Thesis (Ph. D.)--Rutgers University, 2008. / "Graduate Program in Literatures in English." Includes bibliographical references.

This thesis provides an analysis of the works of Gabriel García Márquez and Wilson Harris in the cross-cultural context of the Americas, emphasizing the importance of myth as well as history in their attempts to explore the hybridity of post-colonial identity. García Márquez' phrase “la soledad compartida" is interpreted as the process of a spiritual Journey in which both writers articulate the quest to reintegrate the fractured American psyche. Historical and political contexts are provided to focus the nature of fragmentation, and insights from the new physics to re-iterate the presence of the 'real world' which continues to inform both writers in their experiments with linguistic and literary conventions. Realism is seen as insufficient for defining the reality of the Americas and a framework of magical realism is offered as a more appropriate context in which to approach both writers. My methodology is cross-cultural and interdisciplinary, referring to a variety of Latin American and Caribbean writers, and drawing on history, myth, psychology, and physics, as well as debates about post-colonialism and postmodernism, to support my argument that Harris and García Márquez present a vision of the world in which there is creative hope for the future.

This thesis investigates textual cultures of heroism in Scottish literature c. 1600-1660 as evidenced in a corpus of texts engaged with evolving concepts of martial virtue, honour and masculinity. It provides the first sustained analyses of four seventeenth-century romances – Penardo and Laissa (1615) and Prince Robert (1615), both by Patrick Gordon, Sheretine and Mariana (1622) by Patrick Hannay and Calanthrop and Lucilla (1626) by John Kennedy – and their trajectory within a Scottish tradition of writing that was engaged in a fundamental search for its ideal national hero. Over the course of this research, a series of intriguing connections and networks began to emerge which illuminated an active and diverse community of ‘martial writers’ from whom this corpus of texts were conceived. From these pockets of creativity, there emerged a small but significant body of writers who shared not just a military career but often patronage, experience of service in Europe and a literary interest in what I will define in this thesis as the search for post-Union (1603) Scottish male identity. What began as a study of romance texts was prompted to seek new lines of enquiry across a wide and varied body of texts as it sought to engage with a changeable but distinctive thematic discourse of martial heroism, conduct literature for young men disguised as romance. Its findings are by no means always finite; a partly speculative attempt is made to illuminate the path of one particularly pervasive thread of literary discourse – martial virtue – rather than to lay false claims to homogeneity. The nature of this enquiry means that the thesis examines a vast array of texts, including the fictional romances mentioned above and others such as Sir George Mackenzie’s Aretina; Or, the Serious Romance (1660) and John Barclay’s Argenis (1621), non-fictional texts such as Robert Munro’s The Expedition (1638), George Lauder’s The Scottish Soldier (1629) and James Hume’s Pantaleonis Vaticinia Satyra (1633), and their engagement with issues of martial service. It is, in essence, a study of the seventeenth-century Scottish literary hero, sought naturally at first among the epic and fantastical landscapes of fictional romance, but pursued further into the martial world inhabited by its authors, patrons, and, as will be argued, its readers. In mapping this hitherto neglected topic and its related corpus of texts, the thesis identifies a number of potentially characteristic emphases which evince the development of a specifically martial conversation in seventeenth-century Scotland. It foregrounds the re-emergence of feudal narratives of male identity in the wake of the 1603 Union of the Crowns and after the outbreak of Civil and European war, in which the martial warrior of Brucian romance emerges once again as an ideal model of heroism – the natural antithesis to the more (self-evidently) courtly romance narratives produced at the Stuart court in London. Coupled with the inheritance of a late-fifteenth and sixteenth-century poetics which foregrounds reading as an act of moral investment (from which later writers appear to select the specifically reader-focused aspects of Christian Humanism), the erudite soldier and his corresponding literary protagonist begin to emerge as the foremost Scottish hero in a selection of both fictive and non-fictive texts, from vernacular romance to memoirs and chronicles, and in prose fiction. Across this diverse corpus of texts, collective emphases upon the moral investment of reading, exemplar-based use of historical materials and Scotland’s martial past emerge as a shared advisory paradigm, a conduct book of behaviours for the young Scottish male.

