The creative component of my doctoral thesis articulates narratives of female experience in Colonial Australia. The work re-contextualises and re-narrativises accounts of events which occurred in particular women�s lives, and which were reported in nineteenth century newspapers. The female characters within my novel are illiterate and from the lower classes. Unlike middle-class women who wrote letters and kept journals, women such as these did not and could not leave us their stories. The newspaper accounts in which their stories initially appeared reflected patriarchal (and) class ideologies, and represented the women as the �other�. However, it is by these same textual artefacts that we come to know of their existence. The multi-layered novel I have written juxtaposes archival pre-texts (or intertexts) against fictional re-narrativisations of the same events. One reason for the use of this style is in order to challenge the past positioning of silenced women. My female characters� first textual iterations, those documents which now form our archival records, were written from a position of hegemonic patriarchy. Their first textual iteration were the record of female existence recorded by others. The original voices of the fictionalised female characters of my novel are heard as an absence and the intertext, as well as the fiction, now stands as a trace of what once existed as women�s lived, performative experience. My contention is that by making use of concepts such as historiographic metafiction, transworld identities, and sideshadowing; along with narrative structures such as juxtaposition, collage and the use of intertext and footnotes, a richer, multidimensional and non-linear view of female colonial experience can be achieved. And it will be one which departs from that hegemonically imposed by patriarchy. It is the reader who becomes the meaning maker of �truth� within historical narration. My novel sits within the theoretical framework of postmodern literature as a variant on a new form of the genre that has been termed �historical fiction�. However, it departs from traditional historical fiction in that it foregrounds not only an imagined fictional past world created when the novel is read, but also the actual archival documents, the pieces of text from the past which in other instances and perhaps put together to form a larger whole, might be used to make traditional history. These pieces of text were the initial finds from the historical research undertaken for my novel. These fragments of text are used within the work as intertextual elements which frame, narratively interrupt, add to or act as footnotes and in turn, are themselves framed by my female characters� self narrated stories. These introduced textual elements, here foregrounded, are those things most often hidden from view within the mimetic and hermeneutic worlds of traditional historical fiction. It is also with these intertextual elements that the fictional women engage in dialogue. At the same time, my transworld characters� existence as fiction are reinforced by their existence as �objects� (of narration) within the archival texts. Both the archival texts and the fiction are now seen as having the potential to be unreliable. My thesis suggests that in seeking to gain a clearer understanding of these events and the narrative of these particular marginalised colonial women�s lives, a new way of engaging with history and writing historical fiction is called for. I have undertaken this through creative fiction which makes use of concepts such as transworld identity, as defined by Umberto Eco and also by Brian McHale, historiographic metafiction, as defined by Linda Hutcheon and the concept of sideshadowing which, as suggested by Gary Saul Morson and Michael Andr� Bernstein, opens a space for multiple historical narratives. The novel plays with the idea of both historical facts and historical fiction. By giving textual equality to the two the border between what can be considered as historical fact and historical fiction becomes blurred. This is one way in which a type of textual agency can be brought to those silenced groups from Australia�s past. By juxtaposing parts of the initial textual account of these events alongside, or footnoted below, the fiction which originated from them, I create a female narrative of �new writing� through which parts of the old texts, voiced from a male perspective, can still be read. The resulting, multi-layered narrative becomes a collage of text, voice and meaning thus enacting Mikhail Bakhtin�s idea of heteroglossia. A reading of my novel insists upon questioning the truthfulness or degree of reliability of past textual facts as accurate historic records of real women�s life events. It is this which is at the core of my novel�an historiographic metafictional challenging by the fictional voices of female transworld identities of what had been written as an historical, legitimate account of the past. This self-reflexive style of historical fiction makes for a better construct of a multi-dimensional, non-linear view of female colonial experience.

This study attempts to establish the cross-currents of African American literary traditions and an emerging African American graphic novel aesthetic. A close analysis of the visuality foreground in the visual/textual space of the graphic novel will provide insight into how the form of the graphic novel reconciles and revises more traditional textual literary elements. Such motifs and tropes as the visuality of slave portraiture, Gates’ trope of the talking book, and the paradox of invisibility/visibility within African American creative registers will be used to highlight the creative tradition inaugurated by the African American graphic novel. Each of these elements generally associated with African American textual production, become central thematic concerns with the graphic work of artists such as Ho Che Anderson, Kyle Baker, Dwayne McDuffie, Roland Laird, Taneshia Laird, and Elihu Bey. From the historical biography of Anderson’s King and Baker’s Nat Turner, to the broad history of Laird, Laird, and Bey’s Still I Rise, and finally within the traditional superhero graphic novel of Dwayne McDuffie’s Icon, a definite tradition of African American graphic novels emerge. Understanding how these graphic novels associate themselves with, and ultimately revise, the literary aesthetics of African American texts makes possible the fuller examination of African American graphic novels as a specialized literary tradition.

