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Elementos Sobrenaturales En Las Diez Comedias De Cervantes., Sara M. Lavastida

LSU Historical Dissertations and Theses

This dissertation studies the supernatural elements in Cervantes' comedies. There have been studies in the past, like the dissertation of Linton Lomas Barrett and the dissertation of Mary Lewis Dewey Weaver, that deal with some themes similar to this dissertation. The dissertation of Barrett deals only with the supernatural elements in La Numancia, and the dissertation of Dewey Weaver only studies the presence of magic and witchcraft in some of the narrative prose works by Cervantes. This dissertation not only deals with magic and witchcraft but also the supernatural elements that are present in the ten comedies, such as fate, …

Seen And Unseen Cities: Embodied Worlds In Epic And The Novel., Eamon G. Halpin

LSU Historical Dissertations and Theses

By all accounts, the city has ceased to function as a cosmos, a coherent world which can offer meaning and validity to the lives of its inhabitants. If the ancient city presented the very image of order, the city since the advent of the Industrial Revolution has appeared to us as a jungle, a wilderness, a wasteland, an endless labyrinth--all images which suggest an essentially chaotic space, one which lacks any organizing principle or rationale. Moreover, if the city once offered the individual the greatest possible realization of his freedom, it now appears as the space in which he is …

The Politics Of Decolonization: Race, Power, And Ideology In Contemporary American Drama., Byung-Eon Jung

LSU Historical Dissertations and Theses

This dissertation traces the politics of decolonization dramatized in selected plays from the contemporary American playwrights: African Americans (Lorraine Hansberry, Amiri Baraka, Adrienne Kennedy, and August Wilson), white Americans (Arthur Kopit and David Rabe), and a Chinese American (David Hwang). Through the application of cultural theory to an analysis of dramatic texts, I demonstrate how the plays enact the struggle for decolonization on social, political, and cultural levels. In keeping with the interactions of race, power, and ideology, the plays deconstruct the white cultural formulations of racial minorities. I explore the ways in which the playwrights reclaim the authority of …

Attraction Vs. Repulsion: The Narrative Ambivalence Of Gender In Byron's "Don Juan"., Melinda A. Piontek

LSU Historical Dissertations and Theses

Previous studies of gender in Byron's Don Juan, such as those by Susan Wolfson and Louis Crompton, have concentrated primarily on identifying gender ambivalence and attributing that ambivalence to factors outside the text, such as Byron's ambivalence toward his personal homoeroticism as well as to the social attitudes of Regency England toward questions of gender ambiguity. In this dissertation, I propose to turn the critical gaze back to the text in order to go beyond identifying gender ambivalence to track how that ambivalence works within Don Juan. In order to bring into focus the serial and episodic nature of Byron's …

Comment Redessiner Le Monde: Art Et Anthropologie Dans L'Oeuvre D'Antonin Artaud., Irene Poutier

LSU Historical Dissertations and Theses

In my dissertation entitled Comment redessiner le monde: Art et anthropologie dans l'oeuvre d'Antonin Artaud, I examine Artaud' s critical writings on painting, music and theatre which are central to his reflection. My research focuses on key concepts in Artaud's writings such as "culture," "primitivite" and "mythe." Notwithstanding the complexity and controversial aspects of these notions in the post-modern era, Artaud uses them as pivot points in the articulation of a totally new philosophy of life, which places art at the heart of social activity. My first point underlines Artaud's belief that western civilization alienates the artist from the pervading …

"Wherein Lies Personal Identity": The Reception Of Locke And Richardson And The Language Of Self In The Letters And Journals Of Exceptional Eighteenth Century American Women, Carolann O'Malley Davis

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation adds a new chapter to the history of the social revolution that accompanied the American Revolution, specifically the revolt against patriarchalism. It is my contention that exceptional women initiated a private revolution to gain recognition of a new personal identity. This private revolution led to the rejection of the system of private government of man over woman, patriarchalism.

I identified seven women, Eliza Lucas Pinckney, Abigail Adams, Esther Edwards Burr, Mercy Otis Warren, Eliza Southgate Bowne, Anne Willing Bingham and Anne Home Shippen, who were especially representative of a network of women who developed a self-consciousness. For these …

The Art Of Living': The Aesthetics Of Everyday Life In Dorothy Canfield Fisher's Novels, Anne Marie Downey

Doctoral Dissertations

In 1924, Dorothy Canfield Fisher (1879-1958) wrote, "I have always conceived of everyday life as needing very much the sort of constant effort at composition--that is shapeliness, elimination of unnecessary details, choice of details--as any other work of art." This quotation is the epigraph to my study of five of Fisher's early novels because it reveals a central theme of her fiction: that art is the creation of a daily life that successfully negotiates the "problems of living" (Fisher's phrase) that plague modern America. The five novels that I analyze--The Squirrel-Cage (1912), The Bent Twig (1915), The Brimming Cup (1921), …

Bodies Of Life: Shaker Literacies And Literature, Etta Maureen Madden

Doctoral Dissertations

I examine the roles of literacy and literature among the Shakers from the opening of "Mother" Ann Lee's testimony in 1780 through the early twentieth century to propose that the sect persistently resisted and revised "the world's" literacies. I assert that multiple kinds of reading and writing acts reinforce the beliefs of individuals and the church as a whole, and I argue that the increase in literary acts which appear to contribute to individualism and fragmentation of the institution actually allows Believers to revise their theology so that they see their sect as continuing to grow rather than declining.

