Thesis (Ph.D.)--York University, 2004. Graduate Programme in / Typescript. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 276-285). Also available on the Internet. MODE OF ACCESS via web browser by entering the following URL: http://wwwlib.umi.com/cr/yorku/fullcit?pNQ99238

This archivally-based dissertation re-contextualizes Robert Louis Stevenson’s South Pacific photographic collection (1888-1894), situating it in relation to his incomplete and posthumously published anthropological study of the Pacific, In the South Seas (1896); his unpublished pamphlet about Samoan colonial conflict, “A Samoan Scrapbook”; and his wife Fanny Stevenson’s diary The Cruise of the ‘Janet Nichol.’ Despite the recent and ample scholarship on Stevenson, few critics have engaged significantly with his photography. These (usually) anonymous photographs, taken by different members of the Stevenson family, were intended as illustrations for a projected book entitled The South Seas. Although this literary project was never completed, a dense photographic archive remains and discloses the many functions of photography during Stevenson’s Pacific career. In this truly interdisciplinary dissertation, I recognize the interdependent relationship between Stevenson’s Pacific non-fiction and his family’s photographic practice and stress that the photographic project was more important to Stevenson’s Pacific writing than has been acknowledged previously. This dissertation addresses the relationship between Stevenson’s photography and non-fiction writing, and demonstrates the important and underlying ways in which Stevenson’s photographs are related to his written accounts of Pacific Islanders and their societies. Furthermore, I contribute a series of close readings of individual (and previously unpublished) photographs, which I contextualize in their appropriate literary, cultural, and historical milieu. This dissertation contributes to a limited body of work that addresses the intersections of Pacific photography, anthropology, and Stevenson’s non-fiction. / Thesis (Ph.D, English) -- Queen's University, 2014-04-03 14:57:53.217

Tradução comentada da correspondência entre Henry James (Nova York, 1843 Londres, 1916) e Robert Louis Stevenson (Edimburgo, 1850 Samoa, 1894), inédita em português. A correspondência começou em dezembro de 1884, e se estendeu por uma década. As cartas revelam uma amizade algo improvável entre dois escritores muito diferentes, e um interesse compartilhado pela arte da ficção. O material analisado joga luz sobre uma discussão importante acerca da literatura em um momento decisivo, à véspera das transformações por que passaria no início do século XX. O ensaio introdutório visa reconstituir o curso dessa discussão e apontar algumas de suas implicações. / Annotated translation of the correspondence between Henry James (New York, 1843 London, 1916) and Robert Louis Stevenson (Edinburg, 1850 Samoa, 1894), unpublished in Portuguese. The correspondence began in December 1884 and lasted for a decade. The letters reveal an unlikely friendship between two very different writers and a shared concern for the art of fiction. The material examined sheds light on an important discussion about literature at a decisive moment, on the eve of the transformations that it was to undergo at the beginning of the twentieth century. The introductory essay seeks to recreate the course of this discussion and point some of its implications.

Tradução comentada da correspondência entre Henry James (Nova York, 1843 Londres, 1916) e Robert Louis Stevenson (Edimburgo, 1850 Samoa, 1894), inédita em português. A correspondência começou em dezembro de 1884, e se estendeu por uma década. As cartas revelam uma amizade algo improvável entre dois escritores muito diferentes, e um interesse compartilhado pela arte da ficção. O material analisado joga luz sobre uma discussão importante acerca da literatura em um momento decisivo, à véspera das transformações por que passaria no início do século XX. O ensaio introdutório visa reconstituir o curso dessa discussão e apontar algumas de suas implicações. / Annotated translation of the correspondence between Henry James (New York, 1843 London, 1916) and Robert Louis Stevenson (Edinburg, 1850 Samoa, 1894), unpublished in Portuguese. The correspondence began in December 1884 and lasted for a decade. The letters reveal an unlikely friendship between two very different writers and a shared concern for the art of fiction. The material examined sheds light on an important discussion about literature at a decisive moment, on the eve of the transformations that it was to undergo at the beginning of the twentieth century. The introductory essay seeks to recreate the course of this discussion and point some of its implications.

No description available.

