Recent empirical evidence supports the theoretical stance that fiction provides vicarious experiences of imagined spaces and situations that can help shape our perceptions of the real world, our social others, and the self. The implications for this are especially interesting for adolescents, as their brains undergo a restructuring during puberty, making them more responsive to change in executive function and social cognition. Few scholars have yet addressed how texts instruct young readers in how to use their developing cognition to assess characters' emotions and behavior, and how fiction can potentially affect these readers' cognitive and emotional development. This thesis analyzes the concept that potential adolescent readers can engage with a novel's characters' thoughts and behaviors by using their improving cognitive abilities to transmute what is on the page into real-life coping strategies. This phenomenon is especially compelling when considering the potential impact empowered female characters could have on adolescent girl readers, since their malleable brain around puberty makes them more receptive to accepting ideas - such as a person's gender not being a limitation. I examine what the primary texts themselves offer to potential readers, and analyze certain aspects of the texts that could be linked to potential readers' cognitive and affective engagement. The primary texts I have chosen are Tamora Pierce's two narrative quartets (The Song of the Lioness and Protector of the Small) that deal with characters from the fictional land of Tortall, as they focus closely on female characters in fantasy realms who are breaking gendered stereotypes by training to become knights. Pierce's books are representative of this adolescent feminist fantasy. I extrapolate that findings from this thesis will be applicable to other kinds of adolescent feminist fantasy texts; namely, that adolescent feminist fantasy fiction can beneficially change potential readers behavior and cognition.

El objetivo de esta Tesis Doctoral ha sido el estudio de las concepciones amorosas que están presentes en la novela española de la Restauración (tomando como punto de referencia la obra de Benito Pérez Galdós), sobre todo, en lo que respecta a una visión idealista, y en una doble vertiente: 1,- La importancia del discurso amoroso para la conformación estructural y temática de estas obras, por tratarse de un componente esencial en la configuración sentimental, moral e intelectual de los personajes protagonistas de las mismas.2,- Las ideologías subyacentes que, a través de la exégesis y comentario de los textos pertinentes podemos detectar, en su relación con las concepciones amorosas de los autores de la época. Nos hemos fijado en las influencias de las grandes corrientes de pensamiento de finales del siglo XIX (Idealismo, Positivismo, Pragmatismo y Espiritualismo), y su plasmación y desarrollo en la novela de la Restauración española. / The aim of this Doctoral Thesis has been the study of the amorous conceptions which are present in the spanish novel of the Restoration period (taking Benito Pérez Galdós works as a point of reference), especially regarding an idealistic point of view, and considering the following two aspects:1.The importance of amorous speech for the structural and thematic constitution of these works, since it is an essential component in the sentimental, moral, and intellectual configuration of their protagonists.2.The underlying ideologies which can be discovered through the exegesis and the analysis of the relevant texts in their relation to amorous conceptions of the authors of that time. We have focused on the influence of the most important schools of thought at the end of the XIX th. century (Idealism, Positivism, Pragmatism and Spirituality), and on their reflection and development in the Spanish novel in the Restoration period.

This essay examines the subject-object dichotomy between men and women in Toni Morrison’s Jazz and the thesis of the essay is that this dichotomy develops into subject-object harmony. Through Simone de Beauvoir’s theory regarding the subject-object dichotomy and a close reading of the novel, this essay concludes that Jazz shows the possibility of reciprocal relationships built on friendship. In other words, the dichotomy changes into harmony, which makes it possible for both men and women to reach freedom and fulfilment in transcendence.

This dissertation explores the relevance of recent studies of Aristotle’s comic theory to the central dramatists of early modern England, Ben Jonson and William Shakespeare. Applications of the Poetics to Renaissance English drama tend to treat Aristotle’s theory historically, as a set of concepts mediated to England by continental redactions. But these often conflated the Poetics’ focus on literary form with the Renaissance’s predominant interest in literature’s rhetorical effect, reducing Aristotle’s genuinely speculative theory to a series of often pedantic literary prescriptions. Recent scholarship has both undone these misinterpretations and developed the comic theory latent in the Poetics. Ironically, these studies make Jonson’s and Shakespeare’s comedy look much more Aristotelian than do Renaissance ones. So rather than taking the Poetics simply as a possible source for each dramatist, I read it primarily as a literary theory that, when reinvigorated by modern scholarship, can explain structures and effects arrived at practically by these dramatists. Three recent hypotheses are especially pertinent to Jonson and Shakespeare: that comic hoaxes aim to expose comic error, which is for Aristotle a deviation from the mean of virtue; that “righteous indignation” is the comic emotion equivalent to the “pity and fear” of tragedy; and that catharsis is a clarification, rather than purgation, of reason and emotion. In light of these, I offer detailed readings of four plays that demonstrate these authors’ comic range: from Jonson’s satirical Every Man Out of His Humour to the almost farcical Epicoene, and from Shakespeare’s romantic Much Ado About Nothing to the tragicomic Measure for Measure. These plays demonstrate a variety of ways in which catharsis, the end of drama, results directly from the comic hoax and involves both the audience’s and characters’ experience of indignation and their comprehension of its relationship to the emotions of envy and pity. In each case, Aristotle’s incisive but flexible theoretical framework enables an explanation of the emotional pain present in the these “comedies of affliction” and reveals remarkable similarities between dramatists usually described as direct opposites.

