This thesis offers a thematic comparison of the ways in which fallen women are depicted by two writers: D. H. Lawrence (1885-1930) and Jorge Amado (1912- ). The comparison highlights the contrasts and similarities between two cultures and how they are reflected in literature. The focus of the thesis is on an examination of unconventional female characters and it illuminates more generally the ways in which literary creativity is shaped by the interaction between writers and their social milieus. The theme of the fallen woman provokes discussion of changing patterns of sexuality in two different societies, in two different periods of their historical development. It also involves the question of the social, political and cultural background of both England and Brazil, where these images of the fallen women were fabricated. The thesis argues that both Lawrence and Amado share tremendous sympathy for these women. The thesis is divided into eight chapters. Chapters Two through Six are divided into two parts. The analysis in Part One involves a number of Lawrence's novels: The White Peacock, Sons and Lovers, The Lost Girl, Aaron's Rod, Mr. Noon, `Sun', and three versions of Lady Chatterley's Lover. Part Two looks at the fallen woman in Amado's writing from 1934 to 1977, and the discussion focuses on Jubiabä, Terras do sem fim, Gabriela, cravo e canela, Dona Flor e seus dois maridos, Tereza Batista cansada de guerra and Tieta do Agreste. Female desire and its fulfilment in an unconventional way has been a central question in all these novels. Without a moral judgement, both Lawrence and Amado depict the female characters who are triumphant lovers, redeemed from the sense of sin or guilt by their passion. The depiction of these women highlights the class and gender differences. Both writers show how patriarchy plays a dominant role in keeping female sexuality under control in both English and Brazilian societies.

The thesis aims to explore the issue of representation and its limits in the works of Jorge Luis Borges and Italo Calvin. It focuses on the authors' treatments of the relationships between representational practices and the constraining limits of the human condition in perceiving reality. The introduction aims to discuss the methodology of the thesis and the theoretical positions of contemporary theorists regarding these relationships in order to contextualise and place the thesis in perspective. The conflictual tension between representation and the human condition will then be organised around five major themes, i. e. language, cognition, hermeneutics, spatial forms, and games, each of which will be a focal point of a chapter. While the first two chapters set out to describe how language and cognition prevent humans from attaining the real in its absolute state, the next three chapters will mainly discuss the implications and consequences of the unattainable real and human inadequacies. Each of these five chapters, in its different yet interconnected direction, features an extensive discussion of the issue of representational limits and a comparative analysis of what the authors manage to do in face of the issue. A final conclusion will summarise the similarities and differences in the ways both authors deal with the critical interactions between representation and the limits of the human condition.

This thesis undertakes a literary study of contemporary novels published by metropolitan French writers between 1980 and 2000, and analyses their representation of the changing relationship between France and North Africa. It begins by analysing the specificity of the situation in France, arguing that this is largely due to the functioning of the French Republican tradition, which equates inassimilable difference with inferiority. Consequently, France’s former colonies represent a privileged site of the Republican relationship with difference. This is particularly acute in the case of Algeria, by virtue of its former status as an integral part of the French Republic, and as a result of the large population of Algerian origin resident within France. It therefore offers a useful perspective from which to assess the extent to which French identities and systems of representation have been problematised in the post-colonial era. Part One examines contemporary French attitudes towards the wider Maghreb, including examples from Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia. Drawing on traditions which extend back to Montaigne and Montesquieu, it considers contemporary updating of Orientalist traditions within which French writers have explored other countries as seen from the Hexagon. Part Two concerns the singularity of Algeria’s relationship with France. By focusing on a case-study – representations of the Paris massacre of 17 October 1961 – the thesis draws wider conclusions about the way in which attitudes to the Algerian War are changing, and the key role potentially played by literary and other artistic representation. The final chapter looks at recollections of life in Algeria in the work of two women writers, Marie Cardinal and Hélène Cixous. It concludes that their early experience there of conflict and otherness was fundamental in shaping the development of their writing project, and that their literary memories destabilise notions of a unified ‘Frenchness’.

Although historians have acknowledged the importance of gender as a factor in the social and political life of post-revolutionary France, and bibliographical studies have revealed that vast quantities of memoirs were composed during the half century after the outbreak of the Revolution, the lives of women between the late 1790s and the 1830s, and the works in which they wrote about their lives and about the age in which they lived, have hitherto attracted relatively little attention from literary critics and historians. Previous research, moreover, has concentrated on women as writers of poetry and fiction, on the portrayal of women in novels, and on their position in society as it was defined by legislators, doctors, philosophers and the authors of manuals on female education and conduct. As a result, the diversity of women's writing and the complexity of their lives as historical subjects during this period have often been obscured. It is this diversity and complexity which are revealed by studying memoirs. This thesis examines women's memoirs from both a literary and a historical perspective, focusing on the relationship between gender, genre and historical circumstances. It argues that women wrote memoirs and wrote them in the way they did because of the political and social conditions of the age in which they lived. A short introduction outlines the reasons why the memoirs written by women in the first decades of the nineteenth century have been neglected: the preoccupation of literary scholars with memoirs of the ancien regime; the memoir's apparent lack of depth compared to 'true' or 'literary' autobiography; the weakness of most women's memoirs as sources of information on political and military affairs for the Revolution and Empire; and the narrow focus of recent women-centred histories. The rest of the thesis is an attempt to fill in some of these gaps.

