Chaucer scholars have long recognized the generic complexity of Troilus and Criseyde, but they have tended to read it primarily as a tragedy or romance or as a text whose genre is sui generis. The following essay attempts to read Troilus and Criseyde as an epic and to articulate how such a generic lens would reorient readings of the text. To do so, fresh definition is given to the term “epic,” and insights from genre theory are drawn upon. Ultimately, Troilus and Criseyde is an epic poem because it invests within the composite hero of two lovers the fact that societal stability depends in part on romantic involvement.

Akseli Gallen-Kallela is often discussed as the national painter of Finland, as one who helped define Finnishness when Finland was still a colonized area of Russia. However, his trip to Africa from 1909-1911 shows where Gallen-Kallela acts as a pictorial colonizer himself, not only sympathizing with the Africans but representing them through a European cosmopolitan lens, as purer and closer to nature, but still inferior. The assumptions inherent in his representations of Africa reveal that Gallen-Kallela is not only a colonized subject but a colonizer of his own country.

Beginning around 1850, Italians found themselves in the midst of an identity crisis. Europeans in France and England had surpassed Italians in terms of political, economic, and social progress. Italians seemed trapped in the past, clinging to their magnificent artistic heritage. However, new cultural and social movements were on the rise in Italy that attempted to throw off the domination of other European entities and forge a promising future for Italy. The Macchiaioli, a group of Italian modern artists who painted from 1853 to 1908, were the first group to address contemporary social issues such as class struggle and national weakness. Their art called for progressive change and arguably influenced how the later Italian Futurist movement would address similar concerns beginning in 1909. One of the Macchiaioli, Telemaco Signorini, advocated the development of new technologies and industries—dominated by men—in realist paintings from 1853 to 1901. Futurist artist Giacomo Balla gained recognition for promoting similar ideas in a more radical fashion. Most art historians believe that the Futurists were influenced by trends originating in Western Europe, specifically the French avant-garde. This thesis argues that the Futurists were significantly influenced by an Italian tradition that originated with the Macchiaioli. The Macchiaioli were animated by a nationalistic fervor and a desire to create a strong and unified Italian state. They used art and literature to advance progressive ideals based on masculine acts. The Futurists responded to similar stimuli in their day. In the absence of a powerful national identity, Signorini and Balla employed modern artistic styles to idealize masculine solutions to social problems. Both ultimately foresaw a world in which technology, mastered by men, would elevate Italian society.

“Culinary Scapes” analyzes culinary cultural production produced and consumed by South Asians in various “national” sites: India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Britain, Canada and the United States. It juxtaposes contemporary South Asian cultural production to identify the potentials as well as limitations of thinking through culinary practices to understand how South Asian subjects inhabit multiple identitarian locations made possible by particularized relationships to food and culinarity. This juxtaposition of texts reveals that food is implicated in vital ways in a number of cultural, political and economic debates that both produce and contest ideas about gendered national culinary identity. The dissertation uncouples the seamless link between “food” and “nation” in a range of South Asian contexts to argue that food and nation and gender are not naturally linked, but instead are rendered isomorphic within the popular imagination for politically motivated reasons. The first chapter offers a schematic overview of culinarity in different disciplinary locations. It ends with an exploration of the politics of food production in Ketan Mehta's Mirch Masala (Spices ). Chapter II analyzes how the rhetoric of cookbooks, including those by Kala Primlani and Madhur Jaffrey, discipline middle class “housewives” in India and the United States into performing versions of Indianness, upholding the values of middle class Hindu India. Chapter III explores how queer desire—routed through culinarity—emerges against the backdrop of the classed and sexualized domestic sphere in Romesh Gunesekera's Reef and Deepa Mehta's Fire. Chapter IV examines how food is embedded in discourses about authenticity and citizenship within diasporic contexts, comparing Shani Mootoo's “Out on Main Street” with Sara Suleri's Meatless Days . Chapter V asks what it means to think “beyond the nation” analyzing the gendered, culinary television and cookbook performances of Padma Lakshmi and Raji Jallepalli as well as the writings of Geeta Kothari. It asks how fusion cuisine can be read against U.S. racial discourses of assimilation and otherness. The final chapter reflects on the politico-economic implications of thinking about food and nation in isomorphic terms by reading Nisha Ganatra's Chutney Popcorn alongside debates over basmati rice patenting in South Asia.

