Thesis (Ph.D.)--Columbia University, 2002. / Adviser: David D.W. Wang. Includes bibliographical references.

The used couch -- Indian graveyard -- Heart disease -- Tree house -- Cravings -- Henderson’s grocery. / Thesis (M.A.)--Wichita State University, Dept. of English. / "May 2006."

<p>Despite its huge mass-market appeal, the romance genre continues to be the most maligned of the pulp and mainstream fiction forms. While academic critics, whatever their degree of sympathy with readers, claim that romance serves to reinforce traditional patriarchal structures and values, other researchers claim that beneath the obvious patriarchal influences are elements that women find valuable in their lives. By studying the shift that occurred in the 1980s, and though interviewing feminists who read romance, my research seeks to understand not only the influence that the second-wave women's movement has had on the genre, but also the value that feminists place on the reading of romance fiction. If it turns out that academic critics have not kept up with the changes in romance fiction, the image of the contemporary romance reader will require significant change.</p>

Bea Dumont's life was full of youthful joys; cribbage games with her grandfather and Sunday morning pancackes with her older brother, Trip. When something happens that tears her typical American family apart, she begins a lifelong struggle to understand why it all came crashing down and learns along the way what it takes to forgive.

As one of the first scholarly studies of Ulf Miehe’s Ich hab noch einen Toten in Berlin, this thesis undertakes a close reading of the novel, thereby providing a basis for further research. According to Linda Hutcheon's typology of metafiction as outlined in her book titled Narcisstic Narrative Miehe's novel displays the characteristics that fall under her category of overt metafiction, as opposed to covert metafiction. Overt metafiction self-consciously thematizes narrative, stating outright that a parallel theme to the narrative is the discussion of the narrative. Following mainly Hutcheon's defining characteristics of overt metafiction, I have separated my narrative analysis of Miehe's novel into three sections: pastiche, intertextuality, and narrative layering. The first two sections are concerned namely with how the novel engages with the discourses of the hard-boiled genre and the theoretical and social considerations of the artist, while the last section explores how the form and content expresses this self-conscious disruption of the narrative. The argument unfolds by first discussing Fredric Jameson's concept of pastiche in place of Linda Hutcheon's parody, as indicative of a shift from modernism to post-modernism. Benjamin's narrative (the main character) as a performance projects his pastiche of the hard-boiled genre onto Berlin, recording the gap between the world he experiences and the image he projects onto the world, indicating that it is to be read as imitation. Benjamin documents the inauthenticity of the hard-boiled genre's realism through his projection and indicates the possibility of many versions through Anna's countering version. In the second section, intertextuality is discussed through Hutcheon's link to T. S. Eliot's concept of tradition in literature. Miehe's intertextual references engage with the artistic, theoretical and social considerations of the tradition, including realism of the hard-boiled genre, influence anxiety, originality, inspiration, and race relations. When Miehe includes references to the hard-boiled genre in literature and film, and to himself, his novel questions the necessity and accuracy of the hard-boiled genre's claim to realism, but also expresses part of that questioning to be a comparison and search for inspiration for original work. This involves the recognition of the past texts as not the one and only authentic version or form, but that innovation requires a recreating of past texts. The last and third section concerns narrative layering as a means to thematize narrative within a narrative. Through the devices of mise en abyme, storytelling, narrative thematizing, and narrative framing, the text shows itself to be self-aware of its function as narrative, while creating that narrative. These devices attempt to engage the reader as an active participant as the text questions its own conceptualization of reality, the diegetic world, hopefully leading the reader to question the perception of reality presented in all texts. The occurrences of metafictional devices in Miehe's novel develop the text as what Patricia Waugh describes as the site of communication between the reader and the writer. The writer has dismantled the codes that would usually cause a passive reader. Instead, the reader is encouraged to recreate the narrative through disruptive clues. In this active role, detecting the authentic text becomes the investigation of the many texts.

