Didactic, scientifically oriented children's literature crisscrossed the Atlantic in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, finding wide popularity in Great Britain and the United States; yet the genre has since suffered from a reputation for being dull and pedantic and has been neglected by scholars. Challenging this scholarly devaluation, "Science and Imagination in Anglo-American Children's Books, 1760--1855" argues that didactic, scientifically oriented children's books play upon and encourage the use of the imagination. Three significant Anglo-American children's authors---Thomas Day, Maria Edgeworth, and Nathaniel Hawthorne---infuse their writings with the wonders of science and the clear message that an active imagination is a necessary component of a moral upbringing. Indeed, these authors' books, most particularly Sandford and Merton (1783--1789), Harry and Lucy Concluded (1825), and A Wonder-Book for Girls and Boys (1852), are more than mere lessons: they are didactic fantasies intended to spark creativity within their readers.;These didactic fantasies are best understood in the context of the emerging industrial revolution and the height of the Atlantic slave trade. These phenomena, combined with the entrenchment of classicism in Anglo-American culture and the lesser-known transatlantic botany craze, shaped the ways in which Day, Edgeworth, and Hawthorne crafted their children's stories. Certainly dramatic changes on both sides of the Atlantic during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries influenced the differences in the texts. More important to this study, however, are the vital connections among these stories. Each author draws heavily upon Rousseau's ubiquitous child-rearing treatise Emile and upon her or his literary predecessor to create children's books that encourage exploring nature through scientific experimentation and imaginative enterprise.;Yet these writers do not encourage the imagination run amok. Rather, they see the need for morally grounded scientific endeavor, for which they rely primarily on classicism and on gender ideology. Incorporating tales of the ancient world to inculcate the ideal of a virtuous, disinterested, and learned citizen responsible to the larger body politic, the three children's authors---but most notably and explicitly Hawthorne---tie a romanticized, classical past to the emerging industrial world.

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1900s-Carlsbad Caverns-Southwest- Fiction 2.Korean War, 1950’s-General Enlisted-Fiction 3. Skin disease-Insanity- Science Fiction.

The idea of the present thesis initiated with a seemingly innocent and simple question: How has the relationship between secular Iranian writers and the country's religious tradition developed following the 1979 Iranian Revolution and establishment of the Islamic Republic? This thesis is being crafted at two main levels: the first part aims to discuss the dynamics of the literature field, mostly regarding religion and tradition in the post-revolution era, while the second part aims to look more closely into the works and discourse of Hushang Golshiri (1938-2000). Therefore, this thesis places itself within the study of Iranian literature in its alternative modernization/secularization. The thesis argues that after the revolution of 1979 in Iran, discourse of literary modernity developed in a way to provide a more active involvement with religion and tradition by a group of so-called "secular writers". This involvement has led to a kind of a "reconstruction" of the relationship between modern Iranian literature and religion, in pluralistic, novel, and seemingly secular ways. / 博士(グローバル社会研究) / Doctor of Philosophy in Global Society Studies / 同志社大学 / Doshisha University

This dissertation investigates Marcel Proust's observation and depiction of performative discourses and identity in A la Recherche du Temps Perdu. The first-person and semi-omniscient narrator's transgression of traditional narrative practices provides him with the unique perspective of both an actor and a spectator in the public and private performances that structure the creation and perception of identity. Accordingly, this analysis explores the methodical confinement of identity to orthodox systems of categorization and considers how these rigid systems affect social, psychological, and sexual economies. I argue that Proust's unique narratological approach and stylistic techniques allow him to expose the conventional codes that define identity as he simultaneously undermines them, thereby proposing new, creative ways for understanding the concept of identity. Chapters 1 and 2 explore the narrator's introspective look at the evolution of his own individuality in relationship to his surroundings and other characters. In chapter 3, the focus shifts from the analysis of the narrator to a consideration of his mise en scène of several similar homoerotic encounters that, when viewed as a whole, combine to form a queer and innovative discourse on sexuality. Chapters 4 and 5 study the construction of social image through the narrator's portrayal of interaction in and among different economic classes in society. The study concludes with a discussion of the aesthetics of performance art as it is compared and contrasted to performative behavior in Proust's novel. My work contributes to the ongoing inquiry into human behavior and identity formation as portrayed in A la Recherche. Looking beyond conventional notions of identity, I resist the temptation to classify characters in specific categories and focus instead on the narrator's representation of identity as a fluid, circumstantial exchange. Combining performativity theory, queer and gender studies, and narratology allows for an original analysis of the narrator's interpretation of the various factors that influence characters' perception of their own identity as well as others'. On a larger scale, my dissertation advances the scholarship on performative discourses and identity insofar as it brings to light one author's revelation, subversion, and replacement of traditional practices of discerning identity.

