<p>“To be, or not to be” surely constitutes a strange walk on the tight rope between delusion and reality, and apparently, Robert Fleming is a man with immense problems. Who is Ziggy Stardust, and who is Stephen Dedalus? Is it relevant to claim that there is more of David Bowie’s true personality inside Ziggy than of, for instance Charles Dickens’ great expectations within Pip? By examining Nick Hornby’s novel High Fidelity and it’s main character from a Freudian perspective using Freud’s theories and ideas of the oedipal concept, this is basically a plain attempt in search for a better psychological knowledge and understanding of the musical world of illusion, which finally ends up in a serious effort to interpret the true and inner meanings of Rob’s dreams and personality.</p>

“To be, or not to be” surely constitutes a strange walk on the tight rope between delusion and reality, and apparently, Robert Fleming is a man with immense problems. Who is Ziggy Stardust, and who is Stephen Dedalus? Is it relevant to claim that there is more of David Bowie’s true personality inside Ziggy than of, for instance Charles Dickens’ great expectations within Pip? By examining Nick Hornby’s novel High Fidelity and it’s main character from a Freudian perspective using Freud’s theories and ideas of the oedipal concept, this is basically a plain attempt in search for a better psychological knowledge and understanding of the musical world of illusion, which finally ends up in a serious effort to interpret the true and inner meanings of Rob’s dreams and personality.

"Sounds of Terror" explores the interrelations between discourses of sound and the ghostly in Victorian novels and short stories. Narrative techniques used by Charles, Dickens, George Eliot, Henry James, and Charlotte Mew are historically and culturally situated through their use of or reactions against acoustic technology. Since ghost stories and nvoels with gothic elements rely for the terrifying effects on tropes of liminality, my study consists of an analysis of an important yet largely unacknowledged species of these tropes: auditory metaphors. Many critics have examined the visual metaphors that appear in nineteenth-century fiction, but, until recently, aural representations have remain critically ignored. The aural itself represents the liminal or the numinous since sounds are less identifiable than visuals because of their ephemeral nature. My study shows the the significance of auditory symbols becomes increasingly intensified as the century progresses. Through analyses of Charles Dickens's David Copperfield, George Eliot's Daniel Deronda, and short stories by Henry James ("The Altar of the Dead" and "In the Cage")and Charlotte Mew ("Passed" and "A White Night"), I argue that Victorian writers using gothic modes employ metaphors and symbolism as an alternative to frightening visual images--what could be heard or not heard proved terrifying and dreadful.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Washington, 2003. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 238-250).

"Of That Transfigured World" identifies a generally unremarked upon mode of nineteenth-century literature that intermingles realism and fantasy in order to address epistemological problems. I contend that works of Charles Dickens, Charlotte and Emily Brontë, Walter Pater, and Oscar Wilde maintain a realist core overlaid by fantastic elements that come from the language used to characterize the core narrative or from metatexts or paratexts (such as stories that characters tell). The fantastic in this way becomes a mode of interpretation in texts concerned with the problems of representation and the ability of literature to produce knowledge. Paradoxically, each of these authors relies on the fantastic in order to reach the kinds of meaning nineteenth-century realism strives for. My critical framework is derived from the two interrelated discourses of sacred space theology and cultural geography, focusing primarily on the terms topos and chora which I figure as parallel to realism and fantasy. These terms, gleaned from Aristotle and Plato, function to express two interweaving concepts of space that together construct our sense of place. Topos, as defined by Belden C. Lane, refers to "a mere location, a measurable, quantifiable point, neutral and indifferent" whereas chora refers to place as "an energizing force, suggestive to the imagination, drawing intimate connections to everything else in our lives." In the narratives I examine, meaning is constructed via the fantastic interpretations (chora) of realistically portrayed events (topos). The writers I engage with use this dynamic to strategically address pressing epistemological concerns relating to the purpose of art and its relationship to truth. My dissertation examines the works of Dickens, the Brontës, Pater, and Wilde through the lens of this conceptual framework, focusing on how the language that each of these writers uses overlays chora on top of topos. In essence each of these writers uses imaginative language to transfigure the worlds they describe for specific purposes. For Dickens these fantastic hermeneutics allow him to transfigure world into one where the "familiar" becomes "romantic," where moral connections are clear, and which encourages the moral imagination necessary for empathy to take root. Charlotte and Emily Brontës's transfigurations highlight the subjectivity inherent in representation. For Pater, that transfigured world is aesthetic experience and the way our understanding of the "actual world" of topos is shaped by it. Oscar Wilde's transfigured world is by far the most radical, for in the end that transfigured world ceases to be artificial, as Wilde disrupts the separation between reality and artifice. "Of That Transfigured World" argues for a closer understanding of the hermeneutic and epistemological workings of several major British authors. My dissertation offers a paradigm through which to view these writers that connects them to the on-going Victorian discourses of realism while also pointing to the critical sophistication of their positions in seeking to relate truth to art. My identification of the tensions between what I term topos and chora in these works illuminates the relationship between the creation of meaning and the hermeneutics used to direct the reader to that particular meaning. It further points to the important, yet sometimes troubling, role that imagination plays in the epistemologies at the center of that crowning Victorian achievement, the Realist novel.

