This essay is a literary analysis of two ghost stories, Elizabeth Gaskell’s “The Old Nurse’s Story” (1852) and Susan Hill’s The Man in the Picture (2007). The main focus of the essay is the theme of revenge, which is explored on the basis of similarities and differences in the mentioned ghost stories. It is shown that, in spite of many similarities, The Man in the Picture is a more developed and less conventional ghost story than “The Old Nurse’s Story”. This development is seen in the setting, the narrators and the structure of the story, all of which contain more layers in Susan Hill’s story. The essay also includes a didactic chapter which shows how a teacher can use the two ghost stories in the classroom to teach students in upper secondary school about literary analysis and the Gothic genre.

This thesis questions the connection between Indigenous and immigrant Prairie literature, taking six contemporary texts as a case study. Aboriginal texts include Maria Campbell’s Halfbreed, Beatrice Mosionier’s In Search of April Raintree and Marilyn Dumont’s A Really Good Brown Girl. Immigrant narratives discussed are Hiromi Goto’s Chorus of Mushrooms, Esi Edugyan’s The Second Life of Samuel Tyne, and Madeline Coopsammy’s Prairie Journey. Read alongside one another, these texts demonstrate that Indigenous and immigrant populations do express similar concerns through literature, generally having to do with Canadian multiculturalism. Specifically, this project will discuss bodily and linguistic differences from a white, English-speaking ‘norm,’ home making on the prairies, and story-telling as an alternative indicator of home. This thesis asserts the importance of studying cross-racial literary engagements as they nuance existing discussions of race and space on the prairies and in Canada.

This study traces spatial and temporal disturbances in the modem short story structure. Edgar Allan Poe's "indefinitiveness" and Kenneth Burke's "actualization" serve as historical foundations for this investigation, which leads to contemporary frameworks proposed by such theorists as Gerard Genette, Umberto Eco, Wolfgang Iser, Paul Ricoeur, Peter Brooks, James Phelan, and Susan Sniader Lanser. In particular, I explore how effect operates as a predominant concern of short fiction. Short fiction is a rhetorical interaction encumbered by spatial and temporal constraints, and its narrative teleology is necessarily disrupted by rhetorical techniques. Narrative's boundaries are purposefully violated, its tempo twisted and contorted, exposing a purposeful tension in the rhetorical engagement of author, text and reader. Instabilities crafted within the text disrupt time-space expectations of readers.Importantly, effect is perceived as a rhetorical device within short fiction, and so in this study the text serves as a site of transference privileging equally writer and reader. Conditions of possibility and understanding are invested in the text by the author through techniques of spatial disruption and temporal discontinuity, and then reinvested in the reader by the narrative through the text's generation of uncertainty. Short fiction serves as an invitation by the author for the reader to construct explanations; devices work to disrupt the time-space constraints of the genre, establishing as they do a narrative contract between author and reader that is resolved in and from the text.Burke considers this to be shaping prose fiction to the author's purposes, an act which "involves desires and their appeasements" - and one which purposefully aims for a particular effect. But what are the limits of purposefulness in short fiction? I examine both textual effect and reader affect, relying particularly on Iser and Eco, and turn to Brooks in conclusion to summarize the role of desire in and from the text, and to Phelan to critique the place of rhetoric in establishing and maintaining that desire. My analysis discloses that time-space disruption, employed as a rhetorical strategy by short story writers, serves to heighten rather than threaten the mediated engagement of writer/text/reader in short fiction, producing a measured effect. / Department of English

Högläsning är en vanligt förekommande aktivitet i dagens klassrum. Forskning visar dock på att lärarens högläsning i många fall behöver effektiviseras. Syftet med arbetet är att undersöka vilka effekter lärarens högläsning av berättande texter har på elevers läsförståelse och läsupplevelse i årskurs 4-6. Vidare är syftet att belysa hur lärarens högläsning kan användas som ett didaktiskt redskap för att utveckla elevers läsförståelse och öka deras läsupplevelse. Fokus i arbetet ligger på berättande texter då forskningen visar på att de är de mest förekommande texttyperna i årskurs 4-6. De frågeställningar arbetet besvarar är följande: Vilka effekter har lärarens högläsning av berättande texter på elevers läsförståelse och läsupplevelse? Hur kan lärarens högläsning av berättande texter didaktiskt utformas? Undersökningsmaterialet består till största del av internationella studier, artiklar och nationella forskningsrapporter, vilka har analyserats och jämförts. Att materialet ska vara riktat mot lärarens högläsning och hur högläsningen kan effektiviseras utgör ett obligatoriskt kriterium. Lärarens högläsning av berättande texter visar sig ha en positiv inverkan på elevers läsförståelse och läsupplevelse. Men avgörande för att högläsningen ska kunna bli effektiv, lärorik och meningsfull är att det finns tid och ett syfte med högläsningen. Om läraren inte uppfyller dessa krav kan högläsningen istället få negativa effekter.

