This essay will analyse Charles Dickens’s Great Expectations from a conversion narrative perspective. It will show that the journey of the protagonist Pip have resemblances to the journey of Dante in Dante Alighieri’s The Divine Comedy. The reason for this is that Great Expectations is an equally clear example of a conversion narrative as The Divine Comedy. Both Pip and Dante meet sinners along their way, but the focus is on how the protagonists deal with their own sins. Pip goes through a typical conversion, where he goes from an avaricious, prodigal and proud person, to a man who values working hard for a sufficient living and being with the ones he love.

This bachelor thesis will have its focus on Great Expectations by Charles Dickens. The central claim of this thesis is that in the novel Great Expectations, the protagonist Pip is used by Dickens as a metaphor for the British urbanization during the period of industrialisation.       The literary theory that will help to analyse and prove this claim will be New Historicism. The central praxis of using non-literary historical documents and comparing them it to a literary text such as Great Expectations will be used in the discussion part of this thesis. As New Historicism tends to be unclearly defined, this thesis applies H.Aram Veeser’s definition and his definition is explained in this thesis.      The thesis is structured thus firstly, Pip’s time in the marshes will be discussed and in this discussion and the following ones. Characters that influence Pip is used to see Pip’s alternation.Secondly, after discussing Pip’s time in the marshes, his time in London is discussed. Finally, Pip’s return to the marshes after living in the city is discussed to clearly see his change in attitude and whether the urbanisation is for the better or it worsens his state of mind. Pip’s journey in Great Expectations expresses an ambivalence against urbanization. As urbanisation has great expectations in the rural communities, Pip sees that this comes to a high cost.

Facultad de Filosofía y Humanidades / Informe de seminario para optar al grado de Licenciada en Lengua y Literatura Inglesa / This work is in line with the main theme in our seminar ‘The City and the urban subject in English and American Literature’. In the course of it we have studied the first appearance of the urban subject, amazed by the new metropolitan surroundings that he finds himself in. Then comes the Fláneur who observes, sometimes as an outsider, the new bohemian life in the big cities and finally cannot find a place to fit in the crowd, or either enjoying the crowd in their loneliness. In literature, the cities are built up by the narrator; here is where detail shows its power to set full images in our minds. Cities we know as the back of our hands and like to wander to recall the past, cities we meet for the first time and would like to walk all over, and cities we knew when they were great and now we find destroyed. That we have studied concerning the city. However, this present work is almost entirely related to the urban subject and how they manage to live in the ever-growing city.

<p>“To be, or not to be” surely constitutes a strange walk on the tight rope between delusion and reality, and apparently, Robert Fleming is a man with immense problems. Who is Ziggy Stardust, and who is Stephen Dedalus? Is it relevant to claim that there is more of David Bowie’s true personality inside Ziggy than of, for instance Charles Dickens’ great expectations within Pip? By examining Nick Hornby’s novel High Fidelity and it’s main character from a Freudian perspective using Freud’s theories and ideas of the oedipal concept, this is basically a plain attempt in search for a better psychological knowledge and understanding of the musical world of illusion, which finally ends up in a serious effort to interpret the true and inner meanings of Rob’s dreams and personality.</p>

“To be, or not to be” surely constitutes a strange walk on the tight rope between delusion and reality, and apparently, Robert Fleming is a man with immense problems. Who is Ziggy Stardust, and who is Stephen Dedalus? Is it relevant to claim that there is more of David Bowie’s true personality inside Ziggy than of, for instance Charles Dickens’ great expectations within Pip? By examining Nick Hornby’s novel High Fidelity and it’s main character from a Freudian perspective using Freud’s theories and ideas of the oedipal concept, this is basically a plain attempt in search for a better psychological knowledge and understanding of the musical world of illusion, which finally ends up in a serious effort to interpret the true and inner meanings of Rob’s dreams and personality.

In this paper I'm trying to trace, analyze and emphasize Kathy Acker’s Great Expectations and Alison Knowles’s The Big Book in regard to the books in/finite im/possibilities. I analyze them through historical changes in the books format and structure, especially ones proposed by Mallarmé, Duchamp and Fluxus. To analyze the texts more closely attention is directed to how Acker and Knowles challenge the conventional narrative, in regard to the body and language/voice and sound. I give specific emphasizes to thoughts posted by écriture féminine, while also adding Mara Lee’s temporalities in regard to body resistance and time. A final thing I do in this paper is through close reading look at contemporary material discourses. I try to examine especially two examples that open up for in/finite im/possibilities in Acker’s and Knowles’s use and references to holes and animals.

