The Beats were one of the most influential communities of the 20th century, and this dissertation focuses on the critically underrepresented women who were part of their influence. Today, the Beats are largely celebrated for their literary legacy, popularizing a spontaneous poetic style as well as promoting an antimaterialist ethos and globe-trotting mystique in opposition to Cold War attitudes of confinement and consensus. During the 1950s and 1960s, the Beats were seen as harbingers of cultural disillusionment, taking to the road in search of God, championing the “beatific” nature of the disenfranchised, the poor, and the lowly across America. Today, the Beats are considered to be the progenitors of pacifist “hippie” culture and a revolutionary postwar spirit. Despite this democratizing goal, a prevailing critical consensus holds that the Beat movement was primarily a “boy’s club,” in which the homosocial bonds between the key male figures fostered a system of literary mentorship that largely excluded women writers. Although the canon is frequently narrowed to give precedence to Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, and William S. Burroughs, and the male writers who joined their cadre, my project focuses on the many women writers who were part of the Beat community and the lasting impact of their work. My goal is to reconceptualize Beat aesthetics, themes, and communities in light of these women’s writing. The project entails close textual analysis of these writers’ work across multiple genres, including poetry, memoir, and fiction, as well as research toward historical and cultural contextualization, including interviews. Their writing emphasizes the centrality of the domestic sphere to Beat publishing and the utility of the road in seeking healing and empowerment, in addition to offering new perspectives on Beat spirituality and life writing. In addition to bringing well-deserved attention to these marginalized writers, this research is valuable for American literary history in expanding knowledge of women’s writing at midcentury. More broadly, these writers are of significance to our understanding of modern feminism as well. The majority of these women worked to support their families at a time described by Betty Friedan as the age of the “feminine mystique,” and they pushed back against the rigid social conventions of their time by escaping into bohemian life. The Beat women wrote frankly about reproductive roulette, single motherhood, abortion, social stigma about being women who lived alone, and difficulty starting careers in a sexist culture. For their shared values of self-sufficiency and dedication to their work, these women could be seen as feminist forerunners to the major crest of second wave feminism. However, feminism is not a single, static, monolithic push, and my interrogation of Beat women’s texts complicates and enriches understandings of postwar gender conventions. These writers’ thought contributes to ongoing discussions in modern feminist thought, including shifting cultural attitudes toward domestic labor, the importance of women’s communities, and forms and contradictions of female leadership.

My paper will focus upon the theme of loss in postwar Central European literature in works of Nabokov, Bachmann, Bernhard, Handke, Esterhazy, and Chwin, which are narrated as a modern subject's testimony of loss. My goal is to make a collection of loss figures (inspired by Roland Barthes's Fragments of a Lover's Discourse) to examine the nature of testimony in relation to the acts of writing. Any analytical inquiry that focuses itself on the literary testimony as a work of art will have to deal with these textual mechanisms: transparency, suppression, deleting, distancing, turning over, heaviness and reduction.

Wild Abandon traces a literary and cultural history of late twentieth-century appeals to dissolution, the moment at which a text seems to erase its subject’s sense of selfhood in natural environs. I argue that such appeals arose in response to a prominent yet overlooked interaction between discourses of ecology and authenticity following the rise and fall of the American New Left in the 1960s and 70s. This conjunction inspired certain intellectuals and activists to celebrate the ecological concept of interconnectivity as the most authentic basis of subjectivity in political, philosophical, spiritual, and literary writings. As I argue, dissolution represents a universalist and essentialist impulse to reject self-identity in favor of an identification with the ecosystem writ large, a claim to authenticity that flattens distinctions among individuals and communities. But even as the self appears to disintegrate, an “I” always remains to testify to its disintegration. For this reason, dissolution performs a primarily critical function by foregrounding an unsurpassable representational tension between sense of self and ecosystem. Each chapter explores a different perspective on this tension as it conflicts with matters of gender and race in works by Edward Abbey, Peter Matthiessen, Toni Morrison, Margaret Atwood, and Jon Krakauer. Assuming an anti-essentialist stance, all the texts I study acknowledge ecological interconnectivity as a universal condition but maintain the necessity of culturally mediated and individually constructed identity positions from which to recognize that condition.

