Prose style criticism of literary nonfiction has faded from scholarly popularity since a boom in the 1980s. Recent literary criticism of nonfiction has focused on context while neglecting aesthetics, or left the work of style analysis to composition or rhetoric scholars. I examine the work of Joan Didion, David Foster Wallace, and two writers associated with the literary journal n+1, Keith Gessen and Elif Batuman, to demonstrate the way that prose style analysis is a meaningful critical approach that helps define changing nonfiction genres, including online genres. I read Didion's work across her oeuvre to demonstrate the way her prose style shifts subtly over time and between fiction and nonfiction, memoir and literary journalism. I trace the influence of David Foster Wallace's American postmodern forebears on his fictional and nonfictional prose styles, and follow that line of influence to the nonfiction writing of online genres. I conclude by discussing the way that young writers associated with the journal n+1 regard Wallace's influence on their work and the writing of their generation, and examine Gessen and Batuman's prose style on and offline to find the literary in some unlikely locations. / Thesis (Ph.D, English) -- Queen's University, 2013-11-30 22:27:36.61

The personal essay provides a vibrant method of inquiry for exploring migration. Migration tests the individual on all levels and the personal essay bears witness to that lived experience in writing. In applying Montaigne’s maxim “What do I know?” to experience, the joint endeavor of trial and assessment coincide in the migrant and the personal essay. Yet to date, no study of how the personal essay and the migrant intersect and reinforce their parallel journey of discovery has been published. Emphasizing observation, reflection and synthesis, the personal essay provides a rigorous and innovative approach to investigate what migrants encounter firsthand. Both the genre and the migrant try, weigh and test experience for its value and significance in writing and in the real world. This study of the nexus between migration and the personal essay genre addresses a crucial gap in the research, a space of increasing relevance in a progressively more mobile and globalized world. Migration is a lifelong experience, and New Zealand is a nation of migrants. This research examines personal essays written by contemporary migrants to New Zealand from twenty different countries. By probing the roots and routes of migration, migrant essays address complex questions around identity and belonging to assess the lived stakes of migration. Migrants cross geographic, linguistic and existential frontiers, and their personal essays bear witness to the contact zones between self and other, self and text. The migrant personal essay reflects and analyzes experience from the outsider perspective and testifies to the dominant culture how belonging is predicated on mutual acceptance of the other. As this study demonstrates, the personal essay is the ideal genre to explore how migrants negotiate and assess the space between inner and outer, home and journey, experience and meaning – abstractions intrinsic to our sense of self and world.

Creative nonfiction is abundant and popular. There are many names and definitions for this fluid, multimodal genre, which has played a role in its marginality in academia. This dissertation examines creative nonfiction in composition, creative writing, and journalism. I argue that distinct beliefs and values of each discipline have led to compartmentalized, disciplinary-specific definitions and uses of creative nonfiction. To understand why this is, and to develop and a cross-disciplinary understanding, I use Amy Devitt's rhetorical genre theory to illuminate cultural beliefs and values that influence the names, definitions, subgenres, and views of the genre in each field. A rhetorical understanding of genre reveals the purpose of creative nonfiction, the themes it conveys, and perhaps why it is so persuasive and powerful. In examining composition I analyze the historical development of creative nonfiction, its definitions, and current beliefs and values about teaching composition. I argue composition limits its view of creative nonfiction by too often equating it with the personal essay. A personal-expressive pedagogy would help teach creative nonfiction. In creative writing I analyze the definitions of creative nonfiction and the AWP's statements about creative writing education. I argue creative writing has inclusive definitions, if not rhetorical, but the culture of literature limits the genre for students. A strength of creative writing is the teaching of craft that I argue is beneficial for teaching creative nonfiction. In journalism I analyze the culture of objectivism from which literary journalism emerged. I argue literary journalists have developed definitions that identify the purpose of literary journalism and narrative form. I express concerns about the separation of journalism from composition and creative writing that has limited discussions about creative nonfiction and literary journalism. Finally, I argue each discipline should value one another's views and agree on dissensus instead of focusing on denying one another or trying to find a single name and definition. I suggest narrative nonfiction as a subset of creative nonfiction that would benefit students in composition. Creative nonfiction engages students in writing and examining the sociopolitical world from a personal perspective, which aids them in becoming writers for life.