This study is a thematic-descriptive investigation of the reproduction and transformation of norms in the theoretical discourse on the novel during the 1960s. Primary literature consists of articles and essays published in West German literary and cultural journals 1959-1967. The term ‘discourse’ is applied partly in accordance with Busse/Hermanns/Teubert (1994), the term ‘theory of the novel’ chiefly in accordance with Lämmert (ed. 1984). ‘Ideology’ is not used in the sense of ‘false ideology’ but rather as an umbrella term for various types of value-related statements. From this, the theory-of-the-novel discourse is perceived as an aesthetic-ideological discourse, containing statements directed at the contemporary novel which have clear programmatic function and significant thematic width. The objective of the investigation is to show that specific comprehensive thematic fields – Werteverlust (breakdown and loss of values), Subjektproblematik (‘problematisation of the concept of the subject’), Sprachproblematik (language related problems) and Realitätszerfall (reality loss, breakdown of the reality concept) – bear discursive significance as regards the discussion of literary norms during the 1960s, and that this discussion realises itself as two aesthetic-ideological discourses competing for interpretative precedence. The major issues are: Which reiterated patterns of argumentation, i.e. norm-related categories, concepts and rhetorical patterns, are used in the discourses for diagnoses and programmatic imperatives? How are the comprehensive thematic fields accentuated? What is treated, postulated or set aside as ‘truth’? How - based on the above – is the novel formulated as a ‘problem’ (‘crisis of the novel’)? The investigation confirms that the comprehensive thematic fields are particularly central to the theoretical discussion of literature in the 1960s. This manifests itself as a discursive re-evaluation process which may be characterised as a conflict between an ‘aesthetic-conservative discourse’ and a ‘discourse of change’ (‘Veränderungsdiskurs’) where the right to define and evaluate the novel in terms of literature is at stake. It is in the collision between these two discourses and their largely incompatible concepts of literature that the novel discursively becomes a ‘problem’. The discourses are maintained by specific reiterated patterns of argumentation which in the investigation are subsumed under the following headings: die negative Modernität (negative modernity), das bloß Moderne (phenomena of ‘fashionable character’, simply expressing trends) and das Überzeitliche und das Ganze (the timeless and the totality); respectively die traditionelle, bürgerliche Gesellschaft (traditional bourgeois society), die technisch-sprachliche Realität (technolinguistic reality) and der subjektive, sprachliche Realitätsausschnitt (‘subjective language based slice of reality’). The first group of argumentation patterns is linked to universal, ‘eternal’ and essential categories and inherited norms, ethical-aesthetical educational grounding and a ‘rhetoric of the spirit’ or of ‘mankind’, oriented around a specific reception of German Classicism and Idealism, a downgrading of the present and an upgrading of the past. The other group embraces an incipient constructivism, contextually bound and societal categories and norms as well as implicitly critical programmes of enlightenment, devaluing the past and ‘acknowledging’ rather than criticising the present. In doing so they tend rather to realise a rhetoric of the linguistic and political reality and of more modest programmatic proposals.

This dissertation investigates the cultural connections made between race and color in works of fiction from the Victorian and Edwardian era, particularly how authors who are also artists invent fantastically colored characters who are purple, blue, red, and yellow to rewrite (and sometimes reclaim) difference in their fiction. These strange and eccentric characters include the purple madwoman in Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre (1847), the blue gentleman from Wilkie Collins’s Poor Miss Finch (1872), the red peddler in Thomas Hardy’s The Return of the Native (1878), and the little yellow girls of Arthur Conan Doyle’s “The Yellow Face” (1893) and Frances Hodgson Burnett’s The Secret Garden (1911). These fictional texts serve as a point of access into the cultural meanings of color in the nineteenth century and are situated at the intersection of Victorian discourses on the visual arts and race science. The second half of the nineteenth century constitutes a significant moment in the history of color: the rapid development of new color technologies helps to trigger the upheavals of the first avant-garde artistic movements and a reassessment of coloring’s prestige in the art academies. At the same time, race science appropriates color, using it as a criterion for classification in the establishment of global racial hierarchies. By imagining what it would be like to change one’s skin color, these artist-authors employ the aesthetic realm of color to explore the nature of human difference and alterity. In doing so, some of them are able to successfully formulate their own challenges to nineteenth-century racial discourse.

