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The Confederate Stories Of America: The Short-Story Cycle And The Representation Of The American South, Ikuko Takeda
The Confederate Stories Of America: The Short-Story Cycle And The Representation Of The American South, Ikuko Takeda
LSU Doctoral Dissertations
My dissertation examines the ways in which the short-story cycle has provided a unique generic framework for representing and investigating the complex interplay of contending forces that constitute what we think of as the American South. Often confused with a collection of disparate short stories or a novel, the short-story cycle is a collection of short stories in which each story is independent, but simultaneously interrelated to one another. Although the South has produced a number of short-story cycles or linked story collections, scholars have not paid much attention to the connection between the genre/form and the region. I consider, …
The Exemplary Spartacus: Reception, Adaptation, And Reconstruction, Benjamin Franklin Howland
The Exemplary Spartacus: Reception, Adaptation, And Reconstruction, Benjamin Franklin Howland
LSU Doctoral Dissertations
My project, “The Exemplary Spartacus: Reception, Adaptation, and Reconstruction,” focusses on various representations of the gladiator Spartacus. I assert that Spartacus has almost exclusively been and continues to be an exemplary figure, with an extensive and connected literary tradition, working as an empty signifier in differing temporalities and localities. I draw specific attention to a core issue in the study of Spartacus, namely, the plethora of modern representations of Spartacus in various genres, and the continuing influence these representations exert through their blurring of the historical figure with local themes and ideologies. Each draw from the same ancient sources, infusing …
Inventing An Ethics: Existentialism And Engagement Through Literature, Michael Foster Wickham
Inventing An Ethics: Existentialism And Engagement Through Literature, Michael Foster Wickham
LSU Master's Theses
The existentialist ethics of Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone De Beauvoir offers a unique perspective that challenges a traditional, normative picture that has been dominant throughout the history of ethical thinking and continues to dominate in contemporary discourse. The perspective in question refuses to rely on essence to ground its positions, opting instead to focus on the contingency of the subject and the interpersonal as being fundamental in the invention of moral values and ethical practices. This thesis looks to – in the first chapter – explore the relationship between the subjective and the interpersonal through a discussion of Heidegger’s Mitsein …
Immigration, Ethnicity, And Citizenship: The Words And Faces Of The Chinese Of North America, Pengyi Huang
Immigration, Ethnicity, And Citizenship: The Words And Faces Of The Chinese Of North America, Pengyi Huang
LSU Doctoral Dissertations
In this dissertation, I have analyzed the migrant experience of Chinese immigrants in North America through their representation in literature and photography. Each of its three chapters focuses on three major ethnic issues affecting the lives and identity of Chinese immigrants and their offspring in North America: the first concerns the ways in which occupation, home, and family affect the destinies of Chinese immigrants; the second deals with the role of language in the lives of Chinese immigrants and the career of Chinese migrant writers; the third addresses stereotypes about Chinese immigrants and their offspring and the redefinition of their …
Mark Twain, James Thurber, And David Sedaris: American Literary Humorists, Liz Sills
Mark Twain, James Thurber, And David Sedaris: American Literary Humorists, Liz Sills
LSU Doctoral Dissertations
This analysis probes the unique nature of the American Literary Humorist by looking at three exemplary cases of this type of figure: Mark Twain, James Thurber, and David Sedaris. Rather than dissecting their works to the point that they become unfunny, this piece examines their interaction with the times and publics that form their audiences. Doing so allows us to better understand their resonance both during their own times and today and gives us a better look at what really makes them stand out in the history of American letters.
A Comparative Case Study: An Examination Of How Literature Assists Children Experiencing A Trauma, Michelle Clare Benoit
A Comparative Case Study: An Examination Of How Literature Assists Children Experiencing A Trauma, Michelle Clare Benoit
LSU Doctoral Dissertations
This case study, with four elementary school students as participants, examined the use of books and bibliotherapy when experiencing a traumatic incident. Utilizing fiction books, I explored how literature could be a powerful tool for overcoming life-altering events and circumstances, such as losing a pet, going through a divorce, or dealing with a grandparent who is suffering from Alzheimer's, with a bully in school, or the death of a loved one. Bibliotherapy could also be effective when used with individuals that stutter, children with dyslexia, and children coping with death or a parental mental illness. For this study, the data …
The Imagined After: Re-Positioning Social Memory Through Twentieth-Century Post-Apocalyptic Literature And Film, Amanda Ashleigh Wicks
The Imagined After: Re-Positioning Social Memory Through Twentieth-Century Post-Apocalyptic Literature And Film, Amanda Ashleigh Wicks
LSU Doctoral Dissertations
Maurice Halbwachs first proposed a collective approach to memory in the early twentieth century, but the vast majority of subsequent scholarship investigates memory’s social properties from a theoretical point of view. This project instead proposes that memory functions as a social phenomenon in significant and real ways, primarily understood through the social relations that arise within social frameworks, which provide a structure against which people’s memories come together to form important memory-narratives that configure individual and social consciousness. Once people transform memory from individual thought-image into socially structured language, memory takes on social properties. Memory relies upon social frameworks to …
Body Language: Pain In Victorian Literature, Laura Jane Faulk
Body Language: Pain In Victorian Literature, Laura Jane Faulk
LSU Doctoral Dissertations
“Body Language: Pain in Victorian Literature” argues that Victorian authors use the readable sign system of the body and pain to emphasize their characters’ physical features to the reader. As characters physically manifest emotions or experience violence, their appearances change, and these differences depend on physical descriptions. Marks on the body give it texture and depth, creating a layering that encourages the reader to envision and remember it. Character interactions, particularly when they read others’ somatic signs and experience or cause brutality, further flesh out characters, emphasizing their physical presences in the reader’s mind. The somatic sign system depends upon …
Southern Bellas: The Construction Of Mestiza Identity In Southern Narratives, Wendy Aimee Braun
Southern Bellas: The Construction Of Mestiza Identity In Southern Narratives, Wendy Aimee Braun
LSU Doctoral Dissertations
This project analyzes representations and self-representations of Mestizas living in areas of the Deep South that lack a significant Latino presence. Incorporating a range of media, I take a comparative approach to Southern cultural narratives and propose a re-reading of these works through an examination of identity formation and cultural negotiation. By centering the Southern Mestiza, this dissertation advances concepts of intersectionality to address the role of region, as well as race and gender, in the representation and experiences of women often overlooked in Southern and U.S. Latino studies. The Introductory chapter summarizes the theoretical framework for the study, including …
Lillian Fuchs: Violist, Teacher And Composer; Musical And Pedagogical Aspects Of The 16 Fantasy Études For Viola, Teodora Dimova Peeva
Lillian Fuchs: Violist, Teacher And Composer; Musical And Pedagogical Aspects Of The 16 Fantasy Études For Viola, Teodora Dimova Peeva
LSU Doctoral Dissertations
This monograph concerns the life and compositions of Lillian Fuchs, one of the foremost American violists. Chapter I separates her career into three areas: performer, teacher, and composer. As a violist, her famous interpretation of Mozart’s Sinfonia Concertante, performed frequently with her brother, violinist Joseph Fuchs, has done much to increase the popularity of music written for violin and viola. As a member of the Musicians’ Guild in New York, she has premiered a substantial number of chamber music works, many of them composed specifically for her. She is one of the first violists to perform the Cello Suites …
From Native To Nation: Copway’S American Indian Newspaper And Formation Of American Nationalism, David Shane Wallace
From Native To Nation: Copway’S American Indian Newspaper And Formation Of American Nationalism, David Shane Wallace
LSU Doctoral Dissertations
This dissertation argues that the publication of Copway’s American Indian (1851) challenges accepted representations of nineteenth-century American Native peoples by countering popular stereotypes. Interrogating a multiplicity of cultural artifacts at the moment of their meeting and investigating the friction created as they rub against one another within the columns of the periodical, I argue that the texts that contribute to the make-up of Copway’s American Indian are juxtaposed in such a way as to force nineteenth-century readers to reconsider the place of the indigenous inhabitants in the American nation. Seemingly disconnected tidbits of information, presented not individually but as components …
Elements Of Mythmaking In Witness Accounts Of Colonial Piracy, Plamen Ivanov Arnaudov
Elements Of Mythmaking In Witness Accounts Of Colonial Piracy, Plamen Ivanov Arnaudov
LSU Doctoral Dissertations
Focusing on historical accounts (1684-1734) by English, French, and Spanish witnesses, this dissertation establishes a continuity in fictionalized representations of anti-heroic pirates from the buccaneering period to the Golden Age of Piracy. Informed by history, literary, myth, and performance theory, the analysis identifies significant distortions in reports by observers and participants. The distortions that pertain to mythmaking patterns are classified and analyzed further. Conflicting and ambivalent representations of the pirate as an anti-hero are resolved through the positing of a literary scapegoat hypothesis drawing from René Girard and Joseph Roach. While demonstrating mythical archetypes at work in the construction of …
Attitudes Des Éducateurs Envers Le Français Et Le Créole: Le Cas D'Haïti, Lesly Jean-François
Attitudes Des Éducateurs Envers Le Français Et Le Créole: Le Cas D'Haïti, Lesly Jean-François
LSU Doctoral Dissertations
Language attitudes represent a serious challenge for Haitian education policy makers. This research is the first attempt to study the attitudes of elementary school educators toward the linguistic situation in Haiti. A survey of 154 teachers addressed their attitudes toward language use, preference and choice, and their stereotypes toward other Haitian native speakers. Three instruments (quantitative questionnaire, Match-Guise-Technique, and qualitative questionnaire) were utilized and two Statistical Methods (descriptive and inference), along with Chi-Square were used in order to observe the significance of differences in independent variables. Since Haitian teachers who participated in this study were assumed bilingual, the questionnaire first …
Heroic Individualism: The Hero As Author In Democratic Culture, Alan I. Baily
Heroic Individualism: The Hero As Author In Democratic Culture, Alan I. Baily
LSU Doctoral Dissertations
My study focuses on the literature of democratic morality, with specific reference to the question of "heroic individualism." I attempt to elucidate the notion of heroic individualism by examining three modern democratic moralists whose work occupies the space between politics and literature: Jean Jacques Rousseau, Thomas Carlyle and Friedrich Nietzsche. In brief, I conclude that the central aspiration of heroic individualism is to bridge the gap between writing and action, the Text and the Voice. The dialogue among Rousseau, Carlyle, and Nietzsche reveals that the problem of writing as action is central to heroic-individualist morality. Each of these authors demonstrates …
After Scotland: Irvine Welsh And The Ethic Of Emergence, Benjamin George Lanier-Nabors
After Scotland: Irvine Welsh And The Ethic Of Emergence, Benjamin George Lanier-Nabors
LSU Doctoral Dissertations
In “After Scotland: Irvine Welsh and the Ethic of Emergence,” the author’s objective is to mirror what he argues is the Scottish writer Irvine Welsh’s objective: to chart out a future Scotland guided by a generative life ethic. In order to achieve this objective, the author lays open and reengages Scotland’s past, discovers and commits to neglected or submerged materials and energies in its past, demonstrates how Welsh’s work is faithful to those and newly produced materials and energies, and suggests that Welsh’s use of those materials and energies enables readers to envision a new Scotland that will be integral …
Reticent Romans: Silence And Writing In La Vie De Saint Alexis, Le Conte Du Graal, And Le Roman De Silence, Evan J. Bibbee
Reticent Romans: Silence And Writing In La Vie De Saint Alexis, Le Conte Du Graal, And Le Roman De Silence, Evan J. Bibbee
LSU Doctoral Dissertations
Apart from discourse and yet somehow part of it, silence is a powerfully ambiguous linguistic phenomenon that blurs the lines between presence and absence. Eluding the material aspects of oral and written language, it is only perceptible as the gaps or spaces between words. Nonetheless, it plays a role in all linguistic productions: although silence itself cannot be directly communicated, it can influence communication. In a literary text, silence may takes on many different guises, including rhythmic hesitations, rhetorical omissions, and poetic oppositions that mimic the audible gaps of spoken language. The visual, aural, and fictional interaction of all these …
Perceptions Of Stereotypes In Hispanic Children's Literature, Nancy Gomez
Perceptions Of Stereotypes In Hispanic Children's Literature, Nancy Gomez
LSU Doctoral Dissertations
This study attempted to determine the accurateness of the representation of the Hispanic culture in children’s books. I interviewed ten people: five non-Hispanic and five Hispanic, and I found that the Hispanic people do not seem to pay as much attention to physical features as non-Hispanic people do. However, they were concerned about the portrayal of the Hispanic culture in traditional ways: the traditional roles of women, the traditional dress, the architecture of the houses and the portrayal of the Hispanic people living in rural areas and being extremely poor. It appears that from the timeline covered by the books, …
A World Of Deference: Paradoxes Of Victorian Paternalism In John Ruskin, Charles Dickens, And John Stuart Mill., Peter Mitchell O'Neill
A World Of Deference: Paradoxes Of Victorian Paternalism In John Ruskin, Charles Dickens, And John Stuart Mill., Peter Mitchell O'Neill
LSU Historical Dissertations and Theses
This study examines the residual paternalist ideology in three canonical Victorian texts: namely, John Ruskin's The Nature of Gothic, Charles Dickens's Hard Times, and John Stuart Mill's Autobiography. In exposing an epistemological tension between paternalist and liberal beliefs---especially a putative concern for the working class---that exists in these texts, this discussion concludes that not only are the cultural forces of benevolent authority insidious in Victorian culture, but that the paradoxes that emerge in these texts may reflect a public ambiguity toward the prevalent structures sustaining Victorian paternalism. The three texts examined inscribe hierarchical principles---while ironically exposing them---in generally similar ways: …
Wake Rites: The Ancient Irish Rituals Of "Finnegans Wake"., George Cinclair Gibson
Wake Rites: The Ancient Irish Rituals Of "Finnegans Wake"., George Cinclair Gibson
LSU Historical Dissertations and Theses
The complex of rites, rituals, and mythic reenactments known in Irish mythology as the Rites of Tara provides an interpretive model for James Joyce's Finnegans Wake. Using information and theories pertaining to the Rites of Tara obtained from sources used by James Joyce, a comparison of the Rites of Tara with Finnegans Wake reveals important correlates related to chronology, characters, architectonics, themes, and defining characteristics. The three separate chronological events presented by Wakean scholars as possible dates for the events in the Wake---Easter, an unnamed pagan festival, and the Vernal Equinox---converged on a single day at the Rites of Tara. …
Translating Exile In Panait Istrati's "Mes Departs", Samuel Beckett's "Fin De Partie" And Selected Poems By Paul Celan., Ina Alice Pfitzner
Translating Exile In Panait Istrati's "Mes Departs", Samuel Beckett's "Fin De Partie" And Selected Poems By Paul Celan., Ina Alice Pfitzner
LSU Historical Dissertations and Theses
Translation and exile are two phenomena that marked life in the twentieth century, especially in Europe, and have therefore left their traces in French literature as well. Translation from one language to another is a heightened form of the translation process inherent in any writing. Exile in a foreign country, linguistic exile, is an aggravated form of the exile every human being experiences at some point. Parting from Lucian Blaga's concept of "mioritic space," which is based on the Romanian myth of Mioritza, as well as Walter Benjamin's essay "Die Aufgabe des Ubersetzers" [The Task of the Translator], this study …
Girls Who Would Be Gods: The Poetry Of Emily Dickinson, Elizabeth Bishop, And Sylvia Plath., Anna Lynn Priddy
Girls Who Would Be Gods: The Poetry Of Emily Dickinson, Elizabeth Bishop, And Sylvia Plath., Anna Lynn Priddy
LSU Historical Dissertations and Theses
Girls Who Would Be Gods: The Poetry of Emily Dickinson, Elizabeth Bishop, and Sylvia Plath charts the development of these three American poets, from concerns with ambition and competition that appear in their early poetry, letters and journals, to their later creation of myths surrounding themselves and the secondary worlds of their creation. With Plath's explicit wish that she might be God, Bishop's Crusoe-like exile that allows her to create imaginary realms and homes, and Dickinson's not entirely tentative proposal that she might well be the Biblical Eve, these poets indulged in imaginative re-creations of their worlds and their selves. …
Writing The Beloved Community: Integrated Narratives In Six Contemporary American Novels About The Civil Rights Movement., Paul Tewkesbury Iii
Writing The Beloved Community: Integrated Narratives In Six Contemporary American Novels About The Civil Rights Movement., Paul Tewkesbury Iii
LSU Historical Dissertations and Theses
Throughout the 1950s and 1960s, black southerners in the United States engaged in the series of nonviolent social protests known collectively as the Civil Rights Movement. Martin Luther King, Jr., spoke often of the integrated "Beloved Community" that would result from this nonviolent direct action. This dissertation examines the ways in which six contemporary American novelists have created fictional narratives about the Civil Rights Movement, narratives that employ "integrationist" literary devices whereby form reflects the theme of the search for the Beloved Community across race, gender, and class lines. That is, each novelist chooses to tell his or her story …
Appalachia On Stage: The *Southern Mountaineer In American Drama., Laura Grace Pattillo
Appalachia On Stage: The *Southern Mountaineer In American Drama., Laura Grace Pattillo
LSU Historical Dissertations and Theses
This study examines the portrayal of Southern Appalachian people and their culture in American drama, discussing works from time periods that range from the 1880s to the 1990s. The plays are grouped into categories that are reflective of mainstream America's perceptions of Appalachian culture: (1) the importance of family and gender roles, including the insider/outsider romance plot, (2) issues of violence and conflict between both internal and external forces within the region in the context of wars, feuds, and environmental and labor abuses, (3) the importance of folk practice and belief including tales of the supernatural, superstitious and astrological traditions, …
Espace Textuel: Espace D'Affirmation D'Une Identite De L'Interstice Dans Les Ouvrages De Leila Houari, "Zeida De Nulle Part"; De Farida Belghoul, "Georgette!"; Et D'Azouz Begag, "Le Gone Du Chaã¢Ba"., Nayat M'Hamed
LSU Historical Dissertations and Theses
The aim of this dissertation is to explore the works of Houari, Belghoul and Begag to question a prefabricated model of identity and press for new theories which value a concept of a constructed subjectivity and a rupture with a monolithic mentality. The main purpose of this study is to examine, through a series of close textual readings, how the text becomes the only dynamic space for a creative discourse of identity which emerges from an interstitial cultural space. In chapter one I argue that the significant concern of Houari's novel is the heroine's quest for the correct cultural identity. …
I Won't Be Blue Always: Music As *Past In August Wilson's "Joe Turner's Come And Gone", "Ma Rainey's Black Bottom", "The Piano Lesson" And "Fences"., Yolanda Williams Page
I Won't Be Blue Always: Music As *Past In August Wilson's "Joe Turner's Come And Gone", "Ma Rainey's Black Bottom", "The Piano Lesson" And "Fences"., Yolanda Williams Page
LSU Historical Dissertations and Theses
The purpose of this study is to prove that playwright August Wilson's earliest works, Joe Turner's Come and Gone, Ma Rainey's Black Bottom, The Piano Lesson, and Fences demonstrate the disabling effect of the slave past and the measures that must be taken to overcome that effect. This study seeks to demonstrate that this past can be made enabling through the acceptance of and reconciliation with it. In addition, it will demonstrate that the vehicle for this recognition is music, which becomes an embodiment of the past. This study consists of eight chapters. Chapter One provides an overview of Wilson's …
Catharine Maria Sedgwick's "Hope Leslie": Clues To A Woman's Journey., Sally Mcmillan Tyler
Catharine Maria Sedgwick's "Hope Leslie": Clues To A Woman's Journey., Sally Mcmillan Tyler
LSU Historical Dissertations and Theses
Prevalent in both archetypal and religious literature, the journey motif weaves its way through tales of human growth-stories which grapple with the processes of how people come to be and to know. Such images of identity formation and knowledge construction hold significant implications for the field of education. Indeed, Huebner (1993) notes that "we do not need learning theory or developmental theory to explain human change...The question educators need to ask is not how people learn and develop, but what gets in the way of the great journey---the journey of the self or soul" (p. 405). While Huebner's suggested paradigm …
Faulkner And The Great Depression: Aesthetics, Ideology, And The Politics Of Art., Theodore B. Atkinson Iii
Faulkner And The Great Depression: Aesthetics, Ideology, And The Politics Of Art., Theodore B. Atkinson Iii
LSU Historical Dissertations and Theses
William Faulkner's most concentrated and flourishing phase of literary production virtually coincided with the Great Depression, yet the relationship between these two monumental developments in American cultural history has remained for the most part unexplored. Consequently, a more complete understanding of Faulkner can be achieved by redressing this critical oversight. Such an endeavor must involve reconstituting relevant features of historical and cultural context so as to comprehend the forces informing Faulknees literary production. A critical approach rooted in Marxist literary theory is useful in this regard, for it challenges persistent notions of Faulkner as a writer resistant to contextual influences …
Kate Chopin's Contribution To Realism And Naturalism: Reconsiderations Of W. D. Howells, Maupassant, And Flaubert., Jean Ann Witherow
Kate Chopin's Contribution To Realism And Naturalism: Reconsiderations Of W. D. Howells, Maupassant, And Flaubert., Jean Ann Witherow
LSU Historical Dissertations and Theses
No one has previously undertaken a detailed examination of Kate Chopin's documented intertextuality with writers such as W. D. Howells, Hamlin Garland, Maupassant, and Flaubert. My purpose is to examine Chopin's works in the context of writers with whom she interacts and so to reveal her impact on the development of literary realism and naturalism. My study reveals that, though her mature writing eliminates sentimentalism, she never abandons romance elements residual from her youth. Her typically subjective narrator removes narrative authority, intensifies our involvement with characters, and validates the marginalized voice. Darwin and the philosophers temper her Catholicism, yet she …
Gods, Men And Their Gifts: A Comparison Of The "Iliad", The "Odyssey", The "Aeneid" And "Paradise Lost", Paul Norman Anderson
Gods, Men And Their Gifts: A Comparison Of The "Iliad", The "Odyssey", The "Aeneid" And "Paradise Lost", Paul Norman Anderson
LSU Historical Dissertations and Theses
This dissertation is an examination of the Iliad, the Odyssey, the Aeneid and Paradise Lost based upon their similar depictions of gods and men, specifically in regard to their use of gifts. The procedure is lexical and thematic in approach. The word group around which the majority of the evidence is centered is the noun 'gift' and the verb 'to give.' The nature and use of gifts is examined in the four works under consideration. However, the evidence for the notion of gift-giving is not limited by a strict positivistic approach. Evidence from the texts that clearly includes the notion …
Slain In The Spirit: A Vodun Aesthetic In Selected Works Of Simone Schwarz -Bart, Zora Neale Hurston, And Paule Marshall., Maria Thecla Smith
Slain In The Spirit: A Vodun Aesthetic In Selected Works Of Simone Schwarz -Bart, Zora Neale Hurston, And Paule Marshall., Maria Thecla Smith
LSU Historical Dissertations and Theses
This study, focusing on select novels by women writers of the African diaspora, discovers a surprising commonality among works with obvious geographical, cultural and linguistic differences---an affirmation of the philosophical essence of the Vodun religion as an antidote to Western spiritual and cultural moribundity. Each of the novels---Zora Neale Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God, Simone Schwarz-Bart's Pluie et Vent sur Telumee Miracle, and Paule Marshall's Praisesong for the Widow---alludes to the Vodun pantheon, ancestor veneration and/or rituals in order to valorize the holistic Vodun worldview that recognizes the interconnectedness of all living things and the fluidity of boundaries between …