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This dissertation examines the literary and political significance of the Argentine writer Leopoldo Lugones (1874-1938). Part One provides an account of Lugones’ reputation, largely from the point of view of his critics. He has often been accused of ideological contradictions. Initially labeled as a passionate socialist, he went on to advocate liberalism; in his final years, he became a staunch defender of hierarchy and political order. As a result, the contemporary image of Lugones is associated with Argentina’s complicated historical experience with military coups and dictatorships. He is pictured as a man who favored strong government, the coercion of political opponents, the restriction of individual liberties, and the use of systematic imprisonment and torture. Consequently, he has been judged as a figure who leans toward fascism and populism. Complicating the issue of Lugones’ reception is the fact that he might have suffered from mental instability. Among other things, it has been suggested that he was overly “sensitive.” Part Two suggests that this so-called “sensitivity” not only served as a pre-condition for his social consciousness, but that it also provided unique personal insight throughout his literary and political trajectory. After reviewing a substantial number of Lugones’ early writings, it is argued that he developed a philosophy of history. Just as Nietzsche felt that after “God had died,” major political consequences could follow, Lugones thought that he was living through a period of decay, not material and social in nature, but spiritual. Part Three presents a view of Lugones’ political project as he envisions himself as Argentina’s national writer. The political landscape he paints follows a populist approach, proposing an ideology that leans towards the mythic, the ultimate goal being the political unity of a people for the sake of “individual liberty.”

Please note: creative writing theses are permanently embargoed in OpenBU. No public access is forecasted for these. To request private access, please click on the locked Download file link and fill out the appropriate web form. / Poetry manuscript / 2031-01-01

My dissertation, The Alchemy of Sexuality in Early Modern English Lyric Poetry examines the complex relationship of poetry, sexuality and religion to alchemy in early modern England. I analyze poetic representations of transgressive sexuality by William Shakespeare, Edmund Spenser, John Donne, Thomas Nashe, and Thomas Carew. What emerges from my study is the profound link between alchemical metaphors and poetic expressions of sexuality. These poetic expressions of sexuality develop the poets' interrogation of gender hierarchy in early modern England. This dissertation has theoretical implications for how we read early modern English poetry, but there are also physiological dimensions. I examine representations of sex and the disciplined Foucauldian early modern body. Notwithstanding, my primary focus of this disciplined body are the humoral processes that were thought to govern early modern physiology and their Galenic ties to alchemy. As my study makes clear, alchemy represents an interventionist conjunction within the Galenic-Humoral economy that predominated in early modern England. In each chapter I illuminate the means by which the poets utilize alchemical iconography to codify a transgressive body and therefore illuminate an illicit sexuality. In the introductory chapter, I outline the history of alchemy and its relationship to sexuality and religion, and by extension to the early modern body. I end the introduction by asserting that the poets' use of alchemy is not only a symbol of the creative imagination, but also an attempt to map the contours of desire and the poetic mind. Chapter two focuses on books 2 and 3 of Spenser's epic, The Faerie Queene. In this chapter I seek to develop a theory which will account for the excessive erotica found in these books. At first glance the anachronistic term of pornography would seem to account for the sexual activity found in these books. Nonetheless, pornography's contextual later development, and the slipperiness of the term fail to accommodate early modern theories of erotic reading and the disruptive emotions engendered by such readings. Therefore, I suggest the term of passionate discourse which more fully explains the voyeuristic nature of Spenser's epic and his ability to suspend the assault on the body which erotica could potentially provoke. In chapter three I continue my examination of alchemy and its ties to sexuality by a detailed analysis of Shakespeare's "procreative sonnets." I discuss Shakespeare's use of alchemy which enables his creation of a sexually appropriate hermaphrodite thus challenging regimes against the practice of sodomy. While chapter three focuses on Shakespeare's hermaphroditic creation, chapter four considers Donne's appropriation of alchemy in order to substantiate what I term an alchemic transcendental sexuality. Donne's alchemic sexuality is constituted by the metaphors of alchemy as well as the religious discourse of Familism. As with Spenser and Shakespeare, Donne ultimately challenges sexual understandings of the body and the systems that sought to impose artificial and sexual boundaries on the early modern body. Similarly, chapter five contemplates sexual challenges to religious understanding of the body. My focus is Thomas Nashe's "The Choise of Valentines" and Thomas Carew's "A Rapture." Both Nashe and Carew use their speakers to trope sexual performance as alchemical labor and to interrogate women's reproductive potential. Lastly, I conclude this study by commenting on the aesthetic success of the poems. I believe that those poems which have found a prominent place in the English literary canon owe their prominence to how well they have integrated the discourses of alchemy, sex, and religion in their more overtly sexual poetry. Yet ultimately, this dissertation is about the process of embodiment, and therefore I assert that each poet in this dissertation anchor themselves in the slippery terrain of alchemy in a concerted effort to find meaning among the chaos of the body. / A Dissertation submitted to the Department of English in partial fulfillment of the Doctor of Philosophy. / Spring Semester, 2015. / February 4, 2015. / Alchemy, Donne, Renaissance, Sexuality, Shakespeare, Spenser / Includes bibliographical references. / Bruce Boehrer, Professor Directing Dissertation; Charles Upchurch, University Representative; Anne Coldiron, Committee Member; David Johnson, Committee Member; Daniel Vitkus, Committee Member.

