Thesis (Ph. D.)--Illinois State University, 2006. / Title from title page screen, viewed on May 2, 2007. Dissertation Committee: Torri Thompson (chair), Ronald Strickland, Hilary Justice. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 182-191) and abstract. Also available in print.

This thesis examines certain important aspects of theatrical practice in earlymodern England, as they were manifested in Shakespeare's history plays and pageant literature produced for Queen Elizabeth 1 on procession. This study regards the events marked by these two literary forms as discrete though related theatrical formations, and seeks to examine and question the ways in which Shakespearean criticism and pageant analysis regard both genres as aesthetically equivalent as well as being cultural forms both characterised and linked by their valorisation of state authority. This thesis asserts that such a conceptualisation simplifies the nature of the plays and the pageants as material events, as well as the literature produced for these events. Instead, it argues that a closer examination of the human context in which pageants, processions and plays occurred, and in which the literature for them was performed, enables the construction of an alternative viewpoint. A reprocessing of primary and secondary material while prioritising the fact that a large proportion of audiences who witnessed the pageants, processions and plays were comprised of the common people of early modern England, allows for different perceptions of these cultural events. The presence of these common people has traditionally been either ignored or undervalued and, through a close examination of contemporary records, this thesis proceeds to argue that, as they were the targets of official, dominant ideology, their presence was significant.

In the existing scholarship on Chinese translation history, the shifting conceptualizations of translation from the 1890s to the 1920s have been presented as a teleological evolution from 'traditional', target-oriented translation norms to 'modern', source-oriented norms. In response to this virtually unchallenged grand narrative, the dissertation presents a more nuanced and complex picture of the changing conceptualizations of translation in China during this period. Using New Historicism to engage with Roland Barthes's theory of intertextuality and Gérard Genette's framework of paratextuality, the study builds an integrated theoretical framework for examining how the conceptual relationships between translating, writing, commenting, and editing (among a variety of other textual activities) changed during this period. Adopting Microhistory principles, the dissertation conducts three case studies of marginalized figures - Zhong Junwen (1865-1908), Zhou Shoujuan (1895-1968), and Wu Mi (1894-1978) - from Chinese translation history: by analyzing their translations and/or writings about translation in a range of textual forms such as translation reviews, prefaces, diaries, and pingdian commentaries, the dissertation reveals how these cultural actors blurred the boundaries between translating, writing, commenting, and editing within China's rapidly evolving publishing context and how their conceptualizations of translation were deeply grounded in the traditional Chinese notions of authorship. The results of the three case studies demonstrate how the conceptual boundaries between various textual activities were in flux during these four decades and that the shifts in the conceptualizations of translation were not a simple, linear development from 'traditional' to 'modern'. Apart from contributing to a better knowledge of Chinese conceptualizations of translation in a key period of Chinese translation history, the dissertation challenges the validity of adopting the theoretical models of intertextuality and paratextuality as universally applicable frameworks in translation studies.

This bachelor thesis will have its focus on Great Expectations by Charles Dickens. The central claim of this thesis is that in the novel Great Expectations, the protagonist Pip is used by Dickens as a metaphor for the British urbanization during the period of industrialisation.       The literary theory that will help to analyse and prove this claim will be New Historicism. The central praxis of using non-literary historical documents and comparing them it to a literary text such as Great Expectations will be used in the discussion part of this thesis. As New Historicism tends to be unclearly defined, this thesis applies H.Aram Veeser’s definition and his definition is explained in this thesis.      The thesis is structured thus firstly, Pip’s time in the marshes will be discussed and in this discussion and the following ones. Characters that influence Pip is used to see Pip’s alternation.Secondly, after discussing Pip’s time in the marshes, his time in London is discussed. Finally, Pip’s return to the marshes after living in the city is discussed to clearly see his change in attitude and whether the urbanisation is for the better or it worsens his state of mind. Pip’s journey in Great Expectations expresses an ambivalence against urbanization. As urbanisation has great expectations in the rural communities, Pip sees that this comes to a high cost.

This thesis adopts a historical point of view to analyze Wordsworth¡¦s concept of education in relation to nineteenth-century English educational reform. In the nineteenth century, mass education, following the pace of the French Revolution and the Industrial Revolution, became an indispensable social issue. Among the diverse educational reform movements, Joseph Lancaster and Andrew Bell¡¦s monitorial system was most prominent in that they provided a pedagogy that utilized teaching assistants to achieve efficiency and sufficiency in a large classroom and thus fulfilled the need of large-quantitative education of the age. Featured by efficiency, sufficiency, and materialism, the monitorial system best embodies the spirit of the Industrial Age. On the other hand, Wordsworth insisted on a community-based educational philosophy that urged people of his age to cherish old moral concepts such as harmonious, affectionate, and cooperative communal spirit inherent in traditional rural communities. The poet, representing the eighteenth-century rural tradition, observed with anxiety those children raised in an materialistic atmosphere. He delineates in his major works, especially The Excursion, a social vision that provides the best environment for the development and education of a spiritually mature man in which nature, man, and society are incorporated into a harmonious unity. This insistence on the old rural tradition distanced Wordsworth from his contemporary educational reformers and caused him to withdraw from his original support of the monitorial system.

