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This thesis argues that the best genre parallel for the Acts of the Apostles is collected biography. This conclusion is reached through an application of ancient and modern genre theory and a detailed comparison of Acts and collected biographies. Chapter 1 offers prolegomena to this study and further delineates the contours of the thesis. Chapter 2 provides an extensive history of research, not only to provide the context and rationale for the present work, but also to indicate some of the shortcomings of previous investigations and the need for this present study. Chapter 3 presents the methodological perspective for this exploration. Making use of ancient and modern genre theory, I propose that scholars need to understand genre as a dynamic and flexible system that is culturally influenced and highly adaptable. In Chapter 4 I trace the diachronic development of ancient biographies, describe different sub-divisions, and note the strong, enduring relationship between biography and history. In evaluating the development of biography as a whole, there appears to be a distinct preference by ancient biographers for collected biographies. Chapters 5 to 7 interpret Acts in light of its possible relationship with collected biographies. Chapter 5 provides a detailed comparison of the structural and content features of history, novels, collected biographies, and Acts. Overall, this chapter argues that the structural and content features of Acts are most strongly related to the genre of biography and, secondarily, to history. Chapters six and seven evaluate Acts as a modified collected biography, identifying notable similarities in content features, structure, and endings. Chapter 8 summarizes and concludes the thesis, along with a brief mention of avenues for future research. Related literary investigations, such as a list of literary topoi references in biographies, biographies referenced by Diogenes Laertius, and a full discussion of biography’s adaptability in the first century (modelled by Plutarch and Philo), are treated in appendices.

Thesis (M.A.)--University of Virginia, 1998. / Description based on content as of June 1999. Title from title screen.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Pennsylvania, 1934. / "The major portion of this study is given to a critical review of English memoirs before 1740"--Introd. Bibliography: p. 169-176.

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This dissertation examines the reception of Chinese language and literature during Tokugawa period Japan, highlighting the importation of vernacular Chinese, the transformation of literary styles, and the translation of narrative fiction. By analyzing the social and linguistic influences of the reception and adaptation of Chinese vernacular fiction, I hope to improve our understanding of genre development and linguistic diversification in early modern Japanese literature. This dissertation historically and linguistically contextualizes the vernacularization movements and adaptations of Chinese texts in the seventeenth to eighteenth centuries, showing how literary importation and localization were essential stimulants and also a paradigmatic shift that generated new platforms for Japanese literature. Chapter 1 places the early introduction of vernacular Chinese language in its social and cultural contexts, focusing on its route of propagation from the Nagasaki translator community to literati and scholars in Edo, and its elevation from a utilitarian language to an object of literary and political interest. Central figures include Okajima Kazan (1674-1728) and Ogyû Sorai (1666-1728). Chapter 2 continues the discussion of the popularization of vernacular Chinese among elite intellectuals, represented by the Ken'en School of scholars and their Chinese study group, "the Translation Society." This chapter discusses the methodology of the study of Chinese by surveying a number of primers and dictionaries compiled for reading vernacular Chinese and comparing such material with methodologies for reading classical Chinese. The contrast indicates the identification of vernacular Chinese as a new register that significantly departed from kanbun. Chapter 3 provides a broader view of the reception of Chinese texts in Japan in the same time period, discussing Hattori Nankaku (1683-1759), a kanshi poet and Ogyû Sorai's successor in literary criticism. Nankaku's contributions include a translation and annotation of the Tang shi xuan (J. Tôshi sen), an anthology of Tang poetry compiled by Ming poet Li Panlong (1514-1570). Such commentaries in accessible Japanese prose reflected the changing readership of Chinese texts, as well as the colloquialization of literary Japanese. Chapters 4 and 5 focus on literary translations and adaptations of Chinese narrative texts in different language styles. Chapter 4 analyzes kanazôshi ("kana booklet") stories by Asai Ryôi (1612?-1691) in comparison to their source text, the Ming Chinese anthology of supernatural stories New Tales Under the Lamplight (Jian deng xin hua). For a comparative perspective on translation style, this chapter also addresses adaptations of the same source story by Korean and Vietnamese authors. Chapter 5 looks into the literati genre of yomihon ("reading books") and focuses on Tsuga Teishô's (1718?-1794?) adaptations of Ming vernacular fiction by Feng Menglong. Teishô, a prolific author considered to be the inventor of this important genre, has been grossly understudied due to the linguistic complexity of his works. His adaptations of Chinese vernacular stories bridged different narrative traditions and synthesized various language styles. This chapter aims to demonstrate Teishô's innovative prose style and the close connections between vernacular Chinese and the development of early yomihon as a sophisticated, experimental genre of popular literature. This dissertation illustrates the inextricable relationships between language transformation and genre development, between vernacularization and narrative literature. It departs from the long-standing paradigm of Sino-Japanese (wakan) literary study, which treats Sinitic writing as an integral part of Japanese literary discourse, emphasizing rather a comparative linguistic approach that addresses Chinese and Japanese linguistic and literary movements in parallel. Within this framework, this project is intended as a platform for further explorations of issues of cultural interaction and translation literature.

This thesis explores selected texts by the contemporary author Colum McCann (b.1965), situating his work within a larger transnational Irish canon. The project traces how notions of Irish identity interact with experiences of diaspora, migration and race; throughout the thesis, close attention is paid to the role and function of literary form. After an introduction which maps out the material covered in the thesis, the project opens with a contextual chapter entitled ‘Deoraí: Exile, Wanderer, Stranger: (Post)colonial Ireland and making sense of place’. This chapter sets up the methodological frameworks that guide the thesis through a meditation on exile in an Irish and postcolonial context. My second chapter, ‘Deterritorialised novels: McCann’s short stories as Minor Literature in an (Northern) Irish Mode’, focuses on McCann’s short stories, paying particular attention to those set in the North of Ireland. Invoking Thomas MacDonagh’s notion of an Irish Mode and Deleuze and Guattari’s concept of Minor Literature, I argue that the rejection of the novel in favour of the short story is a form of literary politics inflected with anti-colonial sentiment. Continuing my examination of literary form, my third chapter, ‘Nomadism and Storytelling in Zoli: oral culture, embodiment and travelling tales’, highlights the ambivalence of orality within McCann’s novel Zoli and works towards establishing what a textual practice of storytelling might be, in addition to probing at the representation of nomadic peoples across McCann’s work. The next chapter is entitled ‘Topography of Violence’: race, belonging and the underbelly of the cosmopolitan city in This Side of Brightness’. This discusses the cosmopolitan ethics that underpin McCann’s novel and how these are grounded by the close attention McCann pays to the experiential realities of America’s (often racialised) underclass through McCann’s depiction of interracial love. My final chapter ‘TransAtlantic: Frederick Douglass, the Irish Famine and the Troubles with the black and green Atlantics’, maps out the overlapping histories of the black and green Atlantics, tests the validity of the ostensible affinity between the two groups and asks how useful conventional chronological narratives are in the representation of their histories. Finally, I finish with ‘Minor Voices, race and rooted cosmopolitanism’, which concludes that McCann’s fiction articulates a need for rooted cosmopolitan and critically engaged nomadic thought which embraces Minor Voices and rejects exclusionary politics.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Yale University, 1925.

Thesis (M.A.)--Marshall University, 2003. / Title from document title page. Document formatted into pages; contains v, 85 p. Includes bibliographical references (p. 78-85).

Thesis (Ed. D.) in Literacy Education--University of Maine, 2001. / Includes vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 304-318).