Morrison opens Paradise by constructing a black community based on a traditional, unrelenting patriarchal discourse which seems to be subverted by a rather trivial, private or ¡§feminine¡¨ talk represented by a party of outcast women. Such binary oppositions are thus surfaced continually in the novel and are further intertwined with various genres Morrison draws from myth, fairy tale, romance, biblical story, folklore, vernacular (hi)story, etc. Nevertheless, while elaborating those literary genres and antagonizing sexes, races and classes, she parodies/caricatures and ¡§molests¡¨ them with stereotyped but paradoxical, or contradictory narrative. In so doing, she complicates and revitalizes the seemingly organized but actually paralyzed, unproductive world of language. By fusing and infusing opposite elements into concepts such as stern religious beliefs and one-sided, self-righteous morality, Morrison liberates literature, or language, in a way that it ¡§is both the law and its transgression.¡¨ I quote a phrase from Morrison¡¦s Nobel lecture¡XLanguage¡¦s ¡§force, its felicity is in its reach toward the ineffable¡¨¡Xas part of my title to suggest that her narrative politics¡X¡§stepping in¡¨¡Xis grounded on a sense of human interrelatedness. Demanding as it is, the compassion for distinct individuals, especially for those who are muffled by ¡§representational¡¨ or ¡§monumental¡¨ discourse, is what Morrison tries to gesture toward in her writing. With acute imagination and insightful compassion, she not only voices and makes the ¡§trivial,¡¨ ¡§insignificant¡¨ or ¡§negligible¡¨ things remarkable enough to be juxtaposed with ¡§the grand,¡¨ but also employs them to ¡§step in¡¨ and transform the rather rigid, unreceptive idea of conventional literary canon. Rather than founding a particular ethnic or gendered canon (or hierarchy) to counteract the already dominant, it seems that Morrison appeals to transcend those barriers by releasing the ambiguous, paradoxical and inspiring properties of language, and at the same time, paying deference to diverse, ineffable human differences and experiences.

Magister Artium - MA / The novel Philida by André P, Brink is classified in the genre of slave novel. The novel tells the story of a slave woman, Philida, who lodged a complaint with the Slave Protector because she and her children were about to be sold to a new master. In this study I will look at how the author, Brink, uses different narrative strategies to give an authentic voice to Philida. Amongst these strategies are the unique voice of the character Philida, multiple narrators, language use and the creative use of historical and archival sources. The study will focus on the characterization of Philida and the depiction of aspects of slavery. It will also explore the voices of other characters such as Frans Brink, Cornelis Brink and Ouma Nella. The theoretical basis of the study is informed by aspects of narratology, postcolonialism and feminism.

Jane Austen champions practicality and compatibility versus purely romantic or mercenary sentiment in her novels, and through narrative techniques she preserves her heroines from imprudent marriages. Austen's heroines do not fall madly in love at first sight, but rather they acquiesce to marriage through reason and discernment. She endows her heroines with qualities that make them worthy of her interference in the marriage plot: intelligent although inexperienced, possessed of realistic expectations and sensibility and reason, and, importantly, financial instability. She carefully cultivates heroes worthy of her heroines through plot twists. However, to show her dissatisfaction with the limited roles available to the 19th century woman, she denies the reader the opportunity to witness the wedding that concludes her narratives. The narrator demonstrates her approval or disapprobation by choosing what scenes to narrate and what scenes to dramatize, the latter often representative of her disapproval, her silence signifying her acceptance.

MASTERS School of English Student No: 9910994F / Literary criticism on the short fiction of Raymond Carver investigates frequently the narrative omissions whereby Carver renders the plight of middle and lower class America. Neither exclusively formal nor exclusively thematic critiques of Carver’s short stories explicate adequately the purposes and effects of these narrative omissions. This study, which is framed by Wolfgang Iser’s reader-response theories of ‘negation and ‘negativity’, and Michael Fried’s notion of aesthetic ‘absorption’, provides a formal and thematic reading of eight of Carver’s stories. This study argues that the reader’s investments in these omissions generate various indices of sympathetic identification. In tandem with such an inquiry, this study also examines the apparent antagonism between the realist and postmodernist strains discernible across Carver’s narratives. This antagonism is caused by Carver’s omissions, which simultaneously create the illusion of mimetic transparency and negate this transparency. The omissions that operate across Carver’s stories make the reader conscious not only of how he or she interprets the author’s words, but also how he or she interprets the world. Carver’s neo-realism, this study proposes, therefore has a far greater potential for social realism than traditional modes of realist representation.

