<p>  </p> <p>While the field of Monster Studies has proliferated across disciplines, particularly in relation to studies of the medieval period, often Early Middle English literature has been ignored. In some ways, this is sensible, since the term “monster” is not attested in English until Chaucer’s use of it in the late 14th century in <em>The Canterbury Tales. </em>However, nonhuman beings that might otherwise have been categorized as monsters are still present in the literature. Building on the idea of Hughes’ “non-human human beings” and Mittman’s and Heng’s reconceptualization of race and the “monstrous races,” I propose a new term: nonhuman person. I propose three criteria for determining if a particular literary being falls in this category. I use literary analysis to determine if each criterion is met. Then I examine the lexical choices made to identify and describe each of these nonhuman persons in two sample texts from each rough time period in the language: .<em>The Wonders of the East </em>and <em>Beowulf </em>for Old English; <em>The Owl and the Nightingale </em>and Layamon’s <em>Brut </em>for Early Middle English; and <em>Sir Gawain and the Green Knight </em>and <em>The Canterbury Tales </em>for Late Middle English. Finally, I examine the shifts in the lexicon over time in order to examine how English re-envisions the nonhuman person from the Old English period up through Chaucer’s use of “monster” in his <em>Tales. </em></p>

This thesis concerns the 2.0 decade, the decade when the social web started to develop. The main research objective is to contribute to our embedment in Internet technology in a conscious and livable way. The thesis is part of a general attempt to improve our understanding of the transformation taking place in the development of the web. We live in a time when knowledge contexts are moving from expert knowledge towards conversational knowledge. My research is mainly presented in the form of five essays. This thesis can be described as a conversational analysis of knowledge processes during the 2.0 decade. The 2.0 decade came to life in the wake of the information technology bubble in the end of the 1990s. The first decade of the 2000s was the decade when &apos;the Web&apos; became &apos;Web 2.0&apos; and the energy of the Internet switched from monetary speculations to conversations. Everyone wanted to start conversations and build digital technology, which induced conversations. Like the concept Web 2.0, this thesis came to life in the wake of the information technology bubble. It presupposes the knowledge relation between humans and our technology to be conversational rather than rational. This basically means that digital technology is not a tool but an integrated part in the person assemblage. There are many important thinkers embedded in this thesis. Some of them are more important than others, notably Gilles Deleuze and Donna Haraway. However, the thesis does not analyze the text of other thinkers, it involves them in the conversation. Important concepts as assemblage, rhizome (Deleuze) and cyborg (Haraway) are participants in the text rather than being its objectives. They are part of the general experience behind the essays, together with all the persons I have linked up to and the digital technology I have tried to become with. To become with (or develop together with) technology means to acknowledge the idea that technology is more than a tool. It is something within, not something external.

This dissertation examines the relationship between wisdom and identity in Old English and Old Norse-Icelandic literature. At present, the study of medieval wisdom is largely tangential to the study of proverbs and maxims. This dissertation makes wisdom its primary object of study; it sees wisdom not just as a literary category, but also as a cultural discourse found in texts not usually included in the wisdom canon. I therefore examine both wisdom literature and wisdom in literature. The central characteristic of wisdom, I argue, is its liminality. The biblical question “Where is wisdom to be found?” is difficult to answer because of wisdom’s in-between-ness: it is ever between individuals, communities, and times (Job 28:12 Douay-Rheims). As a liminal discourse, wisdom both grounds and problematizes identity in Old English and Old Norse-Icelandic literature. After a preliminary chapter that defines key terms such as “wisdom” and “wisdom literature,” I examine heroic wisdom in three characters who are defined by their wise traits and skills and yet who are ultimately betrayed by wisdom to death or exile. The implications of this problematic relation to wisdom are then examined in the next chapter, which analyzes the composition of wisdom in proverb poems. Like the wise hero, the poets represented in these poems blend their own voices with the voice of community, demonstrating that identity is open and therefore in need of constant revision. Next I examine how the liminality of wisdom is embodied in the figure of the wise monster, who negatively marks the boundaries of society and its desires. This then leads to a study of the reception of wisdom in chapter six, which focuses on instruction poems. Like narratives of wise monsters, these texts present lore as the nostalgic remnant of a tradition that defines identity, in this case the identity of a community. However, nostalgia assumes loss, and these texts also reveal an underlying fear that wisdom, the basis of the community’s identity, will be forgotten. Whether communal or individual, identity in this literature is both formed and threatened by liminal wisdom. / Thesis (Ph.D, English) -- Queen's University, 2014-05-08 15:35:46.885

