By investigating the discursive rules of hermeneutics and diagnosis, this study seeks to problematize particular presuppositions—most notably the presupposition of sense—of the modern disciplinary hermeneutic context. Following Barthes's consideration of the Greek modus of the middle voice as a useful notion in conceptualizing the modern scene of writing, the study advances itself toward conceptualizing a configuration of the modern reading scene in its middle-voiced permutation. In such a scene, the moment a reading attempts to read itself from without its parameters, it arrives at a spatial and temporal crisis (from the Greek krin-ein; to decide) between its action and the place (of not sense and not not sense) which exceeds the parameters delimiting the action of reading itself, but which nevertheless conditions its possibility. The grammar of this crisis is the middle voice; its condition, in the context of this study, is configured as madness. Madness is thus configured as a function of interrogation, reading and diagnosis. At the nucleus of the modem reading scene itself, this thesis opens with an introduction of the terms middle voice, crisis and madness, and then offers a consideration of three permutations of reading: Chapter Two, Chapter Three and the space between. Chapter Two considers a fictional representation of writing in the middle voice through a reading of Nabokov's Lolita, a text of fiction in the form of a "mad writer's" diary, whose historical reception has been marked by acts of appropriative censorship and clinical diagnosis. Chapter Three considers a permutation of the middlevoiced reading through a reading of Gertrude Stein's lectures on writing. This consideration is framed by fragments from the writing of Maurice Blanchot, connecting reading (as conceived by Stein) to madness, figuring the convergence of reading and madness in writing. The Interchapter, between chapters Two and Three, is an aporetic space entitled "Madness Itself." By allowing a brief and partial view of the modem clinical psychiatric setting, and by calling into question the parameters of the surrounding "chapters" themselves, this section seeks to perform, structurally and thematically, a moment of crisis recalling the middle voice.

Thesis (M.A.)--Miami University, Dept. of Theatre, 2008. / Title from first page of PDF document. Includes bibliographical references (p. 68-71).

By investigating the discursive rules of hermeneutics and diagnosis, this study seeks to problematize particular presuppositions—most notably the presupposition of sense—of the modern disciplinary hermeneutic context. Following Barthes's consideration of the Greek modus of the middle voice as a useful notion in conceptualizing the modern scene of writing, the study advances itself toward conceptualizing a configuration of the modern reading scene in its middle-voiced permutation. In such a scene, the moment a reading attempts to read itself from without its parameters, it arrives at a spatial and temporal crisis (from the Greek krin-ein; to decide) between its action and the place (of not sense and not not sense) which exceeds the parameters delimiting the action of reading itself, but which nevertheless conditions its possibility. The grammar of this crisis is the middle voice; its condition, in the context of this study, is configured as madness. Madness is thus configured as a function of interrogation, reading and diagnosis. At the nucleus of the modem reading scene itself, this thesis opens with an introduction of the terms middle voice, crisis and madness, and then offers a consideration of three permutations of reading: Chapter Two, Chapter Three and the space between. Chapter Two considers a fictional representation of writing in the middle voice through a reading of Nabokov's Lolita, a text of fiction in the form of a "mad writer's" diary, whose historical reception has been marked by acts of appropriative censorship and clinical diagnosis. Chapter Three considers a permutation of the middlevoiced reading through a reading of Gertrude Stein's lectures on writing. This consideration is framed by fragments from the writing of Maurice Blanchot, connecting reading (as conceived by Stein) to madness, figuring the convergence of reading and madness in writing. The Interchapter, between chapters Two and Three, is an aporetic space entitled "Madness Itself." By allowing a brief and partial view of the modem clinical psychiatric setting, and by calling into question the parameters of the surrounding "chapters" themselves, this section seeks to perform, structurally and thematically, a moment of crisis recalling the middle voice. / Arts, Faculty of / English, Department of / Graduate

"With the Earth in Mind" responds to some of the most cutting-edge research in the field of ecocriticism, which centers on ecological loss and the grief that ensues. Ecocritics argue that ecological objects of loss abound--for instance, species are disappearing and landscapes are becoming increasingly compromised--and yet, such loss is often deemed "ungrievable." While humans regularly grieve human losses, we understand very little about how to genuinely grieve the loss of nonhuman being, natural environments, and ecological processes. My dissertation calls attention to our society's tendency to participate in superficial nature-nostalgia, rather than active and engaged environmental mourning, and ultimately activism. Herein, I investigate how an array of postwar and contemporary American novels represent a complex relationship between environmental degradation and mental illness. Literature, I suggest, is crucial to investigations of this problem because it can reveal the human consequences of ecological loss in a way that is unavailable to political, philosophical, scientific, and even psychological discourse.