This thesis aims to read James Baldwin¡¦s Another Country to examine why and how he uses this novel to interrogate black nationalist discourses that inform the sexist and heterosexist biases in mid-century America. I would argue that Baldwin, in writing this novel, adopts an ambivalent narrative strategy both to ostensibly compromise on the heterosexual matrix politically and culturally scripted by black activists, and to critique the black hyperbolic masculinism endorsed and performed by them as itself a tragic consequence of white racism. Whereas black nationalists carry the Black Macho agenda into practice to redeem their manliness, Baldwin suspects that the heterosexist imperative of black machismo may end up infringing the rights of gender and sexual minorities. I thus argue, in Chapter One, that Baldwin writes Another Country to negotiate an oblique response to the conundrum he feels as both an artist and a black leader. To explain how his conundrum takes shape, I attempt in Chapter Two to lay bare the hegemonic masculinist ideologies embedded in anti-racist discourses. Drawing on this historical and theoretical investigation as my interpretive scaffold, I would in the following three chapters elaborate on how the novelist exemplifies his narrative technique via his male figures in Another Country. In doing so, Baldwin can, I would propose, assert that racial justice and sexual freedom must concur to effectuate blacks¡¦ autonomy. As such, I conclude my thesis by suggesting that Baldwin never intends ¡§another country¡¨ to be an idyllic landscape wherein Eric ostensibly plays out as a ¡§sexual savior¡¨ and betters other characters¡¦ self-recognition. Another Country instead illustrates a contested site where discourses on black nationalism, black male sexuality, and black masculinity come into a productive dialogism. Another Country, that is, can be best interpreted as Baldwin¡¦s investigation into the intersection of race, gender, and sexuality in the sixties, and his consistent reformulation of individual identity as fluid, labile, and multiple.

The presented thesis focuses on the phenomenon of child narrator/protagonist in the role of the main actor and intermediary of fictional world in literature for adults. The first chapter is devoted mainly to the theoretical concept of narrator as a significant narratological category. The second chapter presents literature for children and youth in comparison to literature primarily intended for adult readers and looks for their mutual inspirations. Above all, the concept of children aspect is defined. In the practical part, the thesis aims for stylistic analysis, thematic interpretation and comparison of four narrative texts from Anglophone literature. These are The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison, Black Swan Green by David Mitchell, Pigeon English by Stephen Kelman and Cormac McCarthy's The Road. These texts, having a child narrator/protagonist in common, are not primarily intended to be read by children. I see this as a certain strategy of writers, which however fully functions only in such a case, when the authenticity of child narrator/protagonist is maintained. Thus, such elements which we could connect with the concept of children aspect are deliberately used there. My objective is therefore to link the concept of children aspect with a specifically defined literature for adults. I also inquire why child narrators/protagonists are used in literature for adults and what their functions are, how and to what extent can a child narrator/protagonist convey fictional world, what the children in the followed texts are like, how the perceive the world around them, how they impart to us what they see, think and feel, and what possibilities of description of the world through a child's eyes it offers to authors.

This thesis focuses on the concept of the trap for the reader, which is defined using the methodology of the cognitive science cognitive literary studies as an input of such structures and concepts in the text by which specific scheme is activated in the mind of the reader to be replaced by the different incompatible scheme. Based on this replacement, the comprehension of the text is reconstructed. Afterward, we describe specific types of trap for the reader. Every type of the trap is defined by replaced schemes: characters are prototypically an- thropomorphic, characters are black-and-white, characters are archetypes, the narrator speaks the truth, the genre is not changed. Excerpts of literary works are used to represent each type of trap. In the other part of the thesis, we demonstrate usage of this concept in the literature lessons at upper elementary and high schools. Both well-known pieces of the Czech literature, as well as contemporary young adult literature, are used as examples for the didactic use of this concept. Keywords cognitivism, cognitive literary studies, young adult literature, cognitive bias, critical thinking, functional literacy 5

「藝術不是一面鏡子，而是一把槌子。」引領英國紀錄片運動發展的John Grierson曾作出如此嘹亮的宣稱。足見紀錄片作為一種藝術傳達的形式，得以建構社會議題，敲擊現實，撼動主流意識，揭發社會問題的根源。因此本研究將強調紀錄片作為政治行動的可能性。 紀錄片是紀錄片工作者用自己的觀點和詮釋基模所組織起來的真實世界，因此紀錄片工作者乃是紀錄片文本框架的主控者。而環境議題紀錄片則強調藉由影像語言的中介，再現具有爭議性或討論價值的環境議題，且能在主流媒體所塑造的優勢框架之外，產製新的媒體框架以提供觀者新的觀點與另類的視野。 環境議題紀錄片究竟引用了哪些證據？如何凸顯其論證的可信度？能否引發共鳴？為進一步檢視環境議題紀錄片的敘事策略，本研究將援引「集體行動框架」作為分析架構，由問題建構、歸因、處理方針、共鳴程度與動員潛力等面向剖析紀錄片如何再現環境議題，評估紀錄片是否具有觀念倡導、說服觀者採取社會行動的能量。除此，本研究亦將耙梳相關文獻資料，建構台灣環境議題紀錄片類型發展的歷史梗概，期能有助於釐清此類型紀錄片產出的社會脈絡。 本研究由以環境議題三大主要子議題 ── 環境公害、生態保育、反核運動 ──為主題的紀錄片中，各篩選出一部近年來具代表性的環境議題紀錄片作為分析文本，包括《奇蹟背後》、《獼猴列傳》、《貢寮，你好嗎？》。研究發現，上述紀錄片除了提出處理方針之方式有別之外，皆以「環境正義框架」作為主導框架、並深入探究環境議題的結構性因素，以召喚觀者共鳴與動員的可能。 / “Art is not a mirror, but a hammer,” claimed John Grierson, who exerted pivotal influence on British documentary film movement. It is believed that documentary as one of the art forms is able to construct social issues, and explore further the causes of those problems. This study is going to focus on the possibility of documentary as political action. This study will adopt “collective action frame” as analyzing structure, to analyze how documentaries represent environmental issues, evaluate its effectiveness in related ideas, and mobilize the viewer to take up social actions. Behind the Miracle (2002), Biographies of the Macaques (2004), and How Are You, GongLiao? (2004) are the three environmental documentaries that the author chooses to examine. There are four findings in this study: 1.Environmental justice frames are adopted as master frames 2.Structural elements of environmental issues become the major investigating points 3.Proposals of management policy vary 4.The directors endeavor to call for the resonance and mobilization of the audience

