Denna uppsats syftar till att undersöka likheterna mellan den populära klassikern Alice's adventures in Wonderland och Berger och Luckmanns teori om verkligheten som en social konstruktion, samt Anthony Giddens modernitetsbegrepp. För att besvara mitt syfte på ett tydligare sätt har jag definierat och fokuserat på sex teman som återkommer i boken, i den tidigare forskningen och i teorierna, nämligen: vardagsverkligheten, identitet, rationalitet, tid, språk, samt ordning. Efter en genomgång av de teoretiska aspekter uppsatsen stödjer sig på har materialet analyserats med hjälp av en hermeneutisk cirkel; hur delarna ska tolkas har varit beroende av hur helheten tolkas och hur helheten tolkats har varit beroende av hur delarna tolkats. Uppmärksamhet vid återkommande beskrivningar som liknar varandra i betydelse har varit en viktig del av arbetet för att kunna ge en mer tillförlitlig helhetsförståelse. Resultatet av analysen visar att, även om det finns delar som kan tolkas annorlunda, så finns det starka likheter mellan boken och teorierna och boken kan förstås med dessa perspektiv. Med detta vill jag också peka framåt mot en meningsfull användning av kulturprodukter i fortsatt sociologisk forskning och undervisning.

Until recently Alice Cary's works have gone largely unnoticed by the literary community, and those critics who have examined her writings have recognized her primarily as a regionalist sketch writer. However, studying Cary's total body of fiction, including her novels and children's fiction as well as her sketches, and examining the influence of Christian Universalism upon her work reveals that Cary is a much more complex and nuanced writer than she has been previously understood to be. This dissertation explores the way that Cary questions stereotypes of accepted behavior specifically as they pertain to the identities of men, women, and children and offers a more flexible and inclusive religious identity rooted in Universalist ideals. In her depictions of women, Cary uses tropes from gothic stories, fairy tales, and sentimental fiction to criticize evangelical faith, Transcendentalism, and separate spheres-based stereotypes of women's behavior, and she undermines these stereotypes and replaces them with a Universalist emphasis on communal service and identity. Similarly, Cary's depictions of manhood are influenced by her desire to dissect preconceived notions of masculinity like that of the Self-Made Man and his earlier counterparts the Genteel Patriarch and the Heroic Artisan and replace these stereotypes with a Universalist model that embraces gender fluidity and sacrifice of self interest for the larger community. Cary's treatment of children continues her critique of nineteenth century stereotypes. Cary, unlike most early nineteenth century writers, exposes the dangers of romanticized visions of middle class children, which physically isolated children from their families and endangered working class children by increasing the demand for child labor; thus Cary's Universalism leads her to depict all children, not just the wealthy ones, as God's children and worthy of protection. Cary also uses children metaphorically to represent minorities and tentatively question the treatment of African Americans and Native Americans. Cary stands as a prime example of an author who has been overlooked and whose obscurity has hindered the construction of literary history, particularly in regard to the antebellum roots of realism and the influence of liberal religious belief on realistic fiction.

Thesis (M.A.)--Northern Michigan University, 2009. / "14-62709." Bibliography: leaves 54-59.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas at Austin, 2001. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references. Available also from UMI Company.

Thesis (M.A.)--University of North Carolina at Wilmington, 2004. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves : [97]-99).

Thesis (M.A.) in English--University of Maine, 2001. / Includes vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 196-199).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas at Austin, 2001. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 203-216). Available also in a digital version from Dissertation Abstracts.

Children's literature often does not hold the same weight in the studies of a culture as its big brother, the novel. However, as children's literature is written by adults, to convey information which is important for a child to learn in order to be a functioning member of that society, it can be analyzed in the same way novels are, to provide insight into the broad sweeping issues that concerned the adults of that era. Nineteenth-century British children's literature in particular reveals the deep-seated preoccupation the British Empire had with its eastern colonies, and shows how England's relationship to those colonies, particularly India, changed throughout the period. Beginning with the writing of Christina Rossetti's The Goblin Market in 1859, touching upon the Alice stories of Lewis Carroll in 1865 and 1871, and finishing with Frances Hodgson Burnett's The Secret Garden published in 1911, I show how these three works of children's fiction mirror the changing attitudes of Britain in regard to her eastern colonies. The orientalism found in these stories is a nuanced orientalism that reflects the pressures of the moment and the changing tide of public opinion.

To portray women without objectifying them is an intentional, political act. The art historical tradition is to paint women to extol their sexual beauty and to encourage possessiveness. There is a new guard of women painters who provide a counterpoint to this tradition by depicting a more multifaceted version of the female psyche. I align myself as an artist with them by attempting to broaden the depiction of women as subjects in painting. My subjects are beautiful and observable, but not consumable. They are more public than private and more iconic than intimate. My paintings have a strong connection to traditional portraiture in both style and technique. However, my subjects are contemporized through the use of modern fashion, unexpected facial expressions, unique color relationships and photographic cropping. / text

This work examines the relationship between moral philosophy and literature. I start by exploring a dialectic that exists between “prevalent view” theorists (i.e., D. D. Raphael and Onora O'Neill), who argue that the moral interest of literature lies in explicit deliberative arguments modeled in literary texts, and Diamondian realist theorists (i.e., Alice Crary, Cora Diamond and Iris Murdoch), who argue that the “prevalent view” is too narrow. Rather, the ways in which literature affects us emotionally can make ineliminable contributions to fully rational moral thought. In Chapter Two, I explore potential challenges to this position, drawn from the works of Simon Blackburn. He argues that there are epistemological concerns (it relies upon a faulty view of language), and moral concerns (specifically relativism) with Diamondian realism. I respond to these challenges in Chapter Three and conclude that Crary, Diamond, and Murdoch have given us a better picture of literature's moral value.