My primary purpose in this thesis is to continue the refocused attention given to American "proletarian" fiction of the 1930's. Because of their politics and supposed artistic inferiority, many of these works have been marginalized by American literary critics. However, many contemporary scholars are reconsidering this genre and devoting more time to studying the insights it offers into understanding the relationship of political ideology to artistic creation, to understanding the history of the Communist Party in the United States, and for the ways in which it contributes to Postmodern cultural studies. Part One of this thesis is an attempt to recreate the critical ambience that surrounded proletarian fiction by summarizing the literary and political issues that fueled the debates among authors and critics. Contemporaneous and more recent scholarship is considered. The major point of this portion of the thesis is to illustrate the ways in which this literary movement's progression towards its ultimate goal was constrained by its own ideological limits. Part Two of this thesis is a close rereading of six proletarian novels written in response to the textile worker's strike at the Lora, Mill in Gastonia, North Carolina, in 1929. The drama of the strike acts as a "control group" of sorts which I have used to show how different authors approach the same subject matter. The ways in which each author conforms or deviates from the proletarian aesthetic is considered, and a comparative study emerges that illuminates the possibilities and limits of each work and of the Communist ambience that informed them. This close reading of these six novels sheds light on issues that have not as yet been discussed in any critical forum. In addition, this thesis illustrates the ways in which our sense of identity and political agency is historically conditioned. These findings are relevant to current cultural studies that center on the role of ideology in society. They also provide evidence of how politics affects the writing of history. The ultimate goal is to provide reasons why proletarian fiction should be reintroduced, more centrally, in American literary studies. Only through a better understanding of the past can we come to understand the present and the future, and how artists and the creative imagination can play central roles in the quest for social justice. / Graduation date: 1999

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Florida State University, 2002. / Advisor: Dr. Dennis Moore, Florida State University, College of Arts and Sciences, Dept. of English. Title and description from dissertation home page (viewed Sept. 29, 2003). Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Chicago, Dept. of Romance Languages and Literatures, Dec. 2002. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 198-204). Also available on the Internet.

Inaugural dissertation -- Academia Alberta Lvdoviciana. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis advisor: Susan Michalczyk / After the fall of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War, the United States became the one remaining superpower at the head of a unipolar international system. This new position and the repercussions of its power led to the rocky international stability of the 1990s. The Poison Umbrella Effect is a political allegory which explores this historic transition period through the relationships of college students. Anna Bennet is a freshman at Warren College who, after being elected Hall President by default, must find a balance between her friendships and her sense of power and responsibility. Her first year of college is marked by drama, disillusionment, and progress as she develops into the person she will be for the rest of her college career. With her friends representing other countries, and all of their actions representing political events of the 1990s, Anna's experiences demonstrate America's progression from a leading power in a bipoloar world, to the domineering superpower it is today. / Thesis (BA) — Boston College, 2007. / Submitted to: Boston College. College of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: College Honors Program.

No description available.

This work challenges common arguments as to the division of the political from other fictional genres and, in treatments of nineteenth-century fiction and culture, the private from the public sphere. Through an examination of works by Mary Wollstonecraft, Amelia Opie, Maria Edgeworth, and Elizabeth Gaskell, I uncover a common concern with the preconditions of liberal selfhood which posits the household as the space in which the political rights-bearer, defined by interiority and mental qualities, comes to be. This rights-bearer is not, as has been argued, defined by purely formal and abstract procedural reason, but in terms of a capacity for reason which includes the capacity for emotion. This work therefore shows domestic space to be the foundation of, rather than the occluded counterpart to, the liberal polity, and argues that an account of the household, in which the liberal self is disclosed, is likewise at the centre of Victorian political fiction.

This thesis is an examination of the dialogues of Xenophon's Cyropaedia. Chapter I opens with a brief introduction to the Cyr. - its genre, date, epilogue and place in modern scholarship. The second half of the chapter is devoted to an overall survey of the work's dialogues. The dialogues are listed and divided into seven main categories; various formal features of the dialogues - their length, number of speakers, presence of an audience, dramatic background etc. - are noted. The second chapter deals with the "Socratic" or didactic dialogues of the Cyr. These conversations are first compared to Xenophon's actual Socratic dialogues, particularly those of the Memorabilia, and are shown to have several of the same characteristics: a leading didactic figure, discussion of ethical questions, the use of analogies and a series of brief questions and replies etc. A detailed commentary on the "Socratic" dialogues of the Cyr. follows; some of these dialogues are seen to be livelier and more dialectical than Xenophon's genuine Socratic conversations and his hero Cyrus is not always assigned the role of teacher. Symposium dialogues are the subject of the third chapter. These conversations are shown to have several features or themes in common, such as a blend of serious and light conversation, a discussion of poverty and wealth, a love interest and rivalry among the guests. The symposia of the Cyr. are compared to earlier literary symposia, including those of Plato and Xenophon, and some of the more Persian features of these parties are pointed out. Chapter IV deals with the novelle or colourful tales of the Cyr. - the stories of Croesus, Panthea, Gobryas and Gadatas. The characters and plots of these stories are found to have much in common with the novelle of Ctesias and Herodotus. Nonetheless, it is argued in a detailed commentary on these dialogues that Xenophon displays considerable skill and originality in the telling of these tales. The fifth chapter is a brief commentary on the remaining categories of dialogues: short or anecdotal conversations, negotiation, planning and information dialogues. These dialogues are compared to similar conversations in other works by Xenophon. Finally, there are three appendices. The first questions whether Cyrus is portrayed as an ideal hero even after the conquest of Babylon, and the second discusses the problem of Persian sources in the Cyr. The third appendix is a list of the speeches of the Cyr.

Thesis (M.A.)--Baylor University, 2007. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 104-108).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of California, Santa Cruz, 1994. / Typescript. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 270-279).