Going beyond Orientalism in its examination of novels dealing with British colonisation in the West, as well as the East Indies, the postcolonial frame of my thesis develops recent theorisations of the Romantic ‘stranger’. Analysing a range of novels from the much anthologised Mansfield Park (1814), to less well-known narratives such as John Thelwall’s The Daughter of Adoption (1801) and Sir Walter Scott’s Saint Ronan’s Well (1823), my thesis seeks to account for a model of ‘colonial cosmopolitanism’ within fiction of the period. Considering the cosmopolitan dimensions of the transferential rhetoric of slavery, my thesis explores the ways in which, Jane Austen, Amelia Opie and Maria Edgeworth consider the position of women in domestic society through a West Indian frame. Demonstrating the need for reform both at home and abroad, such novels are representative of a fledgling cosmopolitanism that is often overlooked in current criticism. In seeking to account for ‘colonial cosmopolitanism’ as a new model for reading fiction composed during the Romantic period, my thesis attempts to add further nuance to current understandings of sympathetic exchange during the process of British colonisation. In chapters four and five I will develop my analysis of novels dealing with colonial expansion in the Caribbean to consider novels which deal with the Indian subcontinent. Although stopping short of questioning colonial expansion, discourses of ‘colonial cosmopolitanism’, as my thesis demonstrates, provided a foundation for humanitarian and cultural engagement which was mutually transformative for both the coloniser and the colonised.

This work discusses the theory of the Tragic and the Comic as revealed in the French approach to Shakespeare's tragedy and comedy, with particular reference to certain examples of each genre. In part I, chapters 1-4 inclusive examine questions which are basic to the understanding of Shakespeare in France. In part II, chapters 5-9 inclusive deal with the French approach to Shakespeare's tragedy, the first two of them being based on "Shakespeare and Corneille" and "Shakespeare and Racine" respectively. In part III, chapters 10-16 inclusive turn to the question of the French approach to Shakespeare's comedy, the first of them trying to throw some light on the complex differences and similarities between French and English comedy.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Rutgers University, 2009. / "Graduate Program in Literatures in English." Includes bibliographical references (p. 160-168).

This thesis positions itself between two general approaches to Shelley, that of appreciating his poetics, on the one hand, and that of valuing his philosophical vision, on the other. Duffy has noted that “Shelley’s epistemological and political maturity is no longer in any serious doubt”, and he goes on to demonstrate that Shelley’s radical tendencies remained undiminished throughout his lifetime. My findings support Duffy’s contention, and broaden it to include not only Shelley’s writings but the actions of his life. At the same time, O’Neill has highlighted the importance of exploring Shelley’s poetry for “its imaginative effect as much as its ideological or philosophical coherence”, and that approach will be utilized here as well. My hypothesis is that Shelley’s early fiction, in particular his two early novels, Zastrozzi and St. Irvyne, possess value and deserve attention, and can shed light on his poetics as well as his politics. Moreover, conducting my research has revealed issues of sexism, gender, class and feminism, all of which will be explored. The thesis consists of four main chapters, and four lyric interludes. Chapter one deals with the novels themselves, including their association with the Gothic genre, and offers specific details concerning the delineation and focus of the thesis. Chapter two examines the novels in light of Laon and Cythna or The Revolt of Islam, raising issues of domestic happiness and familial relationships. This lengthy poem, which is frequently neglected in close readings of Shelley, occupies a starring role here. Chapter three continues the examination of the novels as pertains The Cenci, in addition to grappling with matters raised in chapters one and two in a more general context. Finally, chapter four scrutinizes Prometheus Unbound in terms of the Gothic or Romance novels and suggests a new possible interpretation. Interspersed between and complementary to the main chapters is a series of chronologically arranged lyric interludes. This organizational structure, similar to Molière’s use of interludes in The Hypochondriac (Le Malade imaginaire), was adopted because these poems are shorter and can stand apart from one another, and it was deemed more appropriate to incorporate them with flexibility into the main argument, like a moon orbiting its planet, rather than grouping them together as a single unit.

