Thesis (M.A.)--Ohio State University, 1986. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 34-35). Available online via OhioLINK's ETD Center

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Byrn Mawr college, 1918. / Vita. Published also without thesis note. Bibliography: p. 193-198.

This thesis explores the representation of mental illness and mental incapacity in medieval Irish and Norse-Icelandic saga literature, with a particular focus on the theme of deception in representations of madness. These texts are compared using the methods of literary close reading. It begins (Chapters 1 and 2) with an overview of concepts of madness found in the two bodies of literature (drawing on law texts and poetry as well as the sagas) and the different narrative uses to which these concepts are put. Some general parallels and contrasts are drawn, and the cross-cultural transmission of the concept of the geilt is discussed in this context. Chapter 3 lays the ground for the thesis's analysis of deception in madness narratives by comparing two Irish and Norse-Icelandic narratives about fools and discussing links between the language of mental impairment and the notion of deception. Chapters 4 and 5 explore narrative representations of how deception is used with the aim of rehabilitating the mad person and reconnecting them with society, focusing in particular on the late Middle Irish saga Buile Shuibhne and an episode in the Icelandic family saga Egils saga Skalla-Grímssonar. Chapter 5 concludes with an extended discussion of the role of poetry and memory in representations of mental illness as seen in these two texts. Chapter 6 explores narratives in which deception is used with the purpose of destroying or humiliating the person of unsound mind, here focusing on the late Middle Irish saga Aided Muirchertaig meic Erca and an episode in the Norwegian king's saga Ágrip.

Traditionally, Macbeth has been read as a morality tale about the perils of ambition. The question that has implicitly animated most treatments of the play is, "Why does Macbeth kill Duncan?" By shifting the emphasis away from Macbeth's motives for killing Duncan onto his inability to refrain from killing him, I draw attention to the striking fact that, in killing King Duncan, Macbeth acts against a fully considered better judgment not to. This suggests the possibility that Macbeth's much-discussed ambition can be understood as a subset of the broader theme of akrasia , the condition in which an agent is unable to perform an action he knows to be right. After identifying and exploring the theme of akrasia in several of Shakespeare's plays, I go on to situate Macbeth's murder of Duncan in the context of the long literary and philosophical debate on incontinence. I then suggest four interrelated explanations of Macbeth's akrasia. First, Macbeth's connection to the motivational conditions of his knowledge is shallow; he does not feel what he knows. Second, Macbeth's lack of self-control is habitual because his weak connection to the conative dimension of his knowledge prohibits him from appealing to techniques of skilled resistance. Third, his habitual lack of self-control renders him vulnerable to Lady Macbeth's taunts, which not only deplete the motivation supporting his better judgment but also prevent him from giving full deliberative weight to his better judgment. Finally, Macbeth also engages in a consistent pattern of self-deception that not only facilitates his akratic slaughter of King Duncan but also enables him to murder Banquo and MacDuff's family. My explanation of how Macbeth is able to act self-deceptively against his better evidence echoes my account of how he is able to act akratically against his better judgment: he does not feel what he knows.

Thesis (M.A. in English)--Washington State University, May 2009. / Title from PDF title page (viewed on May 21, 2009). "Department of English." Includes bibliographical references (p. 60-62).

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Argues that Bellow purposefully creates ambiguity and deception using impersonal narration and free indirect discourse in order to present Herzog and The Dean's December as reflections of an ambiguous and deceptive world. The discussion of impersonal narration is based on Wayne Booth's theories about the confusion of distance resulting from impersonal narration; the discussion of free indirect discourse is drawn from a number of definitions. Utilizes a number of specific references to the texts and to criticisms of the texts to demonstrate the absence of norms and the effect that the ambiguity and deception may have on readers.

Were it necessary to choose two words that could capture the philosophy of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, these two words would have to be truth and nature for, in his works, this philosopher does more than assert that he, and he alone, possesses truth in its entirety. He equally maintains that his sole desire lies in sharing this truth with human kind, that we might rediscover our true nature, one that we have long ago forgotten. In fact, these very words adorn his tomb in the Pantheon where he was finally brought to rest: "Ici repose l'homme de la nature et de la verite." However, upon closer examination of two of his major works, Emile or on Education and The Social Contract, both published in 1762, a surprising contradiction is brought to light. In these treatises, he makes the child and the people believe that they are free when he is merely using rhetoric to manipulate them. For example, in Emile he gives the following advice to tutors: "Take the opposite course with your pupil; let him always think he is master while you are really master. There is no subjection so complete as that which preserves the forms of freedom; it is thus that the will itself is taken captive." While in The Social Contract he recommends using divine intervention to assure that the people "obey freely, and bear with docility the yoke of public happiness." Is Rousseau simply a gifted sophist who, by hiding the rhetoric he uses, can present himself as a man of truth in order to better form the child and the people to do his bidding? Or, is there a justification for his duplicity? Could it be possible that in some instances duplicity must be used if truth is ever to be attained by all human beings? By examining the rhetoric Rousseau uses in Emile and The Social Contract, this thesis attempts to shed some light on this somewhat troubling contradiction.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas at Austin, 2009. / Title from PDF title page (University of Texas Digital Repository, viewed on Sept. 9, 2009). Vita. Includes bibliographical references.

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