This thesis examines the theme of alienation along with the train motif in the life journeys of the protagonists in four modern Japanese novels. Each chapter is devoted to an individual novel and explores its hero's feelings of socio-psychological estrangement on personal and interpersonal levels as well as the role of the train journey which serves to arouse, create or alleviate such feelings. Chapter One deals with Sanshiro (Sanshiro. 1908) by Natsume Soseki and follows the hero on his long train journey from backward Kyushu to progressive Tokyo. The people he meets on the train foreshadow the feelings of uneasiness and estrangement he will encounter in the capital. For Sanshiro, the noisy, crowded streetcars initially represent the "real world," constantly reminding him of his alienation from it. Once over his culture shock the hero's sense of not belonging shifts to his relationships with his friends. Gradually he begins to feel more comfortable with himself and the world around him. Chapter Two examines A Dark Night's Passing (An'ya Koro, 1921-37) by Shiga Naoya. In his search to resolve feelings of unacceptability arising from his childhood experiences, Kensaku takes a series of journeys, many by train, "backward" in time. The train thus serves as an agent which can transcend the barriers of both time and space, separating or reuniting people and creating or breaking down distances between places. It can arouse feelings of happiness, excitement, sadness or loneliness in its passengers or simply provide him with a place to relax and dream about a brighter future. Chapter Three focuses on Snow Country (Yukiguni. 1934-1947) by Kawabata Yasunari. Shimamura's purpose in visiting the snow country is two-fold -- he both desires to escape from and needs to confront the reality of the wasted effort in his life and resulting sense of alienation from humanity. The train complies. As it brings him into this region of Japan it completely loses any connection with reality, creating a void in which weirdly beautiful apparitions float up before our hero's very eyes. Once in this fantasy land our hero is taught to see his own coldness and how to become more human by two beautiful women. It is then left up to Shimamura to put what he has learned into action when he returns to Tokyo by the train which, heading away from the snow country, takes on very real qualities. The final chapter examines The Temple of the Golden Pavilion (Kinkakuii. 1956) by Mishima Yukio. This novel deals with Mizoguchi, a most frightening character whose mixed-up views of both himself and the world are but a thin disguise for insanity. The hero suffers terribly from the resulting feelings of not belonging as well as a great inferiority complex. The situation is complicated by his strange love-hate relationship with the Golden Temple to which he attributes human qualities. The train in this novel serves as the symbolic vehicle which transports the hero back and forth between the region of his birth and what he calls "the station of death" where he will eventually destroy both the temple and the hated half of his personality. In the conclusion the relevance of alienation, trains and the journey of life in modern Japanese literature are discussed. / Arts, Faculty of / Asian Studies, Department of / Graduate

The thesis explores the vexed concept of Heimat in recent German culture. Heimat evokes an exclusive group, founded on the idea of the unity and homogeneity of its members. Conflicts arise around the concept because it constructs oppositions between those who belong and those who do not, insiders and outsiders, the domestic and known in opposition to the foreign and strange. Historically, the concept has been used to tell a story about the cohesion of the German nation; it has also, however, been used to assimilate, eliminate, or exile its Others. The thesis examines how the legacies of the concept and its narrative reverberate through the nation-building process of Germany today. The concept of Heimat is active in films, literature, the law and contemporary German society. The argument is that the concept of Heimat still shapes German identity in ways that use old forms and oppositions to respond to recent social changes. It is argued further that the tensions around the concept have not diminished, but are spreading into many different areas of German everyday life. Two films by Edgar Reitz provide the starting point for exploring the tensions around Heimat in contemorary German culture. Following readings of texts by Jewish-German, Austrian- German, Swiss-German, Persian-German, Rumanian-German, East and West German authors show the concept persisting in different forms with different consequences, according to the different cultural contexts. In each of these contexts, the concept of German Heimat produces both social cohesion and social tensions. As much as people are united by the concept, they are also driven apart by its differentiating and disintegrating mechanisms. Motivated by the search for communal intimacy, the concept also has the effect of controlling and manipulating what appears different and alien. As such a network of interests and strategies it is not merely closed, fixed and bounded, as desired perhaps by the dominant cultural groups, but rather open for contestation and negotiation within and across national borders. / Arts, Faculty of / Central Eastern Northern European Studies, Department of / Graduate