In modern pop-culture, the prevalence of tropes is eminent. Without a knowledge of common themes and overgeneralizations, an author’s work will fail to attract a sufficient audience. One of these encompassing tropes includes the pirate trope. Pirate tropes range from physical aspects, such as eyepatches and tricornes, to the psychological implications of greed and villainy. Understanding the origin of tropes helps eliminate the over usage and transformation of tropes. The current study, a textual analysis, examines the popularized pirate novel Treasure Island and compares its’ tropes to the first collection of pirate biographies, A General History of Pyrates. The researcher hopes to discover many, if not all, of the tropes found in Treasure Island originated, through explicit evidence or variances, from A General History of Pyrates. The study will also utilize the New Historicism approach. Through New Historicism, the researcher will examine what historical accounts, including political, cultural, and economic strife, led Treasure Island to emerge as the most well-known pirate novel, rather than its predecessors. Thus far, the research has indicated that Treasure Island emerged as the prime pirate novel due to several factors, including America’s proximity to piracy during the 18th century. These associations include, but are not limited to: America’s trade system with pirates, proximity to pirate dwellings in North America, Americans’ desire of freedom associated with pirates, and democracy based politics practiced among outlaw captains and crewmembers. Stevenson illustrated these points in Treasure Island, which ties the novel’s timeless tropes with today’s conceptions of piracy. In addition, Stevenson used tropes from other novels associated with pirates including: Sir Walter Scott’s The Pirate; Washington Irving’s Tales of a Traveller; Captain Frederick Marryat’s “The Pirate”; Edgar Allen Poe’s “The Gold-Bug”; and several works by Daniel Defoe. Stevenson combined these tropes in Treasure Island while also using A General History of Pirates as a guide to ensure creditability. These tropes, brought to attention by Stevenson, continue to flourish in modern depictions of 18th century pirates.

Le roman d’aventures anglais du dix-neuvième siècle, héritier d’une tradition issue des écrits de Defoe, de Scott, et de Dumas, trouvera ses chefs-d’œuvre dans L’île au trésor et Enlevé! de Robert Louis Stevenson. Ces textes représentent à la fois l’apogée du genre, et sa réécriture, sa subversion. Joseph Conrad, dans ses fictions aventureuses, répond à cette remise en question des conventions génériques. Les deux auteurs doivent se situer par rapport aux débats littéraires de leur époque, et à la prédominance du réalisme qui touchait à sa fin. En France, au tournant du vingtième siècle, les critiques littéraires cherchent une alternative dans la fiction étrangère au roman moribond qu’ils voient autour d’eux. Face à cette « crise du roman », Marcel Schwob trouvera, en Robert Louis Stevenson, l’auteur qui lui semble donner forme, dans ses œuvres, à un roman d’aventures qui dépasse les oppositions stériles qui alimentent le débat sur l’avenir du roman en France. Cette rencontre littéraire est le point de départ d’une réflexion qui se poursuit dans les années 1900 dans les revues littéraires, où les critiques menés par André Gide commencent à élaborer une théorie du roman d’aventures. Ce concept de l’aventure permet d’étudier la réception de l’œuvre de Stevenson, et de celle de Conrad, dans la culture littéraire spécifique de la France au début du vingtième siècle. Dans la correspondance, les revues telles que La Revue des Deux Mondes, Le Mercure de France, La Nouvelle Revue Française, les traductions, et les éditions françaises des deux écrivains, un phénomène littéraire se dessine, un transfert culturel entre les grands écrivains cosmopolites de la période. / The English adventure novel of the nineteenth century, descending from a tradition shaped by the writings of Defoe, Scott, and Dumas, was to find its masterpieces in Tresaure Island and Kidnapped! by Robert Louis Stevenson. These texts represent both the high-point of the genre, and its rewriting and subversion. Joseph Conrad, in his adventurous fiction, responds to this problematizing of the conventions of the genre. Both authors had to situate themselves in relation to the literary debates of their era, and the soon-to-end dominance of realism. In France, at the turn of the twentieth century, literary critics were seeking an alternative in foreign fiction to the moribund novel that they had inherited. In the face of the this “crisis of the novel”, Marcel Schwob was to find, in Robert Louis Stevenson, the author who seemed to give form, in his fiction, to a novel of adventure which transcended the stale oppositions which had fed the debate on the future of the novel in France. This literary encounter is the starting point for a discussion which continued into the 1900s in the literary reviews, where critics led by André Gide begin to develop a theory of the roman d’aventures. This concept of adventure permits us to examine the reception of the works of Stevenson, and those of Conrad, in the literary culture specific to France at the beginning of the twentieth century. In writers’ correspondence, in literary reviews such as the Revue des Deux Mondes, the Mercure de France, or the Nouvelle Revue Française, in translations and French editions of the two authors, a literary phenomenon takes shape, a cultural transfer between the great cosmopolitan writers of the period.