An investigation into the works of poet Olga Kirsch according to psychoanalytical theories reveals interesting possibilities about Afrikaans's sole expressly Jewish poet and only the second female poet to get published in this language. Her yearning to be accepted in Afrikaans circles seems to have been thwarted by the rise of racist Nationalist power. Motherhood, a career as educator and having an allochthonous creative language in Hebrew-speaking Israel were some of the factors that muffled the immigrant Kirsch's poetic voice for more than two decades after arriving in Israel in 1948. An inability to make a breakthrough in Modern Hebrew or English redirected her attention to the language she felt best at home in - Afrikaans. Kirsch, however, could not continue writing poetry indefinitely in a language she had been isolated from for so long. Psychoanalysis explores the drives behind Kirsch's writings: the flight from the phallic mother, loss of the paternal love object, longing for wholeness in the safety of the chora, as well as self-actualisation and jouissance through the creative process. Kirsch is reaffmned as an important Afrikaans poet who, with each volume of poetry, shared her life as a sujet en proces with her Afrikaans-speaking readers. Whereas Sigmund Freud's basic tenets and further developments in psychoanalysis by Jacques Lacan form the underlying structure of this research, extensive insights from the prolific theoretician Julia Kristeva have been employed to counterpoint the masculine and arguably paternalistic views of the former two psychoanalysists. Some rediscovered poems have been included in this thesis and comments by Kirsch's family also add a new dimension to our understanding of her as a person and of her creative output. Further sources of information were found in a documentary about the poet, recordings for radio and articles in newspapers and literary magazines. In order to establish Kirsch's value and durability as an Afrikaans poet, the canonisation process and possible changes to the poet's position in it were also taken into account. It appears from these that Olga Kirsch is, albeit not one of the greatest poets due to her increasingly dated language, nevertheless an indispensable part of the Afrikaans literary canon.

The walls in the conference room were gray, the color of indecision and sorrow, Margaux's mother would say. Not good for a Cancer, already prone to this sort of thing. Cancers should surround themselves with reds and oranges, hues to warm their watery natures. Margaux no longer believed in her mother's folklore, but she continued to think in those terms. She was, after all, still a Barbaret.

Includes bibliographical references / It appeared to me that the differences and a particular atmosphere I found in Irish writing were due to more than the syntax of Hyberno-English. I was curious and to investigate further I returned to university to add English literature as a major to an existing degree in Psychology, Anthropology, Linguistics and the relevant ancillaries. The literary approach to the few - mostly Anglo-Irish - writers on which single courses were offered left my questions mostly unanswered. My own research continue along historical and psycho-sociocultural lines. I believe this approach discovered what I sought.

Bibliography: leaves 376-401. / This thesis investigates the ways in which three eighteenth-century writers, Bishop Thomas Sherlock, Hannah More and Jane Austen embody orthodox Anglican doctrine according to their individual perceptions of the enlightening properties of Protestant Christianity. After situating them in their respective gender, literary and ecclesiastical contexts, I examine some of their key doctrines and analyse excerpts from their works. My selection of passages from Sherlock's works is fairly comprehensive, but in the case of More and Austen, where there is already a formidable body of literary criticism, it is more selective. Thus, I focus on doctrine in More's tracts, Strictures on the System of Female Education, An Essay on St Paul and most especially Coelebs in Search of a Wife and in the case of Austen, on her prayers and select passages from Sense and Sensibility and Mansfield Park. I conclude that, although diverse in their particular kind of Anglicanism (High, Evangelical and Median) and in their choice of genre, transparency or obscurity (anonymity and pseudonymity) and the various narratological strategies some of them invoke to circumvent certain taboos, Sherlock, More and Austen champion the same central orthodox doctrines, defend them against current alternatives to orthodoxy such as Latitudinarianism, Deism and various forms of Freethinking, and promote similar moral and ecclesiastical reforms. However, indirectly (through female characters who resist male representation or control) the women writers subject their ostensibly authorially-endorsed male narrators/characters to scrutiny and sometimes (when the males objectify the women) subversion.

Includes abstract. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 209-231). / Malawian theatre, like most theatre in the southern region of Africa, is composed of two distinct forms; oral traditional theatre mostly comprising of masks, music and dance, as well as popular theatre which seeks to follow the definition of modern Western theatre. This thesis seeks to show how, of all the elements inherent in both types of theatre, the theme of satire is a recurrent feature and is often found to be the foundation of both types of theatre. The thesis considers how both traditional and modern theatres explore and exploit satire, and how this theme has contributed to theatre as a whole. It also looks at the history of theatre in Malawi, its role in society as well as the impact it has had on the nation as a whole, for example where it has been used as a social tool.