Thesis (M.A.)--Brigham Young University. Dept. of French and Italian, 2007. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 78-79).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Missouri-Columbia, 2007. / The entire dissertation/thesis text is included in the research.pdf file; the official abstract appears in the short.pdf file (which also appears in the research.pdf); a non-technical general description, or public abstract, appears in the public.pdf file. Title from title screen of research.pdf file (viewed on September 26, 2007) Vita. Includes bibliographical references.

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Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Oregon, 2002. / Typescript. Includes vita and abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 227-239). Also available for download via the World Wide Web; free to University of Oregon users.

This thesis explores the network of relationships among health and healing, the natural environment, and poetry during the Romantic period in Britain, and thus offers a new perspective on the Romantic relation to Nature. The context for this study is both the long and varied history that links literature to ideas of health and disease, and the intersection of the late 18th- and early 19th-century discourses of holistic science and healing that emphasize the synergy between self and world and recognize that our living environments can be either hostile or congenial to body and spirit. For many Romantic poets, illness was a painful reality that became vital to their thoughts about poetry and creativity in general. Through Wordsworth's partnership with Coleridge, a vocabulary of health and disease emerges in relation to poetic production and reception that has influenced critics of the period. It constructs the "natural" as a source of health, and establishes Wordsworth and his poetic celebrations of the therapeutic potential of nature as the often problematic legacy both for Coleridge and for second generation poets like Byron and Shelley. While composing Childe Harold's Pilgrimage Canto III, Byron tests Wordsworth's notion that immersion in the natural world can be spiritually therapeutic from the point of view of poetic production. The intensity of Byron's bodily existence, however, prevents him from fully experiencing the spiritual and metaphysical aspects of Wordsworthian nature. As his attempts to disengage the spirit from the body by meditating on nature actually have the reverse effect of bringing him more in touch with his physical identity, he must reject Wordsworth's methodology as a possible vehicle for healing. In refiguring Wordsworth's ideas about "taste," Shelley conceives of his poetry as healthy food for thought. His frequently used metaphors of "literature as food" have their source in his attitudes towards intake first exp

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Sydney, 2005. / Title from title screen (viewed 19 May 2008). Submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy to the Dept. of English, Faculty of Arts. Degree awarded 2005; thesis submitted 2004. Includes bibliographical references. Also available in print form.

This thesis explores the interconnection of sacramental eating and humoural curing in selected plays by William Shakespeare and Ben Jonson. It contends that the drama actively participated in the medico-religious debates of post-Reformation England. Investigating the health benefits attributed to the Eucharistic meal in its pre- and post-Reformation forms, this thesis shows that early modern religious debates occupy an important place in contemporaneous drama, proposing that aspects of religion, particularly the Eucharist, were explored by Shakespeare and Jonson with regards to the Sacrament's medicinal efficacy. The thesis suggests that the drama identifies religious anxiety as medico-spiritual trauma, and offers performative sacramento-humoural therapy. In tracing intersections of sacramentality, cannibalism, and Galenic humourism in six plays, the thesis analyses early modern concepts of the body, blood, food, medicinal practices, the Eucharist, and morality, showing that drama was used as a medical and didactic tool. Chapter 1 explores issues of corporeality and community in Coriolanus, unearthing interconnected concepts of humoural eating and changing religious communities. Chapter 2 investigates early modern medical practices in Titus Andronicus, placing medicinal cannibalism at the nexus of martyrdom, sacramentality, and humoural disease. Chapter 3 develops notions of sacramentality by analysing the philosophy of neo-stoicism in Julius Caesar and linking it with acts of penance. Chapter 4 discusses the portrayal of these themes in Bartholomew Fair, examining Jonson's investigative approach to dramatic portrayals of medico-religious debates. Chapter 5 compares Every Man In His Humour and Every Man Out of His Humour, identifying themes of the medieval morality play, and showing that they were employed for didactic and medicinal purposes. This thesis concludes that interconnected discourses of sacramental eating and humoural curing constitute dramatic commentary on contemporaneous medico-religious issues, and offer temporary, performative salvation for a religiously troubled nation.