My dissertation demonstrates how representations of schizophrenic characters in novels can combat widespread misuses of psychiatric terms and help readers empathize with mentally ill people if we read these novels with some understanding of psychiatry and the psychoanalysis that influenced them. I undertake a critical genealogy of the schizophrenia concept's migration from the mental health professions to fiction, concentrating on the period from the German invasion of Paris in June 1940 to the events of May 1968, with some attention to contemporary uses of the schizophrenia concept by cultural theorists. Experimental novelists writing during the apogee and aftermath of National Socialism from the 1940s to the 1970s represent schizophrenia as they understood it to express the painful emotions produced by World War II's challenge to the value of experimental writing. In the postwar fiction of Samuel Beckett (1906-1989) and Georges Perec (1936-1982), imitating schizophrenia results in careful disclosures of disintegrating life-worlds: in Beckett's case, the dissolution of the James Joyce circle and the communities of modernist exiles it exemplified, which the German invasion of Paris destroyed; in Perec's case, the deaths of his parents in the defense of France and the Holocaust, and the annihilated six million Jews including his mother. Reading Beckett and Perec's novels develops readers' abilities to empathize with both schizophrenic people and the loved ones of Holocaust victims. While those who avoided the concentration camps like Perec did not experience their horrors firsthand, losing relatives and other loved ones transformed their lives, just as losing two thirds of its Jewish population devastated European culture despite reticence to acknowledge the Holocaust's monstrous effects in the postwar years. Late modernist fiction can thus both help readers understand the Holocaust's cultural impact and foster the skills necessary to understand experiences of severe mental disorder. Such empathic understanding is more humane than romanticizing or stigmatizing schizophrenia or other mental illnesses, and it helps us register the Holocaust's degradation of humanity anew rather than walling off this event in the past or regarding it solely as a Jewish issue. Late modernist fiction provides a more precise, caring alternative to the romanticizing/stigmatizing binary perpetuated by postwar cultural theorists because, from the 1930s to the 1970s, the fiction gradually transitions from reinforcing that binary to enabling empathy for traumatized and mentally ill people. Such fiction anticipated recent phenomenologies of schizophrenia - real experiences of distress and impairment rather than socially constructed concepts of madness - and traumatic shame, an emotional experience of oneself or one's community as inadequate in response to failure, especially the Holocaust as a failure of European culture and modernity. Both traumatic shame and severe mental disorder can make the body conspicuous, alienate people from their cultures, and disintegrate structures of salience and belonging that make sustained relationships and projects possible. Recent existential-phenomenological theories of mental disorder enable reintegrating schizophrenia representation in fiction into the history of literary modernism, especially its concern with historical forces disrupting the minds of individuals. These theories explain changes in mentally ill people's sense of possibilities for developing themselves and relating to others, from the way they experience their bodies to the way they use language. Hence I use these theories to demonstrate how knowledge of schizophrenia enabled post-Holocaust novelists to travesty and transform earlier novelists' uses of fictional minds to interrogate cultural change. / English

by Lui Sha-Lee. / Thesis (M.Phil.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2000. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 143-149). / Abstracts in English and Chinese. / Acknowledgements --- p.vi / Chapter Chapter One --- Introduction --- p.1 / Chapter Chapter Two --- Ideological Implications of “Madness´ح in Western and Chinese Culture --- p.12 / Chapter Chapter Three --- Madwoman as the Murderous Daughter: Kitty Fitzgerald's Marge and Tie Ning's The Cliff in the Afternoon --- p.36 / Chapter Chapter Four --- "Madwoman as the Murderous Wife: Elsa Lewin's I, Anna and Li Ang's The Butcher ´ةs Wife" --- p.83 / Chapter Chapter Five --- Conclusion --- p.121 / Notes --- p.134 / Works Cited --- p.143

The central tenet of the study is that language and madness are bound together, language both including madness and perpetuating the exclusion of madness as 'other'. The first chapter considers the representation of madness in Atwood's novels The Edible Woman, Surfacing and Alias Grace from the perspective ofFoucauldian and Kristevan theories oflanguage and madness. Alias Grace becomes the focus in the second chapter. Here the syntax of madness is traced during Grace's stay in the mental asylum. Language, madness and sexuality are revealed as a palimpsest written on Grace's body. The final chapter looks at Grace's incarceration in the penitentiary and her dealings with the psychologist Dr. Simon Jordan where Grace's narrative tightly threads language and madness together. Underlying each chapter is a concern with how language and madness are in permanent interaction and opposition writing themselves onto society and onto Grace. / English Studies / M.A. (English)

