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In Canada, writers of long fiction have recently begun to employ representations of science and to use scientific theories to construct narratives that investigate issues of class, race, sexuality, faith, truth and the ontological understanding of human existence. This turn towards science in creative works of art suggests that scientific discourse in the early twenty-first century has become a space from which to respond to questions about the search for truth after the rise of poststructuralist theory and postmodern culture. My work investigates this recent turn towards science in contemporary Canadian literature as a way of reevaluating the idea that science is associated with a teleological movement towards human progress, and to analyze how scientific representations re-imagine faith and ethics from a secular perspective. The recent shift towards science in the literature of Canada in English suggests a questioning of social conditions which place the human within epistemological spectrums between truth and fiction, faith and reason, and the individual and the universal. In my dissertation questions related to belief and truth are bound up in a cross-textual study that looks at how Canadian literature reevaluates important debates among theology, art, and science in order to access a humanist interpretation of different possible realities. My dissertation investigates: The Bone Sharps (2007) by Tim Bowling; Curiosity: A Love Story (2010) by Joan Thomas; The Origin of Species (2008) by Nino Ricci; The Memory Artists (2004) by Jeffrey Moore; Player One: What is to Become of Us (2010) by Douglas Coupland; Atmospheric Disturbances (2008) by Rivka Galchen, and The Evolution of Inanimate Objects: The Life and Collected Works of Thomas Darwin (1857-1879) (2010) by Harry Karlinsky. / Thesis (Ph.D, English) -- Queen's University, 2012-01-26 11:50:12.999

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Thesis (Ph. D.)--West Virginia University, 1998. / Title from document title page. "December 17, 1998." Document formatted into pages; contains v, 208 p. Vita. Includes abstract. Includes bibliographical references (p. 198-207).

<p> Good leadership is arguably important to the success of any organization, nation, or people. Research over the last 50 years indicates that transformational leaders are desirable and that such leaders can be developed. This research assessed whether and to what extent the protagonists in <i> Harry Potter and The Goblet of Fire</i> and <i>Mockingjay: The Final Book of the Hunger Games,</i> Harry Potter and Katniss Everdeen, respectively, demonstrate the four characteristics of transformational leadership: idealized influence, inspirational motivation, intellectual stimulation and individualized consideration.</p><p>

The thesis discusses the development of nineteenth century responses to the United States. It hinges upon the premise that travel writing is narrative and that the travelling itself must therefore be constructed (or reconstructed) as narrative in order to make it available for writing. By applying narratology to the work of literary travel writers from Frances Trollope to Henry James I show the influence of travelling point of view and writing point of view on the narrative. Where these two points of view are in conflict I suggest reasons for this and identify signs in the narrative which display the disparity. There are several influences on point of view which are discussed in the thesis. The first is mode of travel: the development of steamboats and later locomotives increasingly divested travellers from the landscape through which they were travelling. I concentrate on Frances Trollope, Charles Dickens and Mark Twain travelling by boat, and Robert Louis Stevenson and Henry James travelling by rail to examine how mode of travel alters travelling point of view and influences the form of travel writing. The second is the frontier: writing from a liminal space creates a certain point of view and makes travel not only a passage but a rite of passage. I examine travel texts which discuss the Western frontier as well as the transatlantic frontier. As the opportunity for these frontier experiences diminished through the spread of American culture and developments in travel technology, so the point of view of the traveller changes. A third point of view is provided by European ideas of nature and beauty in nature. The failure of these when put against American landscapes such as the Mississippi, prairies, and Niagara forms a significant part of the thesis, the fourth chapter of which examines writing on Niagara Falls in guidebooks and the travel texts of Frances Trollope, Dickens, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Anthony Trollope, Twain and James. Other points of view include seeing the United States through earlier travel texts and adopting a more autobiographical interest in travelogues. In the final chapter the thesis contains a discussion of the nature of truth in travel writing and the tendency towards fictionalisation. The thesis concludes by considering the implications for truth of having various travelling and writing points of view impact upon constructing narrative out of travel.

This dissertation examines the evolution of poetic theory in English and Scottish writing between c.1470 and 1530. By examining important but neglected works by Stephen Hawes, Gavin Douglas, and Alexander Barclay, as well as influential poetry by Robert Henryson and John Skelton, it demonstrates that the contours and preoccupations of rhetorical poetics in England and Scotland emerged long before the appearance of such seminal works as Philip Sidney’s Apologie for Poetrie (c.1580) and George Puttenham’s Arte of English Poesie (1589). The poets at the heart of this dissertation did not assert their authority by writing rhetorical treatises or formal defences, but by critiquing their predecessors, by insulting their peers, and by showing an occasional disregard for the ‘gruntynge hogges’ of their audience. Some of them, such as Robert Henryson, praised the ‘polit termes of sweit rhetore’, while others, such as Gavin Douglas, argued that poetry was a source of ‘hie knawlage’ and profound philosophical truths. But their opponents claimed that ‘the knowlege of poetes’ simply ‘vanissheth awey’ when compared to that of the Bible. On the eve of the English Reformation this struggle for authority intensified, with at least one English writer declaring that ‘God maketh hys habitacion | In poetes’. Unlike previous scholarship, which attributes such idealism to emerging humanist influences, this dissertation argues that the early defenders of poetry in England and Scotland were motivated not by the transcendent idealism they frequently espoused, but by less noble impulses, such as bitterness, disillusionment, and the struggle for court favour. These writers sought to redefine the relationship between literature and the rest of life, and in the process, they formulated new reasons for their own importance as moral authorities in an increasingly unstable world.

