It is arguable that memories are one of the most important aspects of the human mind. It is through memory that we are able to learn, to make decisions, to evolve. Michael Jacob Kahana (2012) suggests that “our memories define who we are, and our ability to learn and make new memories determines who we become” (Kahana, 2012, p.13). It has also been a topic by several literary authors in their works, such as James Joyce, Virginia Woolf and Antonio Lobo Antunes. This thesis approaches the subject of memories by researching theories and notions regarding the functions of memory and how memories are processed. It embodies the combination of research and practice, where the research into theoretical materials is used in order to develop a collection of short stories. This thesis has the main objective of approaching the practical side of creative writing with thorough background research in theories of human memory, linking all the short stories through the overarching theme of memory and the creative practice, delivering a consistent and unique approach to the field of Creative Writing. That is, these short stories are interpretations of the research through creative endeavour, and aim to explore these theories through the developed narratives. With each story, there is an accompanying critical commentary which describes the creative process and the theoretical approaches that influenced each of them, as well as the literary influences that informed the development of each story.

This study investigates how the use of a specific symbol, the German Democratic Republic (GDR), assists the alignment of individual and dominant interests within contemporary Germany. Based upon a conception of hegemony as a continuous, negotiated process as the main ordering principle within contemporary society, the study focuses upon the ways in which the GDR is constructed within individual narratives and contemporaneous local press reports as a means of examining specific instances of the hegemonic process. Moreover, the analysis of the discursive construction and instrumentalisation of the GDR is also able to identify and evaluate the power of contemporary dominant ideologies to order discourse, marginalise ideological alternatives and hence control the nature of historical representations. Competing constructions of the GDR are analysed by drawing upon theoretical and methodological approaches within discursive psychology and Critical Discourse Analysis )CDA) which aim to investigate links between linguistic representation and the patternsand sources of knowledge-producing and social power. The discursive dynamics of press coverage and those of individual accounts are compared in order to arrive at an original insight into the context and processes by which individuals orientate themselves to their perceived environment. From the theoretical and methodological standpoints, this study develops previous interdisciplinary approaches to studies of situated symbolic exchange, building upon 'media effects' models through the use of CDA. It also relates its findings to critical perspectives within the field of radical media criticism to show how individual discursive activity relates to dominant interests. Thus the combination of these theoretical approaches and the study's qualitative evidence is used to provide a fresh insight into power dynamics within contemporary Germany through an illustration of the mutually reionforcing relationships between the discursive construction of the GDR, alignment with dominant interests and the ideological cleansing of discourse.

Thesis (D. Min.)--Ashland Theological Seminary, 1986. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 183-186).

This study, which is based on close readings of L'Invitee, Les Belles Images and La Femme rompue, focuses on the textual strategies that Simone de Beauvoir uses in her fiction. It shows that madness is an intrinsic quality of the text. Marks of excess, plurality, disruption and transgression are interpreted as an inscription of madness at a discursive level. Madness is discernable in the text whenever the meaningfulness of language is subverted. Chapter One, `L 'Invitee: The Gothic Imagination', argues that, in her first novel, Simone de Beauvoir created a Gothic textual universe in order to confront pain and madness. Gothic conventions and figures are shown to inform the text. In so far as it is Gothic and transgressive the text is mad. Chapter Two, `Continuities in Change: Imagery in L'Invitee, Les Belles Images and La Femme rompue', examines how madness is mediated in the text by images that evoke pain and distress and a sense of lost plenitude. Detailed readings reveal a close affinity between the symbolic landscapes of L'Invitee and the later fiction where excess and hyperbole persist. Chapter Three, `Instability and Incoherence', investigates how disruptive textual strategies unsettle meaning and contribute to the creation of a mad textual universe. It demonstrates how the text subverts notions of a unified and stable identity. Temporal confusion, fragmentation and multi-layering are seen to be a source of the incoherence which exemplifies madness in the text. Traits that disrupt and destabilise the text and duplicate madness are illustrated and discussed. Analysis also reveals how disarticulated and contorted syntax is instrumental in the evocation of the anguish of madness and how syntax can convey a sense of claustrophobia and obsession. Chapter Four, `Language and Meaning: Les Belles Images', locates madness in the text at those points where the meaningfulness of language is subverted. The way plurality, irony, enumeration and repetition enact madness in the text is the focus of attention. It emerges clearly from the close readings undertaken, that Simone de Beauvoir's writing is inflected by forceful emotions and disrupted and destabilised by the excess of madness.