Zugl.: Berlin, Freie Univ., Diss., 2005

The present dissertation argues that more fully than any other fictional work in the latter third of the nineteenth century, Harold Frederic's _The Damnation of Theron Ware_ illuminates the cultural controversies within fin de siecle America. Given the inconsistent nature of its subsequent critical examination, Theron Ware lends itself to a type of new as well as traditional forms of historicist inquiry. While recent efforts by Lisa MacFarlane and Donna Campbell have broadened earlier perspectives to include the gender and theological controversies of the post bellum era, Theron Ware remains unexplored by still another vehicle that Frederic provides (127-143; 80-81). Within a complex and repeated series of episodes, Frederic uses standards of personal etiquette enunciated through a century-long series of published manuals to ponder both the inevitability and the likely consequences that will result from these "compendium of intellectual currents" (Campbell 80).

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[pt] Através da leitura crítica de experimentos contemporâneos de historiografia literária, a tese Historiografia literária contemporânea: experiências cruzadas desenvolve um modelo teórico que reflete a expansão do fenômeno literário e a produção de conhecimento multidisciplinar nas áreas dos Estudos de Literatura e de História. Considerando o espaço híbrido ocupado pela historiografia literária, que une em sua escrita discursos científicos e narrativas literárias, a investigação enfatiza a dinâmica complexa dos processos interativos entre corpo, mente e ambiência. Nesta ótica, avalia-se o descompasso entre a criatividade experimental de historiografias (literárias) atuais em sua configuração estrutural e temática e a oferta de repertórios teóricos atentos aos cruzamentos da percepção sensível e do pensamento inteligível. Os experimentos historiográficos analisados demandam pressupostos epistemológicos alinhados com formas de conhecimento atravessadas por sensibilidades e intuições que orientam as relações entre texto e contexto, entre história e literatura, entre observador e objeto observado. Eles são investigados em vista da elaboração de novas ferramentas que enfatizam processos de retroalimentação entre afecções do corpo, processos cognitivos e experiências situadas. Este cruzamento de múltiplos saberes e olhares, de ideias e afetos na percepção sensorial e na reflexão racional, encontra apoio, entre outros, em propostas desenvolvidas por António R. Damásio acerca das relações entre corpo e mente no campo das neurociências, na concepção da cultura como hipertexto apresentada por Stephen Greenblatt no contexto do ideário do New Historicism e no projeto não-hermenêutico de Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht, contrapondo à hegemonia da cultura de sentido uma cultura de presença, com acento sobre a materialidade da comunicação. Em suma, a presente tese, propondo uma reflexão nos interstícios do corpo e da mente, representa uma contribuição oportuna para uma inovação e ampliação significativa de formas e estratégias de construção de conhecimento na área dos Estudos de Literatura, a partir do diálogo multidisciplinar marcado pela mediação entre reflexão teórica e prática literária, que caracteriza historiografias literárias contemporâneas. / [en] Through critical reading of contemporary experiments in literary historiography, the thesis Contemporary Literary Historiography: Crossed Experiences develops a theoretical model that reflects the expansion of the literary phenomenon and the production of multidisciplinary knowledge in the areas of Literary Studies and History. Considering the hybrid space occupied by literary historiography, which links scientific discourses and literary narratives in its writing, this study emphasizes the complex dynamics of the interactive processes among body, mind and ambience. In this perspective, the mismatch between the experimental creativity of current (literary) historiographies in their structural and thematic configuration and the proposal of theoretical repertoires attentive to the intersections of sensible perception and intelligible thought is evaluated. The historiographical experiments analyzed require an epistemological framework aligned with forms of knowledge traversed by sensitivities and intuitions, which guide the relationships between text and context, between history and literature, between observer and observed object. The experiments are investigated in view of the development of new tools that emphasize feedback processes between bodily affections, cognitive processes and situated experiences. This intersection of multiple knowledges and views, of ideas and affections in sensorial perception and rational reflection, finds support in proposals developed by António R. Damásio, among others, about the relations between body and mind in the field of neurosciences, in the conception of culture as hypertext presented by Stephen Greenblatt in the context of the ideology of New Historicism and the nonhermeneutic project of Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht, opposing the hegemony of the culture of meaning to a culture of presence with an emphasis on the materiality of communication. In summary, this thesis, proposing a reflection in the interstices of body and mind, represents a timely contribution to an innovative and significant expansion of forms and strategies of knowledge construction in the area of Literary Studies, based on the multidisciplinary dialogue marked by the mediation between theoretical reflection and literary practice, which characterizes contemporary literary historiographies.