Thesis--University of Wisconsin. / Vita. Photocopy of typescript. Ann Arbor : University Microfilms, 1975, c1973. -- 21 cm. eContent provider-neutral record in process. Description based on print version record. Bibliography: leaves 328-335.

Texte remanié de: Dissertation--Erlangen-Nürnberg--Friedrich-Alexander-Universität, 2002. / Bibliogr. p. 261-274.

Through the Dust is a novel that takes place in the city of my birth: Istanbul. Using an earthquake as a driving force, the novel explores several themes: the ability to ‘know’ fictional characters and by extension real people, the role memory plays in how we view the world and each other, fate vs. free will, and isolation. Book One entitled ‘The Failure of Ali’ takes place before the earthquake and tells the story of Ali Toz who has hyperthymesia, a condition which prevents him from forgetting and often pulls him into the past. Each chapter alternates between the past and present, allowing us to follow Ali’s youth, his strained relationship with his mother, his time at the ‘school for the gifted’ and his marriage to Mina, while watching his present self wander through Istanbul. It is only when the past catches up with the present that we understand why Ali has come back to Istanbul after 20 years even after vowing never to do so, and why he is so desperate to find five old schoolmates. Book Two entitled ‘The 24th of July’ follows Ali’s five schoolmates through the twenty-four hours before the earthquake happens. Kerim is a surgeon who is having a particularly bad day. Elif is a telemarketer who has been played by her boss and is hated by everyone in her office. Ayse is cheating on her husband in an effort to find the love he promised her she would feel. Omer is going to propose to the love of his life and Didem is stuck in a bar-tending job so she can be with an emotionally destructive man. As the characters go through their day, completely immersed in their own problems, the earthquake strikes the city. Book Three entitled ‘Mary Was Here’ takes place the day after the earthquake and tells the story of Mary, a young woman who has a fatal brain tumor that is making her forget everything. In a parallel voyage to Ali’s, Mary arrives in Istanbul by hitching a ride on an aid bus coming in from Bulgaria. We don’t know why she has come to the city or who she is looking for, but she seems to believe that whoever it is may be able to help her. Early into her arrival, Mary loses her belongings and finds herself alone in the city. One by one, she encounters the five characters from Part Two. It is with Kerim that she creates a real bond and in the midst of all the chaos Mary gets swept along and ends up working as a nurse in a make-shift burn unit by the Golden Horn. The critical element of the thesis, entitled “In The Driver’s Seat: Decoding the Narrative Style of Muriel Spark” focuses on the narrative style of Muriel Spark in the eeriest of her novels. Through an investigation of The Driver’s Seat, I will endeavor to show the narrative and thematic complexity that lies within this seemingly simple and much overlooked novel, and how her techniques influenced my own work.

In this thesis I read a selection of novels by the Scottish writer Muriel Spark as participating in a broader ‘spatialization' of fictional and aesthetic production consolidated during the 1970s, through which they refract the decade's socio-cultural change. My intention is to establish a richer historical and theoretical context than that in which Spark's fiction has traditionally been understood, such that its distinctiveness will both emerge from and in turn shed light upon this wider background. In particular, the stylized, economical spatiality of Spark's work in this period seems at odds with the most influential accounts of spatialization as either an attenuation of historicity or an expression of an unconscious and broadly realist ‘mapping' impulse (these being the poles of Fredric Jameson's diagnoses of the spatial turn). What I consider Spark's more reflexive ‘miniaturism' reaches towards a condensation of the historical referent, while bringing into focus the discrepancy between container and contained; the playful collision of spatial scales in these postmodern allegories grants them a fabulist and gendered dimension distinct from Jameson's more expansive and totalizing ‘cognitive mapping'. Beyond situating Spark within a pre-existing context, then, approaching these novels theoretically and historically opens up a different perspective on the ‘spatial form' of much postmodern fiction. More broadly, I argue that it is through this parallel formal evolution within the longer history of the novel, with its particular limits and potentials for fiction's ‘utopian imagination', that these texts critically mediate (and not merely reflect) a perceived ‘cultural closure' in the years after 1968 – a teleological spatial metaphor which recent histories of the seventies have begun to contest.

