Héritier d’une longue tradition d’écrivains “bohèmes”, Pierre Jean Jouve est l’auteur d’une œuvre romanesque semblable à une route jalonnée de sentiers épars. Rigoureusement balisés par le romancier, mais jamais totalement explorés par le lecteur, visiteur d’un espace littéraire où les pérégrinations des personnages se confondent avec l’errance de l’écrivain, les romans de Jouve se donnent à lire comme de véritables jalons sur la route qui a mené leur auteur à ce qu’il nomme « l’immuable langue ». Cette étude accorde la place qu’ils méritent aux thèmes fondateurs des romans jouviens que sont les voyages (terrestre et céleste), l’onirisme, Éros et Thanatos… autant de catalyseurs de cette “errance romanesque” qui est au cœur de l’art de Jouve et dont le but affiché est de permettre l’accès à « la vraie libre Poésie ». / Heir to a long tradition of “bohemian” writers, Pierre Jean Jouve is the author of a novel similar to a road dotted with scattered paths. Strictly marked by the novelist, but never fully explored by the reader, a visitor to a literary space where the peregrinations of the characters mingle with the wanderings of the writer, Jouve’s novels are read as real milestones on the road that led the author to what he calls « the unchangeable language ». This study puts emphasis on Jouvian novels’ themes namely travel (terrestrial and celestial), dreamlike, Eros and Thanatos... so many catalysts of this “novelistic wandering” at the heart of Jouve’s art, whose stated aim is to allow access to « real free Poetry ».

This study examines trauma, particularly in the thematic contexts of the individual and the community as reflected in her novels Sula, Song of Solomon, and Beloved. By utilizing the specific theoretical modes of new historicism and trauma theory, the veil of double consciousness imposed on African Americans is explicated and exposes various forms of trauma in the individual and the community. The unspoken atrocities experienced as a result of slavery, Jim Crow, and physical and sexual violence in many of Morrison’s novels, suggest the common thread of trauma. The particular traumas depicted in Morrison’s novels Sula, Song of Solomon, and Beloved, damage agency, lead to detachment and paralysis in the individual. The scope of this study is limited to the novels Sula, Song of Solomon, and Beloved as they best illustrate trauma in Morrison’s characters and the damage it causes to agency, leading to detachment and paralysis in the individual. The literary theories of new historicism and psychoanalysis provide cultural and literary context for the novels and allow for a deeper rendering of the characteristics of trauma and provide the context for the term dynamic trauma. of oppression as a mean of dysfunction in the thematic These novels reveal a pathology of trauma disguised as normalcy in the African American community, which leads to disrupted lives, relationships, and communities. Morrison not only depicts these dysfunctional behaviors due to traumatic circumstances but also offers a remedy for the dysfunction—acceptance without acquiescence.

This thesis will attempt to scrutinize Günter Grass's message to his people and show his concern for the spiritual health of his country. Each of his three novels bears directly upon political, religious, and moral issues vital to Germany and to the world. The examination is based upon the assumption that Grass as an author is more concerned that Germans see themselves as they are and as they have been than he is concerned with the image of Germany which his novels present to the world. It is, paradoxically, this very special and sincere concern which gives his work universal appeal.

This thesis is concerned with establishing the nature of the critical standard which Fraser's Magazine, a Victorian journal, used in evaluating the artistic merit of current English novels. Eminent critics such as William Thackeray, Thomas Carlyle, and William Maginn were associated with the magazine during its early years of publication: thus, the early numbers contain some of its most valuable criticism. Because the English novel was in a period of transition in the decade of the 1840's and the years immediately preceding and following it, this study is confined to the twenty-year period from I830 to 1850. Imitative writers of romance and novels of manners were gradually being replaced with novelists concerned with social reform and with the artistic merit of the genre itself. Thackeray's and Maginn's associations with the magazine also occurred during this period, and their literary opinions are an important indication of the magazine's critical development.

Shelby Hearon's eight novels--Armadillo in the Grass, The Second Dune, Hannah's House, Now and Another Time, A Prince of a Fellow, Painted Dresses, Afternoon of a Faun, and Group Therapy- -are unified by the theme of the fairy-tale princess and her quest to assert her autonomy and gain self-fulfillment while struggling with marriage, family, and the mother-daughter relationship. This study traces the development of Hearon' s feminist convictions in each of her novels by focusing on the changing quests of her heroines. This analysis of Hearon's novels attests to their lasting literary significance.

