Thesis--Amsterdam. / Preface in Dutch. "List of books and periodicals consulted or discussed": p. [195]-197.

Thesis.--Helsingfors.

Thesis--Amsterdam. / Preface in Dutch. "List of books and periodicals consulted or discussed": p. [195]-197.

Thesis.--Helsingfors.

Inaug.-diss. - Leipzig. / Lebenslauf. "Literaturnachweis": p. [7]-8.

A reading of Maturin1 s six novels makes it necessary to reevaluate the general opinion that he is chiefly a gothic novelist. This gothic view of Maturin is founded predominantly upon readings of The Fatal Revenge (1807), his first novel, and Melmoth the Wanderer (1820), his fifth. Although "traditional" gothic devices appear in both these novels, Maturin's searching analysis of Christianity as well as the specifically Irish framework make Melmoth, at least, more of a spiritual and social allegory than a gothic novel. Maturin also published four other novels: The Wild Irish Boy (1808), The Mi1esian Chief (1812), Women, or Pour et Contre (1818), and The Albigenses (1824). The first three of these novels are set in contemporary Ireland and they analyze various conflicting forces which, in Maturin1s view, retarded the building of a progressive and unified Irish society. In The Wild Irish Boy and The Mi.lesian Chief, for example, Maturin presents two approaches to the problem of Irish leadership, a problem which the Union with Great Britain in 1800 had magnified. In Women, also, he dramatizes particular religious and social tensions in Ireland; but in this case, it is the religious gulf which separates various groups and which the growing power of the Methodist community intensifies. His final novel, The Albigenses, likewise reflects religious tensions within Ireland; in this case, he reacts to the renewed threat posed by the native Catholics' quest for emancipation. Those who read these four novels --Scott, Morgan, Godwin, the Irish Catholics and the Irish Methodists, and other contemporaries --considered Maturin as more than simply a gothic novelist. Furthermore, if his letters to Sir Walter Scott and to Archibald Constable can be relied upon, Maturin regarded himself as a serious commentator upon Ireland's social and spiritual degeneracy rather than as a gothic novelist. Maturin, an Anglo-Irish clergyman who distrusted Catholic and Methodist alike, was a deeply spiritual man. To him, Ireland's civil chaos resulted from the misdirected spiritual energy of these two groups as well as from the presence of irresponsible Anglo-Irish and British social leaders. For him, a solution to these problems could only be created by sincere and devoted Christian living which was most easily gained by following the forms of the Church of England. Throughout his career as a writer, this belief formed the basis of both his sermons and novels alike; and furthermore,it inspired his search for an effective medium through which he could analyze and suggest solutions to the problems which, because of its unique collection of religions and races, existed in Ireland. By reading all his novels, therefore, and by considering them within the Irish context of the social and religious tensions in which he wrote, a view of Maturin emerges which shows him to be not only a gothic novelist, but also an Anglo-Irish controversialist. / Thesis / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

The study uses subsidence analysis of three deep wells to basement combined with sequence stratigraphic mapping to show that a 85,000 km² area of the Eastern Venezuelan foreland basin in the region of the Orinoco Delta underwent three main stages of foreland-related subsidence that followed a protracted Cretaceous - late Oligocene period of precollisional, passive margin formation. Phase 1 consists of increased foreland basin subsidence in the late Oligocene to middle Miocene (23 - 13 Ma) at average sedimentation rates of 0.14 mm/yr. Clastic rocks of Phase 1 include the Freites Formation, a 1.2 km-thick section of greenish-gray fissile shale and shaly sandstone deposited in shallow marine- neritic environments. Seismic facies show progradation of Phase 1 clastic rocks as a wedge from the NE and NNE. Clastic rocks deposited during the accelerated Phase 2 in the middle to late Miocene (13 -11 Ma at sedimentation rates of 1.45 mm/yr) include the La Pica Formation, a 2.7 km-thick section of gray silt and fine-grained sandstone deposited in shallow marine/coastal proximal environments. Seismic facies show progradation of Phase 2 clastic rocks as a wedge to the northeast. Phase 3 consists of decelerating foreland basin subsidence in the period of late Miocene-mid Pliocene (11-6 Ma at average sedimentation rates of 0.86 mm/yr). Sedimentary rocks deposited during this period include the Las Piedras Formation, a 1.45 km-thick section of sandstone, carbonaceous siltstone and shale deposited in deltaic environments. Seismic facies show a progradation of Phase 3 clastic rocks as a wedge to the northeast and east-northeast. Deeper marine environments and more rapid subsidence rates of Phases 1 and 2 are interpreted as an underfilled foreland basin controlled by active thrusting along the Serrania del Interior at the northern flank of the basin. Deltaic environments and slower rates of Phase 3 are interpreted as an overfilled foreland related to rapid seaward progradation of the Orinoco Delta and its filling of the former, dynamically- maintained interior seaway. Paleogeographic maps constrained by wells and seismic lines show a large regression of the Orinoco River towards the west across the Columbus basin and Eastern Venezuelan basin during the late Miocene and the Paleocene. In this foreland basin setting, the effects of thrust-related tectonic subsidence and early deposition of the Orinoco Delta play a larger role in the early Miocene-Pleistocene sequences than eustatic effects. / text