This dissertation explores the relationship between the regulatory discourses of nationalism and sexuality as they operate in the cultural production and textual dissemination of contemporary Canadian literatures. Applying recent studies in postcolonial and queer theory to a number of works by gay and lesbian authors written across a broad spectrum of years, political perspectives, and genres, I seek to formulate a critical methodology which allows me to situate these works within the trajectory of Canadian canon-formation from the 1940s to the present. In so doing, I argue that the historical construction of Canadian literature and Canadian literary criticism upon an apparent absence of national identity—us encapsulated most tellingly in the "Where is here?" of Frye's "Conclusion"—masks nothing so much as the presence of a subversive and destabilizing sexual identity—"queer." The dissertation is made up of eight chapters: the first opens with a Sedgwickian survey of the "homosocial" underpinnings of several foundational texts of Canadian literature, before providing an overview—via George Mosse, Benedict Anderson, and Michel Foucault—of the theoretical parameters of the dissertation as a whole. Chapter two focuses on three nationally "ambivalent" and sexually "dissident" fictions by Timothy Findley. A comparative analysis of the homophobic criticism accompanying the sexual/textual travels of Patrick Anderson and Scott Symons serves as the basis of chapter three. Chapter four discusses the allegorical function of homosexuality in the nationalist theatre of Michel Tremblay, Rene-Daniel Dubois, and Michel Marc Bouchard. Chapter five examines how national and sexual borderlines become permeable in the lesbian-feminist translation poetics of Nicole Brossard and Daphne Marlatt. Issues of performativity (the repetition and reception of various acts of identification) are brought to the fore in chapters six and seven, especially as they relate to the (dis)located politics of Dionne Brand, and the (re)imagined communities of Tomson Highway and Beth Brant, respectively. Finally, chapter eight revisits some of the vexed questions of identity raised throughout the dissertation by moving the discussion of nationalisms and sexualities into the classroom. / Arts, Faculty of / English, Department of / Graduate

This thesis explores some issues related to directed change in Chinese literature and art from 1930 to 1955. The focus is on the performing arts. The main issues of concern are changes in the social organisation of literary and artistic activity, and changes in the conscious model of literature and art held by those leading these social changes. Fieldwork was done in China during the period 1974 to 1977. Since the main concern of the thesis is with an earlier period, extensive library research was done in China, the United States, and Canada. The formative period of the modern transformation of Chinese literature and art was examined by research into the changes of the Kiangsi Soviet, Yenan, and National Consolidation periods. Theoretical concepts derived from the works of Clifford Geertz on ideology, Eric Wolf on peasant political movements, Antonio Gramsci on intellectuals and hegemony, and Raymond Williams on the arts in society were synthesised to form an approach which could illuminate these problems. In this work literature and art were consistently analysed as modes of social activity rather than as purely aesthetic phenomena. The development within leading circles in China of an approach to literature and art based upon recognition of its social and political aspects and a concern with effecting change in these areas is examined, beginning with the rudimentary formulation of ideas:-on this subject in the early 1930's. The effort to transform literature and art by way of carrying out planned and organised alterations in the social practice of literary and artistic activities on the part of both professionals and amateurs is examined in detail. These efforts were found to be theoretically provocative and to have shown some signs of success, particularly in the middle and late 1940's. A partial revision of these policies is noted in the early 1950's, and some possible reasons for that are suggested. / Arts, Faculty of / Sociology, Department of / Graduate

This study investigates the relation between faith in a transcendent reality and faith in language, both verbal and visual, in the work of English novelist and critic Antonia Byatt. Her ideal conception of communication combines the immediacy and primal vigour of the visual with the methodical pragmatism of words. However, Byatt's characters who exemplify this effort at double vision - in particular Stephanie Potter Orton in the 1985 novel Still Life - find in their quests frustration and even death rather than fulfillment. My investigation focuses on A. S. Byatt's presentation of the way language attempts to represent and interact with three particular areas: fundamental personal experiences (childbirth, death, love), perceptual and aesthetic experiences (colour and form, painting), and transcendent experiences (supernaturalism and Christian religion). I consider all stages of her career to date - from her first novel The Shadow of the Sun (1964) to Babel Tower (1996). Although Possession: A Romance (1990) has garnered most of the critical attention accorded to Byatt, I argue that this novel is not generally representative of her principles or style. A neo-Victorian romance, part parodic and part nostalgic, combined with an academic comedy, Possession shares neither the sombre mythological and psychological fatalism of her 1960s fiction nor the modified realism of her middle-period fiction. Still Life and The Matisse Stories (1993) are the works that best elucidate Byatt's major preoccupations; they intently strive to combine the most powerful aspects of verbal and visual knowledge. The methodological basis for this study is pluralist; it emphasizes close reading, combined with phenomenological, biographical, and thematic criticism. As Byatt does, I rely principally on the ideas of writers and artists rather than theorists; she cannot be understood without specific reference to George Eliot, Donne, Forster, Murdoch, Van Gogh, and Matisse (among others). Byatt's quest for truth and transcendent meaning and her investigation of the trustworthiness of words have undergone recent changes; she seems more sharply aware of the limitations of language and the unattainability of absolute truth. Her writings in the 1990s about paintings and colour emphasize their intrinsic value rather than their ability either to revitalize the word or suggest the numinous. / Arts, Faculty of / English, Department of / Graduate

