Thesis (MFA)--Montana State University--Bozeman, 2008. / Typescript. Chairperson, Graduate Committee: Walter Metz. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 24-25).

Thesis (M.A.)--Montana State University--Bozeman, 2004. / Typescript. Chairperson, Graduate Committee: Amy Thomas. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 91-94).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of North Texas, 1992. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 226-235).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of North Texas, 1992. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 226-235).

Science has featured intermittently as the subject of theatrical texts since Thomas Shadwell first represented the Renaissance scientist in The Virtuoso (1676). The late twentieth century, however, saw an incremental growth in theatre's interest in scientific exploration, a growth concommitant with the vast impact that science has had on technology, warfare and the machinations of political power. The tensions generated by the disjuncture between the rationality of science and the unpredictability of human society have provided a rich source of material for theatrical investigation into the human experience. The purpose of this thesis is twofold: to reveal some of the thematic concerns that emerge in this genre, and to examine the interplay between theatre and science. Shelagh Stephenson's An Experiment with an Air Pump (1999) provides a useful point of focus for this inquiry. By parallelling two time periods, exposing the scientific objectification of women and, in addition, opening up contemporary ethics for negotiation with the audience, Stephenson calls into question the objectivity and certainty of history, gender and ethical conduct. These she presents as dynamic and evolving fields of discourse that contribute to, but do not solely constitute, knowledge and understanding of the world. An Experiment with an Air Pump also displays an awareness, through its metatheatricality, of theatre itself as an imaginative, subjective discourse which parallels the more intuitive and personal aspects of scientific exploration. The play functions as a microscope, bringing into focus a contemporary world in which traditional systems of understanding and knowledge need to be reassessed and reinvented.

Contemporary cultural practices sometimes appear dispassionate, distant and clinical—committed to conceptualism or formalism. Yet works by Jacques Roubaud and Jacques Jouet (both members of the Oulipo, a group of experimental writers in France that use formal and mathematical constraints to generate new literary forms) suggest a complex relationship between epistemology and affect. This thesis argues that contemporary literary and artistic projects that appropriate the tropes of clinical procedure and experimental constraint, suggest alternative forms of knowledge that implicate the body and emotions of the experiencing subject. In these projects, affect and emotion travel through reason, logic, system and constraint and are transformed in the process. Therefore any analysis of forms of affect in these works must also consider the procedural and scientific aspect, that which makes them "projects". My research, drawing on recent work that places emphasis on affect, considers these projects as test cases often mediating between a series of dichotomies such as reason/emotion and mathematics/poetry. Curiously it is in the encounter with epistemological systems that the value of affect, embodiment and subjectivity is underscored, and this thesis interrogates the various ways that contemporary projects articulate affect almost despite themselves. By passing through a scientific impulse to inquire about and test the validity of epistemological systems, these projects underscore the role of affect in producing knowledge. This thesis insists on the continued importance of the Oulipo in contemporary culture and seeks to provide a larger, interdisciplinary context for oulipian experimentation by analysing similar works in the visual arts. This thesis has four chapters, each based on the materials that the projects themselves investigate: 1) numbers and mathematics, 2) lists, collection, and census-data, 3) itineraries and travel, 4) weather and meteorology. Projects bear witness to what the poet Lyn Hejinian has called the romance of science: its rigor, patience, thoroughness and speculative imagination (Mirage, 1983, 24) In so doing, these projects reveal forms of affect that only emerge through this 'weird science' as literary and artistic experiments.

The aim of this thesis is to explore Simon Mawer's approach to science and to compare the roles of science in his novels Mendel's Dwarf and The Girl Who Fell from the Sky. The description of author's life and its influence on his work with emphasis on the scientific aspects is provided and his opinion on the relationship between science and literature given. The difference between fiction with aspects of science and science fiction is explained and other authors who deal with science in their fiction are exemplified. As Mendel's Dwarf employs genetics and eugenics and The Girl Who Fell from the Sky nuclear physics, the brief development of these scientific fields is described.

The ether was proposed by Enlightenment natural philosophers as an undetectable substance filling the space between the stars, that held them in place and supported the propagation of their light across space. In The Subtle Ether: A Memoir of the Space Between, insights from the history of the ether are threaded through my experience of clearing the family home after the death of my parents, and inform a reflection on ‘spaces between' memories, family members, and between ourselves and the world. This thesis both proposes and practises writing creative nonfiction as a method of first person enquiry that bears a familial resemblance to contemplative traditions, and that can acknowledge and mourn the hiddenness of things by writing into the ‘space between' ourselves and the world. Seeking a new synthesis which meshes experience, emotion, observation, and reflection on the insights of science, I employ mixed modes of lyrical, aesthetic, philosophical and personal inquiry. The central claim of this thesis is that awareness and acceptance of hiddenness as the nature of all things counteracts human hubris. While drawing from the example of continuous, open-ended questioning the scientific search for the ‘ether' offers, this thesis both argues and demonstrates that scientific and analytical methods alone cannot address this hiddenness, and that creative practice can be an effective way to think about and communicate what cannot be directly known. I argue that the desire for complete knowledge is a form of acquisitiveness and control, and that recognising the limited scope of human senses and reason undercuts human centrality and sole agency. Crafting an artwork out of contemplation of that which cannot be directly observed opens a space of reflection in which a paradoxical truth can be held in awareness; that the external reality we observe is other than us but also inseparable from us.

No description available.

Issues which faced Britain in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries include the effects of new scientific theories on traditional religious belief, the impact of technological innovation, the implications of mass literacy and the changing role of women. This thesis records how such issues are reflected in contemporary literature, focusing on the emergence of popular culture and the best seller, a term which conflates author and novel. The first English best seller was Marie Corelli and, by way of introduction, Part I offers a summary of her life and her novels and a critical overview of her work. Part II of the thesis examines how the theory of evolution undermined traditional religious belief and prompted the search for a new creed able to defy materialism and reconcile science and religion. Contemporary literature mirrors the consequent interest in spiritualism during the 1890s and the period immediately following the Great War, and critical readings of Corelli�s A Romance of Two Worlds and The Life Everlasting demonstrate that these novels - which form the nucleus of her personal theology, the Electric Creed - are based on selections from the New Testament, occultism and, in particular, science and spiritualism. Part III of the thesis looks at the emergence of �the woman question�, the corresponding backlash by conservatives and the ways in which these conflicting views are explored in the popular literature of the time. A critical examination of the novella, My Wonderful Wife, reveals how Corelli uses social Darwinism in an ambivalent critique of the New Woman. Several of Corelli�s essays are discussed, showing that her views about the role of women were complex. A critical analysis of The Secret Power engages with Corelli�s peculiar kind of feminism, which would deny women the vote but envisages female scientists inventing and operating airships in order to secure the future of the human race. Interest in Marie Corelli has re-emerged recently, particularly in occult and feminist circles. Corelli�s immense popularity also makes her an important figure in cultural studies. This thesis adds to the body of knowledge about Corelli in that it consciously endeavours to avoid spiritualist or feminist ideological frameworks, instead using contemporary science as a context for examining her work.