Global ETD Search

1	Modernists and Middle Age: How Age Anxiety Shaped the Works of Joyce, Rhys and Orwell Carrie A. Kancilia (5929859) 14 January 2021 (has links) This project is a literature-focused investigation of age-related discourse in the Modernist texts of James Joyce, Jean Rhys, and George Orwell. This study locates anxiety about ageing as a consistent trope of Modernist literature in reaction to the shifting and uncertain landscape of the period. Despite the meaningful differences in perspective, gender, nationality, and chronological placement of these authors within the spectrum of the Modernist period, each foregrounds age anxiety as a central theme and tension in their works. Incorporating dread around ageing in distinct manners, these authors expose the irreconcilable disconnect between a cultural call for newness and the inevitable ageing of the authors themselves. This study highlights the largely unexamined motif of age anxiety in the work of Modernism’s most esteemed and compelling authors. Literature Other Literatures in English Ageing Joyce Rhys Orwell
2	Unwiht: Shifting Boundaries of Humanity in Early Middle English Language and Literature Michelle E Parsons-Powell (13171482) 29 July 2022 (has links) <p> </p> <p>While the field of Monster Studies has proliferated across disciplines, particularly in relation to studies of the medieval period, often Early Middle English literature has been ignored. In some ways, this is sensible, since the term “monster” is not attested in English until Chaucer’s use of it in the late 14th century in <em>The Canterbury Tales. </em>However, nonhuman beings that might otherwise have been categorized as monsters are still present in the literature. Building on the idea of Hughes’ “non-human human beings” and Mittman’s and Heng’s reconceptualization of race and the “monstrous races,” I propose a new term: nonhuman person. I propose three criteria for determining if a particular literary being falls in this category. I use literary analysis to determine if each criterion is met. Then I examine the lexical choices made to identify and describe each of these nonhuman persons in two sample texts from each rough time period in the language: .<em>The Wonders of the East </em>and <em>Beowulf </em>for Old English; <em>The Owl and the Nightingale </em>and Layamon’s <em>Brut </em>for Early Middle English; and <em>Sir Gawain and the Green Knight </em>and <em>The Canterbury Tales </em>for Late Middle English. Finally, I examine the shifts in the lexicon over time in order to examine how English re-envisions the nonhuman person from the Old English period up through Chaucer’s use of “monster” in his <em>Tales. </em></p> Early English languages Other literatures in English English language studies English literatures Medieval literature Corpus Linguistics semantic field Monsters nonhumans Early Middle English
3	<i>Ealuscerwen</i>: Alcoholic Beverages and Their Relative Prominence in the Medieval English Corpus Eugene Charles Mc Boyle III (18437706) 28 April 2024 (has links) <p dir="ltr">It is generally known that alcoholic beverages held a significant place in medieval English culture, as they likewise do in modern society: the meadhall and the tavern are familiar locations in our conception of the medieval era. This study provides a corpus-driven approach to analyzing the societal meaning of alcohol in medieval England, both in terms of the general role of alcohol in the society of that time and place, and in terms of the distinction drawn between different types of alcoholic beverage. It examines the distribution of different terms for alcoholic drinks, as well as the meanings of those terms, the cultural significance of the various beverages, and how all of those elements change over time. This data is applied to case studies of three different texts: <i>Piers Plowman</i>, the <i>Canterbury Tales</i>, and <i>Le Morte Darthur</i>. From this, we are able to see not only the broader importance and interpretation of alcohol in medieval England, but also that the type of alcoholic beverage one drinks and the circumstances in which one drinks it are used to communicate information regarding one’s role in society and how one is perceived by medieval English culture at large.</p> Early English languages English language Corpus linguistics British and Irish literature Other literatures in English alcohol Medieval England Old English studies Middle English Literature Old English Language
