Thesis (M.A.)--Memorial University of Newfoundland, 2004. / Bibliography: leaves 141-146.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Oregon, 2000. / Typescript. Includes vita and abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 308-319). Also available for download via the World Wide Web; free to University of Oregon users.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Memorial University of Newfoundland, 2001. / Bibliography: leaves 268-297.

Dissertation (Ph.D.)--The University of North Carolina at Greensboro, 2008. / Directed by Scott Romine; submitted to the Dept. of English. Title from PDF t.p. (viewed Jan. 28, 2010). Includes bibliographical references (p. 240-254).

Not available / text

"Encountering 'this season's retrieval': Historical Fiction, Literary Postmodernism and the Novels of Peter Ackroyd" engages the novels Peter Ackroyd has published, and situates them within broader generic considerations and critical dialogue. Part I, an extended prefatorial apparatus, places Ackroyd and his published fiction within three historicocritical contexts: the problem of author-as-reliable-source and the disparate histories of (a) the historical novel and (b) postmodernism in general (and literary postmodernism in particular). By interrogating the histories and points-of-contention of these areas, this Part aims to problematize critical discourse enveloping Ackroyd's fiction. Part II, comprised of four chapters, discusses specific groupings of Ackroyd's novels. After providing an overview of relevant aspects of the novels and their reception by critics, Chapter A, "Moulding History with Pastiche in The Last Testament of Oscar Wilde. Dan Leno and the Limehouse Golem and Milton in America." considers the multiple functioning of pastiche—often considered a mainstay postmodern implement—in Ackroyd's work. The chapter concludes that rather than achieving a singular effect in the novels, pastiche works in divergent manners and confounds the reading of past historical actuality they ostensibly represent. Chapter B, "The Presence of the Past: Comedic and Non-Realist Historicism in The Great Fire of London and First Light." provides an overview of relevant aspects of the novels, and then analyzes how the presence of comedy in otherwise sombre historical fiction interrupts the realism of the narrative. This chapter argues that while camp comic effects disrupt the authority of quasi-historiographic techniques they cannot fully subvert realism and so create a suspensive modality. Chapter C, "PastlPresent: The Uses of History in Hawksmoor. Chatterton. The House of Doctor Dee and English Music." interrogates elements of the past-present fugue trajectories of these novels in order to problematize schematic readings of their supposed cultural politics. Finally, Chapter D, "Those Conventional Concluding Remarks: The Plato Papers. (National) History and Politics," places Ackroyd's most recent novel (one uncharacteristically set in the future) within the preoccupations of his earlier fiction. The chapter concludes with a brief outline of future scholarship that would investigate the national Englishness constructed throughout Ackroyd's biographical and novelistic work.

Cette etude propose une analyse de "Tel Quel" en tant que mouvement de neo-avant-garde situe a la frontiere de la modernite et de la postmodernite. Nous y considerons tous les textes de creation (roman et poesie) publies dans la collection "Tel Quel" entre 1960 et 1982, sans negliger l'etude de leur rapport avec la reflexion theorique exposee dans les essais et les articles de la revue. Cette these represente en meme temps un effort de synthese des principales typologies ou tentatives de definition proposees par la critique occidentale pour caracteriser les mouvements litteraires issus des societes post-industrielles: modernite, postmodernite, modernisme, postmodernisme, avant-garde, post avant-garde et neo-avant-garde.

This thesis intends to describe the contemporary self as drawn by literary theory and writing practice. This objective implies defining the human being considering its history as well as studying its representation in narratives. / In order to circumscribe today's self, we undoubtedly have to study its historical evolution. Exploring the diametrically opposed conceptions suggested by modernity and postmodernity will lead us to a better understanding of the hybrid composition of the contemporary self, which is characterized by a search for coherence and meaning to a multidimensional and constantly evolving individual. / This definition, so far theoretical, will have to be confronted with the representations of the self found in autobiographies. The study of such self-narratives will provide the opportunity to observe in concrete terms the conception of the human being today. / The essential role of narratives will be identified beforehand. Narrative form certainly allows the representation of the self, but moreover it enters in the constitution and definition of the being itself. Self-narrative permits to establish the coherence of the self, hence it clearly appears at the basis of the identity. Overall, the narrative constitutes the foundation of the contemporary self amidst modernity and postmodernity.

This study contends that postmodern American fiction dramatizes an important shift of philosophical perspective on the fetish in keeping with recent theories of fetishism as a cultural practice. This shift is defined by the refusal to accept the traditional Western condemnation of the fetishist as primitive or perverse, and by the effort to affirm more productive uses for fetishism as a theoretical concept spanning the disciplines of psychoanalysis, Marxian social theory, and anthropology. Analyzing the depiction of fetishistic practices in selected contemporary American novels, the dissertation utilizes fetish theory in order to clarify the unique textual and historiographic features of postmodernist fiction. It also emphasizes the way in which conventional ideas about history and teleology are necessarily challenged by an affirmative orientation toward the fetish. Part One of the dissertation, comprising the first two chapters, traces the lineage of Western thinking about fetishism from Hegel, Marx, and Freud to Derrida, Baudrillard, and Jameson, among others. Recognizing that traditional theories attribute the symbolic power of the fetish to its mystification of historical origins, Part One posits that poststructuralist and postmodernist contributions to the subject enable, but do not develop, an alternative concept of fetishism as a practice with constructive historical potential. Part Two of the study seeks to develop this historical potential with reference to prominent descriptive models of postmodernist fiction, and through close readings of five contemporary American authors: Thomas Pynchon, Kathy Acker, Robert Coover, John Hawkes, and Don DeLillo. The four chapters of Part Two each examine the fictional representation of fetishism within a different theoretical framework, focusing on, respectively: temporality and objectivity in postmodern fiction theory; the interrelation between psychoanalytic theory and female fetishism in novels by Pynchon and Acker

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Ohio State University, 2007. / Full text release at OhioLINK's ETD Center delayed at author's request