This study investigates how minimalist narrative techniques in American modernist literature oblige us, as readers and critics, to be self-reflexive about the ethical basis of interpretation. Through a concentrated narratological analysis of Hemingway’s and Cather’s fiction, I identify three major elements of what I term the “simple text”—thinness, smoothness, and spaciousness—and I show how each category engages a hermeneutic ethics. By gesturing towards accessibility and straightforward comprehension while also producing moments of indeterminacy that subtly resist the reader’s inferences, the simple text challenges the reader to conceive interpretation both as a positive exercise of individuation and imagination and, simultaneously, as a potentially unethical mode of critical violation and imposition. My introduction contemplates the ethical foundations of Hemingway’s and Cather’s famous aesthetics of omission to argue that such simplicity conveys a complex theory of reader engagement. Chapter One defines “thinness” by examining “thin characters” in A Farewell to Arms and My Ántonia—characters whose simplicity makes them paradoxically unreadable in a way that foregrounds the nature of our accountability towards others. The second chapter, focusing on In Our Time and Death Comes for the Archbishop, defines “smoothness” as a simple paratactic patterning that challenges our critical desire to generalize meanings from particular experiences. While the smooth surface invites our interpretive touch, its structural integrity resists marking and inscription. The final chapter details the element of “spaciousness,” showing how open and simple settings in The Old Man and the Sea and The Professor’s House inspire, in the protagonists, moments of self-conscious interpretation of the nonhuman other and solicit a practice of accountable freedom. I argue that the foregrounding of such spaces proffers a subtle yet pointed critique of American individualism, but this critique is learned only through our encounter with the text’s interpretive limits. The study concludes by suggesting how these strategies both respond to and participate in specific criticisms of American democracy that circulated during the modernist period.

This study investigates how minimalist narrative techniques in American modernist literature oblige us, as readers and critics, to be self-reflexive about the ethical basis of interpretation. Through a concentrated narratological analysis of Hemingway’s and Cather’s fiction, I identify three major elements of what I term the “simple text”—thinness, smoothness, and spaciousness—and I show how each category engages a hermeneutic ethics. By gesturing towards accessibility and straightforward comprehension while also producing moments of indeterminacy that subtly resist the reader’s inferences, the simple text challenges the reader to conceive interpretation both as a positive exercise of individuation and imagination and, simultaneously, as a potentially unethical mode of critical violation and imposition. My introduction contemplates the ethical foundations of Hemingway’s and Cather’s famous aesthetics of omission to argue that such simplicity conveys a complex theory of reader engagement. Chapter One defines “thinness” by examining “thin characters” in A Farewell to Arms and My Ántonia—characters whose simplicity makes them paradoxically unreadable in a way that foregrounds the nature of our accountability towards others. The second chapter, focusing on In Our Time and Death Comes for the Archbishop, defines “smoothness” as a simple paratactic patterning that challenges our critical desire to generalize meanings from particular experiences. While the smooth surface invites our interpretive touch, its structural integrity resists marking and inscription. The final chapter details the element of “spaciousness,” showing how open and simple settings in The Old Man and the Sea and The Professor’s House inspire, in the protagonists, moments of self-conscious interpretation of the nonhuman other and solicit a practice of accountable freedom. I argue that the foregrounding of such spaces proffers a subtle yet pointed critique of American individualism, but this critique is learned only through our encounter with the text’s interpretive limits. The study concludes by suggesting how these strategies both respond to and participate in specific criticisms of American democracy that circulated during the modernist period.

