Michel Butor belongs to the group of writers who originated the New Novel in France in the early nineteen fifties. A decade later, Gerard Bessette, among others, inaugurated the Quebec New Novel. / An initial reading of the novels of Butor and Bessette enables one to discern arresting similarities between their surface structures. There is a strong tendency among their characters to bring order into the disorderly world in which they live. Their endeavor is thwarted by the authoritarian figures they confront. The failure of the heroes reveals to them that their speech is inadequate and their voices lack authority. This study attempts to investigate the functioning of authoritarian discourses and to establish the correspondences between the latent/unconscious structures in the novels of the two writers. / Applying contemporary critical theories of discourse, especially those of Mikhail Bakhtin and Michel Foucault, the study examines various types of authoritarian discourses. These discourses are defined and classified under each of the three principal orders identified in the novels. Maternal and paternal discourses are grouped in the familial order, religious, professorial and judicial discourses in the social order, and mythological, legendary and ancestral discourses in the historical order. / The introduction establishes the fundamental relationships between the works of Butor and Bessette, and lays out the theoretical aspects of the study. Each of the three chapters analyzes the interaction between discourses, and the negotiation of authority through discourse in a particular order. The first chapter focuses on the subversion of authoritarian voices in the familial order. The second chapter examines the characters' search for parental substitutes in the social order, and demonstrates the insufficiency of authority in the latter. The failure of the first two orders leads the characters to pursue their quest in the historical order. The assimilation of historical discourses enables the characters to regain their right to speak. The conclusion argues that the narrative authority exercised through writing/speaking is disseminated in the intertextual space. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 56-04, Section: A, page: 1346. / Major Professor: Elaine D. Cancalon. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--The Florida State University, 1995.

Originally a pejorative label assigned to someone who has left a structured, civilized, sophisticated society for one (presumably) less responsible, less structured, and less industrious than the original, going native seems deceptively simple to define in its implications. However, it raises critical questions about one's sense of self within a group or nationality, opening up new categories within old oppositions. As the term's pejorative nature seems to continue to moderate, this text seeks to find the spaces in which the term "going native" places itself in the writing and film of the 1900's. The term is originally a British term for a phenomenon that touches all historical multicultural contacts and clashes. I am looking at a one-way street in examining this term: the characters involved were all created (in the case of fiction) or born (in the non-fiction examples) Anglo-American or British but found their ways into cultural settings that these two particular cultures find extremely foreign and mysterious. The Introduction looks briefly at the Albert Memmi's The Colonizer and the Colonized to find a space for the idea of going native as well as looking the linguistic construction itself, its issues for Anthropology, and transculturation. Chapter One looks at the personality of the new native in Sokolov's Native Intelligence, Tidwell's Amazon Stranger and Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness (as well as Roeg's film of Conrad's novella and Coppola's Apocalypse Now ). Chapter Two examines the texts and films about Archie Belaney/Grey Owl and why a white man at the turn of the century would want to trade a white racial identity for that of an Indian at a time of such social disparity between the races. Chapter Three examines the intersection of going native and treason, focusing on Harry St. John Bridger Philby, Kim Philby, Galsworthy's Forsyte Saga and the writings of Rebecca West. The final chapter looks at an extreme of going native---going feral---(where the new native joins another species rather than another culture) through Margaret Atwood's Surfacing and the story of Dian Fossey.

Abstract not available.

Abstract not available.

This thesis considers the religious identity that Lucy Maud Montgomery constructed in The Selected Journals of L.M. Montgomery. As an adequate theoretical model to study religion in modern autobiography is not available, this thesis approaches the Selected Journals with a "social construction" model (adapted from autobiography theory on gender) in a consideration of her religious identity. Montgomery's religious self-constructions---as unorthodox, Presbyterian, and a seeker of truth---are considered in successive chapters through close readings of passages from her journals. Though her separate self-constructions are apparently paradoxical, I argue that Montgomery's overall religious identity is nonetheless fairly consistent with her most crucial religious self-construction---that of being a seeker of truth---and that she ultimately presents herself in her journals as having faith centred on hope. In conclusion, I offer reflections on the need for the development of an autobiography theory in which religion is regarded as an important aspect of identity.

In The Rez Sisters (1986), Dry Lips Oughta Move to Kapuskasing (1989), and Rose (1999) renowned Cree dramatist Tomson Highway mounts a dramaturgical critique of colonialism, focusing most prominently upon the disenfranchisement of Native women and the introduction of Western gender roles into First Nations cultures. Within each of the three "Rez Plays," he employs the metaphor of rape to depict cultural, territorial and spiritual dispossession brought about by colonization. However, in hegemonic narratives of colonization, Indigenous women are similarly represented in connection with the land and the metaphor of rape is used to portray colonial takeover; as colonial domination heightened, literary portrayals of Indigenous peoples, particularly women, became increasingly demeaning. This thesis investigates the extent to which Highway's works can serve as truly subversive, liberating texts given that the recurring portrayals of sexual violence in the "Rez Plays" reinvigorate dangerous, misogynistic stereotypes. Situating Highway's plays within a framework of contemporary feminist postcolonial theory, this thesis problematizes the repeated use of gender specific representations of victimization in the "Rez Plays."