James Joyce remains a logocentric figure, a position confirmed in his perceived relation to Dante within a patriarchal canonical lineage and its philosophical implications. Joyce also occupies this position within the writing and thought of Jacques Derrida, for whom his work then represents both the logos and its own deconstruction. In contrast, this thesis proposes that Joyce in fact is not a logocentric author, and that his writing is explicitly directed towards a deconstruction of the idea of the logos. This claim is advanced through the suggestion that there is in Joyce a deconstruction rather than a validation of the phonocentric linguistic theory and practice of Dante, and concomitantly of a patriarchal Joyce construed through that Dante. In this interrogation of the Dantean logos by Joyce’s writing the thesis then reads the Derridean view on Joyce and examines its investments, proposing that in it there are wider implications for a critical reading of Derrida’s work and for an understanding of his grammatology. It does so in three imagined papers on Joyce and Dante, an insert, a lecture and an essay. They constitute phantom artefacts in which to read deconstructively, and to read deconstruction, by unbinding Derrida’s Joyce. The first chapter is an imagined insert from Joyce and Dante into Of Grammatology and its first chapter, ‘The End of the Book and the Beginning of Writing’. In the folds of the insert it is proposed that Derrida cleaves to the idea of the book and is bound to it in Joyce. This binding initiates a retrospective reading of ‘The End of the Book and the Beginning of Writing’ and of the wider grammatological opening; its implications are unfolded in the insert. By then unbinding the thread of a logocentric Dante in Joyce, the insert unbinds Joyce from the Derridean idea of the book and furthermore suggests that Joyce, read in the deconstruction of Dante, represents the closure of the book as imagined in that essay. Building upon the proposal of a Joycean closure of the book as unfolded in chapter one, the second chapter advances and outlines the shape of that closure in an imagined lecture by Joyce. The chapter follows the displaced letter a in Ulysses as it interrogates mimesis, tracing the development of a subject in différance. The lecture performs that deconstruction of mimesis and, in doing so, announces not the apotheosis but the death of the realist novel in Ulysses. The final chapter draws together the conclusions of the previous two chapters in an imagined essay that arche-writes ‘Two Words for Joyce’ as an example of its own thesis. It does so in a previously untraced Dantean connection, through a conversation between Joyce and Beckett on Dante that finds its way into Finnegans Wake and is archived in the two words Derrida extracts as the spur for his essay. The imagined essay brings together Derrida, Beckett and Joyce in Dante as a concatenation of pairs within the pair of essays; it also shadows another pair, the Derridean Joyce and his other from whom the imagined essay comes. It both performs a deconstructive reading of Derrida in ‘Two Words for Joyce’ and then, through that reading, more widely affirms a Derridean grammatology. The argument of the thesis as it has advanced through the three chapters is here brought to a conclusion, suggesting that in Joyce’s writing it can be proposed that the relationship of deconstructive reading to its own practice is mediated through literature; it also proposes what might be a relationship between deconstructive reading and literature beyond those consequences.

