This collection of short stories explores themes of contemporary gender performance through the lens of the fairy tale. The stories examine both the reverberations canonical tales continue to have in American society today, and the new iterations of fairly tales we encounter in modern culture, particularly those which we burden young women through film and television. Within the collection of stylistic conceits and narrative concerns specific to the fairy tale, these stories feature isolated narrators and themes of journeying through the forest. Each of these tales presents a female character or characters going into a metaphorical woods; the stories also often invoke the literal woods. The idea of "the handsome prince" figures here as well, in different explorations (most often lampoons) of contemporary masculinity. Many of these stories also foreground the particular dynamics and complexities of relationships between women: friends, rivals, lovers, teachers and students, mothers and daughters.

Translations of three of Ilse Aichinger's stories which originally appeared in the book Eliza, Eliza are presented in this thesis. The three stories translated are "Herodes," "Port Sing," and "Die Puppe."

Cette thèse s’intéresse à la manière dont l’écriture dans les nouvelles de Rick Bass est intimement liée aux modes d’être des animaux. L’esquive, le mutisme, la souffrance silencieuse ou bien encore la capacité de régénération des animaux mettent l’écriture au défi et l’entraînent à se renouveler. L’auteur évite en effet toute prise prédatrice du langage sur les mondes animaliers et instaure une coïncidence entre son écriture et les « styles » des animaux. Les traces descriptives, les comparaisons inattendues et les variations rythmiques ou sonores donnent à éprouver la présence animalière et disent l’altérité et la vulnérabilité des espèces que les narrateurs et les personnages chassent, rencontrent ou côtoient. Bass met ainsi en œuvre un processus d’approche simultanément physique et scriptural qui permet non seulement de réinventer le mode descriptif, mais aussi de renouveler nos conceptions de l’animal et notre relation au monde non-humain. Cette étude de la représentation animalière dans les nouvelles de Bass tente ainsi de montrer comment la structure et la substance de l’écriture fictionnelle revêtent un rôle essentiel, éthique, politique et idéologique, au sein d’un combat éminemment militant et écologiste. / This dissertation examines the manner in which the ways of being of animals have a shaping influence on the writing of Rick Bass’s short stories. The animals’ elusive presence, muteness, silent suffering, and capacity for regeneration challenge the writing and renew it. Indeed, far from trying to intellectually capture the worlds of animals with language, Bass creates some coincidence between his discourse and the “styles” of animals. The descriptive traces, surprising images, and rhythmic or sound variations make the reader feel the presence of animals and transcribe the otherness and the vulnerability of the species that Bass’s narrators and characters hunt, meet, or live with. Rick Bass thus creates a scriptural and physical approach that allows him to redefine the descriptive mode and to reinvent the relations between man and the nonhuman world. This study of the representation of animals in Rick Bass’s short stories thus tries to show how the structure and the substance of fictional writing play an essential role at the ethical, political and ideological levels in an outstandingly activist and environmental fight.

During his time of service in the Italian Army in World War I, Ernest Hemingway was injured. He received a non-life-threatening wound and was forever changed. In his article, "Ernest Hemingway: The Life as Fiction and the Fiction as Life," Jackson J. Benson proposes the idea of Hemingway's "wounding what if?" that follows this course of thought: "What if I were wounded and made crazy?, what would happen if I were sent back to the front? I was only wounded in an accident, what do the really brave ones think of me? (351)" Shortly following the war, Hemingway was wounded a second time, this of an emotional nature. A British nurse whom he had fallen in love with broke his heart by downplaying the relationship they had shared and his emotions for her. These two young experiences seem to have impacted Hemingway's writing a great deal, leading him to color his wounded male characters as feminized. "From Wounded to Woman" is an exploration of a variety of Hemingway's wounded male characters that attempts a connection between their having incurred these wounds and becoming feminizied. There is a direct line of logic-of-assertion followed from Hemingway's most popular character, Jake Barnes, through to some of his lesser-known short story stars that traces a path of consistent wounding and subsequent feminization. In the more narrow literary world, Ernest Hemingway has been known as a masculine author whose tales are of war and suffering. It is my goal to explore the feminine aspects of Hemingway's work through his self-critiques expressed through his leading male characters.

Orientador: Cláudia Maria Ceneviva Nigro / Banca: Giséle Manganelli Fernandes / Banca: Mário César Lugarinho / Resumo: Esta dissertação analisa dois livros da literatura norte-americana: Árvore florida (1929), de Katherine Anne Porter (1890-1980), e Intérprete de Males (1999), de Jhumpa Lahiri (1967-), buscando compreender a relação das personagens femininas com a palavra e o silêncio, além de outros designativos de ausência, como o exílio, a memória e a perda, no processo de busca identitária. Partindo da premissa de que tais elementos não configuram uma negatividade, mas sentido substantivo, a pesquisa apoia-se nos escritos sobre o tema do silêncio com Sontag (1987), Steiner (1988) e Orlandi (1993), além das contribuições dos estudos culturais e de gênero elaboradas por Hall (2006) e Butler (2003), respectivamente. A partir de uma abordagem comparativa dos dois textos, procura-se não só verificar como Lahiri opera o diálogo com Porter como também entender as possíveis motivações dessa escolha. O confronto das obras permitiu-nos identificar, em Lahiri, a presença de mitos e mitemas emprestados de Porter, na tentativa de refundar uma mitologia feminina / Abstract: This thesis analyses two books of the American literature: Flowering Judas (1929), by Katherine Anne Porter (1890-1980), and Interpreter of Maladies (1999), by Jhumpa Lahiri (1967-), seeking to understand the relationship of the women characters with word and silence, as well as other absence designatives, such as exile, memory, and loss, in the process of identity quest. Grounded on the premise that such elements do not constitute a negativity but a substantive meaning, the research is based on the writings about the theme of silence with Sontag (1987), Steiner (1988) and Orlandi (1993), in addition to the contributions of the cultural studies, and gender formulated by Hall (2006) and Butler (2003), respectively. From a comparative approach of both texts, we try to verify not only how Lahiri proceeds the dialogue with Porter but also perceive the possible motivations of this choice. The confrontation of the works allowed us to identify, in Lahiri, the presence of myths and mythemes borrowed from Porter, in an attempt to re-found a feminine mythology / Mestre

