No description available.

No description available.

No description available.

No description available.

<p>George Eliot's later novels are discussed with reference to Mikhail Bakhtin's concept of dialogism. Although Bakhtin traces dialogism from comedy and carnival, Eliot's dialogism is rooted in tragedy. Romola is set during Florentine carnival and Savonarola's sacred parody of carnival. While Eliot and Bakhtin, following Goethe, both use carnival as an image of ambivalence, in contrast to Bakhtin, Eliot recognizes carnival's violence when it is not simply a metaphor. Deviations from a key intertext, Paquale Villari's Ufe and Times of Girolamo Savonarola, are critical to understanding the novel's ambivalence. Felix Holt and The Spanish Gypsy are studied in light of Eliot's discussion of tragedy, a genre that Eliot argues contains irreconcilable positions. Neither work arrives at an absolute pronouncement for dealing with social inequities. Although Felix has usually been seen as Eliot's mouthpiece, I argue that Felix Holt and the separately published address are dialogic and Eliot does not present any simplistic single correct course for English politics.</p> <p>Bakhtin's discussion of the difference between epic and novel is a starting point for looking at Eliot's use of parodic heroes in Middlemarch, in which incessant parody provides multiple views on every action or word, and large abstract truths cannot be found. Harriet Martineau is introduced as a model for Dorothea's possibilities, and the monologism of Martineau's work forms a contrast for Middlemarch. In Daniel Deronda, Eliot's hero realizes his inability to believe in an epic stance, and the possibility of politics is challenged. Daniel is paralyzed, unable to act because of his own consciousness of dialogism. The Zionism eventually embraced by Daniel is not endorsed absolutely but is subject to the various perspectives of the novel. The usual understanding of the concluding allusion to Milton's Samson Agonistes is challenged by examining Milton's depiction of the conflicting duties of family and nation.</p> / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Late nineteenth-century Victorian adventure novels offer a complex depiction of manhood in relation to colonial adversaries. H. Rider Haggard's 1880s novels portray imperial adventure as an opportunity for masculine rejuvenation, while later adventure novels express a sense of imperial dread and suggest that adventure traumatizes, instead of rejuvenates, masculinity. All of these novels offer insight into a larger shift in Victorian thought concerning Britain's role as an imperial power. The novels define masculinity in two distinct ways: as modern and as medieval. Each novel approaches modern manhood as impotent when faced with the colonial threat, but the narratives all offers a different interpretation of medieval masculinity, underscoring the vexed nature of the Victorian's relationship with the past. H. Rider Haggard's novels, King Solomon's Mines (1885) and She (1887), suggest that imperial adventure offers modern manhood rejuvenation and purpose through interaction and eventual suppression of the colonial female. Haggard offers an optimistic portrayal of adventure because of both the men's distinctly medieval form of physical rejuvenation and the men's ability to influence the landscape in their favor. Authors Bram Stoker and Richard Marsh present a vastly different interpretation of empire and medieval masculinity in their 1897 novels Dracula and The Beetle. Adventure traumatizes the men in the later novels, and their hysteria attests to their effeminate lack of masculine virility. The 1897 novels critique both the optimistic depiction of imperial adventure and the unnatural reliance on medieval forms of masculinity offered in novels such as Haggard's.

As to form, Wolfe's novels are deliberately loose, because that is important to his purpose. Conceiving America as an open society of potentiality, he could do no less than remain open himself. To do otherwise would have meant impotence if not sterility. In this thesis, I shall attempt to show that the episodes, divergences, and observations all illustrate and amplify this spiritual growth.

Pereda's literary fecundity and his literary achievement attain their peak in his novels; through these novels he attempts to present a clear portrayal of the social aspects of provincial Spain.

The fact that Jack London's novels seem to fall into two classes--those which he wrote for money and those which he wrote to deliver a social message--has led to this study of his life and novels. It is the aim of this thesis to show that his life was one of conflict between individualism and socialism and that this conflict is reflected to a varying degree in his novels.

The author's purpose has been to trace in a very broad and general manner the trend of naturalism up to this point where the central figure of our study, Theodore Dreiser, enters into the picture. This survey is designed primarily to give the reader an indication of what naturalism is, both in philosophy and method, and a very brief historical background of the movement.