Thesis (doctoral)--Heinrich-Heine-University Düsseldorf, 2007. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 223-230).

This study describes and analyses the treatment of male characters in the work of the East German author, Irmtraud Morgner. The main focus of the thesis is on Morgner's handling of masculinity in relation to her treatment of the fantastic. Given that the majority of scholarship on Morgner concentrates on feminist aspects of her work, the aim of this thesis is to redress this imbalance by concentrating on the importance to her fictional narratives of male figures. The ways in which Morgner portrays her male characters shed significant new light on the function of the fantastic in her work. A detailed analysis of her texts shows that Morgner excludes all but a few of her male characters from the fantastic. By investigating the reasons for this, the thesis seeks to contribute to a better understanding of Morgner's complex views on gender issues. The argument is advanced that Morgner's treatment of her male characters and their interaction, or lack of interaction with the fantastic, reveals a more nuanced disillusionment with society than emerges from examinations of her female characters alone. Such a reading therefore permits a deeper and more differentiated understanding of her work.

D.Litt. et Phil. / A sense of isolation pervades all of Montherlant's writings -- the notebooks, the essays, the novels, and the plays. Although cognisance has been taken of his oeuvre as a whole, we have limited our study to that of Montherlant's theatre, for it is in his theatre that many of the thematic interests dispersed throughout the novels and the essays are crystallised in a striking and concrete form. We have, however, had recourse from time to time to his other writings. The object of this study is to examine in both intellectual and theatrical terms, the way in which Montherlant presents the voluntary distancing of the self in his plays. Almost all of his protagonists appear isolated within their family groups and social frameworks, but they seem voluntarily to have embraced that condition, and, furthermore they actively seek this isolation. Montherlant's first play, L'Exil, establishes a leitmotif that recurs time after time in all his subsequent plays.

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University of Macau / Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities / Department of English

published_or_final_version / Chinese / Doctoral / Doctor of Philosophy

A woman’s choice between a starry-eyed dreamer and a pragmatic businessman ends in disaster. This situation is a motif in the works of Eugene O’Neill, and examining its occurrences in Beyond the Horizon, The Great God Brown, Strange Interlude and Long Day’s Journey into Night sheds light on the “seeker”(the starry-eyed dreamer)and “provider” (pragmatic businessman) characters in O’Neill’s work as well as his understanding of what women believe is the “Ideal Male.” Through his work, O’Neill questions whether women really want a seeker or a provider and, perhaps, would prefer a father instead. Nietzsche, Laing, Lao Tzu, and Frazer are all used to help ground this study of why exactly O’Neill’s women and men seem to get caught up in this cycle that often leaves both sexes dead or insane. / vi, 106 leaves ; 29 cm

The purpose of this study has been to determine what extraliterary forces--cultural, historical, political, social--shaped the critical reception of Alice Walker's first novel, The Third Life of Grange Copeland (1970). The philosophies of Hans Robert Jauss, as espoused in Toward an Aesthetic of Reception (1971), guided this study. Particular interest was placed on Jauss's claim that every work has its own specific, historically, and sociological determinable audience, that every writer is dependent on the milieu, view, and ideology of that audience and that literary success presupposes a book which presents what the audience expects, a book which presents the audience with its own image. (26)The Third Life of Grange Copeland appeared at the end of the Civil Rights Movement, in the midst of a Black Arts Movement (a movement that presented black artist with a criteria for representing their people), and on the cusp of a black feminist movement which moved black women from the object to the subject position in black literary discourse.The politically charged context in which Walker's first novel appeared determined her first audience's reception to her work. The reception from black civic leaders, literary critics, scholars and the black community was largely negative. This initial negative response has followed Walker throughout her literary career despite the fact that she has won both the American Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize for fiction. / Department of English

Zugl.: Tübingen, Univ., Diss.