Transnational black American women writers' literary renderings of "home" evidence an intersectional relationship among black American literature and cultures. This dissertation analyzes, through the trope of home, these authors' portrayals of the multiplicity of experiences informing black American women's lives and identities both domestically and transnationally. Embracing the transnationalism of black American female subjects, as well as a paradigm of intersectionality, this dissertation creates a framework that challenges not only canon formation with regards to black women's literature in the Americas, but also the rigidity surrounding racial/ethnic and national identities generally. To this end, it distinguishes itself from other scholarship that has largely analyzed these women's writings comparatively or within a larger diasporic framework---which, while insightful, tends to undermine the impact and specificity of "New World" or black American cultures. This dissertation consists of an Introduction that delineates "intersectionality," explicating its significance and relational aspects to what I refer to as "transnational black American." Chapter I analyzes how these black women writers' representations of home problematize "nation"; and, it situates the novels within particular historical, sociopolitical, gendered, and literary contexts. Chapter II investigates Paule Marshall's depictions of African American and Caribbean settings as homespaces integral to protagonist Avey Johnson's black cultural consciousness and healing in Praisesong for the Widow. Chapter III examines the ways Haiti and the United States serve as sites of female sexual violation in Edwidge Danticat's Breath, Eyes, Memory . Chapter IV analyzes Toni Morrison's and Opal Palmer Adisa's delineations of African American women's attempts to establish a homespace and connection to their "black woman-ness" in transnational black American settings in Tar Baby and It Begins with Tears, respectively. Lastly, the Conclusion underscores this dissertation's significance in its challenging the rigidity of not only African American and Caribbean literary canons and their respective criticisms, but national boundaries and spaces, as well.

Entitled “Reassessing the Theatre of the Absurd: Parabolic Drama and the Question of Absurdity,” my dissertation interrogates the conventional idea that the Theatre of the Absurd contemplates the purposelessness of life by re-examining some of the major plays of Beckett, Ionesco, Genet and Pinter. I suggest that the plays of the Theatre of the Absurd are, instead, ethical texts that contemplate how life can be made meaningful. I argue that Martin Esslin’s 1961 characterization of such work as “absurd” does not take into account a fully informed reading of Camus, and thus Esslin’s reading does not see the extent to which meaningfulness is fundamental to such cultural productions. Therefore, I push for a re-reading of these plays and playwrights that allows for decidedly meaning-making conclusions. Using an up-to-date understanding of Camus’ philosophy as a theoretical frame, I engage with the long history of Theatre of the Absurd criticism, performance histories and reviews, the genre of the parable, philosophy and performance studies. My dissertation, ultimately, argues against a strictly absurd reading and, instead, positions such work within the larger realm of ethics (in the general vein of Camus).

New Testament text critics are fueled by a search for origins. But in the absence of an autograph, questions of origins are complicated at best. The fruit of that search for origins has resulted in the creation of hypothetical, eclectic texts—texts which have left us translating and interpreting the Bible in a form that no community in human history has before. Far from being failed projects, however, these eclectic versions aptly represent the problem of the One and the many, a problem not easily solved: When faced with hermeneutic duties, can we effectively speak of New Testament texts without speaking of their thousands of various and actual instantiations in the world? The answer, of course, is both yes and no; but the timid no has typically taken a back seat to the boisterous yes. This thesis develops a new literary historical hermeneutic based on the Categories of C. S. Peirce, a philosophical approach that will demonstrate the need for both an ideal (the yes) and a concrete (the no) approach to New Testament criticism. After this need has been demonstrated, the Gospel of John will then be under examination, both in its ideal and in one of its more concrete forms: P66, a second century Greek papyrus manuscript of the Gospel. The nature of the interpretive communities that have made use of the Gospel will also be considered.