This thesis examines stylistic technique and narrative strategy in a range of George Orwell’s fictional and non-fictional texts to demonstrate how personal experience and detached interpretation interact dialectically in his work to create layers of narrative complexity. Moving from Raymond Williams’ observation that the figure of “Orwell” is the writer’s “most successful” creation, this study asserts a vital correlation between form and content in Orwell’s work, specifically in the central position that perspective occupies in his political outlook. The multiple perspectives that surface in Orwell’s texts – the reluctant Imperial policeman, the tramp in disguise, the advocate of the working poor, the rebellious and satirically-inclined anti-totalitarian writer – correspond with the author’s life experiences, and yet are revealed as rhetorically constructed positions that are adopted strategically to generate nuanced, and at times contradictory, impressions of a wide range of subject matter. Chapter 1 treats Orwell’s Burmese writings as ethnographically-inflected texts; Chapter 2 examines the figure of the mask in Down and Out in Paris and London and in The Road to Wigan Pier; Chapter 3 analyses a dialectic of experience and interpretation at play in Homage to Catalonia; Chapter 4 scrutinizes the mobilization of the rebel writer figure in a selection of Orwell’s mature essays; and Chapter 5 examines the strategic deployment of competing perspectives in Nineteen Eighty-Four’s anatomy of the totalitarian state. This array of analytical approaches serves the dual function of highlighting the versatility and sophistication of narrative strategy across a range of individual texts in Orwell’s oeuvre, and of demonstrating a trajectory in his work that adheres simultaneously to both formal and political considerations. Orwell’s highly prolific two-decade-long writing career, I argue, can be productively understood as an ongoing experiment with narrative strategy, and this experiment exerts at each stage a direct influence on his evolving political aesthetic.

The present dissertation investigates the use of the fantastic and its functions in contemporary prose, the initial hypothesis being that the fantastic is not historically exhausted, but continues to be productive. The major part of this study consists of a close reading of four novels printed between 1995 and 2001: Marie Hermanson’s Värddjuret (1995), Majgull Axelsson’s Aprilhäxan (1997), Karen Duve’s Regenroman (1999) and Elfriede Kern’s Schwarze Lämmer (2001). Tzvetan Todorov’s definition of the fantastic as structural ambiguity is fundamental to the dissertation. In order not to bind the definition to a normative concept of genre, the fantastic is in this study considered as a narrative strategy. The dissertation’s analyses demonstrate that in these contemporary novels there is considerable variation of narrative devices, as well as of intertextual motifs deriving from the ‘archive’ provided by the tradition of the fantastic. The fantastic is to a great extent intertextual, but does not merely function as a “signal of fiction” in a postmodern game where ambiguity is no longer relevant. Instead, the narrated world in these novels is characterized by a deeply-rooted ambivalence, heterogeneity and instability. Both attractive and dangerous, the fantastic corresponds to a meeting with “the other” and the unknown, while dampening the conflict between the supernatural and the natural so clearly seen in Todorov. What is central is not the crisis of perception undergone by the novel’s characters as they choose between two opposing views of reality, but their mental state of mind. These characters are in a condition of “betwixt and between”, which in all four novels is linked to the theme of the artist. Via the fantastic, Regenroman initiates a confrontation with male myths of the artist and images of women. Schwarze Lämmer also engages the romantic fantastic tradition and investigates the link between adolescent delusions of grandeur and artistic creativity. Värddjuret, on the other hand, depicts the genesis of a female artist, while Aprilhäxan presents the female artist’s monstrous image of herself and fantasies of omnipotence. An additional function of the fantastic in these four novels is to thematize a concept of reality that is based, not on the contrast between the natural and the supernatural, but on the possibility of several different realities.