This critical edition presents to the reader, for the first time, a definitive text of Charles Dickens's short story, "George Silverman's explanation". This edition presents a critical unmodernized text. Besides the text of the story, this edition includes historical and textual introductions; lists of substantive and accidental variants; word-division; and of collated editions. / Graduate / 0593

This thesis is the first systematic study of short stories published in the New Statesman [NS] weekly magazine from its foundation in 1913 to 1939. The main question it seeks to address is what type of fiction did a mainstream socialist publication like the NS publish then? By chronologically charting dominant literary figures and themes, the thesis aims to discern significant cultural tendencies and editorial principles of selection. Following Raymond Williams' 'cultural materialism', fiction is read in its relation to social history, as a 'representation of history'. Chapter 1 deals with the foundation of the journal and its first year of publication, mapping out the contradictions between Fabian collectivist ideology and ethical socialism, urban realism and literary Georgianism, country and city. A focus on urban problems of poverty unemployment, philanthropy, and machinofacture is at the heart of the NS's literary concern, in 1913. Chapter 2 focuses on stories published during World War I, and goes up to 1926. It argues that the reality of the War was falsified as a time of rest and relaxation, in line with the journal's political policy of supporting the war effort. The immediate post-war period is read as a time of disappointment and intensified social conflict and struggle. The General Strike of 1926 is a turning point in interwar history. It also ushers in a period of unprecedented cultural activity in the NS. As Chapters 4 and 5 show, the post-Strike period is characterised by the consolidation of the working-class fiction of socialist R. M. Fox; by the rise of the countryside realism of H. E. Bates; and by the rise of the colonial fiction of E. R. Morrough on Egypt (which is examined in the context of Leslie Mitchell's, E. M. Forster's, and William Plomer's responses to empire). Significant contributions by women writers (such as Faith Compton Mackenzie) about travel, duty, and oppression are also made in the late 20s, early 30s. Chapter 6 is dedicated to the magnificent place that Russian fiction occupies in the 30s through the work of Michael Zoshchenko. Though written during the free and experimental 20s, his satiric fiction is published as a sample of Soviet literature of the 30s, thus consolidating the Stalinist line dictated by the political editor, Kingsley Martin, that 'self-criticism' is a central part of Soviet politics and society. Chapter 7 is a tribute to the NS's contribution to reconstructing British realism away from both Victorian moralism and European naturalism. The stories of Bates, V. S. Pritchett, and Peter Chamberlain are dominant, conveying different ways of negotiating the pressures of documentary realism and the political developments of the 30s. Also discussed is the unique modernist contribution of neglected Stella Benson, which presents a strong challenge to the usual representationalism of NS fiction. The concluding chapter reads NS fiction in the whole period between 1913 and 1939 as the cultural expression of the new petty bourgeoisie, especially its progressive, politically and socially engaged side. With its focus on ordinariness and lived experience, and its formal experimentation and innovation, NS fiction exemplifies artistic commitment par excellence, a conscious cultural alignment with the actuality and potentiality of the new petty bourgeoisie.

The eight short stories in Shorty examine themes including racism, oppression, conflict, social perception, miscommunication, struggles over meaning, truth and ethnic identity. New Zealand is a country reinventing itself from its colonial past (Wyn 2004 p. 277); identity-making in this country is a ‘dynamic process’ (Liu et al. 2005 p.11) which generates new cultural forms and practices. The concept of culture and subculture links the aforementioned themes in Shorty.

The eight short stories in Shorty examine themes including racism, oppression, conflict, social perception, miscommunication, struggles over meaning, truth and ethnic identity. New Zealand is a country reinventing itself from its colonial past (Wyn 2004 p. 277); identity-making in this country is a ‘dynamic process’ (Liu et al. 2005 p.11) which generates new cultural forms and practices. The concept of culture and subculture links the aforementioned themes in Shorty.

In this dissertation it is argued that the European witch trials that took place between 1450 and 1700 have resulted in a legacy of stereotypical themes in Australian children's literature. Those accused of witchcraft were almost always women who were old, without protection, and physically ugly. They were accused of consorting with the devil, making harmful spells, flying through the night on a magic staff and exhibiting malevolent intent towards others. An analysis of this period forms the contextual framework for identifying themes that appear in contemporary Australian children's literature. A survey of twenty-three books, identified as stories about witches, was conducted to ascertain whether the stereotypical witch from the European witch-hunts continues to be characterised in Australian children's literature. The findings suggest that the witch figure in Australian children's literature mirrors the historical evidence from the European witch trials, but has evolved into a more powerful and proactive character than that identified in the historical literature. The characterisation of the witch in the books for older readers is powerful and evil, compared to the witch as a trivial and diminished figure in the books for younger readers. Gender is also a major influence in the characterisation of the witch, with all readers exposed to themes that may influence their expectations regarding the behaviour and role of women. The representation of the witch in the books reinforces the misogyny of the witchcraft era, and weaves patterns of meaning in the texts that construct undesirable female images. Readers of all ages can link these images to the social world beyond the text.

Ths thesis demonstrates how theory and praxis may be integrated within a postcolonial, or more specifically, anticolonial frame. It argues for the necessity of telling, listening and responding to personal narratives as a catalyst for understanding the construction of identities and their relationship to place. Tlus is acheved through a theorisation of narrative and a critique of postcolonialism. Three 'sites' of contestation are visited to provide this critique: the "Patterns of Life: The Story of the Aboriginal People of Western Australia" exhibition at the Perth Museum; a comparison of Western Australian legislation that governed the lives of Aboriginal people from 1848 to the present and, the life story of Alice Nannup; and, an analysis of the Australian Institute Judicial Association's "Aboriginal Culture: Law and Change" seminar for magistrates. Most importantly, this work foregrounds strategies for negotiating a just basis for coexistence between indigenous and non-indigenous Australians.