This report summarizes the script development, pre-production, production, and post-production stages of making the short film Lost Pines. The short was produced as my graduate thesis film in the Department of Radio-Television-Film at The University of Texas at Austin in partial fulfillment of my Master of Fine Arts degree in Film Production. / text

published_or_final_version / Literary and Cultural Studies / Master / Master of Arts

The novel Salve Creek tells the story of Xavier Creed, a young man murdered in a small industry town in contemporary Northern Alberta. When Xavier goes missing the night of a large bush party, no one notices his absence. Having spoken for months about leaving for Edmonton, his friends and even his own mother assume that he took the Greyhound. Told through the close-third person narration of three main characters—Penelope, Dean, and Westley—the novel takes place over the duration of a year. With the discovery of Xavier’s remains, the narrative moves forwards and backwards in time, pushing against perceptions, as well as both the reader and characters’ understanding of events. Salve Creek is a non-linear narrative told primarily in fragments to reflect the shattered status quo of both town and characters. Penelope, who felt a desire bordering on obsession for Xavier, is particularly affected by his death and finds herself unable to sleep. Her dreams bring her closer to Xavier and repeatedly to the neighbours’ empty field. Dean, who met Penelope the night of the bush party, struggles to communicate his attraction to her. As the novel progresses, his frustration takes increasingly violent shapes. Westley, ten years older than both Dean and Penelope, is a stranger to them both and his actions affect them in ways they cannot see or understand. Salve Creek is a rural noir, written in the new gothic style.

This dissertation discusses Italy’s bestselling author Andrea Camilleri’s series of Montalbano crime novels. It poses the question of what makes Camilleri’s series so successful in the contemporary literary marketplace and if his success is a representation of Italian culture (and by extension, the postmodern or post-postmodern Italian literary scene). This dissertation deals with Camilleri and his success from a narrative literary point of view. It examines Camilleri’s work from several different perspectives, placing it within the vaster context of Italian literature while also taking a meticulous look at Camilleri as the author who has managed to free a literary genre from its previous confines and opened new boundaries for Italian literature. The dissertation demonstrates how Andrea Camilleri provides a "security blanket" for his readers: by including many elements of a common cultural memory, he keeps his readers safely anchored. These elements include a long list of recurring characters that function almost like the chorus in a Greek play. Certain thematic elements, such as Montalbano’s perpetual search for Justice, and his struggle to combine the written law with the law of men are a topoi of Western literature, as are the antonyms eros/thanatos as well as food and death, which Camilleri heavily employs. The Sicilian author manages to root his work deeply within a literary tradition through direct citations, and explicit and implicit references to the canon, but also breaks new ground and manages to move Italian literature a step forward. In front of this apparently nostalgic background, the Sicilian author plays with and invents many new components in his works, satisfying thus the Italian need for the "known" with the pleasure of a discovery of the "unknown" or the "new", which is a major reason for his success. Camilleri participates in a (post)modern shift of horizons, but does not radically challenge his reader’s "expectations". His series of Montalbano mysteries presents literature of a high level that almost by chance becomes part of an "immediate" literary canon, but does not set out with the ambition to become part of "the canon". / Romance Languages and Literatures

No description available.

This study demonstrates that Edwin Arlington Robinson's keen interest in mystery is reflected in his poetry. However, he creates an unusual subgenre--the unresolved mystery. Definitions from the Oxford English Dictionary, religious treatises, and philosophical works, helped formulate a working definition of the word mystery. I then selected eight murder poems from The Collected Poems -- "The Tavern," "The Whip," "Stafford's Cabin," "Haunted House," "Avon's Harvest," "Cavender's House," "The Glory of the Nightingales," and "The March of the Cameron Men" and three poems from the Uncollected Poems and Prose of Edwin Arlington Robinson --"The Miracle," "For Calderon," and "The Night Before." In these murder mystery poems, Robinson fails to provide definite motives or conclusive evidence or reliable narrators--all necessary components to solve a mystery. These violations of mystery writing rules appear both in his long and short poems.In the short poems, without exception, Robinson provides no motives. Dead bodies indicate that crimes have been committed, but none of the perpetrators is brought to justice, and in some cases, not even identified. Hence, the presence of relevant, but skimpy details disallow solving the mystery with any degree of certainty. In addition, the long poems exclude clear motives, hard evidence or reliable narrators--all of which prevent the reader from reaching a sound conclusion. Other poems suggest the involvement of supernatural beings. Consistently, all his murder mystery poems conclude with the mystery either partially or completely unresolved. / Department of English

Thesis (M.A.)--Catholic Theological Union at Chicago, 1993. / Vita. Author listed on microfiche header as Therese M. Purcell. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 113-119).

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Ohio University, June, 2007. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 338-348)

Thesis (Ph. D.)--State University of New York at Binghamton, Department of English, 2009. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 228-243).

Thesis (M. Div.)--St. Vladimir's Orthodox Theological Seminary, Crestwood, N.Y., 2002. / Abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 55-58).