Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Oregon, 2001. / Typescript. Includes vita and abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 420-426). Also available for download via the World Wide Web; free to University of Oregon users.

Thesis (M.A.) -- Ohio State University, 2005. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 84-92). Available online via OhioLINK's ETD Center

Through four hundred years of accumulated disparaging comments from critics, revenge plays have lost much of the original luster they possessed in early modern England. Surprisingly, scholarship on revenge tragedy has invented an unfavorable lens for understanding this genre, and this lens has been relentlessly parroted for decades. The conventional generic approach that calls for revenge plays to exhibit a recurring set of concerns, including a revenge motive, a hesitation for the protagonist, and the revenger’s feigned or actual madness, imply that these plays lack philosophical depth, as the appellation of revenge tends to evoke the trite commonalities which we have created for the genre. This dissertation aims to rectify the provincial views concerning revenge tragedies by providing a more complex, multivalent critical model that makes contemporary the outmoded approaches to this genre. I argue that Mikhail Bakhtin’s theory of carnival, and the ways in which it engages with new historical interpretations of early modern drama, functions as a discursive methodology to open up more creative interpretative possibilities for revenge tragedy. Carnival readings expose gaps in new historicism’s proposed systems of omnipresent power, which deny at every turn the chance for rebellion and individuality. Rather than relegating carnival to an occasional joke, quick aside, or subplot, revenge plays explore carnivalesque concerns, and revengers plot their vengeance with all the aspects of a carnival. In these plays, revengers define subjectivity in terms of the pleasure-seeking, self-serving urges of unofficial culture; negotiations for social change occur in which folk culture avoids a repressive, hierarchal order; and carnival play destabilizes courtly systems that track, classify, pigeonhole, and immobilize individuals.

This thesis tries to circumscribe the carnavalesque narrative strategies that Miguel Angel Asturias (1899-1974) uses in Mulata de tal (1963) to project his pessimistic vision of the social, cultural and religious mixing in Guatemala. The purpose of our work is to make an interpretation of the novel through the analysis of the carnavalesque elements of the work. To achieve this goal, we base our analysis on the Russian critic Mikhail M. Bakhtin's theories of the literary carnavalization and the dialogical principle, which we describe in the first chapter. In the following chapter we examine the formal and semantic components of the novel. In the third chapter we analyse the contrasting and deformed images that represent the social, cultural and religious mixing. Finally, in the fourth chapter we study the different social languages which the author stylizes or parodies to express his ideas in a refracted manner.

Through four hundred years of accumulated disparaging comments from critics, revenge plays have lost much of the original luster they possessed in early modern England. Surprisingly, scholarship on revenge tragedy has invented an unfavorable lens for understanding this genre, and this lens has been relentlessly parroted for decades. The conventional generic approach that calls for revenge plays to exhibit a recurring set of concerns, including a revenge motive, a hesitation for the protagonist, and the revenger’s feigned or actual madness, imply that these plays lack philosophical depth, as the appellation of revenge tends to evoke the trite commonalities which we have created for the genre. This dissertation aims to rectify the provincial views concerning revenge tragedies by providing a more complex, multivalent critical model that makes contemporary the outmoded approaches to this genre. I argue that Mikhail Bakhtin’s theory of carnival, and the ways in which it engages with new historical interpretations of early modern drama, functions as a discursive methodology to open up more creative interpretative possibilities for revenge tragedy. Carnival readings expose gaps in new historicism’s proposed systems of omnipresent power, which deny at every turn the chance for rebellion and individuality. Rather than relegating carnival to an occasional joke, quick aside, or subplot, revenge plays explore carnivalesque concerns, and revengers plot their vengeance with all the aspects of a carnival. In these plays, revengers define subjectivity in terms of the pleasure-seeking, self-serving urges of unofficial culture; negotiations for social change occur in which folk culture avoids a repressive, hierarchal order; and carnival play destabilizes courtly systems that track, classify, pigeonhole, and immobilize individuals.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--McMaster University, 1998. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 221-235). Also available via World Wide Web.

Thesis--Stockholm. / English or Russian. Includes bibliographical references (p. 161-166).

No description available.

This thesis examines the carnivalesque strategies evident in the short story "Confabulacion de la arana" by the Cuban writer, Guillermo Vidal. Two particular perspectives are used here. First, an analysis of the narrator and the narrative structure is made in which the contribution of the narrative strategies present in the text are explored. To do this, the methodological framework of literary carnivalization offered by the Russian critic Mijail Bajtin has been used, foregrounding his basic argument that carnival, as a social practice, is intrinsically subversive since it abolishes all forms of hierarchy and convention present in society during non-carnival time. By extending his theory to those genres of literature in which the elements of carnival are transcribed, Bajtin insists that carnival and carnivalized literature are potentially subversive since they contest conventional structures and frameworks. The narratological models and categories outlined by Gerard Genette and Mieke Bal allow consideration of the variety of pronouns through which the story is narrated and text's representation of the various speech acts. Unlike traditional narratives which are based on the use of a single pronoun, narration in this text is conducted through continual and abruptly shifting changes of pronoun. Such a technique disrupts the stability afforded by a single narrative voice and a narrative function based on ambivalence and plurality becomes evident. Secondly, the carnival theme and its relationship to the Bajtin's theory of the carnivalesque is examined. It is the contention here that "Confabulacion de la arana" may be read as a satire of contemporary Cuban society. Through the process of the continual debasement of the main character, the representative here of authority in Cuba, the story critiques the social and political values in force in Cuba today.

Thesis--Stockholm. / English or Russian. Includes bibliographical references (p. 161-166).