The purpose of this thesis is to investigate the relationship between Elizabeth Gaskell and Romanticism, as shown in her shorter works. This investigation will be conducted in three principal ways: a consideration of Romanticism as a cultural phenomenon; a discussion of the cultural environment in which Gaskell was nurtured; and a critical appraisal of a selection of her shorter works. The first chapter is a consideration and discussion of Romanticism as a cultural shift which manifested itself through the closing decades of the eighteenth century and the early decades of the nineteenth century. Aspects of this cultural shift considered include literature, music and the visual arts. The second chapter focuses on biographical considerations with particular reference to Elizabeth Gaskell's family circumstances and the kind of education to which she had access. The remaining chapters offer a detailed discussion of a representative selection of her shorter works. These texts have been chosen to reveal her early collaboration with her husband William Gaskell; her knowledge of Romantic poets; and ways in which she developed as a writer. This development shows an engagement with an increasingly wide range of Romantic poets and a willingness on her part to engage with the darker side of Romanticism, especially through the use of Gothic techniques. The focus is on Gaskell's shorter works because these texts have received far less critical attention than her full-length novels and because of her contribution to the rise of the modem short story, as a genre distinct from the novel.

The present study compared the romantic relationships of adolescents with and without Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) with regard to romantic involvement, partner identity, relationship content, and relationship quality. A community sample of 58 participants (30 ADHD, 28 Comparison), ages 13-18, completed a standardized battery of questionnaires. Adolescents with ADHD reported having more romantic partners than their typically developing (TD) peers. Females with ADHD were found to have shorter romantic relationships than TD adolescents while males with ADHD reported their age of first intercourse to be nearly two years sooner than TD peers. Irrespective of gender, adolescents with ADHD had nearly double the number of lifetime sexual partners. When choosing a romantic partner, adolescents with ADHD placed less importance on aspects of their partner’s academic and social competence than TD adolescents. However, the romantic relationships of adolescents with and without ADHD did not differ on levels of aggression and relationship quality.

The present study compared the romantic relationships of adolescents with and without Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) with regard to romantic involvement, partner identity, relationship content, and relationship quality. A community sample of 58 participants (30 ADHD, 28 Comparison), ages 13-18, completed a standardized battery of questionnaires. Adolescents with ADHD reported having more romantic partners than their typically developing (TD) peers. Females with ADHD were found to have shorter romantic relationships than TD adolescents while males with ADHD reported their age of first intercourse to be nearly two years sooner than TD peers. Irrespective of gender, adolescents with ADHD had nearly double the number of lifetime sexual partners. When choosing a romantic partner, adolescents with ADHD placed less importance on aspects of their partner’s academic and social competence than TD adolescents. However, the romantic relationships of adolescents with and without ADHD did not differ on levels of aggression and relationship quality.

This study seeks to present a philologically accurate and complete edition of Isabella Andreini’s collection of lyric poetry published in 1601. The collection comprises a total of 368 poems: 196 sonnets, 125 madrigals, 6 canzoni, 10 canzonette morali, 2 sestine, 2 epithalamia, 2 centoni, 3 capitoli, 9 scherzi, 4 versi funerali and 9 egloghe boscherecce. The investigation conducted on Andreini’s poems has led us to discover that the variety of metrical structures that make up her collection are perfectly in line with the trends of the century, as confirmed by both Chiabrera’s lyric poetry and the second part of Marino’s Rime. The present study highlights Isabella’s unique poetic personality and her innovative position in literary history. The interpretation of Isabella Andreini’s poetry in the entire thesis revolves around the statement of poetics she makes in the very first poem of the collection. In fact, in her proemial sonnet Andreini declares the non-autobiographical nature of the fervours expressed by her poems, thus declaring that her compositions are simply a poetic exercise. This is made clear further when she states that following her ability as an actress, she wrote in varying style a thousand pages, thus making reference to the variety of styles and metrical schemes she adopted in her poems. Using similar language, she warns the readers of the different narrating voices in the collection, stating that just as on stage she played different parts as woman and others as man, so she did in her poems. It is clear that the special feature of Andreini’s lyrical style is amenable to her talent as an actress, and it was in fact due to her acting skills that she could ably impersonate a man, or conceal the identity of the narrator in her poems, using this ‘invention’ as a key element in her creative process.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2006. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 68-05, Section: A, page: 1960. Adviser: Elena Delgado. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 238-251) Available on microfilm from Pro Quest Information and Learning.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Yale University, 2006. / (UnM)AAI3214319. Adviser: Giuseppe Mazzotta. Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 67-04, Section: A, page: 1363.