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The Global ETD Search service is a free service for researchers
to find electronic theses and dissertations. This service is
provided by the
Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations.
Our metadata is collected from universities around the world. If you manage a university/consortium/country archive and want to be added, details can be found on the NDLTD website.
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The Dissatisfaction of Utopia in Iain M. Banks's Culture NovelsCarlsten, Björn January 2022 (has links)
The Culture is a utopian civilization that features in the science-fiction novels of Iain M. Banks that has some claim to be as comprehensively satisfactory and universal in its appeal as possible. After sketching out a space of mechanisms by which fictional utopias can maintain their civilization and prevent themselves from collapsing, I situate the Culture in this space. By close reading of five novels, I then clarify two items: the purpose (or lack thereof) the Culture and its citizens can find within the society; and the extent to which the Culture derives its reason for existence from the external wretchedness of less enlightened societies. Using an analogue of Kant’s categorical imperative, I attempt to expose the Culture to its own justificatory logic, and determine if it withstands the onslaught. Specifically, I consider the limiting case where the Culture insistently and consistently works towards the realization of its implicit purposes, and whether this leads to contradiction. Alongside this literary analysis, I highlight and develop thought-experiments and scenarios taken from or inspired by these novels that present interesting parallels to the contemporary world, for the purpose of incorporating these into lesson plans for upper secondary education. Finally, I outline three educational plans based on this material, one more intense than the others, to suit the different demands of the syllabus for upper and lower-level courses of English.
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Perversity on paper taboo, abjection and literature: Iain Banks' The wasp factory, Ian McEwan's The cement garden, and Irvine Welsh's Marabou stork nightmaresDe Coning, Alexis January 2011 (has links)
This thesis explores the notion of perversity in literature, specifically with regard to representations of taboo and abjection in Iain Banks‟ The Wasp Factory, Ian McEwan‟s The Cement Garden, and Irvine Welsh‟s Marabou Stork Nightmares. Julia Kristeva‟s Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection, as well as her notion of revolt, constitute the central theoretical framework for my analysis. However, I also draw upon the concepts of monstrosity, grotesqueness and the uncanny in order to explicate the affect of abject fiction on the reader. I posit, then, that to engage with literary works that confront one with perversity, abjection and taboo entails exposing oneself to an ambiguous or liminal space in which culturally established values are both disrupted and affirmed. The subversive and revolutionary potential of the aforementioned novels is discussed with reference to the notion of the perverted Bildungsroman since, in their respective transgressions of taboos, the narrators of these novels disrupt social order, and their narratives end on a note of indeterminacy or the absolute finality of death, rather than self-actualisation. Moreover, in exposing the binaries of sex and gender as arbitrary and fluctuating, these narrators‟ perverse sexual and gender performativities gesture towards alternative modes of being (beyond social sanction), and invoke Kristeva‟s notion of individual revolt as a „condition necessary for the life of the mind and society‟.
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Motiv "noci" u Jana od Kříže a v současné spiritualitě / Theme of "night" in John of the Cross and in the current spiritualityAndil, Jan January 2018 (has links)
This thesis deals with the theme of the dark night in the work of St. John of the Cross and its influence on the formation of contemporary spiritual authors. Firstly, it focuses on the Spanish Carmelite mystic, John of the Cross social and biographical facts. These provide background to John's spiritual formation and without them the symbol of the dark night loses its historical context. This is followed by a list and brief description of the key works of John of the Cross. Of these texts, the dark night motif is dealt with in "Ascent of Mount Carmel" and "Dark Night," which constitute two aspects of a single journey leading to union with God. We encounter the dark night motive itself in the third chapter. First, we look at the dark night as described by John from the Cross. Then we focus on the symbolism of the dark night in the saint's work, its articulation and outcome. The last chapter introduces us to the view of contemporary spiritual authors, namely Thomas H. Greene, Thomas Halik, Iain Matthew, Gerald G. May, and Wilfrid Stinissen on the dark night theme.
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A mongrel tradition : contemporary Scottish crime fiction and its transatlantic contextsKydd, Christopher January 2013 (has links)
This thesis discusses contemporary Scottish crime fiction in light of its transatlantic contexts. It argues that, despite participating in a globalized popular genre, examples of Scottish crime fiction nevertheless meaningfully intervene in notions of Scottishness. The first chapter examines Scottish appropriations of the hard-boiled mode in the work of William McIlvanney, Ian Rankin, and Irvine Welsh, using their representation of traditional masculinity as an index for wider concerns about community, class, and violence. The second chapter examines examples of Scottish crime fiction that exploit the baroque aesthetics of gothic and noir fiction as a means of dealing with the same socio-political contexts. It argues that the work of Iain Banks and Louise Welsh draws upon a tradition of distinctively Scottish gothic in order to articulate concerns about the re-incursion of barbarism within contemporary civilized societies. The third chapter examines the parodic, carnivalesque aspects of contemporary Scottish crime fiction in the work of Christopher Brookmyre and Allan Guthrie. It argues that the structure of parody replicates the structure of genre, meaning that the parodic examples dramatize the textual processes at work in more central examples of Scottish crime fiction. The fourth chapter focuses on examples of Scottish crime fiction that participate in the culturally English golden-age and soft-boiled traditions. Unpacking the darker, more ambivalent aspects of these apparently cosy and genteel traditions, this final chapter argues that the novels of M. C. Beaton and Kate Atkinson obliquely refract the particularly Scottish concerns about modernity that the more central examples more openly express.