4	HINGED, BOUND, COVERED: THE SIGNIFYING POTENTIAL OF THE MATERIAL CODEX Christina M McCarter (11186181) 29 July 2021 (has links) <div> <p>The idea of “the book” overflows with extraneous significance: books are presented as windows, gateways, vessels, lighthouses, and gardens. Books speak to us and feed us, and they are a method of escape. The book has long represented much more than a static, hinged, bound, covered object inscribed with words. Even when a book is not performing an elaborate, imaginative function, the word “book” very often signifies the text it holds or even the text’s author: You can open <i>The Bluest Eye</i> or carry Toni Morrison in your bag. Fourteenth-century author Geoffrey Chaucer invokes a “book” by “Lollius” as authoritative source of his<i> Troilus and Criseyde</i>, though no person exists; likewise, to conclude the same text, Chaucer asks directs his project to “go, litel bok, go.” When a book makes an appearance in narrative, it is rarely j<i>ust a book</i>—without legs, the book moves, and without breath, it lives. This dissertation asks what about the shape of the codex has helped the book become such a metaphorically rich signifier.<br></p> <p>This dissertation attempts to unravel the various threads of meaning that make up the complex “idea of the book.” I focus on one of these threads: the book as a material object. By focusing on how the book as object—not the book as idea—functions within narrative, I argue that we can identify what about the book object enables its metaphorical range. I analyze moments in literature, television, and film when metaphorical functions are assigned, not to an ephemeral, complex idea of the book, but rather to the material realities of the book as an object. In these moments, the codex’s essential, material shape (what I am calling its bookishness) enables metaphorical functioning; I show that, by examining when mundanely physical bindings, pages, covers, and spines initiate metaphorical action, we can identify how the material book has come to mean so much more than itself.</p> <p><a></a>Indeed, despite a renewed appreciation for the book as both material and cultural object, books have become so significantly meaningful that attempts to define “the book” evade simplicity, rendering books as everything and nothing at the same time. My inquire explores this complexity by starting with a simple premise: Metaphors are based on some element of physical truth. Though the book has sprouted in a variety of metaphorical directions, many of those metaphors are grounded in the book’s material realities. Acknowledging this, especially in an age of fast-evolving media and bookish fetishism, offers a valuable and novel perspective on how and why books are both semantically rich and culturally valued objects.</p> </div> <br> Literature Media Studies Early English Languages English Language North American Literature Other Literatures in English History and Philosophy of the Humanities History of Ideas literary studies english literature history of the book history of the codex codex material culture studies film and television studies dystopian literature children's literature medieval literature cross-periodization cognitive semiotics narratology narrative theory Chaucer thomas malory
5	“DOUBLE REFRACTION”: IMAGE PROJECTION AND PERCEPTION IN SAUDI-AMERICAN CONTEXTS: A COMPARATIVE STUDY Ghaleb Alomaish (8850251) 18 May 2020 (has links) <p>This dissertation aims to create a scholarly space where a seventy-five-year-old “special relationship” (1945-2020) between the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and the United States is examined from an interdisciplinary comparativist perspective. I posit that a comparative study of Saudi and American fiction goes beyond the limitedness of global geopolitics and proves to uncover some new literary, sociocultural, and historical dimensions of this long history, while shedding some light on others. Saudi writers creatively challenge the inherently static and monolithic image of Saudi Arabia, its culture and people in the West. They also simultaneously unsettle the notion of homogeneity and enable us to gain new insight into self-perception within the local Saudi context by offering a wide scope of genuine engagements with distinctive themes ranging from spatiality, identity, ethnicity, and gender to slavery, religiosity and (post)modernity. On the other side, American authors still show some signs of ambivalence towards the depiction of the Saudi (Muslim/Arab) Other, but they nonetheless also demonstrate serious effort to emancipate their representations from the confining legacy of (neo)Orientalist discourse and oil politics by tackling the concepts of race, alterity, hegemony, radicalism, nomadism and (un)belonging.</p> Art Literature History Disability Studies Gender studies Language North American Literature Other Literatures in English Middle Eastern Literature Comparative Literature Studies Literary Theory Aesthetics Epistemology Feminist Theory Hermeneutic and Critical Theory Comparative Religious Studies Islamic Studies Gender, Sexuality and Education British History Saudi culture American Saudi-American Orientalism Orientalism in art neo-Orientalsim Desert oil Cultural studies Arabian Gulf migration Diaspora Studies blackness slavery literature Mormonism Mormon biblical studies disability studies geopolitics 9/11 post-9/11 post-9/11 America Post-9/11, fiction terrorism extremism radicalism visual studies orientalist painting postcolonial Postcolonial Discourse Otherness Alterity munif cities of salt urbanism Modernity tradition Islamic feminism Islam whiteness studies

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