This study examines charity in Marguerite de Navarre's Heptaméron and François Rabelais's Tiers Livre, two works of 1540's France that explore similar philosophical themes and follow analogous literary structures. Charity appears in these texts in contexts of community, friendship, and human nature, which are the topics of the three chapters in this work. Notions of charity in Marguerite and Rabelais's texts are rooted in exegetic tradition stemming from the Pauline Epistles and designate charity as a social model, distinguished by the love of caritas, as well as an interpretive model, characterized by an appeal to read in good part, in bonam partem. The works draw upon exegetic sources for notions of charity that appear in the writings of their contemporaries, such as those of Erasmus, whose adages, treatises, and encomia inform representations of charity in Marguerite and Rabelais's works. As the Heptaméron and the Tiers Livre develop notions of community, friendship, and human nature, they reveal the underlying precepts of charity in these contexts while also exploring aberrant figures and forms that contradict charitable models. These contrasting themes expand the narratives, ultimately contributing to illustrations of charity in Marguerite and Rabelais's texts.

This dissertation examines occasional events at the Jacobean court through the literature written about them--the largely understudied and yet voluminous occasional works published in inexpensive formats during the first Stuart reign. Through a series of contextualized readings of key occasional events and texts, I argue that these poems and pamphlets not only move beyond the epideictic to engage in key political debates, but also that they present competing visions of the Stuart realm and illustrate the international frame of its court. By examining the relationship between occasional works and the "real" events which they discuss, I show how writers sought to persuade the public to accept their political viewpoints through fictional representations of the Stuarts. More importantly, I demonstrate the need to look beyond representations of the Stuarts sponsored by the Stuarts such as masques to fully understand their iconography. Attending to the contexts which shaped occasional literature and the meaningful ways in which authors yoked descriptions of state events to commentaries on political issues, demands a new history of occasional events at court and a new understanding of the Stuart court as polycentric in nature and international in scope. Scholars have long acknowledged the importance of occasional events at court, but dismissed the printed works published about them as ephemeral propaganda. To understand the court, they turned instead to manuscript correspondence and entertainments such as masques, from which they created an image of the Stuarts as a patriarchal family centered on James. By studying representations of the Stuarts in printed works intended for an audience comprised of more than the royal family, nobles, and courtiers, I seek to show a different vision of the Stuarts, one that is international, multi-centric, popular, and poly-vocal. Each chapter focuses on a major court event and the literary response to it: the 1606 state visit to London of the Danish king Christian IV; the death of Henry, Prince of Wales, in London in 1612; the wedding of Elizabeth, daughter of James VI and I and his consort Anna of Denmark, to Frederick, Count Palatine, in London in 1613; and the funeral of Anna in London in 1618. Offering densely contextualized readings of representative occasional works, I argue that authors used these events to envision idealized relationships between, respectively, Britain and Denmark; Britain and France; Britain and Germany; and, England and Scotland. In each case, they picture one member of the royal family establishing and maintaining these relationships. In other words, they imagined different members of the royal family in critical positions of power, and as mediating, through these events, a wide range of religious and political controversies. By examining representational wars over the images of various members of the Stuarts, I hope to offer a complex portrait of a royal family at the center of international debates. These representations which insist on the multiplicity and internationality of the Stuart courts reveal a complex set of cultural and political exchanges across Europe.