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The following study is interested in informal education in three of Charles Dickens's novels: A Christmas Carol (1843), Bleak House (1852), and Great Expectations (1860). While substantial scholarly attention has been paid to Dickens's interest in formal education, for example his educational reform efforts, his fictional depictions of schools and schooling, and his "student" and "teacher" characters, my project considers the fictional moments in which Dickens depicts education happening outside traditional "school" settings. I argue against claims that Dickens was exclusively interested in critiquing pedagogical practices; rather, Dickens offers informal solutions to Victorian attempts at establishing a state-run educational system. My project begins with a chapter providing historical context on formal Victorian educational practices; practices which inform Dickens's descriptions of both formal and informal learning/teaching experiences. In my analysis of A Christmas Carol, I analyze the Christmas Spirits's teaching strategies and find that the ghosts offer a more humane pedagogical approach than common Victorian teaching methods like Andrew Bell and Joseph Lancaster's Monitorial System. My chapter on Bleak House considers the ways in which gendered teaching and learning complicate a Dickensian perspective on what can be defined as best-practice pedagogy. In Great Expectations, I explore how the generic form of the Bildungsroman, or the novel of education, contributes to Dickens's evaluation of learning and social mobility. My project concludes by demonstrating how Dickens explodes and expands definitions of "teacher," "pupil," and "learning" in A Christmas Carol, Bleak House, and Great Expectations, even for twenty-first century audiences. / Master of Arts / In his novels Hard Times, Dombey and Son, and Our Mutual Friend Charles Dickens famously criticizes common Victorian educational practices by depicting unfair and cruel treatment in school and classroom settings. However, Dickens's portrayals of excellent educational settings is often overlooked. My thesis argues that examples of Dickens's successful teachers occur most frequently in his portrayals of informal education. In A Christmas Carol (1843), Bleak House (1852), and Great Expectations (1860), ghosts, friends, mothers, dancing-masters, and dubious neighbors become the best teachers to needy students. My project begins with a chapter providing historical context on formal Victorian educational practices; practices which inform Dickens's descriptions of both formal and informal learning/teaching experiences. In my analysis of A Christmas Carol, I analyze the Christmas Spirits's teaching strategies and find that the ghosts offer a more humane pedagogical approach than common Victorian teaching methods like Andrew Bell and Joseph Lancaster's Monitorial System. My chapter on Bleak House considers the ways in which gendered teaching and learning complicate a Dickensian perspective on what can be defined as best-practice pedagogy. In Great Expectations, I explore how the generic form of the Bildungsroman, or the novel of education, contributes to Dickens's evaluation of learning and social mobility. My project concludes by demonstrating how Dickens explodes and expands definitions of "teacher," "pupil," and "learning" in A Christmas Carol, Bleak House, and Great Expectations, even for twenty-first century audiences.

The research done in this study was motivated by the notion that individuals (or societies) create their own reality through the specific space they occupy at a certain moment in time. This concept of reality implies an "interspace" between (con)texts that could be described as a hybrid (a term that is used to describe the mixing or intermingling of different aspects or liminal space between various (con)texts. As the notion of identity is closely related to the interaction of the individual with a specific context, the main aim of the research was to promote hybridity as a form of identity by exploring the relationship or dialogue between literature (novel) and film as texts. For this purpose, a comparison was made between the formation of identity in the novel Great Expectations by Charles Dickens and its twentieth century counterpart in film produced by Twentieth Century Fox (directed by Alfonso Cuaron and adapted by Mitch Glazer). The main difference between the two texts, the different periods in which the works were produced, constituted an important point of departure for this study. It also revealed that the main character of the respective texts, Pip/Finn, possesses a type of "core personality" of a sense of values that refuses to be repressed, despite the character's interaction with context as reflected in the interplay between the similarities and differences between the texts. The methodological approach was based on the Brockmeier model which suggested an imbrication of theories such as narratology, semiotics and intertextuality that could all contribute, in some way, towards the formation of "textual" identity. The analysis ,first identified three (con)textual aspects/constants in the formation of identity, namely ideological influences, strategies of writing and social reality, in the novel Great Expectations, and then proceeded to illustrate the transformation of these contextual markers in the twentieth century film version. 'The comparison indicated an expansion of the narrator's/protagonist's historic consciousness in the film that correlated with the cultural dominants of the specific time: the film's realist mode as opposed to the postmodernist expansion or fusion of boundaries. The two texts were perceived to be engaged in a dialogue with no conclusive interpretation, an aspect familiar to the postmodernist approach. / Thesis (Ph.D. (English))--North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2008.

The research done in this study was motivated by the notion that individuals (or societies) create their own reality through the specific space they occupy at a certain moment in time. This concept of reality implies an "interspace" between (con)texts that could be described as a hybrid (a term that is used to describe the mixing or intermingling of different aspects or liminal space between various (con)texts. As the notion of identity is closely related to the interaction of the individual with a specific context, the main aim of the research was to promote hybridity as a form of identity by exploring the relationship or dialogue between literature (novel) and film as texts. For this purpose, a comparison was made between the formation of identity in the novel Great Expectations by Charles Dickens and its twentieth century counterpart in film produced by Twentieth Century Fox (directed by Alfonso Cuaron and adapted by Mitch Glazer). The main difference between the two texts, the different periods in which the works were produced, constituted an important point of departure for this study. It also revealed that the main character of the respective texts, Pip/Finn, possesses a type of "core personality" of a sense of values that refuses to be repressed, despite the character's interaction with context as reflected in the interplay between the similarities and differences between the texts. The methodological approach was based on the Brockmeier model which suggested an imbrication of theories such as narratology, semiotics and intertextuality that could all contribute, in some way, towards the formation of "textual" identity. The analysis ,first identified three (con)textual aspects/constants in the formation of identity, namely ideological influences, strategies of writing and social reality, in the novel Great Expectations, and then proceeded to illustrate the transformation of these contextual markers in the twentieth century film version. 'The comparison indicated an expansion of the narrator's/protagonist's historic consciousness in the film that correlated with the cultural dominants of the specific time: the film's realist mode as opposed to the postmodernist expansion or fusion of boundaries. The two texts were perceived to be engaged in a dialogue with no conclusive interpretation, an aspect familiar to the postmodernist approach. / Thesis (Ph.D. (English))--North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2008.