Thesis (M.A.)--Carleton University, 1992. / Also available in electronic format on the Internet.

The field of composition studies has concerned itself with the way in which people learn to write and the role schooling plays in writing development. Recently a trend has developed within the field towards exploring writing development outside of the classroom, termed the extracurriculum. Much of the scholarship thus far has focused primarily on popular literacy through community writing groups, which does not take into account the writing development of individuals outside of these organized groups. There are still tools available to people who want to be writers and these would include popular books on writing. This category of books has become quite popular with readers and is having an undocumented effect on beginning writers. It is the intention of this thesis to identify the books within this category and explore the possible benefits to both scholars in the field of composition studies and beginning writers. Chapter One serves as an introduction to my personal development as a writer and the role that both schooling and reading popular books on writing played in that development. In Chapter Two I introduce the general category of popular books on writing and coin a more accurate descriptor writing life books. This chapter is meant to give a general flavor of the continuum of books falling within this category, and is where I introduce the key terms of authority and identification. In Chapter Three I analyze three specific writing life books to demonstrate how the characteristics work together to promote identification and authority within beginning writers. Chapter Four serves as a review of scholarship within the field of composition studies that is concerned with the elements of authority, identification, and the extracurriculum. / Graduation date: 1999

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Murdoch University, 2002. / Thesis submitted to the Division of Social Sciences, Humanities and Education. Bibliography: leaves 291-298.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Wisconsin--Madison, 1983. / Typescript. Vita. eContent provider-neutral record in process. Description based on print version record. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 255-268).

Thesis (M.A.) in English--University of Maine, 2003. / Includes vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaf 58).

No description available.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--McMaster University, 2006. / Supervisor: Daniel Coleman.

No description available.

This thesis deals with two topics: macro-structurally speaking, the evolving and dynamic new patterns of commercial publishing over the internet where agents and institutions of commercial publishing have been repositioned in the digital Chinese literary field; micro-structurally speaking, the textual analysis of internet fiction prosumed by authors and readers to realise the collective desire of Chinese prosumers (producers and consumers). Together the two topics contribute to the study of the socio-cultural phenomenon of internet fiction in the transnational Chinese on-line literary sphere, especially in China. The internet promotes prosumption behaviour because prosumers are offered more autonomy. This autonomy helps to generate desire in prosumers by incessantly prosuming highly similar texts to reflect a growing Chinese individualisation. A textual analysis of the prosumed literary commodities will be conducted in order to comprehend the collective desire of general prosumers on the internet resulting from the prosumers’ literary autonomy. The approach to analysing the texts – prosumed commodities as the consequence of literary autonomy – is through psychoanalysis, which I believe is best suited to illuminate desire dwelling in the depths of the human mind. The production rates and consumption rates of various fiction genres from long-term statistics which I have collected from Qidian, the largest internet literary portal website based in China, provide the thesis with a standard by which to determine what types of works of fiction are popularly prosumed. The psychoanalytical approach will be applied for a deeper interpretation of these works to establish the reason for their popularity. Whilst internet fiction is being popularly prosumed and prosumers communicate with each other on an individual basis to spell out their desire, they use internet fiction as a channel to reflect their socio-cultural context through various fiction genres. Hence, by analysing the prosumers’ desire, this thesis also strives by means of textual analysis to go beyond interpreting individual desire to examine a symbiosis between prosumers and their socio-cultural environment. The discussion of the new business model of prosumption and the textual analysis of prosumed fiction are like the two sides of the same coin, where the new pattern of commercial publishing provides a mode in which Chinese prosumers are offered autonomy of production and consumption of literary commodities, whilst the prosumed literary commodities sustain the new pattern. Because of this reciprocal relationship, to research one without the other is likely to miss the whole picture of the socio-cultural phenomenon.

No description available.