In their novels, Ernest Buckler, Alice Munro, Peter Ackroyd, Adele Wiseman and A. S. Byatt have each explored moments when their characters experience expanded states of consciousness. Narratives such as these, as well as those of various mystical literatures, posit the idea that the barriers of the known self can be broken through, often repeatedly. Each of the novels to be studied here portrays a gap- or flaw-ridden self in the act of perpetuating and/or penetrating various forms of narrative and identity constructs. Each also features an encounter with what is other when these narrative and identity boundaries are breached. Reading about "mystical" occurrences of this nature challenges readers with the possibility that perceptions may be registered beyond the paradigms of the subject/object split. In this project, narrative fiction will be read in terms of its capacity to trigger a questioning of, and an expansion from within, systems of knowledge and identity, explicitly in terms of character and plot structure, and implicitly as a model for the reading self. The ability to observe and to respond to productive "gaps" or "flaws" in the stories of the self is a skill not only practiced by contemplatives and mystics, and by the characters in these novels, but by readers of imaginative fiction as well.

Scholars approaching the work of Sir Charles G. D. Roberts face two problems: first, a critical mass that divides his work along genre lines and second, limited theoretical frameworks on which to build a discussion, namely, British Romanticism or American Transcendentalism. An alternative critical lens through which to explore Roberts's oeuvre is supernaturalism. Chapter 1 offers a summary of Roberts scholarship and a discussion of current critical frameworks. Chapter 2 contextualizes Roberts's interest in the supernatural through an examination of occult currents of thought during the late nineteenth century and early twentieth century, as well as Roberts's friendships, letters, and related publications. Chapters 3 to 5 proceed chronologically through an examination of how the supernatural manifested itself in his prose fiction: Chapter 3 explores his earliest supernatural stories from Earth's Enigmas; Chapter 4 discusses his Acadian works; Chapter 5 explores his later prose fiction, beginning with The Heart of the Ancient Wood and ending with his last novel, In the Morning of Time. Chapter 6 acts as a corollary to the other chapters through a chronological examination of Roberts's major collections of verse. A reexamination of Roberts's personal writings and acquaintances during key moments in his life reveals a bio-critical void in scholarship that has effectively obscured his affinity for esoteric ideas and for artists who held similar interests. An investigation of his works also reveals that the supernatural manifested itself in his poetry and prose fiction throughout his career. Evidence suggests that the supernatural was a pervasive influence on his life and that he found in esoteric traditions perspectives on the afterlife that could help him articulate his spiritual struggles.

This thesis examines the works of five Irish-born writers who came to Canada between the mid-eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries: Donnchadh Ruadh MacConmara, Isaac Weld Junior, Thomas Moore, Anna Brownell Jameson, and Adam Kidd. Collectively, these writers helped formulate, establish, and solidify impressions of the eventual Dominion. In turn, they played an invaluable role in encouraging immigration to Canada by providing would-be emigrants with valuable insight and information that would aid in their impending decision about where to seek a new home once they crossed the Atlantic: America or Canada. Essential to their respective experiences was the discovery that Canada could offer not only respite from the instability sweeping the British Isles but also that it was superior to the American Republic. To illustrate this point, the Dantean concepts of inferno, purgatorio, and paradiso, first suggested in Weld's work, are equated with America, Canada, and the Old World respectively. This paradigm is used both to conceptualize and assess the New World in relation to the Old, to compare Canada and America invidiously, as well as to encourage immigration to the former and divertit from the latter. In addition to providing a survey of the heretofore unrecognized contribution of five foundational Irish writers to the beginnings of Canadian literature, the thesis also exposes and challenges the early and present-day critical reception of their respective works in reviews and criticism that frequently propagate unfavourable stereotypes of the Irish. Its aim is partly to counter these falsely imposed myths and harmful stereotypes by drawing attention to the unsound practices of many biographers and critics.

<p> This study explores the issue of Japanese internment camp in the United States and Canada during World War Two. It argues that Japanese immigrants, who were totally innocent, became historical victims and experienced camp. During World War Two, the Japanese army attacked Pearl Harbor, a territory of the United States. This incident made mainstream American and Canadian society suspicious of Japanese immigrants, who had the same ethnicity and blood as the army, the "enemies." This study is an attempt to find the voice and feelings of those who had to experience trauma in camp. As subaltern figures, all they had to do was endure and accept their fate. As immigrants, who seemed not to have English fluency, they had to accept the requirements of America or Canada in order to be allowed to live. At the same time, this study seeks to analyze how Japanese-Americans and -Canadians forged their identity after overcoming the trauma of camp and the agony of assimilation. In so doing, this dissertation considers the work of four novelists who have written about these difficult issues. Chapter 1 explains how other Asians &ndash; Koreans and Chinese &ndash; were affected by the Japanese army and how mainstream society looked at Japanese immigrants. Chapters 2 and 3 explore Joy Kogawa's <i> Obasan</i> and <i>Itsuka.</i> Naomi, the protagonist, struggles to find a sense of "home-ness." Chapter 4 examines Monica Sone's <i> Nisei Daughter</i>. Kazuko, the protagonist, has to experience negative aspects of the United States. Chapter 5 explores Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston's <i> Farewell to Manzanar.</i> Jeanne, the protagonist, has to go through painful experiences and racism up to the last section of the novel. Chapter 6 analyzes John Okada's <i>No-No Boy.</i> Ichiro, the protagonist, suffers self-alienation. He cannot fix his identity between his duality until he can find his "home." Chapter 7 examines the authors' intentions and asks in which direction Japanese-Americans and -Canadians can move forward in the future.</p>