This collection of short stories is about being a twenty-something in the 90s, trying to get by, have a little fun and make somewhat of a mark in the process. It’s about the process of growing up, and the seemingly desperate need to hold onto all those youthful pursuits. It’s about finding out that life as an adult tries to suck the life out of you, rather than allowing you to suck the life out of it. That constant struggle, the battle of wills between attending to your needs or just satisfying your wants. This is a time for you when your needs and wants are siblings, bickering in the back of the car on a long drive up the coast. The characters in these stories are having their good time while it lasts. Avoiding the inevitable: maturity, responsibility, adulthood. And so they should. After all, these aren’t called ‘the best years of our lives’ for nothing. The stories celebrate your life as a twenty-something. / Master of Arts (Hons) Writing

In Live Ghosts, Patricia (Patty) Ireland offers a gathering of short stories based upon real life characters she encountered while growing up in the South. Exploring the diversity, complexity and moral ambiguity of those we might normally perceive as being stereotypically “Southern,” Ireland’s tales encompass a variety of time periods, settings, and characters, including: a modern-day family struggling to reconcile the reality of death, interracial lovers in the early 1950’s who are descended from masters and slaves, and an insane killer locked for life in a mental institution of the 1990’s. Live Ghosts is infused with tales of fear, love, loss, regret, madness, and self discovery, themes intrinsic not only to Southern culture, but to the universal vulnerability in all of us.

This dissertation is a collection of four long short stories about contemporary Americans written in the mode of psychological realism. “Bare Knuckles” depicts the struggles of a young man trying to “make it” in the world of illegal boxing. “ZOSO” focuses on the breakdown of an upper-middleclass family forced to move from the rustbelt to the “New South.” In “Dusted,” a man ill-equipped to navigate through the adult world turns to substance abuse and violence as a “way out.” “Sugar Skulls” explores the fascination with death in the punk rock world.

Ernest Hemingway wrote to F. Scott Fitzgerald that “The good parts of a book may be only something a writer is lucky enough to overhear or it may be the wreck of his whole damn life — and one is as good as the other” (305). With that, I created a collection of short stories that analyzes my generation of women’s struggles. Framing the thesis are two stories involving three women, Lindsey, Jenny, and Sarah, “The Generation of Discontent” and “Revisions,” with the characters attempting to sort through love, success, and happiness in society. The piece “The Bachelor” has Amanda torn between her currently successful life and the glamour and sometimes infamy of being on ABC’s reality show The Bachelor. In “Eggs Kennedy Style,” the fine line between delusion and dreams becomes defined in both Nan and Kelley of being one of America’s royal Kennedy family. “Cops and Robbers” shows the inner turmoil of women who do not aspire to be mothers and feel guilty for their aspirations as well asthe resulting resentment when they have to give up their dreams. The ideas of taking your loved one for granted and life goals become the driving aspect of “Flat Tire” where story picks up in the middle of major fight between Nicole and Tommy stemming from him dropping the garter the night before at their friend’s wedding. “Almond Blossoms” between a flashback to Amsterdam with Sam’s Dutch fling Andric and present time suburban Ohio with her finance Kevin showing the conflict of being single compared to being settled. As Fitzgerald said, “An author ought to write for his generation” (ix) and I wrote based on my personal experiences as well as my friends’ tales and tribulations that tell of our generation’s struggle. Giving a voice to the high hopes and resulting discontent I feel is important which models the Modern writers like Fitzgerald’s Gatsby’s green lighted hope for Daisy. I hope to revive a bit of that Modern era in my time though our green light just might be the glow of The Bachelor from the television.

Cities are concentrations of diverse populations that undergo continual transformation over time. This thesis deals with the question, how does the individual make place in a constantly changing environment? The entry point for this study was looking at neglected places in urban environments. I looked specifically at the Don River Valley in Toronto, Ontario and how it has developed as an open-ended and complex system. The site research is presented through a series of stories describing specific events or places in the Don Valley that have taken place over the past 200 years. This thesis offers a mongrel approach to design for a site within the Don Valley. “The Mongrel Approach” is an opportunistic way of building that is committed to survival and open as to how this can be achieved. The design proposes a series of intimate yet public infrastructural devices; a toilet, water fountain, shelter and bridge that are presented in a set of hand drawings as well as through an “Explanatory Tale.” A magpie narrates this short story, which is part true, part fiction and part wishful thinking. As the earth’s population becomes more urban than rural and increasingly mobile, contemporary cities are becoming home to a diverse range of individuals with complex and layered identities. The Mongrel Approach offers a way of building that can handle difference and contradiction and accommodate incongruous or inharmonious parts. It positions the designer as a conjurer or first mover. This thesis proposes Mongrel buildings that respond to change by transforming slowly and incrementally over time with the involvement of multiple authors; but at each moment, a register of time and human ritual.