Thesis (M. A.)--Texas A&M University, 2005. / "Major Subject: Comparative Literature" Title from author supplied metadata (automated record created on Apr. 27, 2007.) Vita. Abstract. Includes bibliographical references.

The thesis comprises eight chapters. The first three investigate the development of an anti-heroic attitude towards mankind in general, and the warrior archetype in particular, in Augustinian theology, the mystery cycles and the Tudor morality play respectively. In the fourth chapter this humanistically minimizing, essentially tragic, vision of the heroic protagonist is contrasted with the more overtly heroic attitude towards the epic hero found in Elizabethan poetic theory and heroic poetry and also operative in Henry V. It is suggested, however, that the heroic image developed in Henry V is atypical of Shakespeare's depiction of the Warrior, particularly in his heroic tragedies, where the career of the protagonist more significantly echoes the formal experience of the morality protagonist in its insistence on the moral ambivalence of the warrior and the failure of the world or his heroic ideals to live up to the faith that he put in them. The second half of the study goes on to develop this intuition concerning the formal debt which the Shakespearean tragic hero owed to the heroic metaphor of the morality tradition. lt is further suggested, however, that the anti-heroic awareness fostered by the early drama helped to alert Shakespeare to the anti-heroic elements which were also latent in classical literature, so that he not only showed himself to be aware of the ideas which underlay the classical anti-heroic, but he was able to make use of the formal expression of that anti-heroic aspect of classical literature in his own tragedies. Thus the succeeding chapters seek to illustrate the formal and intellectual influence of Ovid's Metamorphoses on Titus Andronicus, of the Aeneid on Hamlet, the Iliad and the medieval matter of Troy on Troilus and Cressida and Seneca's Hercules Furens on Macbeth. The method employed is typically the illustration of significant-perhaps symbolic-episodes of earlier literature, and how they can be seen to shape the themes and forms of Shakespeare's plays. In effect it is suggested that the morality metaphor unites with classical metaphor(s) to produce complex heroic images befitting Shakespeare's status as a morally aware artist living during the convergence of medieval-Christian and Renaissance culture. lt should be stated, however, that one further theme of the study is that Shakespeare acknowledged the distinction bet-ween Christian and classical-pagan civilizations, and (along lines first outlined by Augustine) recognized the differing social, moral and eschatological imperatives which each milieu put on its warrior figures. Thus it is argued, although he was quite willing to adapt morality play forms to pagan plays and pagan forms to Christian plays, he did so along-side the recognition that for the heroic protagonist the metaphorical implications of his heroic career were radically different, in a Christian world than in one where revelation and the possibility of salvation had no place.

This thesis explores literary representations in white male discourse of the voices of the racial Other. Tracing a chronological development from colonial to postcolonial texts, it closely analyzes the wider political and ethical implications of these representations in Daniel Defoe’s "Robinson Crusoe", Joseph Conrad’s "Heart of Darkness", Albert Camus’ "L’Étranger" and ‘L’Hôte’, J.M. Coetzee’s "Foe" and "Disgrace", J.M.G. Le Clézio’s "Onitsha" and Cormac McCarthy’s "No Country for Old Men". At the core of my research is the question how can white male writers resist the dominance of Eurocentric consciousness and be a witness to the racial Other and articulate his/her voice without recourse to prejudice and stereotyping. The representation of the Other transitions from the anonymity of slavery in colonial texts to identified and identifiable individuals in postcolonial writings. Through these novels the impact of national Independence, freedom from racial oppression and immigration − all legal expressions of freely articulated voice − can be observed on the traditional colonial power relationship. As a consequence, dominated, silenced voices gradually develop into silent refusals of acquiescence that withhold information. The impact of such resistance is frequently paralleled by a crisis of male identity and the declining stature of the white male protagonists who suffer imprisonment, death, sickness, confusion or defeat, as gestures symbolic of the decline of white patriarchal systems and challenges to accepted concepts of identity, humanity, justice, good and evil. In a globalized world the category of the Other encourages us to think beyond the known and recognize the validity of ideologies that challenge the authority of our own.