The basic characteristic of Postmodern times manifests itself through the dissolution of totalitarian theories. In a more complex and scattered world, postmodern thinking rejects the absolutist interpretations of Big History. This approach implies the multiplicity and acceptance of each and all perspectives that might contribute to a new dimension of a given literary work. We approach this ideology as the end of all ideologies through three critical methods that enhance the textual features as well as the internal contradictions that emerge from the text. The study of the unconscious understood as being structured as language is achieved following the parameters of French anti-Lacanian psychoanalysis. Next, Julia Kristeva's linguistic theories are used to analyze the semiotic content of Tusquets' feminine voices. Finally, the break with the Western system of thought is developed by means of Derrida's deconstructive criticism.

Through a group of films from the late 60s and 70s which have been totally obliterated in the canonical studies about Spanish film due to their low technical quality and apparent triviality, this study focuses on their cultural impact, overwhelming production and extending consume. This group of films, belonging to a genre called “sexy-celtiberic” comedies, suggests and presents a series of social, psychological and sexual behaviors very important in the dynamics of the configuration of a national ideology. The evolution of the treatment of the female body and her sexuality in this filmic genre provides a very challenging field of study within a social, economic, political and cultural context. The use of the female body in this cultural media serves to shape, in a controlled way, the national identity of a society under a dictatorial regime based on a traditionalist moral ideology that is being undermined by a cultural “other.” The sexual and national economy can not work in a simple opposition to the new and foreign, but, as we can see in these comedies, a play of acceptance and repulse comes into action. The female body is one of the pillars on which this national transformation into democracy is supported and where the text of this new national configuration is inscribed. The national discourse is inscribed in the female body, a foreign one in the comedies of the late 60s and a national one in the 70s, to pertain a heterosexual economy whose aims are matrimony and reproduction. However, the Spanish female body needs to contain certain sexual actions, very far away from the moral duty imposed on her, to save the national welfare (that is to say, the male Spaniard) from the foreign influences. Women become a non-historic and pure signifier that can be moved along a chain of signifying and can be furnished with different meanings within a national discourse. Her use and role are going to be present in the long and difficult road to Spanish democracy.

In 1639, a law prohibiting women any head covering; veil, mantilla, manto for example, is promulgated for the fifth time in the Iberian Peninsula under the penalty of losing the garment, and subsequently incurring more severe punishments. Regardless of these edicts this social practice continued. My dissertation investigates the cultural representation of these covered women (tapadas) in Spain and the New World in a vast array of early modern literary, historical and legal documents (plays, prose, and regal laws, etc.). Overall, critics associate the use of the veil in the Spanish territories with religious tendencies and overlook the social component of women using the veil to simply explain it as a mere fashion practice. In my dissertation, I argue that it is more than just a garment; the veil was used by women to make political statements, thereby challenging the restrictive gender and identity boundaries of their epoch. A critical analysis of early modern historical and legal peninsular texts and close-readings of Golden Age literary works, together with colonial cultural productions, allow me to identify patterns in how the tapadas were represented both artistically and culturally. Accordingly, my project attempts to reassess the significance of the tapadas in Hispanic culture for 350 years and demonstrate how their resilience to stop using the veil publicly is symptomatic of the absolutist monarchy inefficiencies in imposing social control. I move away from the tendency to investigate works including tapadas exclusively, and I conclude by reconstructing more accurately their cultural impact on the social dynamics in Spain as well as the New World.

The Universal theme of Water, both the Sea as well as the Rain in literature reaches a dimension of Cult in Cape Verdean literature and it is an important part of the Cape Verdean identity. Water is of the utmost importance at several levels for Cape Verde: an archipelago surrounded by water and yet about half of its population has to immigrate due to the lack of rain. These two facts play an important role in the complex bi-polar Cape Verdean identity struggling between the desire to emigrate connoted with the Sea and the desire to stay connoted with the Rain. The present study aims to analyze, compare and contrast the major literary works of Cape Verdean Literature from the Claridade period (1936) to Post-Colonial period (1975) and extends until 1990 with the publication of Germano Almeida first novel O Testamento do Sr. Napumoceno da Silva Araújo which coincides with the end of the mono party system in Cape Verde. The other authors and works focused on this study are: Jorge Barbosa: Arquipélago (1935), Ambiente (1941), Caderno de um Ilhéu (1956); Manuel Lopes: Poemas de quem ficou (1949), Crioulo e outros poemas (1964), Chuva Braba (1956), Os Flagelados do Vento Leste (1960), Galo Cantou na Baía (1959); Corsino Fortes: Pão & Fonema (1974), Árvore & Tambor (1986), Pedras de Sol & Substância (2001); Baltasar Lopes: Chiquinho (1947), Os Trabalhos e os Dias (1987). This study also makes references to four authors before the Claridade period: Eugénio Tavares, Pedro Monteiro Cardoso, Januário Leite and José Lopes.