This thesis will analyze José Clemente Orozco's mural The Epic of American Civilization in terms of the problem of suffering. It will focus specifically on two panels, “Human Sacrifice in Ancient Times” and “Human Sacrifice in Modern Times.” This analysis will comprehend not only the works of art within their historical context, but also within Martin Heidegger's philosophical discussion of the question of suffering. Heidegger presents a unique perspective on the question of human suffering when he writes that Western humans have forgotten how to “dwell.” This dwelling is defined by Heidegger's novel conception of ontology as relational rather than individualistic. According to this theory, humans must identify themselves through their associations, both with other people and with things. Without these associations, humans are not be able to escape the anxiety associated with suffering and death brought about by the isolating effects of Western modernity. A discussion of Mexico provides a practical example of the complexities of the question of dwelling in Western thought. At the time Orozco was painting his mural, Mexican identity was rapidly fragmenting. In the decades after the Mexican Revolution, many artists wrestled with the concept of Mexican identity, and it was in this time of flux that Orozco offered his interpretation of the cyclical progress of humanity. The two paintings depict two forms of suffering, which this paper will refer to as a “good” and a “bad” death. This nomenclature is not strictly accurate as neither form could be said to be desirable in any concrete way. Consequently a Rivera painting (“Revolution – Germination”) will also be presented that suggests an ideal death. However, the focus will remain on Orozco's paintings. Of course, in his own paintings Orozco is not endorsing the act of human sacrifice. However, because of differences in their composition, they suggest not only a cyclic pattern to human history, but also a downward progression where the persistent problems of violence and suffering in human societies have grown more difficult and complicated since the advent of modernity. As Orozco's paintings seem to suggest and Heidegger will argue, the solution to the isolating ‘bad death’ is learning to live relationally. These relationships comprehend the social and the cultural, but the focus will be on the ecological and the divine, because, as several critics will argue, these are the greatest deficiencies in modernity.

The lintels of Yaxchilan Structure 23 seem to be a demonstrable case wherein specific symbols are singled out and deliberately used in an ordered sequence. Taken together as a unified series, Yaxchilan Lintels 24, 25, and 26 summarize the multi-step process of royal autosacrifice. An iconographic study of the huipil patterns depicted on these lintels yields a better understanding of complex bloodletting iconography and the way in which depictions of ceremonial autosacrifice reinforce Classic Maya beliefs relating to the divine role of Maya elite in eliciting communion with the gods and the subsequent rebirth of the cosmos. The rich iconography of the lintels gives depth to our understanding of importance of royal bloodletting on a cosmic level. Their detailed imagery clarifies what seems to have occurred during each step of the ritual process. The events and symbolism depicted on the three lintels build from each other to form a unified iconographic whole centered on the rebirth of the gods and the cosmos through royal autosacrifice. Iconographic changes from one lintel to the next communicate the pervasiveness of cycles of death and rebirth in Classic Maya cosmology. The symbolism of each lintel communicates the interrelatedness of death and rebirth, while underscoring the role of the ruler in initiating cosmic renewal through autosacrifice. As Yaxchilan Lintels 24, 25, and 26 present themselves in an interrelated series, the subtle differences within the iconography from one lintel to the next represent important progressions within cycles of death and rebirth, elucidating the significance of certain steps within the royal bloodletting ritual and the cosmic rebirth that takes place as a result. As a set, the combined iconographies present on the queen's huipil—crosses, flowers, and toads—epitomize the objective of the ritual, namely rebirthing the cosmos and the gods through the sacrifice of divine blood.

The house of the Caecilii Metelli was one of ancient Rome's most prestigious yet overshadowed plebeian families. Replete with dynamic orators, successful generals, and charismatic women, the Caecilii Metelli lived during the period of Rome's great expansion. Having participated in its transformation into the principal power in the Mediterranean, they survived until the fall of the Republic. By contemporary Roman standards they were a powerful and respected family. Seventeen consulships, nine triumphs, nine members of priestly colleges—including three who became pontifex maximus—and five censors are evidence of their high position in Rome. The trappings of magisterial office and military decorations notwithstanding, the Caecilii Metelli were nevertheless often overshadowed on the stage of Roman politics by stronger personalities and did not receive substantial attention in the ancient sources. This study seeks to understand the political connections and activities of the Caecilii Metelli in Republican Rome. While attention must be given to the appropriate social and historical contexts, the focus must always remain on the individuals and their interactions with each other. Each generation of the Metellan family was involved in varying degrees in the political processes of the time. A deeper understanding of the role of the Metelli in these processes shows that the Metelli can be understood as a family of outsiders who successfully attempted to make their presence felt in Roman politics, but were ultimately doomed to fail in the collapse of the Republic. They can serve as a paradigm for understanding the struggles of aristocratic families to maintain power and influence throughout the Roman Republic.