Thesis (Ph. D.)--Columbia University, 1899. / Published also as Columbia University studies in literature, v. 2. "A bibliography of Spanish romances of roguery, 1554-1668, and their translations": p. 399-469. "Authorities": p. 471-474.

This thesis argues that seventeenth-century English prose romances are motivated by anxieties over truth-telling and the ethical practice of deception. From the title of MacKenzie's 'Aretina: A Serious Romance' (1660), I take the collocation 'serious romance' to refer to the philosophically and politically engaged prose romances of the seventeenth century. Following Amelia Zurcher's work on the concept of 'interest' in 'serious romance', this thesis examines a separate but related aspect of the genre's moral philosophical engagement: its investigation of the ethics of dissimulation. By dissimulation, I mean the art of lying by concealment. Dissimulating techniques include controversial rhetorical tools such as equivocation and mental reservation, but dissimulation is also implicated in laudable virtues such as prudence and discretion. The thesis traces arguments about the ethical practice of dissimulation and other types of lie through English prose romances from Sidney's 'Arcadia' (1590) to Orrery's 'Parthenissa' (1651-69) to suggest that seventeenth-century romances increasingly espoused theories of 'honest dissimulation' and came to champion the theory of the 'right to lie'. The thesis examines a range of works which have hitherto received scant critical attention, notably Roger Boyle's 'Parthenissa' (1651-69), Percy Herbert's 'The Princess Cloria' (1652-61), the anonymous 'Theophania' (1655) and 'Eliana' (1661) and John Bulteel's 'Birinthea' (1664), alongside better studied romances such as Sidney's 'Arcadia' (1590), Wroth's 'Urania' (1621) and Barclay's 'Argenis' (1621). It situates readings of these original English romances within the context of the French romances of D'Urfé, Scudéry and La Calprenède, as well as within the context of contemporary moral philosophy.

This thesis is a collection of six short stories and a novella. These works follow sons, fathers, loners, and families as they must confront what haunts them. In "Brainbarn," a boy whose parents left him at a young age tries to rid himself of the memory of killing a horse by forcing himself on his cousin. In "Scavengers," a father guides his family of disparate parts on a hike in attempt to bring them together, but he instead comes face to face with what he actually wants his family to be like. In "Haruspices," shepherds disrupt an ancient burial practice with dire consequences. "Cenotaph" is about a son who, after his father dies, learns how to properly bury his father, and the memory of his father, through beekeeping. "Wands" is about two cousins who struggle over a lost fiddle. And "Dispatches from a Future Norwegian Futurist" follows a single survivor of a future plague whose job is to dispose of the bodies until he learns he is soon to be replaced in this position by a thing called Prometheus. The novella, entitled The Re-Enactors, follows a father and son--Brinkley and Drift--who, six months after the mother's sudden death from an antique Civil War weapon accident, find themselves riding on top of a train through South Carolina. Through the course of leaping off the train, hiking through a swamp, and confronting a violent mob in the countryside, Brinkley and Drift also confront each other concerning the mother's mysterious death and how they themselves must keep their family together.

This thesis examines the ways in which the literary depiction of the cityscape by several popular mid-Victorian novelists can be read alongside the context of their profound interest in theatre. Though many critics consider Charles Dickens to be the quintessential London novelist, I probe the extent to which other novelists of the era – Wilkie Collins, Augustus Mayhew, and Shirley Brooks – can be considered as 'London' writers. While a distinction can be made between the attributes of early and late nineteenth-century city writings, I suggest that the act of theatricalising the urban landscape can be considered as a mode which was typical of how midnineteenth-century novelists depicted the city. This study brings together two strands of criticism which, for the most part, have hitherto been treated separately. While numerous scholars have examined Dickens's depiction of London, an equal number have contextualised his writings alongside drama of the nineteenth century. A few critics have alluded to the theatricality of Dickens's depictions of the city, but this study offers the first full-length account of how this sense of theatricality is achieved in Our Mutual Friend (1865). I also examine this phenomenon in lesser-known writings of the period – Basil (1852), Paved With Gold (1858), and Aspen Court (1855). The first chapter will argue that the focal authors had a broad theatrical imagination, and how this impacts on their depiction of urban experience will be examined throughout this study. While their descriptions of London are attuned to the sense of visuality and aurality that can be associated with both the city and the theatre, a knowledge of drama, including gestural action, stock characters, and costumery, influences their conception of character. The final chapter will explore nineteenthcentury drama and these writers' depictions of the city through the lens of intertextuality, arguing that both are highly allusive.

Thesis (M.S.)--Boston University

Four weeks before the collapse of the Berlin Wall in 1989 an eleven-year-old flees the Soviet Union with her young father. As political refugee determined to eventually settle in the United States they hastily abandon the girl's estranged alcoholic mother, future stepmother, their friends and relatives, their collection of books and all but a handful of family photographs. She eventually attempts to seek out and recover the people, ideas and objects lost on that voyage to America by going back to a much changed Russia and stitching together the scattered and forgotten pieces in between her old and new homes through dream-like snapshots. Two decades after her emigration the author examines the concept of bad luck in one's travels, the significance of the number four, ambivalent attachments, learning to mother from a place of abandonment, the familial legacy of escape and the pursuit of wholeness within inconsolable loss. The un-tellability of the story is considered through the lens of Sappho, Bernadette Mayer, Yoko Ono, Roland Barthes, Doris Lessing, Nico and many other surrogate mothers and fathers brought together as a chorus in a multi-vocal, lyric approach.

Cities in Dust is a collection of 15 short stories and the first two chapters of Biggest Little City, a novel-in-progress. This collection looks at queerness, gender, sex work, addiction, illness, and the effects of displacement--leaving homes, cities, relationships, and theoretical safety before we are ready. Cities in Dust works to tell stories from the space between places and the moment between moments. Transition is a city of its own.

Still Lives and Set Pieces is a collection of stories that explore concepts of identity under pressure, using meta-fictional approaches and various formal strategies, such as borrowing structural traits from other styles of composition, to fracture POV and add dimensionality. One tale explodes the few moments immediately following an assisted suicide as the surviving partner starts the slow process of self-redefinition. Another wonders if a composer's search for the right five notes to complete his project has more to it than pitch and rhythm. A third sees two would-be criminals, stuck in time, playing darts in the back room of a nameless pub, while they await word of why they are there and what's to happen to them.

[No abstract available] / Education, Faculty of / Language and Literacy Education (LLED), Department of / Graduate

[No abstract available] / Arts, Faculty of / French, Hispanic, and Italian Studies, Department of / Graduate