In this dissertation, I seek to better understand the sensemaking process among surviving family members after a tragic loss of a teenage or young adult child. Using social constructionism (Gergen, 1991) as a theoretical framework, I focused on how meanings of loss are constructed through the use of language and other symbols. I specifically looked at the role of family stories and rituals in making sense of the sudden loss as well as how a survivor's role as a sibling or parent may impact the grieving process. The participants in my research were all members of families in which a child had died unexpectedly in adolescence or young adulthood. I combined multiple in-depth interviews with parents and siblings in each family with episodes of participant-observation. Then I used inductive thematic analysis to examine the patterns of ritualizing in each family, and a process of narrative analysis focusing on the accounts of three siblings and two parents in order to explore how survivors structure their experience in stories. I found that rituals and artifacts play a significant role in assisting family members in coping with bereavement. Even though previous family rituals and traditions are disrupted by the death, families find ways of creating and enacting new rituals. The invention and adoption of new rituals seems to serve an important role in "successful" grieving as a way of sustaining bonds with lost loved ones. I also found that survivors, in sharing with me the stories of sudden loss, worked to construct storylines that tie events together by showing how they are meaningfully, and sometimes causally, connected. In addition, the stories showed how survivors "find benefit" by reframing painful events as positive and growthful. Throughout my analysis of rituals and stories, I looked for similarities or differences between the siblings' and parents' experiences. One insight to emerge from the study was that bereavement is a very individual event, and the resulting differences in expressions and degrees of grief among different family members can put a strain on the family system. Another key theme that emerged was the protective stance taken by surviving siblings towards their parents after the death of a brother or sister, which sometimes involved minimizing the display of their own emotions. In this sense, the siblings seem to have experienced what the literature has called "prohibited mourning," By contrast. parental grief seems to be more socially acknowledged. This study holds potential benefits for those scholars interested in bereavement as a meaning-making process as well as the effects on the family system. Therapists who treat families might find the insights these participants contribute to be helpful in creating ways to communicate with their clients.

In the United States as many as 15% of births occur before 39 weeks because of elective inductions or cesarean sections. This qualitative study employs a grounded theory approach to understand the decisions women make of how and when to give birth. Thirty-three women who were pregnant or had given birth within the past two years participated in key informant or small group interviews. The women’s birth narratives and reflections reveal how they construct the uncertainty of their due dates and how this construction influences their birth decisions. Problematic integration theory is used to analyze this construction and identify points of influence. The results suggest that women construct the uncertainty of due dates as a reason to wait on birth and as a reason to start the process early. The results suggest that information about a baby’s brain development in the final weeks of pregnancy may persuade women to remain pregnant longer. The results demonstrate the utility of using problematic integration theory to understand a medical situation that is the result of epistemological and ontological uncertainty. The analysis suggests the existence of a third type of uncertainty, axiological uncertainty. Axiological uncertainty is rooted in the values and ethics of outcomes.

Charlotte Brontë’s problematising of first-person narrative foregrounds the fluidity of the concept of identity and insists on its constructed nature. Brontë uses specific narrative techniques in The Professor, Jane Eyre and Villette to achieve this foregrounding, which leads to a complex and sophisticated exploration of the individual’s relationship to society, and how this influences the way individuals construct their identity. Each of these novels presents a different example of such self-construction through the characterisation of the first person narrator. Brontë’s questioning of the stability of the self encourages readers to be aware of such constructs. In my first chapter, I look closely at how narrative authority is parcelled out in Brontë’s nineteenth-century society, and what influence the conferring or withholding of such authority has on the construction of a narrative self. The next three chapters are devoted to discussion of specific examples of narrative self-construction in Brontë’s first-person novels, how her protagonists deal with narrative authority, and the difficulties inherent in speaking or writing with such authority for nineteenth-century women in particular. Individuals construct a sense of their self through telling stories. Brontë’s fiction asks the question, if “Literature cannot be the business of a woman’s life” is this tantamount to denying women the right to an arena for the construction of a self at all? What role do readers play in the construction of a narrative self for a writer? In the concluding chapter my aim is to open out my analysis of Brontë’s fiction by examining the idea of narrative as a place more generally for imaginative self-construction. I structure the chapter around J. Hillis Miller’s argument in On Literature that the role of reading and writing in this regard has irrevocably changed in the twenty-first century due to the influence and popularity of the on-line world.

Made available in DSpace on 2014-06-11T19:26:54Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 0 Previous issue date: 2003-02-04Bitstream added on 2014-06-13T19:34:51Z : No. of bitstreams: 1 roefero_msv_me_assis.pdf: 360167 bytes, checksum: 8df13e9266bd54fc25aaa17e53991db6 (MD5) / Este trabalho investigativo aborda questões relevantes sobre a consciência discursível em A morte e a morte de Quincas Berro D'Água de Jorge Amado. Observa-se, portanto, o reconhecido valor artístico que o conjunto da obra evidencia, e que através de uma sustentação teórica e pela aplicabilidade prática da mesma pode ficar comprovado o teor retórico ali contido. / This present invesgative work approaches relevant matters about the discourssive consciousness on A morte de Quincas Berro D'Água de Jorge Amado. Therefore it is noticed the recognized artistic value that the set of the work shows up and also that included in the work confirmed.

