Thesis (M.S.)--Boston University

[Abstract Omitted] / Arts, Faculty of / French, Hispanic, and Italian Studies, Department of / Graduate

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Pennsylvania. / Bibliography: p. [124]-138.

No description available.

No description available.

<p>In this dissertation, the author examines the historical novel Manly pursuits (1999), by Ann Harries. The novel deals with the late nineteenth century in Oxford, England, and inparticular the year 1899 in Cape Town. The focus of the novel is on Cecil John Rhodes and his entourage, and their obsession with empire, which culminates in the South African war in 1900. Featured characters include Chamberlain, Jameson, Kipling, Oscar Wilde, Charles Dodgson, John Ruskin and Olive Schreiner. Harries novel is interpreted as showing resistance to the Victorian society which is the framework which is seen to developed the class and gender-based valued and imperialist thinking of Rhodes and his following. as such the novel is showing resstance to imperialist thinking, the Anglo-Boer war, apartheid and all the resulting legacies for South Africa.</p>

No description available.

Inaug.-Diss.--Munich. / Vita. Bibliography: p. 94-97.

Thesis (M.A.)--Boise State University, 2002. / Web site. Master's project includes an explanatory text and CD-ROM entitled: Historical fiction : a web site supporting secondary U.S. history courses of study-Idaho Department of Education. Includes bibliographical references.

The thesis is that the best historical novels in Britain today make a lively and varied body of literature united by a concern for perspective. This is defined as a present point of view which respects the integrity of the past. The first chapter discusses the nature of their achieveient. Historical fiction has seen many ambitious failures in perspective, where the past has been distorted for the sake of modern causes. In recent decades, the value of realistic narrative and the possibility of historical objectivity have been widely questioned. The success of even a few writers in this genre shows a discrepancy: betteen the most challenging critical theories and the most original creative practice. The argument is continued in a series of critical studies. Two chapters examine Mary Renault's use of contemporary realism to follow the 'sightlines' of ancient cultures. The next two chapters discuss a different, Joycean or 'ludic' stand in fiction, in the vork of Anthony Burgess (Nothing Like the Sun and Napoleon Symphony) and Robert Nye (falstaff); it is argued that they share Mary Renault's sense of a real past vhich is not to be distorted. Chapter 6 shows that J.G. Farrell's trilogy about the British Empire is equally original and intelligent in perspective, while following different methods again. Chapter 7 contrasts John Fowles's The French Lieutenant's Woman and William Golding's Rites of Passage - one novel which exhibits fashionable doubts about the hiscorical imagination, and one which effectively dispels them. These are impressive, if minor, works in a species of fiction which has always been difficult. Their quality shows that much recent talk about the death of the past and the death of the novel has been unduly pessimistic.