The main purpose of this thesis is to trace the impact of the English Romantic poets, especially Keats, Shelley and Byron, on Arab/Iraqi Romantic poetry and thought, in particular that of Nazik al-Mala'ikah. The thesis is divided into two volumes. The first volume consists of three chapters, each divided into short sections. The first chapter is a detailed introduction to the three other chapters. It discusses the problem of defining the term 'Romanticism'. It studies comparatively the four fundamentals of the English and Arabic Romantic theories. It traces the origin and the development of Arabic/Iraqi Romanticism. It also traces the sources of Nazik's knowledge of world literature: Arabic, English, American, French, German, Greek, Latin and Scandinavian. Nazik's poems and those of other Arabic Romantic poets, such as Iliyya Abu Madi, Ali Mahmud Taha, and Abu 'l-Qasim 'l-Shabbi are compared. The importance of the poems that appear in The Golden Treasury to Arabic poetry in general and to Nazik's poetry in particular is highlighted. A list of English poets, such as Shakespeare, Milton, Gray, Coleridge, Wordsworth, Keats, Shelley and Byron, whose poems and thoughts are influential on Nazik's poetry and critical works, is arranged chronologically with a short introduction to each poet, and his posit ion in Arabic/Iraqi poetry in general and in Nazik's literary works in particular. Abdul-Hai's bibliography of the Arabic versions of English poetry and Jlhan's Ra'uf's bibliography of the Arabic versions of Shelley's poetry are given, in order to indicate the earliest possible date of Arabic translation from English poetry. The second chapter is divided into two parts. These parts are preceded by a short introduction on Arabic translation of English poetry, followed by a section on Nazik's motives in translating English poetry. In the first part, Arabic versions of Gray's Elegy by Andraus, Mahmud, al-Muttalibi and Nazik are analysed comparatively to establish whether Nazik's version is original or dependent on the other earlier Arabic versions. In the final section, the influence of Gray's Elegy on Nazik's themes and imagery is traced. In the second part of this chapter, Nazik's version of Byron's address to the ocean in the fourth canto of Childe Harold's Pilgrimage is fully analysed, preceded by a list of Arabic versions of Byron's poems. Nazik's version is studied independently from other Arabic versions, because most of the versions found are of different parts of Byron's poem. A section is devoted to Nazik's and Byron's relationship with the sea. In the last section, the impact of this passage on Nazik's poetry is traced and compared to that of Gray's Elegy. The third chapter traces the presence of Keats's odes in Nazik's poetry. This chapter is introduced by a definition of the term 'Ode'. The second section traces the impact of the themes and imagery of Keats's odes on Nazik' s poetry. Four sections are devoted to establishing the common contrasting themes in Keats's and Nazik's poetry. The following sections are devoted to the natural elements common to the poetry of Nazik and Keats: the birds, the wind, the river, the sun and the moon. The final sections study comparatively Nazik's and Keats's common literary devices: Personification, Synaesthesia and Compound adjectives. The second volume consists of the fourth chapter, the tables and the bibliography. This chapter studies the allusions in Nazik's poetry, and traces their sources in Keats, Shelley, Byron and Anatole France. A section is devoted to names alluded to in Nazik's poetry. The significance of The Golden Bough in Arabic is highlighted in a separate section, followed by a section on Nazik's mythological themes and symbols. Two sections are devoted to the relations of the Jinniyyah to poetry and to god. The appearance and functions of Nazik's Jinniyyah are compared to those of similar figures in Anatole France and Shelley. Nazik's Jinniyyah is seen as the synthesis of a complex mythological tradition. Many examples are given to discuss her relations to: (1) male and female mythological, religious and cultural characters, such as: Adam, Cain, Abel, Prometheus, Christ, Muhammad, Paphnutius, Midas, Plutus, Eve, Thais, Adonis, Cupid, Narcissus, Nessus, Ares, Magdalen, Thais, Venus, Diana, Rabiah al-Adawiyyah, the Sleeping Beauty, Demeter, Rapunzel and Shahrazad; (2) supernatural creatures, such as: the serpent, the demon, the spider, the sirens, the giant fish, the ghosts and the ghoul; (3) mythological things, such as: the Labyrinth, Lethe, Eldorado, Pactolus and al-Kawthar. A section is devoted to the symbol of Gold in Nazik's and in English poetry. Nine tables are supplied, setting out the common mythological names that occur in Nazik's, Keats's, Shelley's and Byron's poetry. A bibliography of primary and secondary Arabic and English sources is given. This bibliography contains the works cited throughout and other relevant secondary sources. The former are marked with an asterisk.

The aim of the thesis has been to offer a comparative analysis of discourses within English and French travel writing in the late-eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, in order to develop a more nuanced understanding of how the East was represented in this type of literature than that offered by Edward Said in his book Orientalism. The thesis considers the degree to which the latent racism and imperialism of western attitudes was universally expressed in this type of writing. While dates have been set for this study, the main reason for this has been to limit the vast body of archive material potentially relevant to its theoretical base. On occasion it has been necessary to step outside these dates in order to examine earlier eighteenth-century work or point out the relevance of this type of study to more recent western approaches to the East. The thesis shows a decline in the nineteenth century in popular belief in a fiction of the Orient as an imagined site of luxury and sensual indulgence, as travel writing countered this image with reports of real countries and peoples. The place of the aesthetic in French writing is considered here, as it offers a challenge to the more political perspective offered by Said. The thesis concludes by suggesting that there were other discourses in travel literature in this period which lie outside specifically racist and imperialist constructs, and therefore deepens and broadens the investigations undertaken by Said with reference to British and French travel writing of the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.