M.A. / An overview of reviews on Antjie Krog’s ‘n Ander Tongval (2005), shows that critics find it difficult to classify the text and to determine the genre of the book. This study is intended to investigate the hybrid nature of ‘n Ander Tongval which is a mixture of poetry, essays, journalistic report, autobiography, academic research and personal anecdotes. This study is primarily an examination of a specific example of a text that can be considered “literary non-fiction” to contribute to the description of the nature of this particularly problematic genre, while at the same time contributing to the literary criticism of Krog’s “literary non-fiction”. Secondly ‘n Ander Tongval is examined to determine the specific demands that this kind of text makes of the reader. This examination of ‘n Ander Tongval contributes to the description and problematising of the term “literary non-fiction” and many other genres which can be associated with these kind of texts because of its hybrid nature. This is also linked to the current debate about the growing interest in what Leon de Kock (2010) describes as “Creative Non-fiction”. De Kock considers this kind of writing distinctive of South African literature. Eventually it becomes clear that ‘n Ander Tongval does not only advocate change (transformation), but makes a change possible by the choice of genre (literary nonfiction) which is itself a text that “changes” established genre conventions and thereby guides the reader to read differently and look at the text and the country in a different way.

abstract: Jazz continues, into its second century, as one of the most important musics taught in public middle and high schools. Even so, research related to how students learn, especially in their earliest interactions with jazz culture, is limited. Weaving together interviews and observations of junior and senior high school jazz players and teachers, private studio instructors, current university students majoring in jazz, and university and college jazz faculty, I developed a composite sketch of a secondary school student learning to play jazz. Using arts-based educational research methods, including the use of narrative inquiry and literary non-fiction, the status of current jazz education and the experiences by novice jazz learners is explored. What emerges is a complex story of students and teachers negotiating the landscape of jazz in and out of early twenty-first century public schools. Suggestions for enhancing jazz experiences for all stakeholders follow, focusing on access and the preparation of future jazz teachers. / Dissertation/Thesis / D.M.A. Music Education 2013

Willing to overstep literary conventions in order to ensure that meaning and purpose reign over structure, cross-genre writing works to push boundaries of genre and tear down the walls of limitation. This cross-genre thesis aims to test literary restrictions of structure and style and, as literary endeavors often do, to rattle our existence. In this thesis, nonfiction and fiction work together to drive meaning to the surface of the page, meaning that is universal in the individual stories as well as in the human experience. Although some characters are fictional and some real, they often intersect, their journeys and discoveries merging into one. The many voices of this thesis, while diverse, speak to similar themes and meaning. The main character of "Silhouettes," a homosexual male who yearns to find his identity away from the place he once called home, experiences feelings of abandonment and loss. The narrator of "A Crimson Trail" longs to uncovers truths about her uncle's suicide and endures similar feelings of loss. "Abandoned Laurels" explores a complex mother-daughter relationship and wades through themes of mourning, regret, and shame. The remaining stories explore similar themes, including those of longing, death, and familial relationships. Shorter pieces are scattered amongst longer works and supplement themes developed in the thesis. Each section contributes to the characters' longing for identity, recovery, and understanding of the past. These related characters and their stories--both real and fictional--merge in a collective endeavor to sift through loss, explore the past, and, most importantly, find identity and hope in the future amidst the rubble of the present.

Comprised of seven essays, this collection of literary nonfiction explores one man's journey into the teaching profession. The author recounts his experiences from just before he heard the call, to his first year teaching as an intern at Punahou School in Honolulu, through his first three years teaching full-time, and the challenges, mostly internal conflicts, he worked through as he taught freshmen and then two junior/senior electives before eventually going on sabbatical to Tanzania for his ninth year.

What We Hide is a collection of memoir essays that explores the themes of mystery and deception in personal relationships, specifically within familial and romantic ones. Though the essays in the collection explore the decades from early in the narrator's childhood through her move to Florida for graduate school, the narrator's keen discernment of the world around her and her curiosity for what experiences shape a person's character remain constant. Many essays explore the extent of her father's alcoholism and the consequences of it, as well as the narrator's obsession over the possible sources of his addictions. Other essays examine the narrator's relationships with men beginning when she enters high school and question the extent to which her strained relationship with her father both excuses and/or explains the way she deceives and allows herself to be deceived in these relationships. What We Hide is endlessly implicating and looks for the accountability of these situations from all sources. The narrator delves into the sneakiness of her parents' courtship, the accusations that become commonplace during their divorce, the ways in which the narrator lies to family, friends, and boyfriends for her own selfish motives, and how each of these experiences shapes subsequent ones. What We Hide uses personal experience, emails, and newspaper articles to demonstrate the vulnerability, contradictions, and complications that are inherent in all of us as humans and how these weaknesses manifest themselves in the relationships with those we are closest with.

