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Examines Chuck Palahniuk's novel Invisible monsters using the theories of Jean Baudrillard as a lens through which to better understand Palahniuk's commentary on the effects mass media have on human subjectivity in the terminal state.

As an undergraduate journalism student, I was taught the “little person, big picture” reportage technique – in essence, using an individual’s story to illuminate a larger issue. In this collection, in which I aim for honesty and relatability, I position myself as the “little person” in essays meant to convey one individual’s experiences and thoughts in hopes of touching another individual who’s gone through similar experiences or had similar thoughts. / Includes bibliography. / Thesis (M.F.A.)--Florida Atlantic University, 2015. / FAU Electronic Theses and Dissertations Collection

This thesis represents a study of The Years by Virginia Woolf and Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier. Both novels attempt to redefine the role of women in patriarchal society during the 1930s. The domestic role women had to fill within a masculine household constrained their ability to form an independent "self," apart from fathers and husbands. I argue that these novels articulate the possibility for women to access an independent self by examining the meaning behind domestic objects in and of the house. Lucy Irigaray asserts that women were, and still are, associated with being valued as a desirable "commodity". Since women have no choice but to work within the symbolic order and are already labeled as "object," women writers have manipulated the system by examining the subject/object dichotomy. The relationship women have with inanimate, and particularly domestic, objects shows how time (the past and the future) manipulates freedom in the present moment. Woolf's reflection on how "moments of being" function as gateways to a heightened sense of awareness is prevalent in her last published novel, The Years. I invoke Friedrich Nietzsche to consider notions of how an antiquated past hinders identity in du Maurier's Rebecca. In the literary texts of Woolf and du Maurier, women have a unique relationship with material objects in relationship to subjectivity. By examining the spatial constructs of the home, women are able to construct themselves as free "subjects" in a male dominated world. / by Stephanie Derisi. / Thesis (M.A.)--Florida Atlantic University, 2012. / Includes bibliography. / Electronic reproduction. Boca Raton, Fla., 2012. Mode of access: World Wide Web.

This thesis emphasizes the visibility of the translator as an agent who promotes cultural exchange. This project includes a translation of Jennifer Egan's short story "Spanish Winter" from her collection Emerald City and Other Stories (1996). It also presents the theoretical frame, the critical analysis, and the pitfalls of the translation. "Spanish Winter" is narrated in the first person by the protagonist, a troubled US American, divorced woman who travels by herself to Spain in the winter. The importance of this text lies in the quest for identity of a female character whose journey symbolizes a search for herself. This postmodern tale, which depicts cultural exchanges between Spaniards and a US American woman and presents a contemporary theme told by a female narrator traveling abroad, is extremely relevant in today's globalized world. It is a valuable text whose translation promotes a fruitful literary exchange between the United States and the Spanish-speaking countries. / by Gabriela Almeida. / Abstract in English. / Text in Spanish and English. / Thesis (M.A.)--Florida Atlantic University, 2012. / Includes bibliography. / Electronic reproduction. Boca Raton, Fla., 2012. Mode of access: World Wide Web.

by Mi Jia-Yan. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 1996. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 258-272). / Poems in Original Chinese. / Title Page --- p.i / Abstract --- p.ii / Acknowledgments --- p.iv / Editorial Note --- p.v / Table of Contents --- p.vi / Introduction --- p.1 / Chapter One --- "The Dialectic of Progressive Body: Self, Cosmos and New National Identity in Guo Moruo's The Goddesses" --- p.16 / Chapter I. --- Sources of Influence: Emergence of a Modern Body --- p.19 / Chapter II. --- The Instinctual Body as Creation of Progressive Self --- p.32 / Chapter III. --- The Metaphorical Body as Transfiguration of Cosmic Self --- p.50 / Chapter IV. --- The Passionate Body as Sacrifice for New National Identity --- p.61 / Summary --- p.71 / Notes --- p.73 / Chapter Two --- The Decadent Body: Toward a Negative Ethics of Mourningin Li Jinfa --- p.82 / Chapter I. --- Economy of Somatic Decadence --- p.87 / Chapter II. --- Aesthetics of Counter-Enlightenment --- p.100 / Chapter III. --- Narrative of Reflection: A Profane Illumination --- p.117 / Chapter IV. --- Toward a Negative Ethics of Mourning --- p.134 / Summary --- p.142 / Notes --- p.144 / Chapter Three --- The Narcissistic Body: Mnemonic Aura and Fragments of Modernity in Dai Wangshu --- p.148 / Chapter I. --- Modernity of Trivia and Fragments --- p.154 / Chapter II. --- The Memory Narrative: A New Syntax of Self-Reconstruction --- p.165 / Chapter III. --- The Tropics of Body Memory --- p.182 / Chapter IV. --- The Floral and the Feminine: Gift of the Senses --- p.191 / Chapter V. --- The Narcissistic Body: Toward an analytics of the Self --- p.221 / Summary --- p.231 / Notes --- p.233 / "Conclusion Modernity, Self-fashioning and the Will to Maturity" --- p.240 / Bibliography --- p.258 / Appendix --- p.273