This dissertation identifies the scholarly historicist/contextualist paradigm on the basis of which most work in the discipline of English Literature now proceeds, and proposes a critical and materialist paradigm as an alternative. The first two chapters offer a new reading of the history of the discipline of English Literature. Chapter one traces the early history of the discipline from the 1920s through to the mid twentieth century, focussing on the project of literary criticism, as distinct from the project of literary scholarship. It demonstrates that literary criticism's characteristic methodologies of "close reading" and "practical criticism" were initially created as the tools of a broader project of aesthetic education, where the category of the aesthetic was being rethought in instrumental or incipiently materialist terms. This model of criticism was then turned to quite different purposes by later critics, who were committed to an idealist account of the aesthetic. Chapter two traces the history of the discipline from the late 1970s to the present, identifying a "scholarly turn" that transformed it from a discipline housing both the project of literary criticism and the project of literary scholarship, into a discipline that housed the project of literary scholarship alone. On the basis of this history, the dissertation goes on to argue for the development of a new project of literary criticism, understood as the close engagement with literary texts for the purposes of cultivating readers' aesthetic sensibilities. The third and fourth chapters begin to lay the foundation for such a project. Chapter three attempts to provide criticism with both a new philosophical basis in a materialist account of the aesthetic, and a new way to conceptualise its institutional site as a site of radical, rather than liberal, education. Chapter four attempts to provide criticism with the first elements of a methodology of reading by way of a case study of Virginia Woolf's Mrs Dalloway (1925). The dissertation thus has four elements: in chapters one and two, a historical element; in chapter three, philosophical and institutional elements; and in chapter four, a methodological element. Taken together, these provide at least the few first sketches of a foundation on which a project of materialist aesthetic criticism might seek to establish itself today.

The defense of poetry is a centuries-old genre that shapes the verse of Ezra Pound, T.S. Eliot, Marianne Moore, and William Carlos Williams. Arguments from the defense of poetry become models for the imagery in their poems and for their own poetic voices. These arguments include defending poiesis as the ennobling essence of poetry; attacking ornament as a property of mere verse; and yoking popular poetry to the vice of over-ornamentation. By drawing together their growing frustration with the prose defense, their internalization of its priorities and prejudices, and their residual commitment to poetic ornament, this cohort of modernist poets produce a genre of poem fraught with contradiction: images of the bad poet and the ignorant masses from the defense become central to modernist poetry. Seminal texts like "In a Station of the Metro," "Poetry," The Waste Land, and Spring and All register the defense's actual political purpose: policing class hierarchies within the democratizing republic of letters.

