Thesis (M.A.)--Miami University, Dept. of French and Italian, 2004. / Title from first page of PDF document. Includes bibliographical references (p. 39-41).

A cursory glance into the background of Sinclair Lewis reveals that he was an ardent nonconformist. In this study, however, it is pertinent to view more closely the conditions that caused his rebellious attitudes, not only those concerning social reform but also those concerning his personal quest for individuality.

Lee Kar Man Ida. / Thesis (M.Phil.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2002. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 101-108). / Abstracts in English and Chinese. / Abstract --- p.i / 論文提要 --- p.iii / Acknowledgements --- p.v / "Introduction The Victorian Age, the Literary Double and Freedom" --- p.1 / Chapter Chapter I --- Struggle against Restraints: Robert Louis Stevenson's The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde --- p.24 / Chapter Chapter II --- The Ambition to Transgress: Locating Freedom in Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray --- p.52 / Chapter Chapter III --- Jekyll and Dorian: Impossible Mission to Achieve an Unrestrained Freedom against the Social Orthodoxy --- p.77 / Works Cited List --- p.101

This study examines the contemporary American memoirs Goat (2004) by Brad Land, Prozac Diary (1998) by Lauren Slater, and The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts (1976) by Maxine Hong Kingston to reveal how these texts push traditional thematic and genre boundaries as well as conceptions of minority identity. Their inclusion of fictional aspects, episodic structure, narrative excesses, and non-teleological endings work to enhance their status as sociocultural critique and protest. This dissertation utilizes a social oppression angle within disability studies to demonstrate the overlapping processes and experiences of marginalization faced by these disparate protagonists who are dis-abled due to their undesired bodily variations and their failure to meet sociocultural standards of appropriate embodied behavior. Society is ideologically unwilling to accommodate or accept the differences the protagonists possess. Such a frame expands the artificial and culturally constructed notion of disability by illustrating the ways that discourse and ideologies of embodied normalcy intersect to constitute various minority identities as incompetent and unworthy. The texts bear witness to each protagonists’ struggle to cultivate meaningful subjectivity and reject passive victim status; however, their resulting survivor subjectivities are both resistant to and complicit with hegemonic tenets. This literary project augments ongoing work in minority, identity, autobiography, cultural, and disability studies that deconstructs essentialist paradigms while reinforcing the important cultural and literary work of contemporary memoir. Moreover, it fills a critical gap with respect to Goat and Prozac Diary, bringing these two texts into the critical discussion of autobiography. Finally, this dissertation illustrates that memoir is uniquely positioned within literary genres to navigate the interconnectedness of identity, subjectivity, and ideology, thus challenging readers to confront the injustice of a sociocultural structure that sanctions these inequities in the first place / Writing a better story : authorizing a vivid and valid self -- Lauren Slater's Prozac diary : the medical model and the suppression of the patient -- Maxine Hong Kingston's The woman warrior : the spectacular subjugation of the dually oppressed and dis-abled body -- The three memoirs : no prosthesis needed. / Writing a better story : authorizing a vivid and valid self -- Lauren Slater's Prozac diary : the medical model and the suppression of the patient -- Maxine Hong Kingston's The woman warrior : the spectacular subjugation of the dually oppressed and dis-abled body -- The three memoirs : no prosthesis needed. / Department of English

Includes bibliographical references (leaves 123-127) / This dissertation examines how three dystopian texts, namely Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, Jasper Fforde’s Shades of Grey and Veronica Roth’s Divergent trilogy, exhibit social conformity as a disciplinary mechanism of the ‘carceral’ – a notion introduced by poststructuralist thinker Michel Foucault. Employing poststructuralist discourse and deconstructive theory as a theoretical framework, the study investigates how each novel establishes its world as a successful carceral city that incorporates most, if not all, the elements of the incarceration system that Foucault highlights in Discipline and Punish. It establishes that the societies of the texts present potentially nightmarish future societies in which social and political “improvements” result in a seemingly better world, yet some essential part of human existence has been sacrificed. This study of these fictional worlds reflects on the carceral nature of modern society and highlights the problematic nature of the social and political practices to which individuals are expected to conform. Finally, in line with Foucault, it postulates that individuals need not be enclosed behind prison walls to be imprisoned; the very nature of our social systems imposes the restrictive power that incarcerates societies / English Studies / M.A. (English Studies)