The works of Vladimir Nabokov have traditionally functioned in a way that challenges its reader to question existing notions of normality. In his works, Nabokov has frequently utilized representations of disability as a means to comment or critique the human condition. Throughout this project I intend to demonstrate how the narratives in both Lolita and Laughter in the Dark function as a normative force which embodies the cultural attitudes regarding disability. This is accomplished through the enforcement of a normative reading by the narrative. It is clear then that Nabakov is attempting to subvert literary conventions by using nontraditional narrators to demonstrate the relativity of normality. Throughout this project, I will be focusing on Nabakov’s use of narrator to distort the cultural line between disability and ability. Ultimately, the goal of this project is to demonstrate that current societal notions of normality and disability are outdated and arbitrary. / Includes bibliography. / Thesis (M.A.)--Florida Atlantic University, 2013.

Zugl.: Saarbrücken, Univ., Diss., 2005 u.d.T.: Schu, Sabine: Krüppel, Außenseiter und Entstellte - deformierte Frauengestalten im dramatischen Werk Friedrich Dürrenmatts

This thesis considers how religious literature represented sickness and disability in Anglo- Saxon and post-Conquest England. Based on Gospel accounts of Jesus's healings, narratives of miracle-cures were highly valued within medieval Christian culture. By analysing a selection of miracle-cure narratives from the main period of miracle writing in England, from the age of Bede to the late twelfth century, this project considers the social significance of such stories. All miracle-cures followed the pattern of a spiritual triumph over the material world, but this thesis focuses on how hagiographers represented human experiences of sickness and disabilities. The first two chapters of this thesis address the conceptual structure of the project. The first explains the two areas of scholarly theory that underpin this thesis. These are the use of narrative sources for historical study; and sociological conceptualisations of bodily difference. The second chapter orientates the case-studies selected for this project in their context. Miracle-cures were recounted in relation to other aspects of the culture of medieval England, most importantly the theology of sainthood and of sin. The remaining three chapters of the thesis provide detailed thematic analysis of selected miracle-cure narratives. The third chapter asks how the spiritual experience of bodily difference was understood. The next chapter considers the physical understandings of a body that was affected by either sickness or disability, and the links between miracle-cure narratives and contemporary medical theory. The fifth and final chapter addresses the representation of social aspects of sickness and disability in these texts, in particular the moralising rhetoric of such texts in favour of community support. This thesis concludes with a discussion of how modern Disability Studies and scholarship on medieval culture benefit from interaction with one another.

My dissertation proposes that the history of early modern repertory theatre cannot be understood free from the history of disability. I argue that disability was a far more ubiquitous presence in early modern theatre than scholars have hitherto recognized. This is because playing companies represented disability through a manifold web of tools pervading the theatrical marketplace, including player identity, props, embodied acts, gestures, vocalizations, fragments of dialogue, and even the staging of locational places. Tracing disability’s overt and allusive ubiquity is essential for understanding how assessments of (dis)ability consistently informed spectators’ encountering and interpretation of staged drama. Chapter One places period commentary on stage players in dialogue with Christopher Marlowe’s Tamburlaine, arguing that ability and able-bodiedness were valued and idealized by playing companies and audiences alike. Chapter Two examines Robert Greene’s Orlando Furioso, Thomas Middleton’s The Revenger’s Tragedy, and George Chapman’s The Blind Beggar of Alexandria, proposing that leading players’ consistent embodiment of disability troubled a firm binary between disability and able-bodiedness in theatrical performance, as players’ stage identities consistently bore the residues of disabled performance. Chapter Three examines William Shakespeare’s Richard III and Othello, as well as Shakespeare and John Fletcher’s The Two Noble Kinsmen, arguing that even minute tics and gestures onstage evoked the memory of past and present disabled performance. Disabled characters were, this chapter argues, often self-consciously constructed upon one another in ways that allowed repertory theatre to both recount and rework its history of disabled representation. Chapter Four examines the anonymous The Fair Maid of the Exchange, Thomas Dekker’s The Shoemaker’s Holiday, and Robert Armin’s The Two Maids of More-Clacke, arguing that disability was essential to the conception of place in early modern theatre—especially within a repertory system in which “place” often depended upon tools of theatrical representation that bore the residues of past and present disabled performance.

