Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Missouri-Columbia, 1997. / Typescript. Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves [242]-256). Also available on the Internet.

Thesis (M.A.)--The University of North Carolina at Greensboro, 2008. / Title from PDF t.p. (viewed Jun. 4, 2009). Advisor: Christopher Hodgkins; submitted to the Dept. of English. Includes bibliographical references (p. 27-29, p. 54-55).

Thesis (M. A.), Memorial University of Newfoundland, 1999. / Bibliography: p. 130-139.

No description available.

This dissertation explores the presence of the divine feminine in Indic river myths of the Ganga, the Narmada, and the Meenachil as represented in the three novels: Amitav Ghosh’s The Hungry Tide, Gita Mehta’s A River Sutra, and Arundhati Roy’s The God of Small Things. It challenges masculinist nationalistic narratives, and identifies itself as a feminist revisionist work by strategically combining Indian debates on religious interpretations with Western phenomenological and psychoanalytical perspectives to open up productive lines of critical enquiry. I argue that the three postcolonial novelists under survey resurrect the power of the feminine by relocating this power in its manifestation as the turbulent and indomitable force of three river goddesses. In their myths of origin, the goddesses are “unchaste,” uncontainable, and ambiguous. Yet, Mahatma Gandhi and the Indian patriarchy manipulated and coerced women for their political purposes. They denied female agency in order to promote a brand of nationalism bordering on religious zeal and subjugation through imposed paradigms of chastity. The patriarchy conflated the imaginary chastity of the mother goddess in her multiple manifestations--including but not limited to the River Ganga--with the exalted position forced upon the young Indian widow. Popular art of the colonial period in India dismantled the irrepressible sexual ambiguity of the divine feminine for the Indian population, and reinvented her as a chaste, mother figure (Bharat Mata, or Mother India), desexualized her, and held her up as an iconic, pervasive figurehead of the Motherland. Ironically though, the makeover of the uncontrollable, “chaotic” feminine into this shackled entity during and after the Indian freedom struggle is just the kind of ambiguity that appears in discourses of nation building. By reaffirming the archaic myths of the feminine, Ghosh, Mehta, and Roy dislodge the colonial project and the patriarchal Indian independence movement that sought to “chastise” the divine feminine. I suggest that in these three novels pre-colonial images of the river goddesses--presented in all their ambiguous, multiple, and fluid dimensions--are a challenge to the Indian nationalist project that represents the goddesses one dimensionally as an iconic figure, unifying the geo-body of India and symbolically projecting her as the pure, homogenous Bharat Mata.

This dissertation explores the presence of the divine feminine in Indic river myths of the Ganga, the Narmada, and the Meenachil as represented in the three novels: Amitav Ghosh’s The Hungry Tide, Gita Mehta’s A River Sutra, and Arundhati Roy’s The God of Small Things. It challenges masculinist nationalistic narratives, and identifies itself as a feminist revisionist work by strategically combining Indian debates on religious interpretations with Western phenomenological and psychoanalytical perspectives to open up productive lines of critical enquiry. I argue that the three postcolonial novelists under survey resurrect the power of the feminine by relocating this power in its manifestation as the turbulent and indomitable force of three river goddesses. In their myths of origin, the goddesses are “unchaste,” uncontainable, and ambiguous. Yet, Mahatma Gandhi and the Indian patriarchy manipulated and coerced women for their political purposes. They denied female agency in order to promote a brand of nationalism bordering on religious zeal and subjugation through imposed paradigms of chastity. The patriarchy conflated the imaginary chastity of the mother goddess in her multiple manifestations--including but not limited to the River Ganga--with the exalted position forced upon the young Indian widow. Popular art of the colonial period in India dismantled the irrepressible sexual ambiguity of the divine feminine for the Indian population, and reinvented her as a chaste, mother figure (Bharat Mata, or Mother India), desexualized her, and held her up as an iconic, pervasive figurehead of the Motherland. Ironically though, the makeover of the uncontrollable, “chaotic” feminine into this shackled entity during and after the Indian freedom struggle is just the kind of ambiguity that appears in discourses of nation building. By reaffirming the archaic myths of the feminine, Ghosh, Mehta, and Roy dislodge the colonial project and the patriarchal Indian independence movement that sought to “chastise” the divine feminine. I suggest that in these three novels pre-colonial images of the river goddesses--presented in all their ambiguous, multiple, and fluid dimensions--are a challenge to the Indian nationalist project that represents the goddesses one dimensionally as an iconic figure, unifying the geo-body of India and symbolically projecting her as the pure, homogenous Bharat Mata.

Thesis (M.A.)--Florida State University, 2005. / Advisor: Dr. Dennis Moore, Florida State University, College of Arts and Sciences, Program in American and Florida Studies. Title and description from dissertation home page (viewed June 17, 2005). Document formatted into pages; contains iv, 51 pages. Includes bibliographical references.

Triomf explores the distortion of the national Afrikaner identity as a result of apartheid. This dissertation aims to demonstrate how van Niekerk deconstructs the Afrikaner through myths, stories, symbols, intertextuality and Derridean deconstruction. The Benades represent the Afrikaner on three levels: the personal, the national and the primordial. Since the Benades are primordial, Van Niekerk is able to use the archetypes of Jung’s collective unconscious to deconstruct the archetypal mythological structures Afrikaner nationalists used to develop identity and unity. The archetypes deconstructed are Spirit, the Great Mother, Re-birth, the Trickster, the Physical Hearth and the Sacred Fire. Afrikaner myths deconstructed include the Great Trek, the family, the patriarch, the matriarch, the future of a white Afrikaner nation and the binding character of Afrikaans as white national language. Van Niekerk undermines the plaasroman of the 1920s and 1930s, as the Afrikaner’s national identity was constituted and deconstructed in literature. / English / M.A. (English)

by Kung Siu Bing. / Thesis (M.Phil.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 1999. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 114-121). / Abstract and appendix in English and Chinese. / by Kung Siu Bing. / Abstract --- p.iii / Acknowledgement --- p.v / Abbreviations used for the four literary works --- p.vi / Chapter Chapter 1 --- Introduction --- p.1 / Chapter Chapter 2 --- Femininity and Masculinity --- p.14 / Chapter Chapter 3 --- Androgyny --- p.51 / Chapter Chapter 4 --- Sex，Gender and Sexual Identity --- p.80 / Chapter Chapter 5 --- Multiple Selves --- p.102 / Chapter Chapter 6 --- Conclusion --- p.112 / Works Cited --- p.114 / Appendix I Chinese version of quotations of Shuang Shen --- p.122 / Appendix II Table of major characters of Shuang Shen and The Illusionist --- p.126

No description available.