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The fascinating relationship between Conrad Aiken (1889-1973) and Malcolm Lowry (1909-1957) has formed the subject of a number of critical studies and fictional treatments. The study of this relationship is of value both for its biographical interest and literary significance, particularly in terms of the literary influence of one writer upon the other. Through Aiken and Lowry's entertaining and extremely articulate correspondence, one has access to what is possibly the most intimate view of this relationship available to date. Although a number of these letters have been previously published, often in incomplete form, In Selected Letters of Conrad Aiken ed. Joseph Killorin, and Selected Letters of Malcolm Lowry eds. Harvey Breit and Margerie Bonner Lowry, three-quarters of the letters have remained unpublished. This volume provides the first complete collection of Aiken and Lowry's correspondence. It comprises eighty-nine letters from the two writers, including photographs, poems, and drawings which they enclosed in their letters, written between 1929, the year when Lowry wrote his first letter of introduction to Aiken, and 1954. This collection contains the complete texts of all letters together with editorial notes and commentary. In addition, it provides textual notes outlining the changes made by each writer at the time of composition. These letters not only reveal the mutual admiration of Lowry and Aiken, and at times their jealousy of each other, but are literary works in their own right. / Arts, Faculty of / English, Department of / Graduate

Le syndrome de Coffin-Lowry (CLS), une déficience intellectuelle liée à l'X, est causée par des mutations du gène RPS6KA3 codant pour la kinase RSK2 régulée par les facteurs de croissance.Pour comprendre les conséquences du déficit en RSK2 dans l'hippocampe nous avons effectué une comparaison des profils d'expression génique d'hippocampes de souris Rsk2-KO et WT. Elle a révélé l'expression différentielle de 100 gènes, codant pour des protéines agissant dans divers processus biologiques. Nous avons analysé les conséquences de la dérégulation de l'un de ces gènes Gria2 codant pour GluR2, une sous-unité du récepteur glutamate AMPA. Un niveau d'expression doublé de GluR2 a été relevé dans l'hippocampe des souris Rsk2-KO et les études électrophysiologiques y ont révélé une réduction des transmissions AMPAR et NMDAR. L’activité de ERK1/2 était aussi anormalement augmentée dans l'hippocampe des souris Rsk2-KO, ainsi que le niveau de P-Sp1. Ensemble, mes résultats ont suggéré que la surexpression de GluR2 dans les neurones déficients en RSK2, était causée par une augmentation de l'activité transcriptionnelle de Sp1 sur le gène Gria2, qui, elle-même, est le résultat de l’augmentation anormale de l’activité de ERK1 / 2. / Coffin–Lowry Syndrome (CLS), an X-linked form of intellectual disability, is caused by mutations of the RPS6KA3 gene encoding the growth factor regulated kinase RSK2. To understand the consequences of RSK2 deficiency in the hippocampus we performed a comparison of the hippocampal gene expression profiles from Rsk2-KO and WT mice. It revealed differential expression of 100 genes, encoding proteins acting in various biological pathways. We further analyzed the consequences of deregulation of one of these genes, Gria2 encoding GluR2, a subunit of the glutamate AMPAR. An abnormal two-fold increased expression of GluR2 was found in the hippocampus of Rsk2-KO mice. Electrophysiology studies showed a reduction of basal AMPAR and NMDAR mediated transmission, in the hippocampus of Rsk2-KO mice. Activity of ERK1/2 was also abnormally increased in the adult hippocampus of Rsk2-KO mice. P-Sp1 level was also significantly higher in RSK2 deficient cells. Together, my results suggested that over expression of GluR2 in RSK2 deficient cells, is caused by increased Sp1 transcriptional activity on the Gria2 gene, which, itself, is the result of ERK1/2 increased signaling.

Thèse de doctorat : Littérature des îles britanniques : Lyon 2 : 2001. / Titre provenant de l'écran-titre. Bibliogr.

Thèse de doctorat : Etudes anglophones : Lyon 2 : 2001. / Titre provenant de l'écran-titre. Bibliogr. Index.

This dissertation argues that a number of works of Canadian fiction usually designated as modernist fit more properly into the category of “late modernism”: a category that has only recently begun to emerge as a bridge between post-war modernism and emergent postmodernism. These works are aligned by their use of abstract, absurdist, or surrealist narrative structures and consequently by their refusal to adhere to conventional strictures of social realism. Because of this refusal, literary critics have identified the late-modernist emphasis on narrative form as necessarily ahistorical or apolitical. Conversely, I argue, these works are socially and politically engaged with the historical contexts and material conditions of their inception, composition, and consequent reception. I argue herein that the works of Sheila Watson, Elizabeth Smart, Malcolm Lowry, and John Glassco tend towards non-representational narrative forms, and in doing so, they engage in modes of cultural critique. These critiques are focused by a negotiation of what has been multiply identified as a “contradiction” in modernist art: while on the one hand the texts break with traditional forms of social-realist narrative out of a need to find new forms of expression in an effort to rebel against conservative, bourgeois sensibilities, on the other hand they are always produced from within the self-same socio-political economy that they critique. Whether this position is identified as a “modernist double bind” (following Willmott) or a “central paradox” of modernism (following Eysteinsson), I have argued that each author negotiates these internal contradictions through the integration of autobiographical material into their writing. In reading these works as part of a unified late-modernist narrative tradition, this dissertation aims to destabilize critical and popular understandings of mid-century Canadian prose and argue for an alternate reading of artistic interpretation of the twentieth-century Canadian condition. Such a reading challenges current canon formation because it destabilizes traditional critical accounts of these texts as instances of eccentric expression or singular moments of genius. Instead, we are asked to consider seriously the tendency for play with subjectivity and autobiographical material as an interpretive strategy to express the mid-century, post-war condition.