This dissertation reads the novels of Jules Verne, Albert Robida, Villiers de l'Isle-Adam and Emile Zola, investigating the representation of inventors who specialize in electricity. The figure appears as the intersection of divergent literary movements: Zola, the father of Naturalism and leading proponent of a `scientific' approach to literature, Villiers de l'Isle-Adam, decadent playwright and novelist, Robida, leading caricaturist and amateur historian, and Verne, prominent figure in the emerging genre of anticipation, all develop the inventor character as one who succeeds in realizing key technological aspirations of the 19th century. The authors, however, take a dim view of his activity. Studying the figure of the inventor allows us to gain insight into fundamental 19th century French anxieties over the nation's progress in science and technology, its national identity, and international standing. The corpus casts science as a pillar of French culture and a modern expression of human creativity, but suggests that social control over how progress is achieved is more important than pure advancement, no matter the price of attaining control. There is a great desire for progress in this period, but as society's dependence on scientific advancement is becoming apparent, so is its being ignorant of the means through which to achieve it. In fiction exploring this subject, the inventor appears as an intercessor, standing at the articulation of cultural aspirations in science and cultural fear over their timely, socially-constructive realization. Chapter 1 focuses on the works of Jules Verne, elaborating a portrait of the inventor as he appears in the series of the Voyages Extraordinaires. The character returns with remarkable preponderance in subsequent installments of the series, with Vingt mille lieues sous les mers (1870), L'Ile mystérieuse (1874-1875), Les Cinq cents millions de la Bégum (1879), Robur-le-conquérant (1886), Le Château des Carpathes (1892), Face au drapeau (1896) and Maitre du monde (1904) all showing him as best poised to advance French science. Emphasis is placed on his private, reclusive pursuit of the discipline, which is contrasted by the author through the development of characters representing official science, such as professors and engineers. This distinction is read in the context of Verne's educational mission, which supports the official scientists and emphasizes service to the community and the growth of their respective disciplines. Chapter 2 analyzes Albert Robida's key satirical futuristic novel La Vie électrique (1892). Unlike Verne, Robida illustrates perversions of progress, offering a world in which the rhythm of life is sped up to an untenable pace by inventors. Set in the 20th century, in this version of France technology is fully integrated in everyday life, the inventor is a popular idol and successful businessman. Despite this great departure from the model proposed in Chapter 1, the figure of the inventor is defined through the same seclusion and dedication to research, disdain for education and oversight of his activities. The author thereby succeeds in simultaneously illustrating the realization of France's hopes and fears about its technological development at the turn of the century. Whereas Verne gives voice to the dominant ideological perspective on science, Robida's position as satirist enables him to critique it while retaining a degree of hope, not only through aspects of the plot but also his copious illustrations. Chapter 3 focuses on the figure of Thomas Edison as the protagonist of Villiers de l'Isle-Adam's L'Eve future. Borrowing the electrical inventor from anticipation, the novel finds its other main source in the topoi of the decadent movement. The inventor's real-life persona is offered as guarantee of the extraordinary achievement of his fictional counterpart, in contrast to Verne's conveying realism through scientific detail. The inventor cynically markets his work to a decadent audience, but Villiers also relies on the repertoire of this tradition to condemn him. The author merely plays at integrating Edison into the line one would imagine for him. Prometheus and Frankenstein are the mythological and literary standards against which the new figure is compared, but are quickly dismissed. Villiers then suggests Goethe's Faust as the most reliable model, only to reveal in a final, negative assessment of the Edison that he is, in fact, Mephistopheles. The novel thus constructs a modern legend of the inventor as a fusion of contemporary journalism and older literary archetypes. Chapter 4 reads Zola's Travail (1901) as a utopian re-writing of Germinal (1885). It argues that Travail realizes Germinal's closing warning that `new men' would eventually emerge, though it is not to avenge tragedy. These `new men' are the same 19th century workers of Germinal, whose violence and lack of education Zola had described as infantilizing, but this time, they are the children of better fathers, who prepare them to adapt and evolve. The transformation of the working-class community depicted in the Evangile is possible through the work of a Vernian inventor, Jordan. Zola repeats many of the topoi of the character's representation in our other authors, which are again associated with singular success in the domain of electricity. Through Jordan, Zola moves away from his Naturalist of heredity, where the efforts or ambitions of the individual were thwarted by the manifestation of an ancestral tare. Travail uses the inventor figure to propose a new model, one which allows for the transmission of acquired characteristics, and in which positive change is possible.

This dissertation focuses on the proliferation of literary personae in print between 1588 and 1603, a phenomenon which generated the conditions for print stardom, heated debate, cross-volume narratives, and a culture of literary appropriation. Each chapter focuses on a different persona - Colin Clout, Martin Marprelate, Thomas Nashe, and Robert Greene - and contains close readings of generically diverse texts. In so doing, the project tells a new story about literary culture of the 1590s, a story in which personae stimulated the print market by becoming textual celebrities, fighting with one another, and capitalizing on already well-known textual personalities' fame.

This dissertation examines the changing ways in which nineteenth-century French poets addressed readers and constructed relationships with them from the late Romantic period through the rise of the Symbolist movement. While poetry’s increased isolation from the public is recognized as an important facet of the evolution of nineteenth-century poetry, the specific reasons for this have not been broadly studied. This dissertation first examines the poet-reader relationship in prefaces to poetic works, examining the shift from Romantic poets such as Victor Hugo and Alphonse de Lamartine, who considered addressing humanity an important part of their vocation, to mid-century poets such as Charles Baudelaire, Lautréamont and Charles Cros, who used prefaces to criticize and chase away readers, to later poets such as Stéphane Mallarmé and Arthur Rimbaud, who abstained from addressing readers by not writing prefaces or publishing their poetry. In order to understand the reasons for this shift, this dissertation examines new media and new readers which these poets rejected as the antithesis of poetry: the press, women and working-class readers. This dissertation studies poetry and critical articles in the mainstream press, women’s publications and publications by and for workers to reveal the models of the poet-reader relationship they presented. In so doing, it creates a broader view of poetic practices and readership in this period, which remain understudied in literary history. The models of the poet-reader relationship evident there demonstrate that rather than ignoring or rejecting them, elite poets defined poetry and readership in direct relation to these other practices and audiences.

