The present research concerns the translation of the Culture-Specific Items (CSI) from the original English version of Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban into two Chinese renditions, a Mainland Chinese version and a Taiwanese version. CSI translation involves not only the transmission of language but also that of culture. In this research, the writer seeks to establish how the two professional translators dealt with four areas of CSIs in the relevant translations. These four areas are: character names, place/shop names, charms/magic formulae, and magical creatures. These are the elements that are important in constructing the background and atmosphere of the story, and sometimes carry cultural or language specific connotations that are difficult to translate. The researcher analysed the CSI translation strategies used by the two translators on the basis of a new categorisation, based on previous researchers' taxonomies. By analysing both quantitative and qualitative data, the thesis writer was concerned with how these CSIs were translated into the two versions, whether the two versions tend to be source-text or target-text oriented, and how the connotations of the originals were conveyed in the target texts. The study found that the translation of proper names, such as character names and place/shop names, was more conservative, which may have been due to traditional Chinese translation conventions. The renderings of these two groups of CSIs showed a significant tendency toward the preservation of the original sounds. By comparison, substitutive strategies were used more frequently in the translation of magic formulae and magical creatures than in the translation of character names and place/shop names. Findings of this research also indicated that even though both translators preferred conservative strategies in most cases, the Taiwanese translator seemed to have adopted substitutive strategies in a slightly larger number of cases than the Mainland Chinese translator. At the end of this thesis, some possible explanations of the differences found between translations of the two versions are presented, followed by some suggestions for further studies.

This paper considers the embodied ethics of Geoffrey Hills poetic practice. Hill stages his engagement with poetry through the idioms, images, tropes, and diction of the literary tradition. Through this pragmatic rehearsal of the language of the dead, Hills poetry projects the tradition into the present. Hill resists the ethical entrapments of appropriative poetry through his insistence upon the brute physicality of atrocity and through a rigorous (for both poet and reader) formal difficulty. Hills practice refuses to console after the models of Peter Sacks, Jahan Ramazani, or John Vickery. Instead, concerned with modernitys disconnectedness, Hills poetry returns us to the presence of the dead, to their ritual and language. Alternatively, because Hills subjects are historical atrocities, rather than natural occurrences, the sort of communal consolation that the elegy traditionally offered would be inappropriate to Hills concerns. These atrocities are, most frequently, instances of human violence (the Holocaust, the Battle of Towton, the Wars of the Roses, etc.) and, for this reason, they do not lend themselves to the consolations of natural cycles of death and rebirth. Since they were often committed in the name of religion, Christian transcendence is similarly questionable, as are other consolatory transcendences. These conventional modes of consolation being denied, Hills poetry reconnects us with the dead through the formal devices and techniques of the historical institution of poetry. Through the rigorous engagement with and sacrificial making of poetry, Hill attempts to redeem tradition and history for the present.

Primarily through the experiences of his gay protagonists, Michael Cunningham critiques the heteronormative nuclear family structure of the 1950s and depicts alternatives to it. Drawing on the work of feminist critics who focus on the political intent of American women authors during the nineteenth century, the findings of family historians who examine families of the 1950s, and the work of anthropologist Kath Weston, I argue that Michael Cunningham represents domesticity in ways that promote readers' appreciation of and support for alternative family models.

Thesis (M.F.A.)--Boise State University, 2009. / Includes abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaf 42).

<p> This thesis explores the intersection of fairy tales with late twentieth and early twenty-first century science fiction - specifically, the reimagining of classic fairy tales within science fictional settings. I will begin with an overview of the ways in which fairy tales and science fiction seem particularly well-suited for such an endeavor, in terms of similarity of common themes, structure, and narrative device. Next, I will examine two recent examples: Caitl&iacute;n R. Kiernan's "The Road of Needles," and Tanith Lee's "Beauty," noting deviations from the traditional source material and highlighting the ways in which the original stories have been updated for modern audiences. Finally, I will offer several of my own stories that reimagine fairy tales in science fiction settings: "Curiosity," a retelling of "The Little Mermaid," "I Dream the Snowfall, the Red Earth of Mars," a retelling of "Snow White," and "Match Girl," a retelling of "The Little Match Girl."</p>

<p> &ldquo;Borders Maritime&rdquo; explores how the English imagined maritime geography, politics, and culture from 1575 to 1625. As a zone that is neither land nor sea, the maritime needed to be developed, demarcated, navigated, and policed in order for England to take her place on the international stage as the Empire by the end of the seventeenth century. To do so, traditional forms of sovereignty founded on the land needed to be reimagined from a different elemental perspective, that of the sea. The model of sovereignty inherited from political theology&mdash;anthropocentric, legalistic, and religious&mdash;is here transformed into a maritime political ecology&mdash;nonhuman, imaginative, and elemental. Recent criticism of the development of modern sovereignty out of the middle ages has found ways to displace the biological basis for the definition of life and reach further into the networked world. This includes forms of life such as pirates and power lines, territories and tidal zones. The move to define the maritime likewise requires including unfamiliar forms of life and active natures. It requires acting on the water, thinking like a whirlpool, imagining waves, and navigating islands.</p><p> The fifty years under consideration here mark this turn from the land to the sea in the English geopolitical imagination. Since the maritime is a border, an especially destructive and deconstructive one, drama provides an especially suitable vehicle in its own borderline nature&mdash;fiction performed in real space with real elements. This dissertation analyzes how the Elizabethan estate entertainments at Kenilworth and Elvetham, William Shakespeare&rsquo;s <i>Hamlet</i>, the Jacobean court masques by Ben Jonson, Samuel Daniels, and Francis Beaumont, and John Fletcher&rsquo;s tragicomedies <i>The Island Princess</i> and <i>The Sea Voyage </i> perform elemental sovereignty and stage the political ecologies of early modern England.</p>

No description available.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Nebraska University, 1909. / Bibliography: p. 77.

Thesis--Bonn. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (p. 212-222).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Wisconsin, 1957. / Typescript. Vita. eContent provider-neutral record in process. Description based on print version record. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 280-330).