Made available in DSpace on 2014-06-11T19:32:48Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 0 Previous issue date: 2012-11-22Bitstream added on 2014-06-13T18:44:14Z : No. of bitstreams: 1 ask_cca_dr_assis.pdf: 1033732 bytes, checksum: 63cf4cc3313aa02c9d461c59cd883799 (MD5) / Secretaria de Estado de Educação de São Paulo / Este trabalho tem por objetivo realizar uma leitura dos contos da autora escocesa Muriel Spark, nos quais a importância das práticas narrarativas se manifesta como a característica mais evidente: a estrutura narrativa e as construções significativas agem em favor da expressão de um modo de estar no mundo e, mais regularmente, representam também o grande desafio que a leitura poderá abrigar ao tratar das personagens, em especial as femininas. No entanto, é necessária a identificação das referências que constituem os mundos ficcionais, geralmente atreladas à realidade e à proposição de novas formas de inteligibilidade. Em geral, estas formas estão implícitas no texto e cabe às leitoras e aos leitores acessá-las; para que isto ocorra, devemos reconhecer que estrutura narrativa e caracterização de personagens encontram-se intrinsecamente relacionadas. Por meio dos contos sparkianos, é possível ter uma ampla visão da obra da autora e, ao mesmo tempo, das práticas e experiências das mulheres historicamente situadas. Assim, a tese que defendemos é a de que os contos de Muriel Spark, com base nas construções significativas presentes no texto, permitem um diálogo entre o texto e a realidade sob o enfoque da personagem feminina. Servindo-se das referências adequadas, a leitura dos contos sparkianos pode contribuir para a compreensão das formas de interação das mulheres em seu próprio grupo e com o grupo dos homens / This study aims to perform a reading of the short stories of Scottish author Muriel Spark, in which the importance of the narrative practices manifests itself as their most evident feature: the narrative structure and the building of significances may favor the expression of a mode of being in the world and, more regularly, they also represent the great challenge that reading can accommodate concerning the characters, especially the female ones. However, it is necessary to identify the references that constitute the fictional worlds, usually tied to reality and proposing new forms of intelligibility. In general, these forms are implicit in the text and it is a readers’ task to access them; for this to occur, we must recognize that narrative structure and characterization are intrinsically linked. Through the sparkian characters it is possible to get a broad overview of the work of the author and, at the same time, the practices and experiences of women historically situated. Thus, the thesis we defend is that the stories written by Muriel Spark, based on significant buildings in the text, enable a dialogue between text and reality from the perspective of female characters. With the appropriate references, the reading of those sparkian short stories can contribute to the understanding of the ways by which women interact within their own group and with the male group

This thesis is an investigation into the nature of the 'postmodern' narrative strategies and fictional methods in the work of two British Catholic writers. The work of David Lodge and Muriel Spark is here taken as an example ofthe 'Catholic novel'. In order to determine ifthe overlap ofpostmodern. and Christian-influenced narrative strategies constitutes more than a convergence or coincidence of formal concerns, narrative form in these novels is analyzed in the light of neo-Tho mist and Tho mist aesthetics, a traditional Catholic Christian theory of the arts. The 'postmodern' in these 'Christian' texts becomes largely a coincidence of terminology. Narrative forms which can be classified as 'postmodern' can also be categorized using the terminology of Thomas Aquinas. The apparent similarities betray radically divergent metaphysical presuppositions, however. The nature of the Catholic 'difference' lies in the way postmodern forms are used to challenge the metaphysical bases of those forms. / English Studies / M.A. (English)

This thesis is an investigation into the nature of the 'postmodern' narrative strategies and fictional methods in the work of two British Catholic writers. The work of David Lodge and Muriel Spark is here taken as an example ofthe 'Catholic novel'. In order to determine ifthe overlap ofpostmodern. and Christian-influenced narrative strategies constitutes more than a convergence or coincidence of formal concerns, narrative form in these novels is analyzed in the light of neo-Tho mist and Tho mist aesthetics, a traditional Catholic Christian theory of the arts. The 'postmodern' in these 'Christian' texts becomes largely a coincidence of terminology. Narrative forms which can be classified as 'postmodern' can also be categorized using the terminology of Thomas Aquinas. The apparent similarities betray radically divergent metaphysical presuppositions, however. The nature of the Catholic 'difference' lies in the way postmodern forms are used to challenge the metaphysical bases of those forms. / English Studies / M.A. (English)