Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Oregon, 2006. / Typescript. Includes vita and abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 502-527). Also available for download via the World Wide Web; free to University of Oregon users.

"Scenes of Reading: Forgotten Antebellum Readers, Self-Representation, and the Transatlantic Reprint Industry" argues that African-American and white working-class people participated in transatlantic antebellum literary culture in a far more central and sophisticated manner than has been assumed. Employing "scenes" of reading--self-representations of what, where, how, and why African Americans and the white working classes read--as primary texts, this dissertation asserts that these groups, in differing degrees and under distinct circumstances, were able to learn to read, to appropriate reading materials from mainstream literary culture, and, most importantly, to transform their acts of reading into acts of politicized self-representation. Their literary practice was possible because of the transatlantic reprint industry that flourished during the antebellum era resulting from the lack of a copyright agreement between Britain and America. This meant that in both nations, texts from across the Atlantic could be reprinted and sold more cheaply than domestic texts, making novels, poetry, and non-fiction available to wider readerships. Reprinted texts in multiple inexpensive formats were ubiquitous, allowing even marginalized readers to encounter them in the context of everyday life. More importantly, reprinted texts legally belonged to no one, meaning that they could be appropriated by anyone, including black and working-class groups whose political values threatened to undermine accepted social hierarchies. With no permission or payment required for reprinting, reprints were easily grafted into new ideological contexts, meaning that black and working-class newspapers had access to free literary content that they could employ toward counter-hegemonical self-representations. The practices and implications of reprinting enabled free blacks, slaves, and white workers to participate in mainstream literary culture subversively through "underground literacy": set of literary practices that were counter-cultural yet also dependent upon the apparatus of mainstream print culture in order to carry out subversive aims. Reading reprinted texts and assimilating them into the context of their everyday lives, African Americans and the white working classes in America and Britain formed similar strategies for practicing literacy beneath the surface of a transatlantic print culture. This dissertation examines scenes of reading that exemplify these underground reading strategies and represent the literacy of these groups. / McAnulty College and Graduate School of Liberal Arts; / English / PhD; / Dissertation;

This study of the contribution of working-class fiction to the debate on class conflict in Britain is based on four novels written by two ex-miners between 1929 and 1939: The Gate of a Strange Field (1929) and Last Cage Down (1935), by Harold Heslop, and Cwmardy (1937) and We Live (1939), by Lewis Jones. These novels represent, in work­ing-class fiction, a unique combination of an archetypal working-class occupation, min­ing, with central features of the 1930s cultural discourse, the role of political ideology in literature. This study takes as its starting point the perception of these novels as having a spe­cifically communicative function in the social and cultural context of the 1930s. It recognises their role in articulating the radical voice of the miner in the conflict of inter­ests between capital and labour as exemplified by the coal industry. I also argue that the novels are influenced by the polarised discourse of British social and cultural life in this period. Cultural context is not seen simply as a reflection of 1930s attitudes and ideas, but also in relation to a tradition of working-class and miners' fiction that appropriates accepted literary forms for specific needs, in this case, the articulation of miners' griev­ances in the 1930s, seen in terms of class conflict. This conjuncture of historical and contemporary cultural discourses acts as the organising principle of the first part of this study. The four novels are analysed in terms of a sub-genre classification of the realist novel: the roman à thèse. This approach facilitates an analysis focusing on the deter­mining influence of ideology as a totalising concept affecting the structure, content and message of these novels. I argue that the prime purpose of these novels is to constrain interpretation to a desired outcome, as represented by the doctrine inherent in the text. Two types of roman à thèse are distinguished: the apprenticeship, which builds on the precepts of the Bildungsroman, and the confrontational, which is non-transformational, depicting scenes of class conflict. The apprenticeship model consists of two types of exemplary narrative: positive and negative. This study demonstrates that, by applying the analytical model of a positive apprenticeship to Cwmardy, the narrative structures of the novel limit the potential for interpretation to the doctrinal assumptions underlying the text. The reader is expected to identify with the class-conscious insights gained by the hero. The Gate of a Strange Field, in contrast, acts as a cautionary tale, illustrating the consequences of embracing a false doctrine. Both We Live and Last Cage Down are considered as novels of confrontation in which the primary conflict between capital and labour is modified by a secondary conflict within labour on the question of ways and means of achieving a socialist society. The conclusion reached is that these novels can only be understood in relation to the polarised social and cultural attitudes of the 1930s, and in relation to their place in a history of miners' literature that appropriates literary forms to engage in a debate on the class nature of British society. / digitalisering@umu

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Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas at Austin, 2000. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 581-604). Available also in a digital version from Dissertation Abstracts.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Nevada, Reno, 2008. / "May, 2009." Includes bibliographical references (leaves 195-212). Library also has microfilm. Ann Arbor, Mich. : ProQuest Information and Learning Company, [2009]. 1 microfilm reel ; 35 mm. Online version available on the World Wide Web.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Florida, 2006. / Title from title page of source document. Document formatted into pages; contains 228 pages. Includes vita. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--ha-Universiṭah ha-ʻIvrit bi-Yerushalayim, Jerusalem, 1980. / Abstract in English. Title on added t.p.: The status of the labourer and the relationship between employers and employees in the Talmudic and Midrashic literature. Errata slip inserted. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 197-208).

"This report was originally submitted as a thesis at the University of British Columbia ..." Thesis at University of British Columbia on planning future mining communities that would depend for their existence solely on the exploitation of mineral deposits. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 92-106).

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