Some Black women writers--Zora Neale Hurston, Toni Cade Bambara, Paule Marshall, Gloria Naylor, and Alice Walker--of American fiction have written characterizations of winning women. Their characterizations include women who are capable of taking risks, making choices, and taking responsiblity for their choices. These winning women are capable of accepting their own successes and failures by the conclusions of the novels. They are characterized as dealing with devastating and traumatic personal histories in a growth-enhancing manner. Characterizations of winning women by these authors are consistently revealed through five developmental stages: conditioning, awareness, interiorizing, reintegrating, and winning. These stages contain patterns that are consistent from author to author.While conditioning and awareness of the negative influcences of conditioning are predictable, this study introduces the concept of interiorizing and reintegrating as positive steps toward becoming a winning woman. Frequent descriptions of numbness and disorientation mark the most obvious stages of interiorizing. It is not until the Twentieth Century that we see women writers using this interiorizing process as a necessary step toward growth. Surviving interiorizing, as these winning women do, leads to the essential stage of reintegrating.Interiorizing is a complete separation from social interaction; reintegrating is a gradual reattachment to social process. First, elaborate descriptions of bathing rituals affirm the importance of a woman's body to herself. Second, reintegrating involves food rituals which signal social reconnection. Celebration banquets and family recipes offer an important reminder to the winning woman that the future is built on the past. Taking the best of what has been learned from the past into the future provides strength and stability.The characterization of a winning woman stops with potential rather than completion. A winning woman must still take risks, make choices, and bear the consequences of her choices. The winning woman does not accept a diminished life of harmful conformity. She is characterized as discovering how to use choice and power. Novels included in this study are: Zora Neale Hurston's Their Eyes Are Watching God; Toni Cade Bambara's The Salt Eaters; Paule Marshall's Brownstone, Brown Girl; The Chosen Place, the Timeless People; and Praisesong for the Widow; Gloria Naylor's The Women of Brewster Place, Linden Hills; and Alice Walker's Meridian, and The Color Purple. / Department of English

Thesis (MA)--Stellenbosch University, 2015. / ENGLISH ABSTRACT: This thesis is an exploration of the textuality of the skin, and how we approach and read wounds and scars. My discussion approaches the skin through the frame of surface reading to address three interconnected but seemingly disparate areas; namely American slavery, atrocities committed by the Lord’s Resistance Army, and self-mutilation. These areas all share the trope of the wound, and my approach is thus interdisciplinary in nature. I begin my discussion with Toni Morrison’s Beloved, focusing on the manner in which the extreme violence the characters suffer plays an instrumental role in their ability to reconcile themselves with their pasts. I focus specifically on the scars on Sethe’s back that resemble a tree, and how this tree links all of the characters together in their desire to re-member themselves. I then move to the Lord’s Resistance Army and how their mutilations of the civilian population serve a communicative function. I explore how we read images of atrocity, and how many of these images are framed and manipulated in order to garner attention. From there, I move to Kony 2012, the viral ‘documentary’ that drew the world’s attention and criticism for its gross misrepresentation of Africa and its indulgence in the stereotypes that present Africans as passive victims in need of saving. Finally, I discuss the phenomenon of self-mutilation and how the cuts and scars reveal how language is rendered incapable of expressing the inner pain and suffering of cutters. Often, these wounds and scars are misinterpreted as failed suicide attempts, an interpretation which completely ignores the expression of the symptom revealed on the surface. The negative stigma attached to self-mutilation hinders communication between those who cut and those who do not. In order for communication to be successful, all preconceived notions of what self-mutilation is need to be abandoned. / AFRIKAANSE OPSOMMING: Hierdie tesis is ʼn verkenning van die tekstualiteit van die vel, en hoe ons wonde en littekens benader en lees. My bespreking benader die vel deur die lens van oppervlak-analise om drie onderling verbonde dog uiteenlopende areas aan te spreek, naamlik, Amerikanse slawerny, gruweldade wat deur die Lord’s Resistance Army gepleeg is, en self-mutilasie. Dié areas deel saam die troop van die wond, en my benadering is dus interdissiplinêr van aard. My bespreking begin met Toni Morrison se Beloved met die fokus op die manier wat die uitermatige geweld waaraan die karakters onderwerp word ʼn integrale rol speel in hul vermoë om vrede te maak met hul verledes. Ek fokus spesifiek op die littekens op Sethe se rug wat soos ʼn boom lyk, en hoe dié boom al die karakters aan mekaar skakel in hul begeerte om hulself te ‘her-versamel’ en her-onthou. Ek beweeg dan aan na die Lord’s Resistance Army en hoe hulle verminking van die burgerbevolking ʼn kommunikatiewe funksie vervul. Ek verken hoe ons beelde van gruwel lees, en hoe baie van dié beelde geraam en gemanipuleer word om aandag te trek. Van daar beweeg ek aan na Kony 2012, die gewilde web-dokumentêr wat die wêreld se aandag en kritiek uitgelok het as gevolg van die totale wanvoorstelling wat dit van Afrika getoon het, asook die onnadenkenheid van die documentêr in terme van Afrikane wat as passiewe slagoffers wat redding benodig gestereotipeer word. Oplaas bespreek ek die fenomeen van self-mutilasie en hoe die snye en littekens ʼn openbaring maak van die ontoereikendhied van taal om innerlike pyn en lyding van snyers uit te druk. Dikwels word die wonde en littekens verkeerd geïnterpreteer as mislukte selfmoordpogings, ʼn interpretasie wat die uitdrukking van die simptome wat op die oppervalk blootgelê word ignoreer. Die negatiewe stigma wat aan self-mutilasie gekoppel word belemmer kommunikasie tussen snyers en nie-snyers. Kommunikasie kan net suksesvol wees as alle vooropgesette idees van wat self-mutilasie is agtergelaat word.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--York University, 2005. Graduate Programme in Women's Studies. / Typescript. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 192-201). Also available on the Internet. MODE OF ACCESS via web browser by entering the following URL: http://wwwlib.umi.com/cr/yorku/fullcit?pNR11579