This thesis examines Dickens's uses of images of the river throughout his fiction, and also in the early sketches, the reprinted pieces from Household Words and The Uncommercial Traveller. The river concerned is usually but not exclusively the Thames, usually but not exclusively in London. The thesis offers some practical evidence to account for the powerful influence of the Thames upon Dickens's imagination and shows how he conceives of it both within existing frames of reference and in some distinctively Dickensian ways. It considers how Dickens's representations of the river play into the cult of the picturesque which emerged at the end of the eighteenth century, and into the tradition which sees it as a symbolic conduit of the empire. It goes on to consider his use of the river as a boundary, the consequent importance of river crossings in his work, and his conception of the riparian space as a liminal one. It then explores a distinctive scheme of discourse which uses the river to represent rebellious forces beyond the control of human agency and shows how this reflects the sense of spiritual threat which is to be found in some of the other, albeit rare, depictions of nature to be found in his writing. It then shows how Dickens uses the river symbolically to express ideas about death and rebirth, together with the loss of and changes in identity, and how he draws on a scheme of distinctively Christian iconography to do so. Finally it shows how he uses it to create and represent an underworld for London, using tropes of epic founded on classical models. The thesis concludes that, in its use of natural forces to signify social ones, Dickens's writing about the river serves to amplify his conception of stratification in Victorian society and adds weight to the socially conservative political stance which is known to be present in his world view.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Tufts University, 2004. / Adviser: Joseph Litvak. Submitted to the Dept. of English. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 295-301). Access restricted to members of the Tufts University community. Also available via the World Wide Web;

This thesis explores the idiosyncrasies of the nineteenth-century property market and the significance of rented spaces in the literary imagination, focusing on Charles Dickens's fiction and journalism. The traditional understanding of the Victorian home has been challenged in recent criticism that points to the permeability of the public and private spheres, complicates the ways in which gender mapped onto these spheres, and highlights the difference between home and house, freehold and leasehold. This thesis contributes to the discussion by showing that domestic space was a more fractured concept than the middle-class ideal suggests. Versions of 'home' could be found in a multitude of unlikely and unstable places: in inns, hotels, lodging-houses, boarding-houses, and private houses subdivided into apartments for income. Drawing particular attention to London, I reveal tenancy - the commodification of space - to be a governing force in everyday life in the period. The vast majority of the population had an immediate economic relationship with the rooms and houses they inhabited, and this basic fact had various social, psychological and imaginative corollaries. Dickens may have been read as an overwhelming proponent of domestic ideology, but as this thesis argues, rented spaces had an enduring hold upon him. Most significantly, for Dickens, to write about tenancy meant to write about writing. His tenancy narratives touch upon questions of genre, style, character, authorial self-consciousness and the literary marketplace - especially his dialogue with the writers working around him. I explain that the emerging prominence of rented spaces gave Dickens and his circle new narrative opportunities, offering them a tool with which to study the boundaries of different genres. Space, then, does not simply provide a backdrop for incident in the novel, but plays a direct part in determining which incidents take place. Accordingly, the chapters in this thesis are principally divided by genre. The introduction lays out the historical, theoretical and geographical coordinates of the argument. The first chapter identifies some of the key features of Dickens's emerging urban style, situates his early work within an influential farce tradition, and brings the figure of the landlady to life. The second discusses spatial metaphors in the Bildungsroman; it ends with an argument about the 1851 window-tax repeal and its implications for literary lodging-houses. Chapter 3 considers the sudden growth of the hospitality industry during the Great Exhibition and its corresponding narratives, from comedy to sensation fiction. This is followed by a short interlude on seaside lodgings, where Dickens and his contemporaries modernised the pastoral for the nineteenth century. After charting contemporary debates surrounding 'low' lodging-houses, Chapter 4 demonstrates how these writers used rented spaces to make major contributions to the rise of the detective story. The fifth chapter, on living alone and living together, is largely dedicated to the multi-authored Christmas numbers of Household Words and All the Year Round; these witty collections suggest that the dynamics of the lodging-house reflect the politics of Dickens's immediate circle. Finally, a coda contemplates the legacy of Dickens's tenancy narratives in the late nineteenth century and beyond.