Literary Dependents focuses on diverse discourses on childhood that informed and impacted Japanese literature and society in the modern era. Through an analysis of magazines, literary works, and related media, this dissertation traces the ways childhood has been constructed and utilized in literary, social, political, and cultural discourse from the late nineteenth century to the present. As Japan strove to establish itself as a modern nation in the late nineteenth century, children and youth became a focal point of development as future citizens and leaders of the nation. Hence, images of children in print media were directly tied to Japan’s national identity in the modern world. The development did not stop in the twentieth century, and the concept of childhood underwent many shifts and changes. Taishō Democracy, the Second World War, the Allied Occupation, and the economic boom all brought about changes in the meaning and value of childhood to society, and in each period, new depictions of childhood abounded in print media. By exploring these developments, Literary Dependents seeks to understand how modern Japanese society has represented and utilized childhood as a way of shaping its visions and ideals regarding gender, family, life, art, and the future. The materials covered in Literary Dependents are publications that were intended for both children and adults, in which complex relationships between children and adults played out. The first chapter analyzes the Meiji period (1868-1912) women’s magazine Jogaku zasshi (Women’s Education Magazine, 1885-1904), showing how notions of the wise mother, hardworking wife, as well as a model language for women were constructed through its reading material for children. Chapter 2 centers around the translation of the American children’s novel Little Lord Fauntleroy (1885-1886) by Wakamatsu Shizuko, serialized from 1890 to 1892 in Jogaku zasshi, which provided an idealized image of the child, mother, and family, and was meant to show young women, rather than children, how to be mothers and how to create an ideal family. Chapter 3 discusses the literary space shared by children and adults in the children’s magazine Akai tori (Red Bird, 1918-1936), in which about one fifth of the pages were allotted to writings in prose and verse by children from across the empire. This chapter discusses the unique kind of authorship that arose from the collaboration between adults and children as the child writers themselves strove to fit the standards established by Akai tori. Chapter 4 further explores the issue of child authorship through the example of Toyoda Masako (1922-2010), whose elementary school compositions were repeatedly published in Akai tori, and in 1937, were published in a book titled Tsuzurikata kyōshitsu (Composition Class). This chapter rereads Toyoda’s writing in Tsuzurikata kyōshitsu intertextually, juxtaposing her own expressions with the critique and interpretations by educators and literary writers, as well as referencing her autobiographical writings from the postwar period. The juxtaposition elucidates the arbitrariness of the ideals that were attributed to children’s writing in 1920s and 30s Japan. Chapter 5 deals with the depiction of children with disabilities during the Second World War through an analysis of Kawabata Yasunari’s Utsukushii tabi (A Beautiful Journey), serialized in Shōjo no tomo (Girls’ Friend, 1908-1955) from 1939 to 1942. The serialization took place during a time of significant political change, which impacted the contents of Shōjo no tomo and the novel. The difficulty of continuing to write about a deaf-blind girl at such a time is evident in the abrupt turns in direction that the novel took during this time, moving away from depicting the disabled child and ultimately expressing colonialist and nationalist ideals. The sixth and last chapter explores the role of children in systems of distribution and consumption. In the immediate post-WWII period, reading material for children were scarce, not only because it was a general time of lack even for food, but also because strong nationalist/militarist sentiments found in wartime publications needed to be eliminated, or at least repackaged to fit the new environment. Yoshino Genzaburō’s Kimitachi wa dō ikiru ka (How Will You Guys Live?, 1937) was one text that underwent multiple “repackagings” in the postwar period. This chapter examines the different ways an “ethics” book was promoted under the changing historical conditions of post-WWII Japan. Although the materials covered in Literary Dependents center around those published in Japan, they are inextricably tied to other cultures and traverse national boundaries, not only through translation and adaptation, but also through intercultural interaction, collaboration, or travel. Furthermore, the dissertation connects childhood to other identities of gender, sexuality, disability, race, and class. Publications for children are often a coalescence of society’s myriad of networks as well as its most pressing issues, packaged and issued to an imagined child reader, which is itself an idealized image of the members of that society. The child and all of the ways it is imagined in print media can provide a unique window onto society and history. Hence, this dissertation explores the topic of the child in publishing culture, not to arrive at some definition of the child, but to better understand history through it. As much as children are dependent on adults and encounter publications through the mediation of adults, many aspects of the publishing industry are also dependent on children as readers, writers, consumers, images in marketing, or ideological figures. Literary Dependents is an investigation of mutual dependencies between the child and adult, publishing and literature, and print media and society.