published_or_final_version / English Studies / Master / Master of Arts

This thesis examines the workings of “home” for the displaced individual in contemporary contexts: whether a counterpoint for disorientation arising from displacement, for example, or an attempt to assert control in the very process of identity negotiation across geographical distances, “home” in the novels of White Teeth by Zadie Smith and Ignorance by Milan Kundera, especially, offer an important study of the quest for home through an unexpected anchor of exile. The signifier of ultimate security and belonging in pre-modern eras, God has been destabilized in the post-war, contemporary context. “Home,” like the notional God, that is, has been destabilized by social forces of the diaspora, where “home,” in addition to the physical native place of birth or permanent place of shelter, can take on forms of imaginary exile/unbelonging within the same place without physical estrangement; as Martin Heidegger recognizes home can paradoxically be constituted as a form of control, namely from the inside out: from the existential feeling of “not being at home.” Samad, Irena and Josef of White Teeth and Ignorance, respectively, are analyzed on their alternative quests for control of identity. Replacing the trace of God with a trace now of “home,” Samad, Irena and Josef face limitless freedom outside their native and geographic contexts, which entails at the same time a sense of disorientation. They feel compelled to achieve meaningful identity based on a left-over notion of “home,” or, in the converse, to utilize what they control as “home” to avoid at least self-annihilation. This thesis contends in the contemporary narratives studied that there is a tendency for the individual to avoid estrangement or perceived unnatural “provisional” separations from the idea of “home”; and, second, therefore to seek to control of identity formation in the name of seeking “home.” Such control is desired by reflex of aversion to estrangement, which can be felt with the liberation from God or the distances from the geographies or assumptions of “home.” This thesis will expound, therefore, upon the stages of estrangement through, first, an initial and tentative placement of “home”; then, displacement through physical departure; exile revisited; attempts at re-placement along a nostalgic trace of belonging toward a “home” in the identity negotiation; and the “returnability” of the displaced person to adopt a native “home” after prolonged absence. In conclusion, considering the placement of the self somewhere, in order to gain control over identity inside an environment of dis-placement; in physical and updated “exile” away from place of birth; or even in the form of tragic imagination to be discussed, a trace of “home” (like an absent “god” in Waiting for Godot, for example) cannot be relinquished altogether as a point of reference for reinvention of identity while it can still be reinvented and updated at the same time. However, even this trace remains an illusion of the displaced person, reflecting an ache for certainty of roots as a point of reference for identity formation, rather than a route, running backwards or forwards, towards a feasible alternative “home.” / published_or_final_version / English / Master / Master of Philosophy

In this master's thesis, we wish to demonstrate that it is possible to read the history of the human psyche through the fairy tales collected by the Grimm brothers. In order to make such a demonstration, we have consulted the works of Carl Gustav Jung, but also of scholars from various disciplines such as anthropology, mythology, folklore and sociology. In the first chapter we briefly expose the main concepts of the Jungian theory, particularly that of the archetypes. In the second chapter, we present a survey of secondary literature which sheds light on the similarities and contrasts between fairy tales and myths, we enumerate the different theories regarding the origin of tales and we state and discuss interpretative theories similar or opposed to Jung's. In the third chapter we finally propose a Jungian type analysis of three Grimm tales from the Kinder-und Hausmarchen.

Thesis (M.A.)--York University, 2005. Graduate Programme in Psychology. / Typescript. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 235-272). Also available on the Internet. MODE OF ACCESS via web browser by entering the following URL: http://gateway.proquest.com/openurl?url%5Fver=Z39.88-2004&res%5Fdat=xri:pqdiss &rft_val_fmt=info:ofi/fmt:kev:mtx:dissertation&rft_dat=xri:pqdiss:MR11800

No description available.

Thesis (M.A.)--Bowling Green State University, 2008. / Document formatted into pages; contains v, 93 p. Includes bibliographical references.

published_or_final_version / English / Master / Master of Arts

No description available.

This research presents a psychological investigation of the characteristics of literary reading and the expertise associated with it. Specifically, it examines the kinds of knowledge about discourse which highly skilled readers use to generate a representation of a fictional narrative. At the same time it investigates their informal reasoning and the role that authorial intentions play in their interpretive strategies. / To investigate highly skilled literary readers who are trained to look at texts in multi-dimensional ways, this research applied a cognitive model of literary reading to analyze the readers' verbal protocols in terms of discursive patterns and reasoning strategies. / The findings suggest that as student readers gain knowledge and experience, their developing expertise is demonstrated by their ability to generate knowledge representations of the multiple components of a literary text. The construction of an explicit communicative context, however, is a hallmark of literary expertise and is instrumental in their reasoning since it frames the problem space for their text descriptions. Students, in contrast, appear ambivalent about the author-text relationship.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Tulsa, 1970. / Bibliography: leaves 233-235.