Hierdie studie ondersoek vrae rondom die aard van literêre niefiksie - ook die vierde genre genoem. Die bestaande drieledige genreklassifikasiesisteem maak nie voldoende voorsiening vir tekste waarin die grense tussen feit en fiksie opgehef word nie. Die toename van sodanige hibriede tekste noodsaak dus ‘n uitbreiding van tradisionele genrekategorieë tot ‘n vierde, naamlik dié van literêre niefiksie. Dié ondersoek poog om vrae rondom literêre niefiksie te beantwoord met verwysing na De plaag: het stille knagen van schrijvers, termieten en Zuid-Afrika (2001) van David van Reybrouck. Dié teks dokumenteer Van Reybrouck se ondersoek na die bewering dat Maurice Maeterlinck die termietnavorsing van Eugène Marais sonder erkenning oorgeneem het. Tydens sy navorsingsreis maak Van Reybrouck kennis met die verwikkeldhede van ‘n postapartheid Suid-Afrika en verwoord sy reiservaring met behulp van metafore uit die entomologie. Die resultaat is dat De plaag ‘n hibriede karakter vertoon wat versoenbaar is met die kriteria vir literêr-niefiksionele tekste. / This study attempts to explore the nature of literary nonfiction (the fourth genre). The existing tripartite classification system does not make adequate provision for texts where the borders between nonfiction and fiction are transcended. A marked increase in such texts therefore necessitates an expansion of the traditional genre categories to accommodate a fourth, namely that of literary nonfiction. De plaag: het stille knagen van schrijvers, termieten en Zuid-Afrika (2001) by David van Reybrouck will serve as point of departure to explore the genre of literary nonfiction. The said text documents Van Reybrouck’s investigation into the alleged plagiarism by Maeterlinck of Marais’ research on termites. Van Reybrouck’s travels expose him to the complexities of a post-apartheid South Africa, which he expresses by using metaphors derived from the field of entomology. The result of this process is that De plaag displays a hybrid character which complies with the criteria for literary nonfiction. / Afrikaans and Theory of Literature / M.A. (Afrikaans)

Hierdie studie ondersoek vrae rondom die aard van literêre niefiksie - ook die vierde genre genoem. Die bestaande drieledige genreklassifikasiesisteem maak nie voldoende voorsiening vir tekste waarin die grense tussen feit en fiksie opgehef word nie. Die toename van sodanige hibriede tekste noodsaak dus ‘n uitbreiding van tradisionele genrekategorieë tot ‘n vierde, naamlik dié van literêre niefiksie. Dié ondersoek poog om vrae rondom literêre niefiksie te beantwoord met verwysing na De plaag: het stille knagen van schrijvers, termieten en Zuid-Afrika (2001) van David van Reybrouck. Dié teks dokumenteer Van Reybrouck se ondersoek na die bewering dat Maurice Maeterlinck die termietnavorsing van Eugène Marais sonder erkenning oorgeneem het. Tydens sy navorsingsreis maak Van Reybrouck kennis met die verwikkeldhede van ‘n postapartheid Suid-Afrika en verwoord sy reiservaring met behulp van metafore uit die entomologie. Die resultaat is dat De plaag ‘n hibriede karakter vertoon wat versoenbaar is met die kriteria vir literêr-niefiksionele tekste. / This study attempts to explore the nature of literary nonfiction (the fourth genre). The existing tripartite classification system does not make adequate provision for texts where the borders between nonfiction and fiction are transcended. A marked increase in such texts therefore necessitates an expansion of the traditional genre categories to accommodate a fourth, namely that of literary nonfiction. De plaag: het stille knagen van schrijvers, termieten en Zuid-Afrika (2001) by David van Reybrouck will serve as point of departure to explore the genre of literary nonfiction. The said text documents Van Reybrouck’s investigation into the alleged plagiarism by Maeterlinck of Marais’ research on termites. Van Reybrouck’s travels expose him to the complexities of a post-apartheid South Africa, which he expresses by using metaphors derived from the field of entomology. The result of this process is that De plaag displays a hybrid character which complies with the criteria for literary nonfiction. / Afrikaans and Theory of Literature / M.A. (Afrikaans)