Voorwoord: In die loop van hierdie studie word dit op enkele plekke duidelik gestel dat die littérature engagée nie beperk is tot die engere "politiek" nie, en dat 'n teks met 'n religieuse tema of 'n teks waarin maatskaplike wantoestande aan die lig gebring word, ook engagé kan wees. Die politiek laat hom egter as magsfaktor oor so 'n wye gebied geld dat nuanserings nie altyd moontlik is nie; 'n teks met 'n oorwegend "religieuse tema" kan politieke implikasies hê. Dit bring verder mee dat selfs 'n teks of 'n bundel waarin géén politieke verwysing voorkom nie, na 'n polities-gemotiveerde keuse teruggevoer word. Die kern van die saak is dat 'n teks tot hierdie subgenre gereken kan word slegs wanneer dit minder of meer uitdruklik kontesteer, of die klimaat skep vir kontestering, wat meebring dat 'n imperatief tot verandering in die teks aanwesig moet wees. Hierdie appél tot verandering rig hom in die beduidendste werke van die genre verbý die partypolitiek, rig hom tot die mens wat (met of sonder sy keuse) onderhewig is aan politieke gebeure. Kontestering (verset) impl iseer ook meebelewing, solidariteit en vereenselwiging. Dit is die oogmerk van hierdie studie om na te gaan hoe aspekte van hierdie vereenselwiging die engagement en die universele waarheid as temamoment en selfs as struktuurfaktor in homself kan verenig. Vanweë die omvang van die teoretiese inset van die studie word tekste in hoofsaak eksemplaries gebruik - déégliker struktulrele analises waarin die estetiese steeds sáám met die die maatskaplik-etiese dimensie ondersoek word, verg 'n afsonderlike studie.

This dissertation is a comparative study of the properties that distinguish Chinese fiction from its counterpart in the West. I argue that the nonmimetic nature of Chinese literary theory is derived from the world view epitomized in the concept of Dao as opposed to the Western definition of truth. Instead of representing dao, wen X (writing) is born out of, and remains part of, dao. The way in which orthodox Confucianist discourse takes shape and operates decides that fiction cannot have a cognitive function and, therefore, determines its low status in China. The Chinese term "xiao shuo" (small talk), which is always translated as "fiction," has clearly different associations from the Western word. Unlike "fiction," which mainly denotes the dualism of truth and falsehood, xiao shuo primarily signifies a value judgment. Xiao shuo is neither purely literature nor a genre in pre-modern China. Subsequently I propose that concepts such as "you xi" (game) or "qi" (the strange) are more appropriate constructs for approaching Chinese fiction than "realism" or any other Western term. On the basis of analysis of these indigenous terms, I conclude that we should recover the lost traditional criticism, which represents a unique understanding of pre-modern Chinese fiction.

In this study we examine the origins, development and distribution (popularity) of emblem books throughout western Europe during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Inherent in such a study is the clarification of the differences between and relationships among emblems, empresas, epigrams and conceits. After a brief review of pertinent traditional and modern criticism on Gongora, we study nine sonnets, a "cancion," the Soledad primera and the Polifemo for emblematic allusions and/or content. All of these works seem to have emblematic allusions; however, many (at least six sonnets, the "cancion" and the beginning of the Soledad primera) are shown to be what we shall call "emblemorphic poems," i.e., poems that are based on specific emblems (one from Cesare Ripa and the others from Andreas Alciati) and then "metamorphosed" into unique, Gongoristic poems. By combining classical mythology, emblematic conceits and autobiographical material, Gongora uses a variety of literary techniques (formulae of elocution, latinization of the lexical and syntactical units, hyperbaton, hyperbole, etc.) to create his own personalized "emblems" or emblemorphic poems. Based upon these findings, we propose at least nine more sonnets as possible emblemorphic sonnets which for a variety of reasons (themes, allusions, "architecture" (form), etc.) would lend themselves to this sort of analysis. We also suggest that the Soledades, the Polifemo and other "major" works be studied "in the light of the emblem." Thus, it can be concluded that Luis de Gongora was, like many of his contemporaries, greatly influenced by the existent emblem literature of his time and, in fact, was one of the more active proponents of crafting these curious visual and conceptual images into his own repertoire of poetic materials and techniques. This then confirms the title of our study and the appropriateness of the label we apply to this complex baroque poet, "Gongora emblematico."

This project engages a cultural studies approach to translation. I investigate different thematic issues, each of which underscores the underpinning force of cultural translation. Chapter 1 serves as a theoretical background to the entire work, in which I review the development of translation studies in the Anglo-American world and attempt to connect it to subject theory, cultural theory, and social critical theory. The main aim is to show how translation constitutes and mediates subject (re)formation and social justice. From the view of translation as constitutive of political and cultural processes, Chapter 2 tells the history of translation in Vietnam while critiquing Homi Bhabha's notions of cultural translation, hybridity, and ambivalence. I argue that the Vietnamese, as historical colonized subjects, have always been hybrid and ambivalent in regard to their language, culture, and identity. The specific acts of translation that the Vietnamese engaged in throughout their history show that Vietnam during French rule was a site of cultural translation in which both the colonized and the colonizer participated in the mediation and negotiation of their identities. Chapter 3 presents a shift in focus, from cultural translation in the colonial context to the postcolonial resignifications of femininity. In a culture of perpetual translation, the Vietnamese woman is constantly resignified to suite emerging political conditions. In this chapter, I examine an array of texts from different genres—poetry, fiction, and film—to criticize Judith Bulter's notion of gender performativity. A feminist politics that aims to counter the regulatory discourse of femininity, I argue, needs to attend to the powerful mechanism of resignification, not as a basis of resistance, but as a form of suppression. The traditional binary of power as essentializing and resistance as de-essentializing does not work in the Vietnamese context. Continuing the line of gender studies, Chapter 4 enunciates a specific strategy for translating Annie Proulx's Brokeback Mountain into contemporary Vietnamese culture. Based on my cultural analysis of the discursive displacement of translation and homosexuality, I propose to use domesticating translation, against Lawrence Venuti's politics of foreignizing, as a way to counter the displacement and reinstate both homosexuality and translation itself.