This dissertation engages in a critical analysis of the poetry of Emily Dickinson which, to me, suggests that the poet suffered from a type of manic-depression known specifically in psychiatric parlance as bipolar disorder. I argue that although Dickinson experienced much pain and suffering she learnt, through time, to address, understand and contain adversity - that ultimately, she transformed these experiences into the raw materials for poetic creation. Dickinson's poetic achievements are often obscured by a misunderstanding of her mental and emotional constitution. This thesis provides an alternative to the views of those commentators who maintain that Emily Dickinson was insane, neurotic or delusional. I intend, ultimately, to offer the reader a fresh insight into Emily Dickinson's poetry by reading it from the assumption that she suffered from bipolar disorder. / Thesis (M.A.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Pietermaritzburg, 2007.

The central tenet of the study is that language and madness are bound together, language both including madness and perpetuating the exclusion of madness as 'other'. The first chapter considers the representation of madness in Atwood's novels The Edible Woman, Surfacing and Alias Grace from the perspective ofFoucauldian and Kristevan theories oflanguage and madness. Alias Grace becomes the focus in the second chapter. Here the syntax of madness is traced during Grace's stay in the mental asylum. Language, madness and sexuality are revealed as a palimpsest written on Grace's body. The final chapter looks at Grace's incarceration in the penitentiary and her dealings with the psychologist Dr. Simon Jordan where Grace's narrative tightly threads language and madness together. Underlying each chapter is a concern with how language and madness are in permanent interaction and opposition writing themselves onto society and onto Grace. / English Studies / M.A. (English)

Cette thèse examine la représentation littéraire de migrations depuis des colonies vers les centres impériaux à l'époque de la décolonisation par l'analyse comparative de romans antillais en langue anglaise et maghrébins en langue française traitant d'immigration vers la Grande-Bretagne et la France respectivement. L'attention portée à la relation de domination est un point de convergence majeur. Lamming, Chraïbi et Kateb la présentent comme une relation coloniale ayant des effets tant économiques que psychologiques et culturels. Boudjedra et Ben Jelloun dans les années 1970 placent et l'immigration et la colonisation dans le cadre plus large de l'exploitation capitaliste. La représentation des conditions de vie difficiles et de la marginalisation des immigrés participe dans ces romans d'une critique générale de la modernité européenne. Les auteurs maghrébins dénoncent le caractère oppressant de la rationalité occidentale, tandis que les romanciers antillais se concentrent sur les racines coloniales de l'attitude des Britanniques face aux populations non-Européennes. Des deux côtés, on répond au discours colonialiste et à la représentation positive du colonisateur à travers la manipulation du point de vue et de la voix narratifs et le thème de la folie. La plupart des écrivains réfutent les images négatives des immigrés en insistant sur des aspects négligés, tels que la dimension émotionnelle de leur vécu et les tenants et aboutissants coloniaux des relations entre immigrés et autochtones. Ce faisant, leurs représentations finissent par se conformer à la figure de l'immigré sous-tendant les discours qu'ils dénoncent. Leurs préoccupations se distinguent de celles de générations d'auteurs ultérieures et de discours récents sur les populations d'origine maghrébine et antillaise en France et en Grande-Bretagne / This thesis examines the literary representation of migration from a colony to the imperial metropolis in the period of decolonisation through a comparative analysis of novels by Anglophone Caribbean and Francophone Maghribi writers about migration to Britain and France respectively. A major point of convergence is the focus on the relationship of domination. Lamming, Chraïbi and Kateb address this explicitly as a colonial relationship that is psychological and cultural as well as economic, whereas the 1970s writers Boudjedra and Ben Jelloun place both immigration and colonisation within a wider framework of capitalist exploitation. The difficult material conditions and the racism targeting immigrants are not depicted for their own sake but are the occasion of a wide-ranging critique of European modernity. Maghribi writers attack the rationality of Western civilisation as oppressive, whereas the Caribbean novelists focus on the colonial roots of attitudes to non-Europeans. Both sets of writers nonetheless provide responses to European colonialist discourse and to the positive self-presentation of the coloniser through the manipulation of narrative point of view and voice and through the theme of mental breakdown. Most of the novelists set out to refute negative representations of immigrants by restoring aspects they feel are neglected, in particular the emotional dimension of the immigrant experience and the colonial determinants of the relationship between immigrants and natives. In doing so their representations of immigration often conform to the immigrant figure underpinning the discourses they attack. Their preoccupations are distinct from those of later writers and recent discourses about Caribbean and Maghribi populations in Britain and France : with the exception of Selvon and, more ambiguously, Mengouchi and Ramdane, the novelists are not interested in the process of formation of ethnic-diasporic minorities in France and Britain