L’appellation « genre frénétique », créée par Charles Nodier en 1821, fait aujourd’hui partie intégrante du vocabulaire des études sur le romantisme. Le genre qu’elle désigne donne cependant lieu à des définitions divergentes, tant au niveau des auteurs qui l’exemplifient qu’au niveau des caractéristiques qui le décrivent. Cette thèse retrace l’histoire du genre frénétique tel qu’il a été défini par la critique, de 1821 à 2010, à partir d’une étude des emplois de l’appellation générique dans un corpus de près de 630 textes critiques. Dans les années 1820 et 1830, la notion du frénétique revêt une visée polémique dans le cadre du débat sur le romantisme. Alors que Nodier inventait le genre frénétique pour le distinguer du romantisme, de nombreux critiques assimilent au contraire, totalement ou partiellement, les deux notions, l’appellation permettant de décrire le romantisme dans ses dimensions violente et excessive. Après plusieurs décennies où le genre disparaît des lectures du romantisme, le genre « frénétique » est à nouveau convoqué au début du XXe siècle et connaît un succès croissant, qui a pour corollaire une complexification des définitions. Manifestation d’une révolte métaphysique ou transposition littéraire d’un èthos, le « frénétique », qu’il soit jugé favorablement ou non, permet aussi généralement de rendre compte de la vogue, à l’époque romantique, d’un genre horrifique et outrancier, héritier du roman gothique anglais. Ce dernier genre, formé par les romans de Radcliffe, Lewis et Maturin, constitue cependant un corpus hétérogène déterminant deux lignées génériques qui méritent d’être distinguées, le roman noir et le frénétique. / The name of the “Frénétique” genre was created by Charles Nodier in 1821 and is now an integral part of the vocabulary of Romanticism studies. The genre it designates, however, has experienced diverging definitions, both with regards to the authors associated with this genre and the characteristics that describe it. The present thesis traces the history of the genre known as “Frénétique” as defined by critiques from 1821 to 2010, based on a study of the uses of the genre name in a corpus of close to 630 critiques. In the 1820s and 1830s, the notion of “Frénétique” was used in debates on Romanticism with a polemical purpose. While Nodier invented the “Frénétique” genre so as to distinguish it from Romanticism, numerous critics instead assimilated the two notions in part or in whole —using the “Frénétique” appellation to describe the most violent and excessive dimensions of Romanticism. After disappearing from Romanticism readings for several decades, the “Frénétique” genre emerged again in the early 20th century, when its rising success lead to an increasing complexity of its definitions. The “Frénétique” genre can be the manifestation of a metaphysical revolt, the literary transposition of an èthos, or is generally used to describe the Romantic-era craze for a horrific and excessive genre that inherited its key characteristics from the Gothic Novel. The latter, constituted by the novels of Radcliffe, Lewis and Maturin, spurred two genres that should be distinguished: the French Gothic Novel and the “Frénétique” genre.

Thesis (B.A.)--Haverford College, Dept. of English, 2004. / Includes bibliographical references.

Abstract This study examines the connection between power and identity in three Gothic novels, Ann Radcliffe’s The Mysteries of Udolpho, William Godwin’s Caleb Williams, and Charles Robert Maturin’s Melmoth the Wanderer. Following the identity theories of Erik Erikson, I argue that identity has biological, psychological, and social aspects that are subject to change over time. As individual agency—the ability to function as a person—depends on a relatively certain and stable sense of personal identity, Gothic villains—both individuals and institutions—gain and maintain their power by disempowering their victims. In order to do so, they work to compromise these victims’ sense of personal identity, causing them to suffer identity crises that greatly reduce their ability to function. Employing various means—including threats of rape, destruction of reputation, imprisonment, forced exile, denial of freedom of thought, torture, and others—Gothic villains attempt to weaken their victims by placing them in situations that cause the fears that Erikson argues all people share to become paralyzing and debilitating states of anxiety, states in which the victims suffer from a temporary, or, in extreme cases, permanent loss of agency. These Gothic victims’ paranoia, identity crises, and subsequent loss of agency underscore the importance of individuals’ identity and constitute the horror that is at the heart of Gothic fiction.