Through the filters of postcolonial theory, environmental humanities, and digital humanities, this project considers the capabilities and limitations of novels to galvanize action in response to environmental crises. My findings suggest that novels are well equipped to engage in environmental education, although some of the form’s conventions must be disrupted to fully capitalize upon its strengths. The modern novel is conventionally limited in scope, often resorts to apocalyptic narratives that can breed hopelessness, is dedicated to a form of realism that belies the dramatic weather events exacerbated by climate change, defers authority to a single voice, and is logocentric. By supplementing conventional novels with a variety of paratexts, including digital tools, scientific findings, non-fiction accounts of past, present, and future activism, and authorial biography, it is my contention that the novel’s potency as a pedagogical tool increases. After addressing this project’s stakes and contexts in my Introduction, Chapter II assesses three South Asian novels in English that are concerned with sustainable development: Bhabani Bhattacharya’s Shadow from Ladakh, Bharati Mukherjee’s Jasmine, and Aravind Adiga’s The White Tiger. I conclude by considering how StoryMaps might further disrupt pro-sustainable development propaganda alongside more traditional novels. Chapter III examines how explicitly activist South Asian novelists construct authorial personae that propose additional solutions to the environmental problems identified in their novels, focusing on Amitav Ghosh’s The Hungry Tide and Indra Sinha’s Animal’s People. Chapter IV coins the term “locus-colonial novel,” a novel that decenters the human, situating place at the fulcrum of a work of historical fiction, using Hari Kunzru’s Gods without Men as one exemplar. I examine Kunzru’s novel alongside promotional materials for planned Mars missions to consider how narratives of colonialism on Earth might lead to a more socially and environmentally sustainable colonial model for Mars. Chapter V introduces the concept of a digital locus-colonial novel that allows users to develop informed, environmentally focused scenarios for colonial Mars. Through these chapters, this dissertation identifies specific rhetorical techniques that allow conscientious novels to create imaginative spaces where readers might explore solutions to the social, economic, and increasingly environmental problems facing human populations worldwide.

Thesis (M.A. (Creative Writing))--University of Western Australia, 2008.

This thesis, consisting of four chapters, examines the shifting identities in contemporary québécois migrant literature, as well as the way the Other is represented by the authors in our study. The first chapter is devoted to the methodology and the theoretical framework for our research, which, in terms of postcolonial critique, is based on Homi Bhabha’s concept of « third space » as a creative literary space and fertile ground for the exploration of identity. Our study also explores concepts pertaining to specific traits of migrant literature, such as oral tradition, irony and humour, and transcultural identity, from theorists such as Janet Paterson, Linda Hutcheon and Lise Gauvin. The second chapter focuses on the writing of Marie-Célie Agnant and Abla Farhoud, both of whom use the notions of home and of oral tradition to gather the generations and to establish family histories. These two authors portray the image of a grandmother, exiled in Québec, and represent these women as the backbone of their respective families. The third chapter takes a very different approach to the question of Otherness, examining the use of irony and humour as tools for social critique in the work of Dany Laferrière and Pan Bouyoucas, two authors who use humour to mask the serious nature of their subject matter. Their critique of modern society is developed by exploiting the concept of «Otherness». The fourth and final chapter is dedicated to a more contemporary expression of the experience of migration, as portrayed in the work of Kim Thúy and Ying Chen, whose writing signals a significant departure from the themes of the earliest literature classified as « migrant », in the sense that they both adopt a neutrality of tone and create a literary production mostly absent of spatiotemporal reference. For Thúy and ! vi Chen, writing represents an apprenticeship of the French language and of cultural integration. Today’s Québécois migrant literature questions the pluralisation of identities, as well as the concepts of individual identity and collective identity. As such, the developing pluralistic nature of Québécois society is better represented within its literary scene. Within the framework of our study, what interests us the most is the changing face of the migrant identity over the course of the past fifty years, as well as the trajectory of its representation in this body of literature. / Thesis / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) / This thesis examines the evolution in the representation of migrant identity and the experience of migration at the heart of contemporary Québécois literature. This research questions the pragmatic aspect of literature, specifically the establishment of new identities in twentieth and twenty-first century Québec and Canada. Our corpus explores the literary representation of life on the margins of a host society. By applying the postcolonial research on Otherness and Identity of theorists such as Homi Bhabha, Lise Gauvin and Janet Paterson, we are able to analyse the distinct characteristics of the literary production on memory and history, and on displacement, that originate from what Bhabha calls the gap between cultures.