In this dissertation I have made an attempt to follow up on Peter Baker's idea of Generative Criticism. Generative Criticism, as Baker proposes in Modern Poetic Practice (1986), aims at a deeper understanding of poetry by incorporating the poet's point of view in literary analysis. I have chosen Janos Pilinszky's work for my investigations into the issue. Pilinszky is one of the most distinguished Hungarian poets of the twentieth century, and certainly one of the most original ones even worldwide. He seemed an ideal subject for my study, because he builds a poetic world out of the lowest number of elements possible, while maintaining an atmospheric presence that poets using a lot more tools have not achieved. Studying such limited material one can reach consistency, accuracy, and access the whole of his poetry more easily than by trying to make sense of more complex texts. At first, I had to clarify my point of view, which I did by introducing a heuristic environment with an appropriate hermeneutics and epistemology. I coordinated my initial tenets in relation to contemporary phenomenology (Husserl), dialectics (Hegel, Aristotle), semiotics (Kristeva), and Rhetorical Criticism (Baker) in Chapter One and Sections 1-3 and in Chapter Two. I probed the workings of the system set up by applying it deductively to the poet's creative act as well as to the resulting poems. I used inductive argument when trying to coordinate the poet's point of view from material written on, or by the poet himself. Ideally, the resulting conclusions materialized as the synthesis of the combination of induction and deduction (Sections 3-7 of Chapter Two, the whole Chapter Three, and Sections 1-4 of Chapter Four). The synthesis I made by proving that imitation of the poet is possible by employing the modules of his experience and his poetry (Section 5 and 6 in Chapter Five). Finally, after placing Generative Criticism, as I understand it, in the context of rhetoric (Aristotle, Lanham), former attempts (Baker), and as a possible part of eclectic approaches (Rosenthal), I endeavored to identify some modern poetic tools from a Generative point of view (Chapter Six). In conclusion I found that the analysis of my limited material may have led to the formulation of rules and categories that can apply to modern poets at a much larger scale.

This study is focused on the works of Cormac McCarthy and their interpretations; it also is concerned with the hermeneutical practice itself. I explore three types of interpretation performed on McCarthy's texts—scholarly essays, translations, and journalistic articles—with an eye to how critics, translators and reviewers have understood this author's work in the United States as well as in Germany and France. After presenting a panoply of interpretations by American critics interspersed with my own observations on the five McCarthy texts to be investigated ( Outer Dark, Suttree, Blood Meridian, All the Pretty Horses and The Crossing), I offer an overview of translation theory and the translator's role within that discipline. I then perform a comparative reading of the works in English, German and French, but where I expected divergent interpretations, I instead found striking similarities: the translations were remarkably close to my own understanding of McCarthy's texts; only on rare occasions did the German or French renderings suggest meanings different from those I and American scholars had found. This result led me to investigate how German and French reviewers interpreted the translated texts and here too I found overwhelming similarities between how European critics and their American counterparts seemed to understand McCarthy's works. Given the indeterminacy of language(s) and of textual meaning—tenets to which I had always adhered—this was not an outcome I anticipated. How could the Atlantic not be large enough to engender varied readings? The logical if somewhat maligned answer seemed to me to lie in authorial intention. To reassert the author's importance in the creation of a literary text is then one of the goals of this study, but while this project concludes with an argument for an intentionalist interpretation of McCarthy's singular prose, it does not erase the winding path it took to arrive at that conclusion. In the end, this paper is as much a testament to the ways in which I was forced to question and reevaluate my thinking about literary interpretation as it is a discussion of the wordsmith McCarthy.

Burning Down the Grief Motel is a collection of poems that combines explorations of a central speaker's personal grief, his transition into fatherhood, and his negotiations with identity in relation to landscape, folklore, local history, and issues of class. As a whole, the collection seeks to explore the different contexts in which traditional modes of masculinity become self-destructive in ways that disrupt those contexts and the people who must live within their boundaries. / A Dissertation submitted to the Department of English in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. / Spring Semester, 2015. / March 18, 2015. / literature, Poetry, Southern / Includes bibliographical references. / James Kimbrell, Professor Directing Dissertation; Juan Carlos Galeano, University Representative; Erin Belieu, Committee Member; Susan Ward, Committee Member.