À l'opposé du Paradis céleste que rejoignent les élus, les artistes romans ont imaginé le monde de tourments qui attend les pécheurs. Ce lieu de terreur, duquel s'élèvent « des pleurs et des grincements de dents » (Matth. 22, 13), ne peut être illustré sous des formes simples et communes. L'imagerie médiévale, précocement, dès le IXe siècle dans le domaine anglo-saxon, donne à l'Enfer l'apparence d'une tête hybride, la Gueule d'Enfer. Sculpteurs et enlumineurs se sont-ils inspirés de monstres issus des mythologies païennes anciennes et contemporaines ? Sur quelles sources textuelles se sont-ils appuyés pour élaborer ce motif ? Aisément reconnaissable, l'image de la Gueule s'inscrit dans les nombreuses représentations du Jugement Dernier et de la Descente du Christ aux Enfers. Une étude typologique pourra déterminer l'influence de la présence et de l'aspect de la Gueule d'Enfer sur la signification de ces épisodes fondateurs du Christianisme. La Gueule terrifiante devient le symbole même d'un Enfer fantasmagorique et vivant ; elle envahit progressivement toute l'iconographie religieuse et il convient de voir si elle ne modifie pas le sens de nombreux épisodes bibliques. Présente encore à l'époque gothique, la Gueule d'Enfer est transformée par les artistes de la fin du Moyen Âge, avant de disparaître progressivement de l'iconographie religieuse. Si l'Enfer médiéval a suscité de nombreuses études, le motif de la Gueule dévorante a paradoxalement peu attiré l'attention des Historiens de l'Art. Cette thèse tend à combler, au moins en partie, cette lacune. / Opposed to the Celestial Heaven waiting for the blessed, the roman artists invented a netherworld waiting for the sinners. This terrifying place, from where « tears and gnashing of the teeth » arrive (Matth, 22 , 13 ) cannot be illustrated in simple and common ways. As soon as the 11th century, in the anglo-saxon world, Hell was represented as an hybrid head, the Maw of Hell, in the medieval imagery. Did the sculptors and the illuminators get their inspiration from the monsters belonging to the oldest and contemporary pagan mythology ? Which textual sources did they use to elaborate this pattern ? Easily recognisable, the image of the Maw is one of the many representations of the Last Judgment and of Christ's Descent to Hell. A typological study will determine the influence of the presence and the aspect of the Maw of Hell on the meaning of those founding episodes of Christianism. The terrifying Maw became the symbol of a fantasmagoric and real hell slowly invading the whole religious iconography and it is worth wondering if it didn't change the meaning of many biblical episodes. Still present during the Gothic period, the Maw of Hell was changed by the artists of the late Middle Ages, before disappearing slowly from religious iconography. If medieval Hell was the subject of many studies, the Maw of Hell surprisingly attracted few Art History researchers. This thesis partially tries to fill this gap.