This dissertation presents a close reading of Stendhal’s La Chartreuse de Parme, analyzing its written style, its themes, and the relationships between its numerous characters and narrative lines. Through a rigorous investigation of these factors, Stendhal’s explicit creative project emerges: the author’s desire to present himself as a storyteller in conversation with his reader. As storyteller, Stendhal applies himself to show rather than tell. In his narrative method first person often replaces the third; the story unfolds before the reader’s eyes as it would on a stage. The clarity and sobriety of Stendhal’s language becomes a vehicle for the vivid expressivity and dynamic energy that give rise to the Chartreuse’s blatant theatrical presentation. This analysis unfolds in five chapters and an epilogue, illuminating the foundations of Stendhal’s theatrical style. I. Caricature: The Rogues’ Gallery: An inquiry into the passages that present Stendhal at his satiric best. II. Sentence Structure: The stylistic characteristics that underpin theatrical presentation. III. The Emphasis on Time: Stendhal’s manipulation of narrative time facilitates the forward movement of the action; it is theatrical in the sense that there is a continuous flow of movement. IV. Architectural Structure: Enables the disparate components of the narrative to fit together, though there are a multitude. V. Theatrical Prelude: The culmination of Stendhal’s tactics results in an aura of theatricality.

Please note: creative writing theses are permanently embargoed in OpenBU. No public access is forecasted for these. To request private access, please click on the lock icon and filled out the appropriate web form. / Creative writing / 2031-01-01T00:00:00Z

Blood We Did Not Spill, a historical political novel, begins in June 1997 when a young Indian Police Services officer stops at a small town to visit a retired police officer—delusional and very sick—on behalf of her boss. She sees him briefly, speaks with the family and then leaves. Fifteen days later she returns to the same town to take charge of a prison-in-flux on a temporary basis. She is the first woman in the history of the police force to be given this posting, only for five days while the officer-in-charge is on vacation. The prisoners of K—Jail are being moved to a newer facility and whilst most of them have been transferred, the young officer must oversee the relocation of one small group—dacoits—serving life terms. During the transfer she uncovers a discrepancy amongst these prisoners; an extra man is found. This discovery is further compounded by the fact that none of the prisoners will answer her questions honestly or directly. At the time it becomes difficult for her to find out the true identity of the men through official means. Pertinent files from the records room are missing. Instead, she finds a manila envelope containing illegible papers with blood splatter on them and letters—official and love letters—dating from 1977 onwards till 1996. The country has shut down for an extended religious holiday so she cannot get duplicate records that are kept at headquarters. What she learns from these men helps her put together some of the pieces of the puzzle that involve the retired police officer she visited, now deceased, and his twin daughters. Other events that play a part, especially those that happened during The Emergency of 1975-1997, a period that is considered one of the most controversial of Independent India’s history, come to light. With limited time on her, and pressure building, her investigation leads her to events historically rooted in the mistakes made by another pioneering woman—Indira Gandhi, India’s first female Prime Minister—and her allies. How the police officer conducts her investigation and what she chooses to do with the results of the discrepancy irrevocably changes the lives of all the people involved. / A Dissertation submitted to the Department of English in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. / Spring Semester 2017. / April 27, 2017. / Feminism, History, Mystery, Novel, Politics, Transnational / Includes bibliographical references. / Diane Roberts, Professor Directing Dissertation; Charles Upchurch, University Representative; Bob Shacochis, Committee Member; Robert Olen Butler, Committee Member; Jennine Capó Crucet, Committee Member; Jerrilyn McGregory, Committee Member.