This thesis is focused on the new writers who appeared in Shanghai during the Japanese Occupation between December 1941 and August 1945. The rise of these new writers to fame and their subsequent disappearance from the literary scene were consistent with the fall and liberation o f Shanghai. In the meantime, their appearance and disappearance were parallel with the success and decline of magazines published in Shanghai during that period as well. Both the magazines and their editors played significant roles in promoting the new writers into the literary arena. The war disrupted the development of literature, their writing "nourishment" mostly depended on the literary resources which had been stored up in Shanghai since the late Qing. My discussion of these eight new writers, Zhang Ailing, Shi Jimei, Cheng Yuzhen, Tang Xuehua, Zheng Dingwen, Shen Ji, Guo Peng, and Shi Qi, progresses through an analysis of the elements of region, literature, and war. While most of the female writers' themes were focused on love, mundane love or God's love, the male writers were either more interested in setting their stories on Chinese native soil like Shen Ji, Guo Peng, and Shi Qi; or personal concerns and anxieties regarding the future such as Zheng Dingwen. Among her contemporaries, Zhang Ailing is the most successful and the most influential. These new writers did not go through the baptism of the May Fourth Movement, and had less of a moral burden than their predecessors did. Thus they had more freedom to develop their writings— although the freedom was confined due to a depressed political and social climate. / Arts, Faculty of / Asian Studies, Department of / Graduate

This thesis seeks to map out the development of literary modernism in the 1930s and 1980s People's Republic of China (PRC). Despite the long temporal halt, these two periods are innately and historically related to each other. Much as Chinese literary modernism was a literary legacy of Western modernism, its decades-long development provided it with the conditions for a second life. When it reemerged in the 1980s, it bore unique national characteristics that, in turn, enriched the realm of global modernism. In short, the distinct historical and national context of the twentieth century China dictated that Chinese literary modernism could not be a mechanical reproduction of its Western counterpart. The importation and translation of Western modernist creative and critical works, together with the modernist practices of modern Chinese intellectuals, contributed to the formation and rise of modernist literature in the 1930s, as well as its revival in the 1980s PRC. Structurally, this thesis identifies three localities of global modernism in the works and literary theory of Fei Ming, Mu Dan, and Wang Zengqi. It argues that these writers' modernist practices and distinct writing styles not only represented the characteristics of Chinese literary modernism, but also added diversities to modernist literature in the global context. Methodologically, I pair the Chinese modernists with their Western counterparts, including Virginia Woolf and T.S. Eliot. This comparison helps to find similarities between modernist works across time and place, and to identify the unique features of Chinese literary modernism. In practice, when studying the three modernists' first encounters with literary modernism in Republican China, as well as their respective experience in the PRC, I seek to (i) present three modes of initiation of literary modernism at the beginning of the twentieth century; (ii) trace the development of literary modernism both in the republican era and its revival in the PRC; (iii) show the process of Chinese literary modernism growing its distinct characteristics and evidence its second life. In short, Chinese modernists' participation in the building of global modernism and their contributions to the enrichment of literary modernism in the global context are two foci of my thesis. In the final analysis, this thesis engages research on Chinese literary postmodernism. No matter the literary movement's status in the PRC, then and now, how and why it differs from the development of postmodernism in Western literature and culture are valuable research questions.

This thesis discusses Christian orthodoxy in the English novel during the time period from 1930 to 1950.

Mishima Yukio premiered the play Rokumeikan in 1956 and published it in 1957. For more than half a century, this play has been praised as one of the finest Japanese plays in the Post-War period. Rokumeikan is a multi-act tragic melodrama, set in 1886 (Meiji Period) in the Rokumeikan building. The play intertwines complex political cabals, intense loves and hatreds, and multiple deceptions embodying the conflict between political power and love. This essay explores the reasons why Rokumeikan has maintained its popularity over its fifty year long performance history and examines the critical reception of the play. My analysis of the Rokumeikan text is based on conflicting notions of truth and power. According to the French philosopher, Michel Foucault, socio-political power creates truth. This "power reality" is embodied in the play by Prime Minister Kageyama, and its authority is challenged by his wife, Asako, who has an entirely different conception of truth. This interplay of conflicting values has helped to maintain the popularity and stature of the play for half a century.

Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI)