Thesis Abstract This thesis analyses the fiction of the twentieth-century Irish-American author Maeve Brennan through the lens of shame. All of Brennan's published writing has been included: her short stories and magazine contributions collected in The Long Winded Lady, The Springs of Affection, and The Rose Garden, as well as her novella The Visitor. Shame has recently been embraced in academia as a subject of research, as well as an interpretative key for literary analysis. The thesis examines shame in order to map out social and psychological experience of belonging, and the lack thereof, in Brennan's fiction, as both the threat and the reality of isolation, stemming from social rejection, occur as its prominent themes. These elements are also shown as connected to the issues of self-determination and identity, as Brennan's characters partly embrace and partly oppose social normativity. As some of their individual needs, especially those of women, are add odds with social expectations, they are effectively choosing between social inclusion on the one hand, and embracing their personal difference. As transgressions of social norms come with varying degrees of shame, the emotion is omnipresent in the highly regulated, and surveilled, environments that Brennan depicts. As the affect itself causes further...
Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:nusl.cz/oai:invenio.nusl.cz:449660 |
Date | January 2021 |
Creators | Hutková, Klára |
Contributors | Wallace, Clare, Pilný, Ondřej |
Source Sets | Czech ETDs |
Language | English |
Detected Language | English |
Type | info:eu-repo/semantics/masterThesis |
Rights | info:eu-repo/semantics/restrictedAccess |
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