<p>"Sentimental Manipulations: Duty and Desire in the Novels of Sophie Cottin" examines four novels by Sophie Cottin, from 1798 until 1806. A forgotten but once-popular novelist, Cottin used the theme of motherhood to develop the relationship between women and desire and duty. These novels use the sentimental novel in different ways that challenge the limits of genre and confront social perceptions of motherhood. The generic transitions reveal subversive representations of women's sexuality and choice. The author's rewriting of motherhood and genre thus plays a crucial role in understanding the complex and developing notion of the sentimental novel in a period of transition after the Revolution. The eighteenth century gave rise to more structured gender divisions in society that provided little space for women's freedom outside of the patriarchal dictates of the family and motherhood. Jean-Jacques Rousseau's 1761 publication of <italic> Julie; ou la Nouvelle Héloïse</italic> and his 1762 publication of <italic> Emile; ou de l'éducation</italic> are thought to have defined social roles for women in relation to their reproductive abilities. The novel, as a site of social production, was understood to have influential moral implications and was used to confront and maintain socially accepted behavior. Mother-child depictions in literature, therefore, reveal socially acceptable behavior for women. My first chapter examines the development of motherhood as a form of social duty imposed on women. I explore the Rousseauian themes in Cottin's first sentimental epistolary novel, <italic> Claire d'Albe</italic>, published in 1978. The representation of adultery reveals the complex relationship between women's duty, virtue, and sexuality. In my second chapter, I analyze how Cottin manipulates the epistolary sentimental genre in <italic> Amélie Mansfield</italic>, published in 1802. Cottin creates narrative spaces that privilege women's expression and redefine women's choice through a violent and controversial depiction of the protagonist's suicide. I explore the social implications of the removal of the suicide scene from all publications of the novel after 1805. My third chapter examines the incorporation of elements of the travel narrative into the sentimental genre in <italic> Malvina </italic>, published in 1800, and <italic>Elisabeth; ou les exilés de Sibérie</italic>, published in 1805. Through the description of travel, I explore Cottin's representations of duty and women's education at two distinct moments in her publishing career.</p> / Dissertation

A coming-of-age novel in which a girl who grows up in a Christian cult must cope when her father is killed.

Dawn Jones's sorority sisters thought she made a big mistake marrying blue-collar Reginald. But thanks to hard work and belief in each other, Dawn and Reginald left the big city and made their own happiness, complete with a comfortable home and two lively children. Dawn can't wait to show everyone just how perfect her choices were—especially when her mega-successful best friend, Sasha, shows up to visit. But she never expected Sasha would like Reginald so much she'd steal him for herself. . .or that Reginald would see Sasha as a second chance to pursue hopes he never fulfilled. With her perfect life now in shambles, Dawn will do whatever it takes to regain what she's lost. But the road back will mean facing the hardest of truths, even tougher choices—and risking more than she ever imagined to discover what her life could really be.

Jeffrey Eugenides‟ Middlesex can be ascribed to many genres, one of which is the novel of immigration. Mikhail Bakhtin has suggested that each genre, indeed any literary motif, can be defined by its own chronotope, literally “time space,” “the intrinsic connectedness of temporal and spatial relationships that are artistically expressed in literature.” The essay discusses the chronotope of immigration in Middlesex, and looks at how four specific intersections of time and space, embodied by the four houses inhabited by the Stephanides family, contribute to the unfolding of this particular immigration saga. The four houses can thus be seen to represent the key elements of this novel‟s instance of a chronotope of immigration, which brings up concepts such as assimilation, hybridity and “third space.” The essay also examines the relations of central characters to time, space and each other; the upstairs/downstairs and inside/outside dichotomies within each house providing interesting keys to inter-gender and inter-generational alienation within this chronotope of immigration.

In this essay, I analyse the characters of Frodo and Aragorn in Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings and Peter Jackson’s film trilogy in order to see if traits and relationships are consistent between the novel and the films. Any changes in characters and the ways they interact in relationships entail changes not only to the overarching narrative, but potentially to the most important themes of the story: friendship and heroism. This is important for the general discourse on the films as adaptations, since they have been accused of not being true to the thematic core of the source material. Peter Jackson’s claim that the intention was to always remain true to the spirit of Tolkien’s novel, then necessitates a closer comparison of the two works. Therefore, in investigating the characters I look not only for differences and similarities, but also for the repercussions these have on the story and the potential reasons behind them. By examining the characters from the perspective of the novel, the films and the filmmakers’ commentaries, I discuss how the removal of social class in the films changes the actions of the characters and consequently affects the themes of friendship and heroism. I also bring up the effects of changing from a novel to film as well as the symbiotic relationship between the character traits and the narrative as a whole. This essay shows that though the social class, character traits and the narrative flow are changed in a circular pattern. A closer look at the films reveals that the story’s core themes of friendship and heroism not only remain consistent, but are given more emphasis than in the novel.

In order to investigate if difference in personality is depended on the teat positions in piglets, Sus scrofa, 63 piglets, from 21 litters, were studied. The piglets were at an age between 9 and 31 days. 3 piglets in each of the 21 litters, one that suckled at an anterior teat, one at a middle teat, and one at a posterior teat, were studied during lactation, undisturbed activity, and introduction to a novel object respectively to new straw. In total thirteen behaviors were recorded. The only significant difference between the teat position were disputes during suckling (P=0.018). There was a tendency of playing during undisturbed activity (P=0.062) between the teat positions. There were significant differences between the litters for every behavior except for inactive piglet lying alone (P=0.108) and when exploring new straw (P=0.584). There is only evidence for behavioral differences for the frequency of disputes during suckling between piglets at different teat positions. A principal component analysis, which accounted for 64.2 % of the variance, suggested four personality traits: exploration (19.2 %), playfulness (17.5 %), interest in food (14.8 %), and interest in straw (10.9 %). However, no significant differences were found for these components for the different teat positions.