Parody is central both thematically and structurally to Chaucer's works. In this he proves to be firmly within medieval literary tradition. A parody is an incongruous imitation of some exemplary work, proposing another version of that work which is only imperfectly analogous to it. Analogy, developed in St. Paul, St. Augustine, St. Francis and the doctrine of the Antichrist, is fundamental to the culture of the Christian Middle Ages: the imitation of Christ is the basis for the Christian way of life; evil is a parody of the highest good. Twelfth- and thirteenth-century Latin satires, like Walter Map's De Nugis Curialium, the Tractatus Garsiae, the "Apocalypsis Goiliae," and the "Sancti Evangelii Secundum Marcas Argenti," criticize corrupt clergy as parodic inversions of exemplary Christian figures and doctrine. The vernacular parodies of chivalry invert the categories of romance. "Spiritual " pastourelles invert the terms of that genre. Chaucer uses analogy and analogic parody and travesty in Troilus and Criseyde to evaluate and structure the course of the love affair as imperfectly analogous to both pagan and Christian models, to ennoble Troilus, and to emplot Criseyde's behavior as a parody of Troilus', her betrayal as a travesty of their love, and her character as complementary to Diomede's. Sacred parody in the Pardoner's Tale is well-grounded in medieval exemplary parody and the theology of the Holy spirit; chivalric parody in Thopas has precedent in works such as the Audigier; the Merchant's Tale travesties chivalric and Christian values.

The anonymous Cloud author is one of five medieval spiritual writers commonly referred to as the fourteenth-century English mystics. Generally regarded as the most original writer among the five, the Cloud author remains, nonetheless, entirely orthodox in his theological outlook; in fact, his extreme concern that his works not be read out of context reflects his fear of inadvertently leading his readers into spiritual error. Although some critics dismiss the Cloud author's concern in this regard as excessive, the existence of several twentieth-century articles comparing the Cloud author's teaching to aspects of Buddhist and Hindu meditation calls for a reexamination of the Cloud corpus within its proper context. As a prerequisite to investigating the validity of comparisons that have been drawn between Eastern forms of meditation and the Cloud author's concept of prayer, the first three chapters of the dissertation attempt to establish the appropriate context within which the Cloud author's works can best be understood. Chapter One places the Cloud author's work within the context of its Roman Catholic heritage, and Chapter Two explores the nature of Neoplatonic influences in the Cloud author's writings, focusing in particular on Dionysian sources and their relationship to the Cloud corpus. The Cloud author's view of language and its proper role with respect to contemplative prayer is the subject of Chapter Three; here it becomes apparent that a correct understanding of the Cloud author's use of language is essential to an accurate comprehension of his teaching. Finally, Chapters Four and Five deal directly with parallels drawn between prayer of the Cloud author and the use of the koan and mantra, two specific techniques in Buddhist and Hindu meditation. Careful examination of these comparisons reveals a general disregard for proper context, both of the Cloud author's works as well as of Buddhist and Hindu concepts, that invalidates claims to any substantial resemblance between Eastern meditation and the contemplative prayer of the Cloud author.

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The Angel in the House: An Unstable Icon examines the ways in which the figure named in Coventry Patmore's series of mid-nineteenth century poems provoked an anxiety that manifests itself consistently in British literature throughout the nineteenth and into the twentieth century, where the family beacon, the one whose raison d'être was to guide her husband and children away from the immorality rife in the public sphere, instead actively interfered with the good instincts of her offspring, substituted her own wishes for theirs, and caused irreparable harm in the process. This dissertation analyzes the ways in which mother figures in mid-century novels interrogate the angel-mother in particular and suggest the destructive capability inherent in that figure. It argues that the literary questioning of the ideal supports what Poovey calls "uneven development" in the construction of a gender model. The Angel in the House: An Unstable Icon will demonstrate that at the hands of Thomas Hardy and Henry James in particular, the mother is reimagined into a figure bearing little resemblance to the Angel mother, except in her inheritance of a belief that the mother must remain her child's guide, despite the inclinations of their adult children toward a new autonomy. While the Victorian consciousness seems to have experienced a splitting--women were either good or bad, mothers were either good or bad--Hardy and James resist such splitting, instead exploring the gaps and flaws in the Angel-in-the-House ideology, in the process establishing the prototype for mother figures who little resemble Angels, in other words, fully human mothers, that both British and American Modernists such as D. H. Lawrence, William Faulkner, and Virginia Woolf would adapt as central figures in their major works. / English

This dissertation argues that mid-Victorian detective fiction critiques concurrent shifts in Victorian information culture. Detectives in fiction check alibis, investigate clues, and perform acts of detection and ratiocination which link their labor to social procedures of information management. We can read the genre as a response to drastic mid-Victorian changes in the perception of “information.” Specifically, I argue that detective fiction of the 1860s and 70s demonstrates skepticism of the developing mid-Victorian concept of abstract information. Abstract information is content detached from context, supposedly able to exist free from space, materiality, or necessary connection to human meaning. Mid-Victorian detective fiction challenges that perception. Recovering how mid-Victorian detective fiction embodies social ambivalence towards changing perceptions of information helps us avoid writing a fallacious developmental narrative onto the genre. Detective fiction of the early twentieth century imagines a split between the “rational” and “sensational” material in the genre. The procedures of information management within the novel—gathering and ordering clues, collecting evidence, making deductions—are usually considered “rational” parts of the genre. Reading mid-Victorian novels within this framework, we are apt to see the mid-Victorian detective’s acts of information management as being inherently “rational.” When re-examined through the lens of contemporary information culture, however, we see that information management actually serves in these novels and stories as an indicator of the “sensational.” Rather than tending to advance towards order, as we might expect, mid-Victorian fictions evoke the procedures of information to evoke uncanny feelings and undermine the apparent conclusions of their detectives. We read a novel or short story from the 1860s and see the use of factual information, such as Robert Audley manipulating a railway timetable or Sergeant Cuff carefully collecting testimony. We tend to think of their endeavors as rational, prototypical examples of detective reasoning. But in making that assumption, we overlook how problematic information was in mid-Victorian society and how self-conscious contemporaries were of its limits and contradictions. What we overlook, in short, is the possibility that “information” in mid-Victorian detective fiction serves as another indicator of the “sensational.” To misread the use of information in mid-Victorian detective fiction is to risk misunderstanding Victorian information culture, as well as the text’s adoption and adaptation of other informational forms. While all of the texts I examine exhibit skepticism of the perception of abstract information, this dissertation also traces a development in the texts’ attitudes towards information in the 1860s and beyond. Abstract information, each fiction suggests, is not a perfectly accurate concept, but in the later texts I consider, this becomes less of a problem. For Mary Elizabeth Braddon’s Lady Audley’s Secret (1862), abstract information is a deeply problematic idea, and the text sets a trap for us into which we might fall if we fail to understand the alienated nature of such information. Bracebridge Hemyng’s Telegraph Secrets (1867) challenges the idea of that information can be disembodied from material contexts, but the novel’s attempt to critique it backfires and creates aesthetic oddities in the text. Wilkie Collins’s The Moonstone (1868), a transitional novel, shows the idea of decontextualized abstract information breaking down, but this is not problematic. Instead, the novel begins to exploit the possibilities offered by an information age which can imagine information freely acquiring new meaning in different contexts. Finally, the many critics of Charles Dickens’s The Mystery of Edwin Drood (1870) actively celebrate the aesthetic possibilities offered by the idea of abstract information, creating a proliferating collection of new creative work out of the gap left in the original text. / English

Patrick Kavanagh's position in twentieth-century Irish literature is both influential and anomalous. His rendering of rural Irish life leads some critics to emphasize his social realism, while others praise him as a lyricist in the Romantic tradition. This study suggests that Kavanagh's varied and often mixed literary strategies respond satirically to his cultural milieu throughout his career. Kavanagh reclaims the materials of Irish stereotype by placing them in dialogue and by exploiting his own reputation as an "authentic" peasant-poet. Chapter one traces the terms of his social and aesthetic critique that reaches fruition in "The Great Hunger" through the treatment of landscape, agriculture, and rural society beginning with Kavanagh's earliest poems. The use of the theater as a framing device in "The Great Hunger" evokes the stage Irishman and the drama of the Irish Literary Revival in order to redefine the rural subject against its dominant-culture representations. The second chapter examines the figure of the peasant-poet in Kavanagh's semi-autobiographical The Green Fool and in satirical verse-plays. By employing and undermining an ethnic stereotype aimed at his own personal history, Kavanagh satirizes the Irish Literary Revival, Anglo-American modernism, and de Valera's rhetoric of national purity. Kavanagh's responses to the commodification of tradition by Irish nationalism are further examined in the third chapter; his satires play upon the wake and the mummery as customary occasions for social criticism, but do not represent them as artifacts of an essential Irish culture. Chapter four links Kavanagh's critique of nationalist essentialism to modernism's ideology and style, culminating in a reading of "Lough Derg." The poem explores and rejects both social documentary and modernism's fragmentation of experience, setting the Catholic pilgrimage in the context of Irish Partition and isolation during World War II, and ultimately affirming the spiritual dimensions of human change and communication. The fifth chapter concludes that rather than surrendering earlier themes, the Canal Bank poems employ Kavanagh's familiarity with the natural world within a liminal urban setting that reflects his career-long concerns with audience, cultural commodification, and the poet's comic role.

The purpose of this creative project was to advance scholarship in areas suffering a lack of attention by Ball State University. Exploring a broader scope of Irish writing than most theses would cover, this project could easily be incorporated by other universities which share Ball State's departmental impotence with regard to Irish literary studies. I chose a time frame of two-hundred years to focus attention for this course.My directed readings from my project chairperson and my research at the Dublin Writers Museum led me to the design of this hypothetical course in contemporary Irish Literary Studies. I chose texts from 1801-Present which examine the varied cultural assumptions that various sects of the Irish citizenry hold, as depicted in their literature. What I found is that as time progresses, the emphasis toward violent preservation of cultural identity increases literally. This portfolio maps out those assumptions via Irish literature. / Department of English

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