<p>Despite its huge mass-market appeal, the romance genre continues to be the most maligned of the pulp and mainstream fiction forms. While academic critics, whatever their degree of sympathy with readers, claim that romance serves to reinforce traditional patriarchal structures and values, other researchers claim that beneath the obvious patriarchal influences are elements that women find valuable in their lives. By studying the shift that occurred in the 1980s, and though interviewing feminists who read romance, my research seeks to understand not only the influence that the second-wave women's movement has had on the genre, but also the value that feminists place on the reading of romance fiction. If it turns out that academic critics have not kept up with the changes in romance fiction, the image of the contemporary romance reader will require significant change.</p>

As one of the first scholarly studies of Ulf Miehe’s Ich hab noch einen Toten in Berlin, this thesis undertakes a close reading of the novel, thereby providing a basis for further research. According to Linda Hutcheon's typology of metafiction as outlined in her book titled Narcisstic Narrative Miehe's novel displays the characteristics that fall under her category of overt metafiction, as opposed to covert metafiction. Overt metafiction self-consciously thematizes narrative, stating outright that a parallel theme to the narrative is the discussion of the narrative. Following mainly Hutcheon's defining characteristics of overt metafiction, I have separated my narrative analysis of Miehe's novel into three sections: pastiche, intertextuality, and narrative layering. The first two sections are concerned namely with how the novel engages with the discourses of the hard-boiled genre and the theoretical and social considerations of the artist, while the last section explores how the form and content expresses this self-conscious disruption of the narrative. The argument unfolds by first discussing Fredric Jameson's concept of pastiche in place of Linda Hutcheon's parody, as indicative of a shift from modernism to post-modernism. Benjamin's narrative (the main character) as a performance projects his pastiche of the hard-boiled genre onto Berlin, recording the gap between the world he experiences and the image he projects onto the world, indicating that it is to be read as imitation. Benjamin documents the inauthenticity of the hard-boiled genre's realism through his projection and indicates the possibility of many versions through Anna's countering version. In the second section, intertextuality is discussed through Hutcheon's link to T. S. Eliot's concept of tradition in literature. Miehe's intertextual references engage with the artistic, theoretical and social considerations of the tradition, including realism of the hard-boiled genre, influence anxiety, originality, inspiration, and race relations. When Miehe includes references to the hard-boiled genre in literature and film, and to himself, his novel questions the necessity and accuracy of the hard-boiled genre's claim to realism, but also expresses part of that questioning to be a comparison and search for inspiration for original work. This involves the recognition of the past texts as not the one and only authentic version or form, but that innovation requires a recreating of past texts. The last and third section concerns narrative layering as a means to thematize narrative within a narrative. Through the devices of mise en abyme, storytelling, narrative thematizing, and narrative framing, the text shows itself to be self-aware of its function as narrative, while creating that narrative. These devices attempt to engage the reader as an active participant as the text questions its own conceptualization of reality, the diegetic world, hopefully leading the reader to question the perception of reality presented in all texts. The occurrences of metafictional devices in Miehe's novel develop the text as what Patricia Waugh describes as the site of communication between the reader and the writer. The writer has dismantled the codes that would usually cause a passive reader. Instead, the reader is encouraged to recreate the narrative through disruptive clues. In this active role, detecting the authentic text becomes the investigation of the many texts.

Robert Penn Warren has a facility for transforming region and history into fiction and poetry. His novel Flood: A Romance of Our Time (1964) and his poem sequence “Internal Injuries” (1968) stand out insofar as they share a leitmotif; that is, he uses images of imprisonment to represent the loss of free and responsible selfhood under a technocratic dispensation. He is the quintessential loneliness artist, as can be heard through the voices of his characters. His literary criticism is a testament to his concerns about how one comes to reconcile oneself to place. His theory of literature provides us a unique window on what it means to discover oneself in the tumult of a rapidly changing landscape. The use and misuse of technology to augment one’s relationship to place and self is my overriding concern. In Fiddlersburg, the town in Flood, melodrama hangs in the air like rotting perfume. All that will remain once the town is flooded is the penitentiary. In “Internal Injuries,” Warren’s poem-within-a-poem sequence about the loss of self within the modern city, Warren invokes the penitentiary to represent and speak for the loss of self and the feeling of lonesomeness. Flood speaks to “Internal Injuries” in the sense that Warren oscillates between the discovery of self in Flood to the loss of self in “Internal Injuries.” I give my observation of how Warren’s critical work forms a dialogue with his creative work, offering insight as to how the oldest maximum-security penitentiary in Kentucky speaks to the lost and found selves of Warren’s world. Finally, I deal with the problem of modernity and Warren’s perennial concern about the alienation of the self and how he wrestles with it from a deeply personal and experiential perspective. The reader will find that Warren’s critical and creative works form a kind of inside passage.

This original novel with a critical introduction is a summary and capstone of my study of creative writing at Texas A&M University. The introduction uses storytelling traditions in genre science fiction as well as non-genre writing as it explores the novel’s narrative structure, the world building process, and character development. The novel demonstrates the postmodern and genre techniques while masquerading as a traditional short novel, encouraging the reader to discover possible conspiracies in order to complete the narrative.

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