In this dissertation I analyze how the postwar German writers Wolfdietrich Schnurre, Günter Eich, and Ilse Aichinger negotiate anthropocentric and speciesist discourses via animal figures by drawing on such posthumanist thinkers as Derrida, Agamben, and Deleuze & Guattari. The literary texts question a world view and discourse organized around the establishment of power that utilizes animal metaphors to turn living beings into objects (and could thus be called “carno-phallogocentric”). They thus react to the strict hierarchy of (gendered) man over animal and respond - in the aftermath of the Second World War – by highlighting instead the similarities between man and animal, such as creaturely existence and shared trauma. The analysis is guided by questions such as: How do the literary texts reflect and subvert the power discourses which surround man and animal? What is the role of language in this context? How does the animal, which is usually assumed to be mute, relate to the categories that are established in language? Does its place outside of language grant it capabilities the human cannot realize? Can the literary encounter between man and animal establish a space of the “Open” in which language can be re-evaluated and, after World War II, be saved? Is there a unique “animal poetology” which correlates to post-anthropocentric conceptions of the human? Because these writers disorient the reader’s perception of reality via figures of the animal, i.e., animals as both metaphors and as subjects, I develop what I would like to call an “animal poetology” that is unique to them. This animal poetology, which redefines Agamben’s concept of the open by giving it a postwar, language-critical dimension, includes a thorough critique of human language with regard to power structures and a speciesist language which, during the early 20th century, was a vehicle for ideology and discrimination. The encounter with the animal leads the human being to reflect on the limits of language and thus enables the establishment of a mode of being in which the encounter with the other – beyond a space of judgement and hierarchies –is once again possible.

In this dissertation I analyze how the postwar German writers Wolfdietrich Schnurre, Günter Eich, and Ilse Aichinger negotiate anthropocentric and speciesist discourses via animal figures by drawing on such posthumanist thinkers as Derrida, Agamben, and Deleuze & Guattari. The literary texts question a world view and discourse organized around the establishment of power that utilizes animal metaphors to turn living beings into objects (and could thus be called “carno-phallogocentric”). They thus react to the strict hierarchy of (gendered) man over animal and respond - in the aftermath of the Second World War – by highlighting instead the similarities between man and animal, such as creaturely existence and shared trauma. The analysis is guided by questions such as: How do the literary texts reflect and subvert the power discourses which surround man and animal? What is the role of language in this context? How does the animal, which is usually assumed to be mute, relate to the categories that are established in language? Does its place outside of language grant it capabilities the human cannot realize? Can the literary encounter between man and animal establish a space of the “Open” in which language can be re-evaluated and, after World War II, be saved? Is there a unique “animal poetology” which correlates to post-anthropocentric conceptions of the human? Because these writers disorient the reader’s perception of reality via figures of the animal, i.e., animals as both metaphors and as subjects, I develop what I would like to call an “animal poetology” that is unique to them. This animal poetology, which redefines Agamben’s concept of the open by giving it a postwar, language-critical dimension, includes a thorough critique of human language with regard to power structures and a speciesist language which, during the early 20th century, was a vehicle for ideology and discrimination. The encounter with the animal leads the human being to reflect on the limits of language and thus enables the establishment of a mode of being in which the encounter with the other – beyond a space of judgement and hierarchies –is once again possible.

The thesis presents an assumption that literature is inspired by reality (besides other factors), and that specific literary worlds may, to a certain extent, reflect the actual state of society. Historical events around the end of WWII and the consequent rapid social changes in Japan during late 1940s and 1950s had an indisputable impact on literary production at the time. The aim of this thesis is to affirm this assumption through an analysis of selected short stories and novels from the time concerned. The analysis focuses on remarks and on references about the period of time when the prose was written, and also on behavioral and attitude changes of its characters - prototypes of the Japanese society. The direct impact of historical and social transition on literary work may also be traced in the works' themes, motifs and narrative. We can thus, in many cases, follow the development of the Japanese postwar society from 1945 until the late 1950s, when the country started to prosper economically. The selection of the analysed pieces of literature includes two novels which did not only describe the time of their origination, but also had reverse effect on society. The impact hypothesis is thus confirmed and, what is more, we can see a mutual influence exercised by both, the society and art: The...