Depuis que l'animal humain a conçu un système de technologies pour la pensée abstraite grâce au langage, la guerre contre le monde sauvage est devenu une voie à sens unique vers l'aliénation, la civilisation et la littérature. Le but de ce travail est d'analyser comment les récits civilisationnels donnent une structure à l'expérience par le biais de la ségrégation, de la domestication, de la sélection, et de l'extermination, tandis que les récits sauvages démontrent les possibilités infinies du chaos pour découvrir le monde en toute sa diversité et en lien avec sa communauté de vie. Un des objectifs de cette thèse a été de combler le fossé entre la science et la littérature, et d'examiner l'interdépendance de la fiction et la réalité. Un autre objectif a été de mettre ces récits au cœur d'un dialogue les uns avec les autres, ainsi que de tracer leur expression dans les différentes disciplines et œuvres pour enfants et adultes mais également d’analyser leur manifestations c’est redondant dans la vie réelle. C'est un effort multi-disciplinaires qui se reflète dans la combinaison de méthodes de recherche en anthropologie et en études littéraires. Cette analyse compare et contraste trois livres de fiction pour enfants qui présentent trois différents paradigmes socio-économiques, à savoir, «Winnie-l'Ourson» de Milne qui met en place un monde civilisé monarcho-capitaliste, la trilogie de Nosov sur «les aventures de Neznaika et ses amis» qui présente les défis et les exploits d'une société anarcho-socialiste dans son évolution du primitivisme vers la technologie, et les livres de Moomines de Jansson, qui représentent le chaos, l'anarchie, et l'état sauvage qui contient tout, y compris des épisodes de civilisation. En axant la méthodologie de ma recherche sur la façon dont nous connaissons le monde, j'ai d'abord examiné la construction, la transmission et l'acquisition des connaissances, en particulier à travers la théorie de praxis de Bourdieu et la critique de la civilisation développée dans les études de Zerzan, Ong, et Goody sur les liens entre l'alphabétisation, la dette et l'oppression. Quant à la littérature pour enfants, j'ai choisi trois livres que j’ai connus pendant mon enfance, c'est-à-dire des livres qui sont devenus comme une «langue maternelle» pour moi. En ce sens, ce travail est aussi de «l’anthropologie du champ natif». En outre, j’analyse les prémisses sous-jacentes qui se trouvent non seulement dans les trois livres, mais dans le déroulement des récits de l'état sauvage et de la civilisation dans la vie réelle, des analyses qui paraissent dans cette thèse sous la forme d'extraits d’un journal ethnographique. De même que j’examine la nature de la littérature ainsi que des structures civilisées qui domestiquent le monde au moyen de menaces de mort, je trace aussi la présence de ces récits dans l'expression scientifique (le récit malthusien-darwinien), religieuse, et dans autres expressions culturelles, et réfléchis sur les défis présentés par la théorie anarchiste (Kropotkine) ainsi que par les livres pour enfants écrits du point de vue sauvage, tels que ceux des Moomines. / Ever since the human animal devised a system of technologies for abstract thought through language, the war on wilderness has become a one way path towards alienation, civilisation and literature. In this work, I examine how the civilised narrative orders experience by means of segregation, domestication, breeding, and extermination; whereas, I argue that the stories and narratives of wilderness project chaos and infinite possibilities for experiencing the world through a diverse community of life. One of my goals in conducting this study on children's literature as knowledge, culture and social foundation has been to bridge the gap between science and literature and to examine the interconnectedness of fiction and reality as a two-way road. Another aim has been to engage these narratives in a dialogue with each other as I trace their expression in the various disciplines and books written for both children and adults as well as analyse the manifestation of fictional narratives in real life. This is both an inter- and multi-disciplinary endeavour that is reflected in the combination of research methods drawn from anthropology and literary studies as well as in the content that traces the narratives of order and chaos, or civilisation and wilderness, in children's literature and our world. I have chosen to compare and contrast three fictional children's books that offer three different real-world socio-economic paradigms, namely, A.A. Milne's Winnie-the-Pooh projecting a civilised monarcho-capitalist world, Nikolai Nosov's trilogy on The Adventures of Dunno and Friends as presenting the challenges and feats of an anarcho-socialist society in evolution from primitivism towards technology, and Tove Jansson's Moominbooks depicting chaos, anarchy, and wilderness that contain everything, including encounters with civilisation, but most of all an infinite love for the world. Stemming from the basic question in research methodology on how we know the world, I first examine the construction, transmission, and acquisition of knowledge, particularly through the lens of Bourdieu's theory of praxis, as well as the critique of language and literacy through Zerzan's, Ong's, and Goody's studies on the links between literacy, debt and oppression. Regarding children's literature depicting the three socio-economic paradigms, I chose three books with which I have been familiar since childhood, i.e. in whose narratives I have “native fluency” and, in this sense, this work is also about “anthropology at home”. Moreover, I compared and contrasted the underlying premises not only in the three books, but also with the unfolding narratives of wilderness and civilisation in real life, that I inserted in the form of ethnographic/journal entries throughout the dissertation. As I examine the very nature of literature, culture, and language and the civilised structures that domesticate the world through the threat of death and the expropriation of food, I also trace the presence of these narratives in the scientific (the Malthusian-Darwinian narrative), religious, and other cultural expressions and the challenges provided by anarchist science and theory (Kropotkin) as well as wild children's books such as Jansson's Moomintrolls.

