Victorians frequently conflated body and text by using terms of medical diagnosis to talk about literature and, in turn, literary terms to talk about the body. In light of this conflation, this dissertation focuses on the intersection between narrative form and disability in nineteenth-century fiction and interrogates how the shape of Victorian fiction both informed and reflected the era’s developing notions of disability. Examining this intersection of body and text in several genres and across seven decades, from Frederic Shoberl’s 1832 English translation of Victor Hugo’s Notre-Dame de Paris to Arthur Conan Doyle’s “The Adventure of the Crooked Man” (1893) from the Sherlock Holmes series, I show how the structural forms of these works reveal that disability’s conceptualization during the Victorian era was frequently dialogic, incongruously understood as both deviant and commonplace. My research thus contributes to our understanding of disability’s complex development as a concept, one that did not immediately or irrevocably marginalize people, but rather struggled to negotiate the limits, capabilities, and meanings of bodies in a rapidly changing culture. / Graduate / 2020-04-19

I hold that Melvillean society consists of paradoxical relationships between civilization and barbarianism, evil and good, the corrupt and the natural, the individual and the collective, and the primitive and the advanced. Because these terms are arbitrary and, in the context of the novels, somewhat interchangeable, I explore Melville's thoughts as those emerge in the following groups of novels: Typee, Omoo, and White-Jacket demonstrate the paradox of Melvillean society; Redburn, Moby-Dick, and Mardi illustrate the corrupting effects of capitalism and individualism; and The Confidence-Man, Israel Potter, and Pierre depict a collapsed paradox and the disintegration of Melville's society.

Joseph Campbell, in The Hero with a Thousand Faces, establishes a pattern for the hero to answer the call to adventure, ask the question of the goddess and receive her boon, and return to his homeland. Campbell does not, however, make any suggestions about a myth whose protagonist is female. Erich Neumann, in The Origins and History of Consciousness, hints that the woman may, indeed, be her own goddess, that she must give herself the boon she already carries. The novels of Anita Brookner illustrate the dual nature of the feminine protagonist: the seeker and the boon giver. The feminine hero (even when Brookner's protagonist is masculine, he exhibits feminine qualities) hears the call to adventure, receives the teachings of the goddess and/or her representative, receives help fromother beings (in myth these would be supernatural beings), realizes that she carries the answer to the cosmic question of selfhood within her, and, following an apotheosis, makes a return to society. Much of the present work is spent delving into both the monomythic and feminist structures of Brookner's novels. Although Brookner characterizes herself as a "reluctant feminist," examination of her novels reveals a subtle adherence to feminist principles which can be ascertained by viewing each novel in terms of the monomyth schema.

The diploma thesis Modern Dystopias and Theories of Totalitarianism deals with comparation of this two phenomena. The thesis is based on the concept of Giovanni Sartori. He understands the phenomenon of totalitarianism as ideal ending of the axis totalitarianism- democracy. Extreme points of this axis fulfill the role of unrealizable ideal regimes. In reality we can only move closer to them but modern dystopias may represent these ideal regimes. The diploma thesis is divided into theoretical and practical section. There is the analyse of five books in the theoretical section which deal with the theory of totalitarianism. The analysis contains the work of Sigmund Neumann, Hannah Arendt, Carl J. Friedrich and Zbigniew K. Brzeziński, Giovanni Sartori and Juan J. Linz. Each theory of totalitarianism is supplemented by reflection from other authors. There is the analyse of five dystopias (J. Zamjatin - We, A. Huxley - Brave New World, G. Orwell - Nineteen Eighty-four, M. Atwood - The Handmaid`s Tale, A. Moore, D. Lloyd - V for Vendetta) in the practical section. The analysis contains the storyline of the book, elements of totalitarian regime in the dystopia and inspiration of author for the world of dystopia. There is elaborated final comparation between theories of totalitarianism and modern dystopias...

La recherche suivante propose une étude approfondie des représentations des handicaps dans les romans français et italiens pour les adolescents écrits dans les trente dernières années, notamment à partir de 1980, âge d’or de la littérature à destination des adolescents, par une mise en lumière des caractéristiques principales et des enjeux sur lesquels leur écriture se fonde. En particulier, en allant au-delà de la simple analyse littéraire des représentations de cette diversité propre à la condition humaine, cette thèse vise à souligner les intentions idéologiques, sociales, politiques, philosophiques et pédagogiques de cette production, selon un parcours historique et comparatif entre les littératures française et italienne.Grâce à cette perspective transversale, elle montre comment les représentations des handicaps présentes dans les deux productions littéraires ont subi une évolution en lien avec leur contextualisation historique et culturelle et avec la prise en considération culturelle, juridique et sociale de la notion de handicap.Point de départ possible pour une meilleure connaissance du sujet, la littérature est un des instruments capables d’aider le lecteur adolescent à se rapprocher du handicap, en dépassant la notion de différence et en promouvant celle d’altérité. / The following research proposes an in-depth study of representations of disability in the French and Italian novels for young adults written in the last thirty years, especially from the 1980s, the golden age of young adult literature, by bringing into light the main features and issues its writings are based on.In particular, by going beyond the simple literary analysis of representations of this diversity specific to the human condition, this thesis aims to point out the ideological, social, political, philosophical and pedagogical intentions of this production, according to a historical and comparative path between French and Italian literatures.Thanks to this transversal perspective, it shows how the representations of disability in both literary productions have undergone changes in line with their historical and cultural contextualization, taking into account the legal and social concept of handicap.By being a possible starting point for a better understanding of the subject, literature can be a useful tool to help the young adult reader to approach the notion of disability, by overcoming the notion of difference and promoting the one of otherness.

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This paper can be seen as a first step towards developing genre tailored heuristics for visual novels. The focus being visual novels come from the fact that it is a genre of games that is growing in popularity globally. Besides players and developers, it is also popular among researchers because the genre is very accessible (Camingue, Carstensdottir & Melcer 2021). But let’s say the developers and researchers want to evaluate a visual novel they are creating, what methods would be fitting. There isn’t a lot of research on this, so the method suggested in this paper is heuristic evaluation, due to it being a very accessible method (Nielsen 1994). To tailor heuristics for this genre, a compiled list of heuristics was used to evaluate a number of visual novels and the data from the evaluation was analyzed and used to identify problems that weren’t addressed by the heuristics.

Skolverket (2022) emphasizes how important it is to take part of different texts that highlight human terms, identities and life issues. The purpose of this study is to understand how men and women are represented in three fiction novels that are used by active Swedish teachers in high school, and what didactic potential the novels have. In addition, the intention is to create an increased understanding among teachers of the importance of gender knowledge when reading, and the literature's possibilities to be able to challenge and meet students when reading. Hence, this study is relevant for both Swedish teachers and Swedish teaching students. Our research questions are the following: “How are men and women represented in three fiction novels that are used by active Swedish teachers in high school?” and “What didactic potential from a gender perspective can be identified in the three novels?”. The method that has been used is a qualitative thematic text analysis. Furthermore, the material has been analyzed by direct and indirect characteristics as well as didactic potential. The novels were chosen based on what novels twelve Swedish teachers usually use in their teaching. Moreover, the result of this study shows that there are stereotypical and non stereotypical structures in the fiction novels, but the importance lies in how the fiction novels are used. Nevertheless, the study shows that all novels have didactic potential, as long as you criticize, twist and turn the novels. Therefore the focus should be on how to use fiction novels in teaching.

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