"With the Earth in Mind" responds to some of the most cutting-edge research in the field of ecocriticism, which centers on ecological loss and the grief that ensues. Ecocritics argue that ecological objects of loss abound--for instance, species are disappearing and landscapes are becoming increasingly compromised--and yet, such loss is often deemed "ungrievable." While humans regularly grieve human losses, we understand very little about how to genuinely grieve the loss of nonhuman being, natural environments, and ecological processes. My dissertation calls attention to our society's tendency to participate in superficial nature-nostalgia, rather than active and engaged environmental mourning, and ultimately activism. Herein, I investigate how an array of postwar and contemporary American novels represent a complex relationship between environmental degradation and mental illness. Literature, I suggest, is crucial to investigations of this problem because it can reveal the human consequences of ecological loss in a way that is unavailable to political, philosophical, scientific, and even psychological discourse.

Shirley Jackson’s House Trilogy: Domestic Gothic and Postwar Architectural Culture traite de la série de romans gothiques écrits par Shirley Jackson entre 1957 et 1962, de The Sundial à The Haunting of Hill House en passant par We Have Always Lived in the Castle. L’ouvrage situe son rapport au style gothique domestique dans le contexte du discours contemporain sur l’architecture et les formes de l’après-guerre. En particulier, cette étude fait valoir que sa trilogie « House » est une véritable intervention dans l’histoire de l’architecture et le discours domestique, Shirley Jackson utilisant une poétique gothique de l’espace pour évoquer la répétition spectrale des structures de pouvoir et de l’imaginaire idéologique liés à l’architecture. Grâce à son symbolisme architectural approfondi, elle explore la maison américaine et ses racines à travers les mythes et croyances les plus tenaces et les plus discordants du pays, suggérant que la maison elle-même, à la fois structure physique et symbole structurel, est un « fantôme » sociologique qui hante le projet domestique américain. L’auteure nous rappelle que l’architecture et la culture domestiques ne sont jamais neutres et que, bien plus qu’on ne l’a reconnu, sa fiction met en lumière les caractéristiques particulières des formes, des mouvements, des guerres de style et des discours architecturaux ayant activement contribué aux structures culturelles des genres, des classes et des races en Amérique. La carrière de Shirley Jackson, qui s’inscrit dans les deux décennies suivant la Seconde Guerre mondiale, coïncide avec le plus grand boom immobilier de l’histoire américaine, ainsi qu’avec l’une des périodes les plus expérimentales et les plus fébriles de l’architecture américaine. Pourtant, malgré les belles promesses et visions utopiques de cette époque, son architecture et sa culture domestique ont plutôt eu tendance à reproduire les structures de pouvoir oppressives du passé, qu’il s’agisse des normes de genre étouffantes de la maison familiale des années 1950 ou de la ségrégation dans les banlieues. Les maisons de madame Jackson se veulent des allégories gothiques de ce milieu et de sa structure temporelle « fantomatique », marquées par la routine et les revirements angoissants. Chacune des maisons de sa trilogie témoigne de ce que l’on pourrait appeler une « historicité hybride », évoluant à la fois vers le passé et vers l’avenir à travers l’architecture et le discours domestique américains. Dans les manoirs des années glorieuses et les constructions gothiques victoriennes de ses romans, l’auteure satirise l’architecture d’après-guerre et son futur nostalgique, suggérant que les maisons du présent restent hantées par les fantômes du passé. Contrairement à l’architecture de son époque, qui prétendait avoir banni ces fantômes, Shirley Jackson ne cherche pas à échapper aussi facilement aux spectres de l’histoire américaine et de l’assujettissement qui s’y rattache. Plutôt, elle entreprend de les affronter. Pour ce faire, elle pénètre dans la « maison hantée » de l’architecture et de la domesticité américaine : elle l’explore, l’examine, l’interroge et, finalement, la brûle, la met en pièces et la reconstruit. / Shirley Jackson’s House Trilogy: Domestic Gothic and Postwar Architectural Culture considers Shirley Jackson’s suite of gothic novels written between 1957 and 1962, from The Sundial to The Haunting of Hill House to We Have Always Lived in the Castle. It places her treatment of the Domestic Gothic alongside the actual architecture and design discourse of her postwar moment. In particular, it argues that her House Trilogy constitutes an intervention within architectural history and domestic discourse, with Jackson using a gothic poetics of space to suggest the spectral repetition of architecture’s structures of power and ideological imaginary. Through her extensive architectural symbolism, she probes the American house and its roots within the country’s most abiding myths and divisive beliefs, suggesting that the house itself, as both a physical structure and structuring symbol, is a sociological “ghost” that haunts the American domestic project. Jackson reminds us that domestic architecture and culture are never neutral and that, much more so than has been acknowledged, her fiction excavates the specific design features, movements, style wars, and architectural discourses which actively participated in the cultural constructions of gender, class, and race in America. Her writing career — from her first major publication in 1943 to her untimely death in 1965 — coincides with the largest housing boom in American history, as well as one of the most experimental and anxious periods in American architecture. And yet despite the era’s broad promises and utopian visions, its architecture and domestic culture tended to reproduce the oppressive power structures of the past, from the stifling gender norms of the 1950s family home to the segregated suburb. Jackson’s houses are gothic allegories of this milieu and its “ghostly” time structure of uncanny repetition and return. Each of the houses in her trilogy exhibits what might be called a “hybrid historicity,” gesturing at once backwards and forwards through American architecture and domestic discourse. Inside the Gilded Age mansions and Victorian Gothic piles of her novels, Jackson satirizes postwar architecture and its nostalgic futures, suggesting how the houses of the present remain haunted by the ghosts of the past. Unlike the architecture of her time, which claimed to have banished these ghosts, Jackson does not seek to escape the spectres of American history and subjecthood so easily. Instead, she endeavours to face them. In order to do so, she enters the “haunted house” of American architecture and domesticity itself — exploring it, examining it, interrogating it, and, eventually, burning it down, tearing it apart, and remaking it.