Thesis (M.A.)--Rowan University, 2008. / Typescript. Includes bibliographical references.

The topic of this doctoral thesis is the nature essay: a literary form that became widely used in European literature around 1800 and continues to flourish in times of ecological crisis. Blending natural history discourse, essayistic thought patterns, personal anecdotes, and lyrical descriptions, nature essays are hybrid literary texts. Their authors have often been writers with a background in science. As interdis-cursive agents they move swiftly between different knowledge formations. This equips them with a unique potential in the context of ecology. Essayistic narrators can grasp the interdisciplinary character of environmental issues because they have the ability to combine different types of knowledge. They can be encyclopae¬dic fact mongers, metaphysical ramblers and ethical counsellors. More often than not they are all in one person. Where nature essays were taken into consideration so far they were mostly discussed together with other nature-oriented nonfiction forms under the label ‘nature writing’. This study proposes a different approach in that it insists that the nature essay has to be understood as a literary form in its own right. It explores canonical works of nature writing, such as Thoreau’s Walden, often for the first time as nature essays by discussing them alongside other typical examples of this genre tradition. In order to better understand the discursive impact of this form, I frame my discussion in the context of ecocritical theory. This means that I analyse my corpus of texts with regard to the ways in which writers depict the relationships between human and nonhuman spheres. Putting a particular focus on Germanic and An-glophone literature, the present thesis investigates central paradigms in the evolu-tion of nature essay writing. It covers a time period that stretches from its roots in late eighteenth-century natural history discourse to the present, identifying key epistemological, formal, and thematic patterns of this literary form the importance of which so far has been rather neglected by literary criticism.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Wisconsin, 1967. / Typescript. eContent provider-neutral record in process. Description based on print version record. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 57-59).

Holmwood is the novel which constitutes the major work submitted towards my PhD in Creative Writing. It is accompanied in a second volume by an exegesis of the generative and governing notions which I deem to bear on this work. The novel is a contemporary Australian fiction set in the city of Adelaide and focusing on a period of a month or so in the entwined lives of two sisters, Evie and Paula Haggerty, women in their forties. Holmwood grows out of my abiding preoccupation with the acculturation of women worldwide towards a muting and dilution of selfhood and identity, but it is a novel rather than a tract, attempting in particular a psychological verisimilitude and therefore situated largely within the minds of the central characters, who refract and provide a slant on the narrative. Evie and Paula are bound in family bonds and by shared responsibility for Paula' s children. The sisters work in early-child -care and aged-care respectively, their work scenarios providing a context and perspective for their mid-life entanglements with new partners and ongoing struggles with unresolved birth-family and young-adult relationship dilemmas. The close connections of both sisters with adolescents points up their residual attachment to a youth-culture neither has definitively left. I propose the Haggerty sisters as modest heroines of a difficult chapter in history, not alert to all the meanings of their lives, indeed actively repressing many of them, damaged by early life-experiences, but victorious, to a great degree, against the challenges of their adult lives. I hope this is an amusing and insightful novel about women of a certain age. It is squarely aimed at an identifiable market, thirty-plus women readers bored with 'chick lit'. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--School of Humanities, 2005.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas at Austin, 2006. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (M.A.)--Marshall University, 2003. / Title from document title page. Document formatted into pages; contains 111 p. and map. Includes bibliographical references (p. 105-110).