Le texte qui suit, malgré son libellé onomastique (le nom « John Cage »), son orientation disciplinaire (la « théorie littéraire ») et sa visée thématique (« la révision du commentaire critique »), se place d’emblée dans une posture d’écriture et de création. Il consiste à proposer comme point de départ l’identité de la forme textuelle et de sa dérivation métatextuelle, en d’autres mots : de la voix citée et analysée avec l’autre voix citante et analysante. Cette prémisse dérive elle-même d’une confrontation locale : les spécificités et les idiosyncrasies de la textualité mise en place par John Cage à partir des années quarante (partitions littéraires des recueils Silence et A Year from Monday, mésostiches de M et X, réécritures et « writing through » d’Empty Words…). En effet, l’examen par la théorie littéraire d’un corpus aussi disséminé et « néologique » que l’est celui de John Cage pousse son rédacteur à poser la question de sa propre écriture (« autoréflexivité ») et à rendre possible une réalisation artistique personnelle (« performativité »). C’est donc à travers la contingence d’une langue et d’une subjectivité au travail que la théorisation (textuelle) du texte cherche ici à s’élucider et à s’écrire. Le travail commence par installer les modalités à la fois circulaires et circulatoires de la théorie littéraire, une tension rhétorique et épistémologique qu’il identifie sous le nom d’« aporie autoréflexive » (le texte théorique est concerné par la question de lui-même). Il s’efforce ensuite d’analyser la nouveauté de l’œuvre littéraire cagienne, en empruntant un schéma dialectique et antagoniste : d’un côté, une « textualité-objet », originale et orthographique, de l’autre, une « textualité-sujet », disséminante et intertextuelle, anarchique et jubilatoire. Enfin, le texte propose la révision, la recomposition, la « réécriture » du commentaire critique sur les bases nouvelles d’une textologie autoréflexive et performative — une indiscipline d’écriture qui utilise sciemment les coordonnées linguistiques de son élocution (néologie, typographisme, procédés citationnels…) et qui fait place sans camouflage ou refoulement à la personnalité intertextuelle, contextuelle, métissée du rédacteur. Par l’entremise d’une sorte d’« exemplarité textuelle » (Cage), ce travail insiste pour une synthèse à la fois productive et expressive des voix analysées et analysantes dans les études littéraires. On verra que, par moments, cette proposition implique que le texte se marginalise. / The following text, despite its onomastic labelling (the name “John Cage”), its disciplinary orientation (“literary theory”), and its thematic aim (“the revision of the literary commentary”), positions itself as a writing and creative venture. It starts by stating the strict identity of texts and metatexts, in other words, of the quoted, analyzed voice, with the quoting, analyzing other voice. This premise derives from a specific confrontation: the specificities and idiosyncrasies of John Cage’s literary production since the late 1940s (the literary scores from the anthologies Silence and A Year from Monday, the mesostics from M and X, the rewritings and “Writing through’s” from Empty Words…). Indeed, the examination by literary theory of a body of work as disseminated and “neological” as John Cage’s encourages the literary critic or theoretician to ask the question of his own writing (“self-reflexivity”) and also to make possible an original artistic realization (“performativity”). It is therefore through the possibilities of a language and of a subjectivity at work that the (textual) theorization of texts tries herein to elucidate and to write itself. This work starts by setting up the modalities both circular and circulatory of literary theory—a rhetorical and epistemological tension that will be identified as the “self-reflexive aporia” (the theoretical text is primarily concerned by the question of itself). It then tries to analyze the novelty of Cage’s literary work, using a dialectical and antagonistic configuration: on one hand, an “objective textuality”, original and orthographical; on the other hand, a “subjective textuality”, disseminating and intertextual, anarchic and unrestrained. Finally, this text proposes the revision, recomposition and “rewriting” of the critical commentary on the basis of a new self-reflexive and performative textology. That is: a sort of undiscipline in writing that knowingly manoeuvres the linguistic coordinates of its elocution (neology, typographism, quotation processes…) and that does not try to conceal or repress the intertextual, contextual, heterogenous and disparate personality of its author. Through a sort of “textual exemplarity” (Cage), this work insists on a synthesis both productive and expressive between the voices analyzing and the voices being analyzed. We will see accordingly that this proposition implies, from time to time, that the text be marginalized. / Toutes les illustrations qui ponctuent cette thèse ont été réalisées par Chantal Poirier. Elles ont été insérées dans le texte selon un ordre méticuleusement aléatoire.

La tesis "Análisis pluridisciplinar de Tres tristes tigres para el estudio de la poética de Guillermo Cabrera Infante" ofrece un panorama inicial desde el cual situar la complejidad de la escritura creativa de Cabrera Infante, incorporando toda la bibliografía existente sobre esta novela. Se propone una lectura gráfica y escenográfica de Tres tristes tigres, que es leída aquí como si de un espectáculo se tratara. Se explica a qué se refiere cuando se habla de Tres tristes tigres como escena, es decir, como espacio textual y como espacio hablado. La oralidad y la escritura a la que se hace referencia en este estudio son comprendidas en términos de una articulación de registros. Se trata de un entrecruzamiento de distintas formas de representación, donde el discurso, asociado a un locus de enunciación específico, se diluye en el proceso de articulación de lenguajes. Decir que la oralidad es una forma de representación supone aceptar que las diferentes tramas, personajes y temas se constituyen gracias a distintas (per)versiones, es decir, a un constante e ilimitado proceso de redefinición, de reescritura y de repetición que es otro de los hallazgos que esta tesis pretende mostrar. / The thesis " Multidisciplinary Analysis of Three Trapped Tigers to study the poetry of Guillermo Cabrera Infante " offers an initial overview from which to pinpoint the complexity of the creative writing of Cabrera Infante, including the entire existing bibliography on this novel. A graphic and descriptic reading of Three Trapped Tigers is set out, read here as if it where a play. It is explained what is meant when Three Trapped Tigers is referred to like a scene, or to say, like textual space and spoken space. The orality and literacy referred to in this section becomes understood in terms of a articulation of registers. One is a crossing between different forms of representation, where the speech, associated to a locus of specific enunciation, is diluted in the process of articulation of languages. To say that the orality in Three Trapped Tigers is a form of representation supposes to accept that the different plots, characters and subjects constitute themselves because of different (per)versions, or to say, to a constant and limitless process of redefinition, of rewriting and repetition that is another one of the findings that this thesis tries to show.

This thesis proposes a theory of literature's human relevance in literary terms, developing hints in the critical practice of twentieth century literary critic F.R. Leavis. It examines how literary texts can be humanly relevant in a manner that depends on their literary merit, and does so in three stages, interrogating: the way literary texts operate; the role literary language plays in thinking; and the interaction of literature and morality. The thesis has two, related, aims: to reconceptualise literature's relation to human living, and to offer a recharacterisation of Leavis's literary criticism, with the investigation of aspects of Leavis's practice forming part of the more fundamental enquiry regarding the nature of literature's human significance. In the first stage, the thesis argues that Leavis's critical practice in his works of the 1930s (his first major decade of critical output) provides fruitful ways for conceptualising the interaction between form and meaning in literature, with important consequences for present-day understandings of how literature functions and how it matters. It focuses on an untheorised (by him or others) achievement in Leavis's criticism, the introduction of the term 'attitude' into literary analysis and judgement, and argues that the term enables a different mode of attention to the question of how literature relates to the human world. The second stage first interrogates the role that language in general plays in understanding, constructing a hypothesis from arguments by philosophers R.G. Collingwood and Charles Taylor, and then turns to literary language, arguing that it enables a mode of relating to experience not otherwise possible, and forms a process of thinking, for reader and writer alike. The final stage focuses on arguments in aesthetics against literature's cognitive value, and in moral philosophy for its empathic and moral value. Building on earlier arguments about the operation of literary language and language's relation to thought, the thesis claims that literary language is humanly meaningful in a way that is both cognitively and morally significant. Throughout, the thesis argues for the inescapable link between well-written literature and the morally resonant, such that good literature forms what Taylor calls 'moral sources'. The crucial query is how literature functions, which will help us better to answer why it is humanly important. This thesis engages with literary criticism, philosophical aesthetics and moral philosophy, as well as offering close readings of literature itself.

Victorian society had strict written and unwritten laws about what was permissible in terms of personal relationships. Anglican patriarchal church values governed behaviour between the classes and enforced codes of conduct on gender related boundaries of private individuals. Society subscribed to the traditional family of man, woman and children in the context of marriage. Homosexuality amongst men was punishable by prison. Government and religion preached Christian morality, yet the number of prostitutes had never been greater. This dissertation explores the problems of a pro-homosexual and anti-establishment Victorian author writing about human relationships forbidden by society. It exposes the consequences suffered by Oscar Wilde due to his investigative insights into the `Other' in the context of individual rights of preference in regard to sexual orientation, as expressed in selected texts, and his resolution of conflict, in De Profundis. / English Studies / MA (English)

Informada pelos pressupostos da área interdisciplinar conhecida como estudos animais, esta tese propõe uma leitura a contrapelo das figuras animais na literatura, na qual elas não são entendidas apenas como metáforas de certos aspectos da vida humana, mas como presenças textuais com um estatuto de personagens e, nessa condição, são interrogadas em sua alteridade. A questão central em pauta é: o que a metáfora diz sobre os animais e sobre a relação entre os animais e os seres humanos e o que significa des-figurar a metáfora e explorar a possibilidade de re-significar, a partir da textualidade ficcional, a relação humano-animal. Para tanto, desenho um panorama dos estudos animais, abordando o estado da arte no Brasil, inserindo tais estudos nas possibilidades de inovação no campo da literatura comparada. A seguir, elaboro um aporte teórico a partir da filosofia animal de Jacques Derrida, ao qual incorporo e coloco em discussão posicionamentos teóricos de Calarco (2008), Krell (2013), Lawlor (2007) e Naas (2010) sobre a questão em pauta. Por fim, realizo leituras comparadas entre A metamorfose (1915), de Franz Kafka, e Porcarias (1996), de Marie Darrieussecq, ambos sobre o tornar-se animal, e entre Flush (1933), de Virginia Woolf, e Timbuktu (1999), de Paul Auster, ambos sobre a domesticação de animais. / Following the tenets of the interdisciplinary area of animal studies, this dissertation presents a reading of animal figures in literature against the grain, which means that they are not taken only as metaphors of certain aspects of human life but as textual presences with a status assigned to characters and, in this condition, are interrogated in their alterity. The central question to be explored is: what the animal metaphor says about animals and the relation of animal and human beings and what it means to de-figure the metaphor in order to explore the possibility of re-signifying, in ficcional textualities, the human/animal relation. In order to address these issues, I draw a panorama of animal studies, including the state of the art in Brazil, to contend that this area adds to the possibilities of innovation in the field of comparative literature. Then, I consider a theoretical framework of Jacques Derrida’s animal philosophy, also discussing theoretical positions of Calarco (2008), Krell (2013), Lawlor (2007) and Naas (2010) on this topic. Finally, I propose comparative readings of Franz Kafka’s The metamorphosis (1915) and Marie Darrieussecq’s Pig tales (1996), from the perspective of becoming animal, and of Virginia Woolf’s Flush (1933) and Paul Auster’s Timbuktu (1999), both on domesticating animals.