The zombie narrative has seen an increasing trend towards the emergence of a zombie sentience. The intention of this thesis is to examine the cultural framework that has informed the contemporary figure of the zombie, with specific attention directed towards the role of the thinking, conscious or sentient zombie. This examination will include an exploration of the zombie’s folkloric origin, prior to the naming of the figure in 1819, as well as the Haitian appropriation and reproduction of the figure as a representation of Haitian identity. The destructive nature of the zombie, this thesis argues, sees itself intrinsically linked to the notion of apocalypse; however, through a consideration of Frank Kermode’s A Sense of an Ending, the second chapter of this thesis will propose that the zombie need not represent an apocalypse that brings devastation upon humanity, but rather one that functions to alter perceptions of ‘humanity’ itself. The third chapter of this thesis explores the use of the term “braaaaiiinnss” as the epitomised zombie voice in the figure’s development as an effective threat within zombie-themed videogames. The use of an epitomised zombie voice, I argue, results in the potential for the embodiment of a zombie subject. Chapter Four explores the development of this embodied zombie subject through the introduction of the Zombie Memoire narrative and examines the figure as a representation of Agamben’s Homo Sacer or ‘bare life’: though often configured as a non-sacrificial object that can be annihilated without sacrifice and consequence, the zombie, I argue, is also paradoxically inscribed in a different, Girardian economy of death that renders it as the scapegoat to the construction of a sense of the ‘human’. The final chapter of this thesis argues that both the traditional zombie and the sentient zombie function within the realm of a posthuman potentiality, one that, to varying degrees of success, attempts to progress past the restrictive binaries constructed within the overruling discourse of humanism. In conclusion, this thesis argues that while the zombie, both traditional and sentient, attempts to propose a necessary move towards a posthuman universalism, this move can only be considered if the ‘us’ of humanism embraces the potential of its own alterity.

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Denna uppsats har analyserat gestaltningen av det feminina som skräckinjagande i de två gotik- och skräckromanerna Bunny (2020) av Mona Awad och Cackle (2022) av Rachel Harrison. Den metod som har använts har varit en textnära läsning av novellerna och den teori som analysen har utgått ifrån har huvudsakligen varit Maria Margareta Österholms avhandling Ett flicklaboratorium i valda bitar – Skeva flickor i svenskspråkigprosa från 1980 till 2005 (2012) som behandlar Mary Russos begrepp gurlesken och dess olika former, Sandra M. Gilbert och Susan Gubars teori om den internaliserade manliga blicken i deras bok The madwoman in the attic, The woman writer and the nineteenth-century literary imagination (1979), och Yvonne Lefflers teori om skräckberättelsens förmåga att väcka känslor hos läsaren i hennes bok Horror As Pleasure (2000). Syftet var att undersöka hur romanerna förhåller sig till sammanflätningen av det skräckinjagande och det feminina. Analysen har visat att den internaliserade och objektifierande blicken på kvinnorna är en viktig del i hur de skräckinjagande elementen framställs både groteska och hotfulla – särskilt vid framställningen av det feminina och kvinnomonster. Jag behandlar i den avslutande diskussionen hur det feminint monstruösa i dessa två romaner har förskjutits till ett mittemellanförskap som förhåller sig till förmågan hos publiken att konceptualisera situationerna. / This thesis aims to analyze the figuration of the feminine as something horrifying in the two horror novels Bunny (2020) by Mona Awad and Cackle (2022) by Rachel Harrison. The method is a close reading of the novels and the main theory is based on Maria Margareta Österholms dissertation Ett flicklaboratorium i valda bitar – Skeva flickor i svenskspråkigprosa från 1980 till 2005 (2012), in which she investigates Mary Russo's concept of the gurlesque, Sandra M. Gilbert and Susan Gubar’s theory about the internalized male gaze from their book The madwoman in the attic, The woman writer and the nineteenth-century literary imagination (1979), and Yvonne Leffler’s study Horror As Pleasure (2000), about the aesthetic premises of the horror story and its ability to transform unpleasant feelings into pleasurable horror and aesthetic enjoyment. My thesis aims to investigate how the relationship between the horrifying and the feminine is intertwined in the novels. The analysis has shown that the internalized and objectifying gaze has an important part in the grotesque and threatening aesthetics of the horror story – especially in the depiction of the feminine and female monsters. I argue that the feminine monstrous in these two novels has made a shift into an” in-between-relationship” which behaves differently depending on the audience's ability to conceptualize the situations that arise in the novels.

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