Texte remanié de: Th. doct.--Litt. comparée--Paris 3, 2000. Titre de soutenance : L'autre, le temps et la mort dans trois fictions du milieu du XXe siècle : "El jardín de senderos que se bifurcan", 1941, de J. L. Borges, "Under the volcano", 1947, de Malcolm Lowry, "Le rivage des Syrtes", 1951, de Julien Gracq : la question de la fiction. / Bibliogr. p. 343-358. Index.

Thesis (M.A.)--Brigham Young University. Dept. of English, 2005. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 62-65).

This thesis acknowledges the presence of a clear note of affirmation in some novels of the mid-Twentieth Century. Finding a similar affirmation in Albert Camus' essays, The Myth of Sisyphus and The Rebel, it attempts to demonstrate a basic agreement between the essays and a limited selection of such novels. It then attempts to support this conclusion by examination of two novels in some detail. It considers that this relationship arises naturally from the artists' mutual perception of man's perilous condition in the modern world, and that it does not imply the necessity of conscious imitation of Camus' thoughts on the absurd. Nevertheless, since this thesis intends to show that the affirmation in the novels arises from an attitude that Camus termed "absurdist" and inheres in a way of life that he termed "absurd," such novels, for the purpose of this study, are called "Absurd." Chapter One attempts to explain man's existential anxiety as a spiritual state germane to his condition as an intelligent being in an obscure universe, and to describe how this natural anxiety, painfully intensified in a godless, materialistic age, has resulted in spiritual sterility and paralysis of creative action. Of this condition, such novelists as Malcolm Lowry, Joseph Heller, William Golding, Lawrence Durrell and William Styron seem acutely aware. In addition, it attempts to define Camus' uses of the term "absurd," and to explain the nature of the absurd life—the life of absurd rebellion—that he advances as the only-positive answer to the challenge of the times. While recognizing that the diversity evident among these novels attests to their nature as independent creations, Chapter One attempts to establish their basic agreement with Camus' ideas of the absurd, and to trace the existence among them of broad similarities. Finally, by examination of values implied, it notes that these authors seem to arrive at Camus' conclusion that "everything is permitted," limited, as Camus limits it, by the necessity of individual responsibility. Chapters two and three, detailed examinations of the absurd in two novels, Malcolm Lowry's Under the Volcano and Joseph Heller's Catch-22, attempt to clarify the nature of the authors' protest by pointing out what forces, both external and internal, are attacked. As this process involves an analysis of the nature and results of destructive escapism, whether individual escape into alcoholism or mass escape into meaningless conformity or excessive rationalism, it suggests also the urgency of the individual struggle for the "lucid awareness" that Camus demands. In particular, these chapters hope to clarify the affirmation implied by the individual liberation from illusion and anxiety to defiant joy in conscious living. The Conclusion restates the fundamental agreement between the controlling themes of these novels and the tenets of the absurd delineated by Camus. Also, it demonstrates the diversity of method and approach by which the two novels deal with common themes and arrive at affirmative conclusions. Finally, it warns against the interpretation of this fiction as the expression of a doctrine for universal salvation. The Absurd Novel is not, therefore, what Camus would call disparagingly a "thesis-novel" ; at most, like The Myth of Sisyphus, it issues a positive challenge to the individual in the modem world. / Arts, Faculty of / English, Department of / Graduate

This thesis traces the efforts of Patrick White and Malcolm Lowry between the years 1933 and 1957 to "purify the dialect of the tribe." As young writers in the England of the Thirties both felt the language of the English middle class, the pre-dominant dialect of English fiction, to be exhausted. Some time in the Forties, both chose to live and write in isolated places where they believed there to be English dialects which possessed a vigour and a contact with reality absent in the England they had abandoned. The texture and structure of their subsequent writing demonstrate the effects of this choice of locales. My introductory chapter surveys the concern of both novelists, up to the end of the Fifties, with language, class, and place, and addresses the biographical facts relevant to these concerns. This discussion establishes the formal, linguistic, and ideological parameters of my approach to these novelists. The body of the thesis is divided into two sections: the first deals with the period up to 1941, the second with the post-war period. Part A, chapter I addresses the cultural background and the ideological confusion of young middle-class writers in England during the Thirties. The following three chapters set the early novels of both writers in this context. Part B begins by establishing the post-war literary milieu in England from which the fiction of White and Lowry offers a sharp break. The following five chapters consider the continuing influence of Thirties dilemmas on their approach to form and the use of language, the attempts of both writers to find formal means adequate to their readings of the contemporary world, and their progressive break with literary realism. The conclusion evaluates the literary results of these struggles with language: in particular, the degree to which a creative use of dialect has extended the range of the English novel during a period characterized in England by caution and retrenchment. / Arts, Faculty of / English, Department of / Graduate