La reconnaissance internationale de la littérature latino-américaine au XXe siècle a souvent été interprétée par la critique comme le résultat de l’influence du Modernisme, notamment du fait de la lecture, par les auteurs latino-américains, de James Joyce et William Faulkner. Certains auteurs du continent, pourtant, suivent des stratégies différentes : Borges, Bioy Casares et Cortázar utilisent les fondements de la littérature de genre (fantastique, policier, horreur, roman d’aventures) pour opérer une reconfiguration des équilibres entre le champ littéraire et les injonctions politiques, nationales et culturelles. Dans cette optique, le travail de Robert Louis Stevenson sur les publics populaires et le croisement des genres peut être vu comme une référence idéale, du fait de sa complexité et de son souci constant d’expérimentation. Cette étude a donc pour objectif de proposer une comparaison de ces stratégies, en utilisant les outils conceptuels et théoriques de la littérature mondiale. Stevenson, de cette manière, pourra apparaître comme un modèle herméneutique pour penser et résoudre certains dilemmes géographiques et littéraires. / The international recognition of Latin American literature during the twentieth century has been interpreted by critics as a result of a Modernist influence, mainly through the reading of James Joyce and William Faulkner. Some Latin American writers, though, pursued other strategies : Bioy Casares, Borges and Cortázar used the foundations of popular literature (fantastic, detective or horror literature, adventure novel) to reconfigure the relations between the literary field and the political, national and cultural injonctions. For that purpose, Robert Louis Stevenson’s work on popular audience and generic hybridity at the end of the Victorian era can be seen as an ideal point of reference, thanks to its complexity and constant experimentation. The aim of the present study is to analyse this process using world literature’s conceptual and theorical tools. Stevenson can thus be seen as a model to think and resolve some geographical and literary dilemmas.

Due to their inclusion of characters or objects that are the result of scientific investigation or subject to scientific scrutiny, Frankenstein, Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, and “The Colour Out of Space” are works that may be classified as science fiction. However, despite these narratives’ engagement with scientific practice, at crucial moments when scientific description would be expected, it is prominently absent. This report investigates the effects of these absences within the narratives and suggests that such absences do not appear due to the author’s unfamiliarity with the science of her or his era, but rather serve the positive purpose of creating the effect of the sublime through horror, which is most effective when the reader is forced to confront the unknown or unreadable. To corroborate this hypothesis, this report also examines the treatment of certain hybrids within the three stories and the way that the terror they inspire seems to rely on the ways in which they mingle the known with the unknown and resist coherent description. Overall, this report seeks to illuminate the complex interaction of the known and the not yet known that has enabled a fruitful interaction between science fiction and horror as genres since the inception of science fiction as a definable genre. / text

I have written a novel as a prequel and parallel narrative to Robert Louis Stevenson’s The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. The accompanying critical commentary draws on psychoanalytic and feminist perspectives, interpreted for “the complexities of fin‐de‐siècle British society” (Kucich, 2007, p.35), and examines my novel alongside other adaptations of Jekyll and Hyde. Although my work may invite comparisons with Neo‐Victorian novels such as works by Sarah Waters, Michael Cox’s The Meaning of Night (2006) or Michel Faber’s The Crimson Petal and the White (2002), I would argue that it has more in common with Jean Rhys’ Wide Sargasso Sea (1966) and Sophie Gee’s The Scandal of the Season (2008), both of which are prequels respectively to Jane Eyre and The Rape of the Lock. My research explores the potential origins of Jekyll’s decision to divide himself – the psychological roots of “his desire to reveal himself and his desire to conceal himself” (Laing, 1960, p.37). I have used this premise for both a psychoanalytic and a feminist perspective, drawing on the key works of Freud, specifically his writings on the unconscious and in relation to dreams, and Gilbert and Gubar’s seminal text The Madwoman in the Attic. The decision to use these texts as a framework was made using the rationale of two primary perspectives: Stevenson’s novel was inspired by a dream he had, which led me to Freud, whose theories fit so well with the manifestations of the Jekyll/Hyde personae, and whose analytic attention to sex and gender, with the argument that psychological and social forms of gender oppression cause a manufactured and oppressive role for women, is correlative with a feminist approach. Gilbert and Gubar’s critique analyses nineteenth century female writers, and it is my argument that Stevenson’s novel suggests that Jekyll’s rigid beliefs about his ‘other’ can be seen as both a resistance to the feminine within himself, and as an unconscious identification with women who felt suppressed in a patriarchal society and constrained by that society’s rigid gender expectations. This feature of late Victorian culture which Stevenson’s novel appears – on the surface ‐ to actively resist, is symbolised by the anonymous and one‐dimensional female characters within his novel, therefore this narrative motif is the starting point for my novel.