D. H. Lawrence made the final break through the mask of Victorian prudery to gain a full conception of man and his role in the universe. His principal emphasis is on the restoration of man's conception of himself as animal, an animal capable of conceptualizing, but essentially animal all the same. In attempting to restore man to the mindless state of irrational animism, Lawrence did away with the conventional idea of man as the perfection of God's created universe. Lawrence did not conceive of man as being controller of the natural universe; he thought of man as being, like Mellors in Lady Chatterly's Lover, a warden who lives within natural order. He attacks vain intellectual sophistry of the scientific, industrial society and finds man to be a brute spirit caged by the conventions of his puny reason and his self-imposed social customs. Philosophically, he changes the emphasis from being to becoming.

This thesis describes critically two famous controversial novels, one by an English author, the other by an American, in such a manner that an emotionally and intellectually secure teacher will be able to draw from these findings in order to teach either of these literary works confidently.

<p>This dissertation argues that nineteenth-century novelists depended on aesthetically unremarkable—or plain—women characters to establish the realist novel as the genre of the British middle class by mapping class values onto plain women’s bodies. By creating female characters with an unremarkable appearance, novelists train readers in the skills necessary to read the realist novel by focusing on interiority rather than materiality. I theorize plainness as a middle ground between beautiful and ugly that allowed authors to define a morality distinct from the upper and lower classes; plain heroines’ unremarkable exteriors embodied middle-class British values of authenticity, restraint, and morality. More than merely the non-beautiful, plainness delineated a very specific kind of moral and classed female subjectivity.</p> <p>The aesthetic of plainness allowed novelists to engage with cultural discussions of modern female subjectivity, for in creating plain female characters, novelists wrote against idealized depictions of passive women. To accentuate a female character’s inner life, plainness in novels functions primarily through comparison, through networks of represented women. Whereas the literary angel-whore binary has been well-established, I am interested in how the presence of a plain woman—neither angel nor monster—complicates our understanding of heroines in novels. The progressive potential of plain woman speaks to a contemporary movement that rebukes the misogynistic trope of distrusting a woman’s surface and instead portrays plain women with deep feeling and individuated identities.</p>

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This thesis explores Frieda von Bülow's last and most popular colonial novel. Im Lande der Verheißung, which she wrote in 1899 after she had returned to Germany from her second journey to the German colony of East Africa. In her novel, Bülow manifests her nationalistic ideology and her support for female participation in the colonies in the character of Maleen Dietlas, who believes in and supports the German colonial ambitions. Bülow provides her female protagonist with a role and purpose in the colony. Maleen serves as an imperial mother who sees it as her duty to "civilize" the German men of the colony. Her true sense of purpose is shown, however, in her guidance of a motherless, wayward, and dark-skinned girl, Maria, who maleen feels nees to be brough into womanhood and "civilization". This thesis views Im Lande der Verheißung and Maleen's "civilizing mission" as a metaphor for Germany's nationalistic objective to "civilize" its overseas empire.

<p>This dissertation aims to address the lack of transcultural and historical perspective in the study of the Chinese term <em>shishi</em> and its role in the contemporary literature among the current scholarship. To begin with, the study traces the origin and genealogical development of <em>shishi</em> as a literary concept. It concludes that although it was initially invented as a translation for the Western term “epic,” the connotation of <em>shishi </em>was then greatly expanded and modified by Chinese intellectuals and should be understood as a unique aesthetic paradigm for evaluating literary works and inspiring writers, especially in terms of the criticism and the creation of historical fiction.</p> <p>Guided by the craving for building a unified identity for the newborn nation with literary works inspired by communist ideology, the revolutionary historical novel from the “Seventeen-Year Era” (1949-1966) becomes the embodiment of the classic ideas of <em>shishi</em>: heroism and optimistic belief in social progress. With the revolutionary era coming to an end, the orthodox historical narrative was challenged by writers and critics who began to implement new and alternative methods of representing and reconstructing past events and memories, which leads to the renovation and diversification of <em>shishi</em>. With a combination of textual analysis and historical interpretation, this study shall examine the works of six writers with varied and distinctive features from the 1980s to the present and demonstrate their contribution to the continued relevance and vitality of <em>shishi</em> in Chinese literature. The final lesson is, instead of sustaining a static and definitive view of <em>shishi</em>, we should recognize and embrace its dynamic and plural natures, and its ability to adapt and innovate.</p>

This thesis emphasizes the significance of readers’ emotional engagement with characters in the process of reading novels which, in turn, plays a critical role in the reflective moral transformation of the reader. It approaches the analysis of the relationship between emotions, literature and ethics from the perspective of the perceptual theory of emotions. My claim is that our imaginative engagements with narrative fictions, and particularly realist novels, by triggering a critical reflection process through the arousal of our emotions, might prove to be a morally transformative experience. Reflective moral transformation is defined as a deepening of one’s moral understanding that often involves a shift in one’s perspective that comes about as a result of a critical reflection of one’s existing moral beliefs. As such, it entails a willingness to scrutinize one’s moral beliefs and to improve one’s moral understanding. I put forward here a model that will satisfactorily explain how engagement with realist novels can serve to morally transform ourselves.

This study aims to examine teachers’ experiences when working with novels to discuss gender related questions in their EFL-classrooms. The research questions this study aims to answer are which prerequisites and limitations affect teachers when working with novels and gender in the EFL-classroom and what are the benefits and negatives when working with novels and gender in the EFL-classroom. The data was gathered through seven semi-structured interviews with teachers from both upper- and lower secondary school. The theoretical approach that was used to analyse the answers received from the interviews were gender studies, with a focus on ‘overing’, and critical literacy.  The results from this study show that teachers have an interest in working with novels and gender related questions. The study also shows that there are both prerequisites and limitations that affect how teachers can work with gender and novels in their classroom, a few of the examples brought up in the results are: meeting resistance from the students in the classroom regarding these issues, which class sets of novels are available, the teacher’s personal interest in the subject, and if there is sufficient support to teach about novels and gender. Finally, it can be discerned that a teacher’s own commitment affects how much gender related questions are incorporated when working with novels.

The aim of this study is to examine upper and lower secondary school teachers’ experiences of using graphic novels in the English subject in Swedish schools in order to discuss if, and how, multimodal texts can be used to increase students’ motivation to read and analyze fictional texts. This is done through qualitative semi-structured interviews with 12 participants currently working as English teachers from both upper and lower secondary schools in Sweden. The framework of this study centers around the concept of multimodality, multimodal literacy and how it can be used in the English classroom. The results of the study indicate that comics and graphic novels can and are being used for a number of purposes in English language courses in Sweden, and that they allow teachers to incorporate visual analysis into their literature modules, adding more elements for students to discuss and work with. Furthermore, the participants experience that comics and graphic novels aid in increasing students’ motivation and interest as the multimodality makes them more accessible. The results of the study also show that comics and graphic novels could be used to teach students about literary analysis, both visual and verbal. However, in order to utilize the multimodality of comics and graphic novels, teachers require an understanding for how two modalities can be used together to create meaning. Moreover, the study shows that comics and graphic novels are viewed as a lesser form of fictional texts, as they are mostly seen as motivational supplements or a stepping-stone toward other types of novels. In conclusion, there are numerous benefits to using comics or graphic novels in EFL courses, such as an increase in motivation and additional visual/multimodal aspects for students to analyze when working with fictional texts.

The purpose of this study was to examine and evaluate the various influence that have helped to make the characters in the works of Miss Cather what they are.