Thesis (Ph.D.)--Boston University. / The purpose of this study was to examine the criticism of a representative group of nineteenth century American authors (Bryant, Poe, Holmes, Whittier, Cooper, Hawthorne, Melville, Simms, Sigourney, Southworth, Whitman, and Thoreau) in about a dozen representative British and the same number of American periodicals during the years l840-l860, with the intention of presenting through summary, paraphrase, and quotation, a cross section of the criticism and of discovering, if possible, the similarities in and differences between the two bodies of criticism. A number of conclusions emerged. The British criticism was not unduly harsh, unfair, condescendince, or colored in any significant way by a general anti-American feeling or a feeling of superciliousness. There were exceptions, to which I feel the Americans gave the undue attention and currency that exceptions usually receive. The American criticism was not influenced by strong feelings of nationalism to the point of being unduly gentle, exaggerated, or chauvinistic, although, here again, there were outstanding examples of these attitudes, to which the writers of the day gave more notice than they deserved. American criticism did not take its cue from and wait upon the pronouncements of the British before it dared to commit itself. On the contrary, it was almost without exception earlier than the British reactions in the case of specific American works, was sometimes different from the British criticism, and was cited occasionally by the British themselves. This is not to say that American critics were independent of British influence. Given a powerful and ancient tradition and culture, a similar system of education and the same language, the Americans inevitably adhered to many of the same standards and were influenced by the same background. It is therefore difficult to say that there is a distinct and characteristic American criticism. Religious, political, class, geographical, and aesthetic influences affect judgments within each of the two bodies of criticism. As a result, divisions are often more marked on these lines than on strictly national ones. For example, the denominational magazines on both sides of the Atlantic seem to have more in common in their treatment of ethical and didactic issues than they have differences because of their national origins; and the political liberals of England and America have more in common with each other than with their conservative countryman. Sectional differences within the states often seem as great as those between American and Britain. [truncated]

This thesis examines the relations between music and literature through fictional women musicians in nineteenth-century European literature and more particularly through their bodies. The female body appears to be a rich juncture between music and literature, facilitating musical references in literature as well as creating complex musical narrative systems anchored in social, cultural and scientific discourses of the long nineteenth century. All types of women musicians are examined (singers, instrumentalists, composers, and even listeners) along with different discourses on the body (social, philosophical and scientific), shedding a new light on gender and the arts. Our chronological as well as thematic approach strives to highlight a common representation of the body and of female musicians in literature. German Romantic texts thus present women musicians as elusive figures who play a key role in the impossibility to materialise the abstract. Realist and sensation novels are analysed through a clinical perspective on the body and envision female musicians as monomaniacs. On the contrary, fiction written by female authors introduces empowered musicians as priestess of art. Finally, fin-de-siècle novels stage the female body as a degenerate entity of society. The parallel analysis of literary case studies with different perspectives on the body posits the women-music-body triangle as a new approach to gender, music and literature.

Collage Grrrls represents the first sustained attempt to define, historicise and analyse the contentious genre of ‘anti-chick lit’. In this thesis, I argue that anti-chick lit – while critically neglected – represents a key development in women’s writing from the 1990s onwards; alighting on the girl and the grrrl as figures of contradiction and transitional possibility, anti-chick fictions generate spaces in which the darker aspects of female experience – from mental illness, self-harming and unwanted pregnancies, to sexual excess and consumerism – can be creatively (re)imagined. In this way, Collage Grrrls makes a timely intervention into debates about feminine identity and feminism in popular culture. At the heart of these debates, however, exists a fraught paradox that Collage Grrrls will interrogate: at the same time as celebrating a female subject that is ‘untamed, ungroomed and unglossed’, does anti-chick lit’s alignment with the mass- market appeal of chick lit mean that the subject is simultaneously re-tamed, re-groomed and re-glossed in order to preserve her appeal – paradoxically – to a mass audience? I identify Emma Forrest, an Anglo-American author and journalist, as a representative for the genre. Along with Forrest’s novels Namedropper (1998), Thin Skin (2002) and Cherries in the Snow (2005), I will also include detailed reference to Stephanie Kuehnert’s I wanna be your Joey Ramone (2008) and Kristin Hersh’s Rat Girl (2010). Collage Grrrl’s scope of literary genres includes Young Adult fiction and memoir, with each key work presenting an unapologetic portrait of female pathology. The discussion will address the impact of third wave and postfeminism, and the cultural shifts in mainstream representations of gender, specifically in light of the fluxional identity politics of the 90s and their effect on young women. The politics and practices of this era paved the way for movements such as riot grrrl, with the grrrl becoming a notable figure for challenging normative meanings of femininity. By examining authors and works on which there is little critical material, Collage Grrrls aims to do the same, seeking out authors and texts that have yet to be recuperated to academic discourse.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Boston University / This study is divided into two parts. Part One consists of an analysis of the critical reception of each. of Edith Wharton's works of fiction. The aim of Part One is to trace the history of Wharton criticism in the past sixty years in order to discover the possible patterns of critical attitudes towards her fiction both when it first appeared and in the present day. Part Two consists of an enumerated annotated listing of all biographical and critical studies of Edith Wharton and her fiction subject to the limitations stated in the work. Since all present listings of secondary sources on Wharton are at best fragmentary, the purpose of Part Two is to compile as complete a bibliography as possible in order to help future students in further research [TRUNCATED]