Most primitive mythologies recognize that suffering can provide an opportunity for growth, but Western man has developed a mythology in which suffering is considered evil. He conceives of some power in the universe which will oppose evil and abolish it for him; God, and more recently science an, technology, were the hoped-for saviors that would rescue him. Both have been disappointing as saviors, and Western culture seems paralyzed by its confrontation with a future which seems death-filled. The primitive conception of death as that through which one passes in initiatory suffering has been unavailable because the mythologies in which it was framed are outdated. However, some post-World-War-II novels are reflecting a new mythology which recognizes the threat of death as the terrifying face the universe shows during initiation. A few of these novels tap deep psychological sources from which mythical images traditionally come and reflect the necessity of the passage through the hell of initiation without hope of a savior. One of the best of these is Wright Morris's The Field of Vision, in which the Scanlon story is a central statement of the mythological ground ahead. This gripping tale uses the pioneer journey west to tell of the mysterious passage the unconscious can make through the ccntempoorary desert to win the bride of life. It serves as an illuminator and normative guide for evaluating how other novels avoid or confront the initiatory hell. By the Scanlon standard, some contemporary mythology is escapist. Robert Heinlein's Stranger in a Strange Land and Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.'s Cat's Cradle express the youthful desire to arrive almost automatically at a new age, either with help from a new Christ or through practicing a simplistic morality. Other novels tell of the agony of modern Grail questers who sense that a viable myth is possible, but cannot completely envision it nor accomplish the passage through the void to gain it. The hindrances in each case are powerful forces which exert control over society. These forces are scientific objectivity and racism in Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man, and an unbeatable Combine which forces people to be rabbits and like it in Ken Kesey's One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. Thomas Pynchon's The Cring of Lot 49 makes clear thet the confining forces are sustained because the secret of life has been lost, and man needs protection from the void which he cannot face without the secret. Saul Bellow deals directly with mythologies in Mr. Sammler's Planet. On the one hand is the popular view which ignores what every man knows is right and asserts instead that whatever one wants, he should have. This view replaces the archetypal sustaining images with a myth of continuous progress which, now that progress has faltered, makes living seem overwhelmingly hopeless. However, Sammler believes that meaning is established in life even as it collapses. The good man is part of an elite which is unusually intelligent and discerning, able to develop the will to carry out the contract with life and to enjoy the mystic potency in living. The novels in this study indicate a trend toward a reformulation of the basic mythological structures of Western man. Possibly the belief is weakening that something from somewhere will save him from his given situation, and a mythology is emerging which tells of significant life in the common, discovered through an awareness of the archetypal consciousness.

The purpose of this paper is to determine why Mrs. Radcliffe's gothic novels were popular with contemporary readers. Sources include reviews from eighteenth century periodicals, essays of early nineteenth century critics such as William Hazlitt and studies of her work by twentieth century critics. The thesis is organized in four chapters each of which discusses one aspect of her work which particularly pleased her contemporary reviewers and critics: her invention, her attitude toward superstition, her use of poetic justice, and her outlook on nature. These aspects of her work alone did not secure for her the popularity she enjoyed, but, when combined with her ability to create suspense, helped her become one of the most popular writers of her era.

Some men are born to greatness, others to great tragedy. This novel is a fictional account of one of those men: the notorious Texas outlaw, Sam Bass. Set in the Old West of the 1870s, the story primarily concerns itself with events in the train robber's life from the time he owned and raced the Denton Mare to the now famous shoot-out in Round Rock, Texas. It is a story of crime and betrayal told through the eyes of Bass and one of his close confederates, Jim Murphy.

This novel of the Vietnam War examines the effects of prolonged stress on individuals and groups. The narrative, which is told from the points of view of four widely different characters, follows an infantry company through three days and two nights of combat on a small island off the coast of the northern I Corps military region. The story's principal themes are the loss of communication that contributes to and is caused by the background of chaos that arises from combat; the effect of brutal warfare on the individual spirit; and the way groups reorganize themselves to cope with the confusion of the battlefield. The thesis includes an explication of the novel, explaining some of the technical details of its production.

The title of my thesis is appropriately borrowed from a romance novel title, as my work proposes to mine the content, design and culture of romance novels and other erotic texts in order to excavate my own queer romance narrative. The body of work includes large-scale drawings of “stand-in boyfriends” stolen from romance novel covers, pieced fabric text works based on the titles of erotic texts, and a couch covered in erotic reading material. Drawing attention to the ubiquity of heterosexualized images and texts by deconstructing them, my work critically questions larger social constructions of normality and deviance, pleasure and disturbance, and high and low culture, as they pertain to ideas of love, romance and sexuality.