This thesis uses Narrative Theory and Technology Acceptance Model to uncover the experiences, perceptions, and challenges that five experienced teachers face when using and integrating technology in their classroom. It gives narrative consideration of the value of unique experience by focusing on the stories of each participant, and it analyzes narrative themes. This study found that there were numerous impacts on teachers’ perceptions on the usefulness and ease of use of technology: this included (a) Limits: technology limits, teacher limits, student limits, and practical limits; (b) Support: school board, resources, equipment, parents; and (c) Dynamic environment (teacher-student feedback loop) which influence strategies for integrating technology: attitude, teaching orientation, classroom management, technology management, technology tools, and participant-observer strategies. Study limitations and recommendations are discussed.

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This thesis discusses aspects of feminist translation as exemplified by my French to English translation of Marie Vieux-Chauvet’s novel, Les Rapaces (1984). Articulating feminist translation as a form of activism, I argue that feminism manifests in translation not only informatively, through linguistic and cultural representation, but also through formative processes that are constitutive of texts. Describing some of the key moments in the creation of The Raptors, I show how these relate to Bracha Ettinger’s concept of metramorphic processes and to my own elaboration of her theory with regard to the generative aspect of becoming in translation. Viewing translation as a transformative encounter, from the perspectives of both the translator and the translation’s Haitian American audience, I underline the contribution of feminine paradigms for innovating translation theory and practice.

Den ojämna könsfördelningen i byggbranschen är än idag en utmaning för att förmå kvinnor att söka sig till, samt stanna kvar i branschen. Tidigare forskning gör det tydligt att det finns ett flertal orsaker till detta och pekar på olika tillvägagångssätt för hur könsfördelningen ska behandlas. Syftet med denna studie är att, genom tre kvinnors berättelser, undersöka deras upplevelser och erfarenheter från sina arbetsliv i byggbranschen, hur de återberättar om dessa och hur de framställer sig själva i sina återgivanden. Metoden för att inhämta data för att svara på studiens frågeställningar har varit genom livsberättelseintervjuer med tre kvinnor aktiva i byggbranschen. Resultaten från livsberättelseintervjuerna analyserades genom narrativ teori, varpå livsberättelser konstruerades. Därefter genomfördes analyser av livsberättelserna i enlighet med den narrativa teorin. Resultaten visade att de tre kvinnorna, var och en för sig, har haft unika upplevelser av och erfarenheter från sina arbetsliv. Deras unika berättelser visade även på hur deras handlande, vilka emotionsuttryck, relationer, meningsskapande och därigenom deras unika identiteter uttrycks i varje livsberättelse. De slutsatser som drogs från forskningsundersökningen var bland annat att byggbranschen har genomgått en förändring idag, jämfört med förr, avseende kvinnornas arbetssituation. Resultaten delvis motbevisar, men även styrker, den allmänna uppfattningen av byggbranschen som manlig och denna nyanserade bild bör efterfrågas mer i det offentliga samtalet. / The gender imbalance in the construction industry is still a challenge for attracting and retaining women in the industry. Previous research makes it clear that there are a number of reasons for this and points to different approaches on how to address the gender imbalance. The purpose of this study has been to examine three women's experiences from their working lives in the construction industry, how they recount these, and how they portray themselves in their accounts. The method for collecting data to answer the study's questions has been through life story interviews with three women active in the construction industry. The results of the life story interviews were analyzed through narrative theory, after which life stories were constructed. The life stories were then analyzed according to the narrative theory. The results showed that the three women, individually, have had unique experiences of their working lives. Their unique stories also revealed how their actions, emotional expressions, relationships, identity expressions and thus their unique meaning-making are portrayed in each life story. The conclusions drawn from the research study were, among other things, that the construction industry has undergone a change today, compared to the past, regarding the work situation of the women. The results partly refute, but also reinforce, the general perception of the construction industry as male and this nuanced picture should be requested more in the public discourse.