(in English): This thesis is devided into three parts. In the fist part, the development of literary discourse in Japan between Meiji and postwar period is described, with emphasis on the development of literary character and Subject in a work of literature. The second part theoretical apparatus for studiying and analyzing literary character is introduced, using contemporary literary theory. In that part relationship between literary character and its subject is also included. In the third part, these findings are applied on a specific literary works of Japanese postwar literature, on which development and changes of literary character are observed. The three analyzed works here are Kamen no kokuhaku by Mishima Yukio, Tanin no kao by Abe Kōbō and Man'en gan'nen no futtobōru by Ōe Kenzaburō.

En la tesi doctoral "La recepció de Heinrich Böll a Espanya" s'analitza el procés de divulgació a Espanya de l'obra de l'escriptor alemany contemporani que s'hi ha reeditat més vegades, i se'n proposa una periodització. L'estudi se centra en dos àmbits: la recepció externa de Böll (editorials que se n'ocupen, reaccions de la crítica i el món acadèmic); i l'anàlisi textual d'una selecció de traduccions seves al català i al castellà. En el primer apartat es parteix d'un enfocament sociològic i es compara la recepció espanyola i catalana amb l'alemanya; en el segon es pren com a base el model de la lingüista Juliane House per a l'avaluació de traduccions (que parteix també de la comparació amb els originals), adaptant-lo a l'estudi de textos narratius de ficció. S'ha intentat relacionar aquests dos enfocaments d'anàlisi sempre que les metodologies aplicades ho han permès. El treball no parteix d'un ànim avaluatiu, sinó descriptiu. / En la tesis doctoral "La recepción de Heinrich Böll en España" se analiza el proceso de divulgación de la obra del escritor alemán más veces reeditado en este país y se propone una periodización de ese proceso. El estudio se centra en dos ámbitos: la recepción externa de Böll (editoriales que se ocupan del autor, reacciones de la crítica y del mundo académico); y el análisis textual de una selección de traducciones de obras suyas al catalán y al castellano. En el primer apartado se parte de un enfoque sociológico y se compara la recepción española y la catalana con la alemana; en el segundo se toma como base el modelo de la lingüista Juliane House para la evaluación de traducciones (que parte también de la comparación con los originales), adaptándolo al estudio de textos narrativos de ficción. Se ha intentado relacionar ambos enfoques de análisis siempre que las metodologías aplicadas así lo han permitido. Este trabajo no parte de un ánimo evaluativo, sino descriptivo. / The doctoral thesis "The reception of Heinrich Böll in Spain" analyzes the spreading process of the work of the most published contemporary German writer in this country, and proposes a periodization for it. The work is based on two wide fields of study: on the one side the 'external reception' of the process (role of publishers and reactions of literary criticism, scholars and of the academic world) and on the other side the 'textual analysis' of some in Catalan and Spanish translated works of the author. For the first area a sociological perspective is adopted and the Spanish and Catalan processes are compared with the German one, for the second area the Juliane House model for translation quality assessment is used (which is also based on textual comparison) and adapted for the analysis of fictional narrative texts. I have attempted to relate the two perspectives of analysis as far as the methodological procedures have allowed it. My work does not pursue an evaluative aim, rather a descriptive one.