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Responding to Alienating Trends in Modern Education and Civilization by Remembering our Responsibility to Metaphysics and Ontological Education: Answering to the Platonic Essence of EducationKarumanchiri, Arun 01 January 2011 (has links)
This thesis explores the most basic purpose of education and how it can be advanced. To begin to analyze this fundamental area of concern, this thesis associates notions of education with notions and experiences of truth and authenticity, which vary historically and culturally. A phenomenological analysis, featuring the philosophy of Heidegger, uncovers the basic conditions of human experience and discourse, which have become bent upon technology
and jargon in the West. He draws on Plato's account of the 'essence of education' in the Cave Allegory, which underscores human agency in light of truth as unhiddenness. Heidegger calls for ontological education, which advances authenticity as it preserves individuals as codisclosing, historical beings.
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Responding to Alienating Trends in Modern Education and Civilization by Remembering our Responsibility to Metaphysics and Ontological Education: Answering to the Platonic Essence of EducationKarumanchiri, Arun 01 January 2011 (has links)
This thesis explores the most basic purpose of education and how it can be advanced. To begin to analyze this fundamental area of concern, this thesis associates notions of education with notions and experiences of truth and authenticity, which vary historically and culturally. A phenomenological analysis, featuring the philosophy of Heidegger, uncovers the basic conditions of human experience and discourse, which have become bent upon technology
and jargon in the West. He draws on Plato's account of the 'essence of education' in the Cave Allegory, which underscores human agency in light of truth as unhiddenness. Heidegger calls for ontological education, which advances authenticity as it preserves individuals as codisclosing, historical beings.
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Informationist Science Fiction Theory and Informationist Science FictionLong, Bruce Raymond January 2009 (has links)
Master of Philosophy (MPhil) / Informationist Science Fiction theory provides a way of analysing science fiction texts and narratives in order to demonstrate on an informational basis the uniqueness of science fiction proper as a mode of fiction writing. The theoretical framework presented can be applied to all types of written texts, including non-fictional texts. In "Informationist Science Fiction Theory and Informationist Science Fiction" the author applies the theoretical framework and its specific methods and principles to various contemporary science fiction works, including works by William Gibson, Neal Stephenson and Vernor Vinge. The theoretical framework introduces a new informational theoretic re-framing of existing science fiction literary theoretic posits such as Darko Suvin's novum, the mega-text as conceived of by Damien Broderick, and the work of Samuel R Delany in investigating the subjunctive mood in SF. An informational aesthetics of SF proper is established, and the influence of analytic philosophy - especially modal logic - is investigated. The materialist foundations of the metaphysical outlook of SF proper is investigated with a view to elucidating the importance of the relationship between scientific materialism and SF. SF is presented as The Fiction of Veridical, Counterfactual and Heterogeneous Information.
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Informationist Science Fiction Theory and Informationist Science FictionLong, Bruce Raymond January 2009 (has links)
Master of Philosophy (MPhil) / Informationist Science Fiction theory provides a way of analysing science fiction texts and narratives in order to demonstrate on an informational basis the uniqueness of science fiction proper as a mode of fiction writing. The theoretical framework presented can be applied to all types of written texts, including non-fictional texts. In "Informationist Science Fiction Theory and Informationist Science Fiction" the author applies the theoretical framework and its specific methods and principles to various contemporary science fiction works, including works by William Gibson, Neal Stephenson and Vernor Vinge. The theoretical framework introduces a new informational theoretic re-framing of existing science fiction literary theoretic posits such as Darko Suvin's novum, the mega-text as conceived of by Damien Broderick, and the work of Samuel R Delany in investigating the subjunctive mood in SF. An informational aesthetics of SF proper is established, and the influence of analytic philosophy - especially modal logic - is investigated. The materialist foundations of the metaphysical outlook of SF proper is investigated with a view to elucidating the importance of the relationship between scientific materialism and SF. SF is presented as The Fiction of Veridical, Counterfactual and Heterogeneous Information.
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