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In his Dialogue on the State of a Christian Man (1597), William Perkins articulated the popular early-modern understanding that the individual is a "double person" organised under "spiritual" and "temporal" regiments. In the one, he is a person "under Christ" and must endeavour to become Christ-like; in the other, he is a person "in respect of" others and bound to fulfil his duties towards them. This early-modern self, governed by relationships and the obligations they entail, was profoundly vulnerable to the formative influence of speech, for relationships themselves were in part created and sustained through social dialogue. Similarly, the individual could hope to become "a person...under Christ" only by hearing spiritual speech - Scripture preached or read, or the "secret soule-whisperings" of the Spirit. The capacity of speech to effect real and lasting change in the auditor was a commonplace in seventeenth-century England: the conscious crafting of identity, dramatised by Stephen Greenblatt in Renaissance Self-Fashioning, occurred daily in domestic and social transactions, in the exchange of civilities, the use of apostrophe, and strategies of praise. It happened when friends or strangers met, when host greeted guest, or the signatory to a letter penned vocatives that defined his addressee. It lacked a sense of high drama but was nonetheless calculated and effective. Speaking Selves proposes that examining the impact of speech upon the "double person" not only contributes to our understanding of selfhood in the seventeenth century, but also, and more importantly, leads to new insights into some of that century�s greatest literary artefacts: Paradise Lost, Paradise Regained, and Samson Agonistes. The first chapter turns to conduct manuals and conversion narratives, to speech-act theory and discourse analysis, and draws out those verbal strategies that contributed to the organisation of social and spiritual selves. Chapter 2 turns to Paradise Lost and traces the Father�s gradual revelation to the Son, through apostrophe, how he is to reflect, how enact the divine being whose visible and verbal expression he is. Chapter 3 discusses advice on address behaviour in seventeenth-century marriage treatises; it reveals the positive contribution of generous apostrophe and verbal mirroring to Adam and Eve�s Edenic marriage. The conversational dyads in heaven and prelapsarian Eden enact positive identities for their collocutors. Satan, however, begetting himself by diabolical speech-act, discovers the ability of words to dismantle the identity of others. Chapter 4 traces the development of his deceptive strategies, drawing attention to his wilful misrepresentation of social identity as a means to pervert the spiritual identity of his collocutor. The final chapter explores the reorganisation of the complex social-spiritual person in the postlapsarian world. We watch the protagonist of Samson discriminate between the many voices that attempt to impose upon him their own understanding of selfhood. Drawing on spiritual autobiographies as structurally and thematically analogous to Milton�s drama, this final chapter traces the inward plot of Samson as its fallen hero redefines identity and rediscovers the "intimate impulse" of the Spirit that alone can complete the reorganisation of the spiritual self.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Nebraska-Lincoln, 2007. / Title from title screen (site viewed Dec. 3, 2007). PDF text: 189 p. ; 661 K. UMI publication number: AAT 3271936. Includes bibliographical references. Also available in microfilm and microfiche formats.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Illinois State University, 2006. / Title from title page screen, viewed on April 27, 2007. Dissertation Committee: C. Anita Tarr (chair), Roberta Seelinger Trites, Jan Christopher Susina. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 197-208) and abstract. Also available in print.