Submitted by Roberth Novaes (roberth.novaes@live.com) on 2018-07-11T15:23:45Z No. of bitstreams: 1 AS GRANDES ESPERANÇAS DO SR. PIP - UM ESTUDO INTERTEXTUAL (DISSERTAÇÃO COMPLETA).pdf: 742350 bytes, checksum: 180153cce3b278388400fd09dfe773eb (MD5) / Approved for entry into archive by Setor de Periódicos (per_macedocosta@ufba.br) on 2018-07-11T16:52:30Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 1 AS GRANDES ESPERANÇAS DO SR. PIP - UM ESTUDO INTERTEXTUAL (DISSERTAÇÃO COMPLETA).pdf: 742350 bytes, checksum: 180153cce3b278388400fd09dfe773eb (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2018-07-11T16:52:30Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 AS GRANDES ESPERANÇAS DO SR. PIP - UM ESTUDO INTERTEXTUAL (DISSERTAÇÃO COMPLETA).pdf: 742350 bytes, checksum: 180153cce3b278388400fd09dfe773eb (MD5) / FAPESB / Esta dissertação busca identificar e analisar os diversos vínculos intertextuais presentes no romance neozelandês O Sr. Pip (2007), de Lloyd Jones, em especial aqueles estabelecidos com o romance vitoriano Grandes Esperanças, escrito por Charles Dickens, em 1861. A pesquisa desenvolve-se orientada pelo conceito de intertextualidade, derivado dos estudos do filósofo russo Mikhail Bakhtin e cunhado por Julia Kristeva, por volta de 1960, na França. Nessa direção, a noção de texto se expande para abrigar não só o texto literário, mas também os variados discursos sociais que definem o contexto de produção de uma obra, como política, religião e a própria língua falada. Evidencia-se, por conseguinte, a teia de diálogo e remissões que se tece no âmbito textual, possibilitando a problematização de conceitos mais tradicionalistas como originalidade e autenticidade. Além disso, a pesquisa debruça-se sobre a acentuada marca da tradição oral na narrativa de O Sr. Pip, apontado pelo próprio autor como fio condutor de sua narrativa. Assim, com base em referenciais teóricos da área de estudos de oralidade como Walter Ong (1998), Erick Havelock (1996) e Paul Zumthor (1993; 2014), busca-se compreender como se opera o discurso oral e de que forma a narrativa de O Sr. Pip, bem como a de Grandes Esperanças se constrói com elementos deste discurso. Vista como um dos intertextos presentes entre os dois romances, a oralidade torna-se um elemento importante na medida em que desloca a narrativa canônica do texto dickensiano, baseada na leitura de livros, para uma contação de histórias, recriando assim o romance inglês em um movimento desconstrutor, possibilitando a problematização da noção de cânone literário. / This study aims at identifying and analysing the various intertexts found in the New Zealand novel Mr. Pip (2007) by Lloyd Jones, especially those that refer to the Victorian novel Great Expectations, written by Charles Dickens in 1861. This research is guided by the concept of intertextuality derived from Russian philosopher Mikhail Bakhtin’s studies and further developed by Julia Kristeva, around 1960, in France. Thus, the notion of text broadens in order to refer not only to the literary text but also to other social discourses as politics, religion and the spoken language itself. Consequently, the whole network of dialogue and references that operates at the textual level becomes clearer, questioning more conservative concepts such as originality and authenticity. Plus, this research addresses the theme of orality within the narrative of Mr. Pip, which Jones himself affirms to be central to his novel. Therefore, guided by the study of scholars from within the field of Orality and Literacy such as Walter Ong (1998), Erick Havelock (1996) and Paul Zumthor (1993; 2014), this work seeks to understand how the oral discourse operates and how the narratives of Mr. Pip as well as of Great Expectations are shaped by oral features. The oral language, considered here as one of the intertexts between these two novels, becomes then an important element as it transposes the canonical narrative of the Dickensian text, based on the reading of books, into an environment of story-telling, recreating the English novel in a deconstructive movement and questioning the notion of literary canon.

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