My thesis focuses on a group of novels dealing with Indo-British interracial marriage, written at the turn of the 20th century. The novels belong to the large corpus of popular literature produced at this time about India by male and female Anglo-Indian writers whose purpose in writing was not only entertainment but also, importantly, instruction.¹ This literature has been neglected by the literary critics but repays close attention for it is a valuable archive for the study of female perspectives on British rule in India. There has been work by historians on Anglo-Indian women recently but the womens' own fictional writing has been largely neglected. Using a historical materialist approach, one of my aims in this study is also to examine the differences of perspective on British rule evident in male and female writing on India. The narrative trajectory is invariably the same: an ignorant British protagonist marries an Indian with whom s/he sets up home, prompted by desires which are gendered. The depiction of intimacy, I argue, is intended to illuminate the hidden space of Indian life (the home) so that marital and domestic practices which were considered to degrade Indian women may be exposed to the British reader. The link made by the British between the treatment of women and the fitness of Indian men for self-rule is important here. The representation of the Indian home as a hidden space about which the British knew very little but imagined much, offers a reading of the anxiety felt by the British about the limits of their control in India, both over the Indians and over themselves. ¹These writers include Alice Perrin, Maud Diver, Fanny Penny, E.W. Savi, Victoria Cross and Pamela Wynne; several male Anglo-Indian writers and non-Anglo-Indians are included.

This collection of nine fiction stories explores the journeys of men and women who find themselves unable to continue on the path they've set for themselves. So often, the roads we follow are dictated by social conditioning. This collection considers how are paths are predetermined by social norms and follows the characters as they react to unexpected obstacles encountered in common scenarios. Will they forge new paths? Turn back? Or will they take a detour and return to their original road?

Thesis (Ph. D.)--State University of New York at Binghamton, Department of Comparative Literature, 2005. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 234-247).

<p>A comparative essay to show links between empowerment in feminism and postcolonialism by comparing the development of the protagonist in Margaret Atwood's <em>Surfacing</em> to the development of Pauline in Louise Erdrich's <em>Tracks</em>.</p>

The classroom practices discussed in this thesis come slowly and at a "slant" to feminism through critical reading of texts, a practice that I call a (re)presentation of the silent women in texts. Given our patriarchal western culture, making meaning, and especially making sense, of the role and representations of females offers a special challenge. Often, we readers discover that women are represented by "silence" or rendered according to the patriarchal value system, with little or no thought given to their actual cultural roles. My analysis and construction of a "point of perspective" for the silent or silenced females in male-authored canonical texts offers students a way to enrich their experience with a text and to enrich their abilities as critical readers. Creating a fiction with the intent of having it appear transparently neutral may have been a common motive for both Geoffrey Chaucer and J.M. Coetzee as they created their silent women with their use of what Wayne Booth refers to as a distant narrator-agent. By distancing themselves as authors from their tales, Chaucer and Coetzee create the appearance that they are merely recording the words of others, but both authors make representations and speak for females. Kenneth Burke's dramatistic approach to rhetorical analysis, including the analysis of literary discourse, anticipates the much later critical stance that writing never emerges completely unscathed by authorial motive and purpose. / Graduation date: 1997

Lingering in the topic of literary engagement, this article follows a reader enthralled by words and the significant non-space where fiction and reality intersect. Using Terry Fallis’ political satire “The Best Laid Plans,” a physical map of the reading is followed as I amble through the Ottawa sites depicted in the novel. In this literary pilgrimage, reading is considered as a corporeal (re)action with a series of educative affects. Contrasting this experience with common in-school reading practices, this narrative encourages the honouring of the individualized relationship between reader and text as well as highlighting the pedagogical value of dallying in a work of fiction. Drawing on concepts of spatiality, I contemplate the notion of the home city as a familiar and yet capricious place, made more significant by a fantastic connection. Reading in significant spaces has a lasting, sprawling outcome whereby text, place and reader are all affected.