In …

The Discourse Of Gratitude In The Novels Of Jane Austen, William Gosnell Sayres

Doctoral Dissertations

Jane Austen is preeminently the novelist of gratitude, and no substantive noun of similar moral content recurs in these texts with the frequency of "gratitude." Gratitude has enormous power in her novels. It is a necessary precursor of love in the formation of bonds between men and women, and no "good" mutual love is possible unless it evolves through the process of gratitude. For successful marriages, gratitude is even more necessary than love. Among the scholars who focus on significant terms in Austen novels, few give more than passing attention to gratitude or to the massive volume of eighteenth-century moralist …

Emerging From The Chrysalis: Isolation And Publication In Nineteenth-Century Literacy Narratives, Lisa Ann Sisco

Doctoral Dissertations

"Emerging From the Chrysalis" begins with the words of Frederick Douglass, who explains in his 1845 slave narrative that learning to read was a conflicted experience, simultaneously enabling and painful. Douglass writes, "I would at times feel that learning to read had been a curse rather than a blessing." These powerful words reveal a paradoxical "double-consciousness" inherent in nineteenth-century narratives about literacy: literacy's capacity to simultaneously imprison and empower. Douglass's relationship to literacy, both as a character within his narrative and as an author in a historical context, exemplifies the focus of this dissertation.

I borrow my central metaphor from …

Education, Class And Gender In George Eliot And Thomas Hardy, Keith Ronald Jones

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation examines the relationship between education, class and gender in The Mill on the Floss (1860) and Daniel Deronda (1876) by George Eliot; and in The Woodlanders (1887) and Jude the Obscure (1896) by Thomas Hardy. The Introduction discusses how, in nineteenth-century Britain, education was intended to "improve" individuals and society. The Introduction establishes the Marxist and feminist critical background of the study, and briefly surveys the nineteenth-century debates on "The Education Question," and on education for women.

The novels examined show education failing to 'improve.' Maggie Tulliver, in The Mill on the Floss, and Jude Fawley in Jude …

Developing Language Skills In Second Language Learners Through Literature Discussions, Ruth K. A Devlin

UNLV Retrospective Theses & Dissertations

This study analyzed book discussions of primary aged ESL students and their teacher to examine the benefits to language development. Collected over one school year, data included transcribed audiotapes of the book discussions, class interviews, and personal journal entries of the teacher which described classroom events and interactions. Analysis of the transcripts resulted in the identification of seven categories which illustrated the diversity of types of talk. In addition, changes in the amount of student and teacher talk over time were noted, with student talk increasing, and teacher talk becoming less pronounced. Four students were highlighted to illustrate the benefits …

Encoding Imperialism: Homelessness In American Naturalism, 1890-1918., Janet M. Whyde

LSU Historical Dissertations and Theses

Homelessness occurs with uncommon regularity in the works of American naturalists, and in each case, the result of a character's homelessness results in a crisis of social identity and self definition. This pattern recurs in the works of the canonically identified naturalists, such as Stephen Crane, Frank Norris, and Theodore Dreiser, as well as other writers who have only been tangentially associated with naturalism--Edith Wharton and Paul Laurence Dunbar, for example. In this study, I analyze the relationship between homelessness as it is represented in the novels and the political debate over the United States's imperialist aspirations at the turn …

Another America, Another Literature: Narratives From Louisiana's Colonial Experience., Germain Joseph Bienvenu

LSU Historical Dissertations and Theses

This dissertation attempts to establish a literary canon for the first French period of Louisiana's colonial history (1681-1763). The study examines works by writers who heretofore have not been analyzed as colonists of long residence in the New World but as Continentals who happened to spend some time in the Americas and then wrote about their experiences. The present analysis argues that many of these authors, by virtue of the significant time they spent in Louisiana, their devotion to and interest in the promotion of the colony, and their common concerns, should be examined principally not as European literati but …

"Two Kinds Of Geography": Complicity And Resistance In Canadian Pioneer Literature, Gillian Heather Siddall

Digitized Theses

The purpose of this thesis is to consider the Canadian wilderness as an actual and a mythological site for discursive change. Part One analyses five pioneer journal/handbooks, and Part Two examines four contemporary texts which focus on the pioneer experience.;Chapters One to Three explore the extent to which the disruption of their political and social assumptions caused the female pioneers to explore alternative constructions of gender. These chapters illustrate that the women do indeed see the potential in the wilderness for redefining themselves, for shifting away from the restrictive nineteenth-century construction of women. This shift comes in part from their …

Shakespeare's Concepts Of The Future In The Tetralogies, John David Hartley

Digitized Theses

This thesis attempts to demonstrate that Shakespeare's conceptions of the future develop in complexity and coherence in the tetralogies and are important to readings of the plays as an indication of his developing sense of historical change. I approach the plays from a modified cultural materialist viewpoint. This critical approach offers useful presuppositions and a strategy for analysis of characterization and ideological issues that assist in understanding how the future takes shape in the plays.;Shakespeare includes a number of factors other than characterization and ideological issues that help to shape the future--fate, Providence, prophecies, dreams, and images. His concepts of …

Kwaku Ananse And The House Of Ashe., Craig David. Schisler

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Abstract Not Available.Dept. of English Language, Literature, and Creative Writing. Paper copy at Leddy Library: Theses & Major Papers - Basement, West Bldg. / Call Number: Thesis1995 .S33. Source: Masters Abstracts International, Volume: 34-02, page: 0528. Adviser: E. McNamara. Thesis (M.A.)--University of Windsor (Canada), 1995.

Feeding The Unicorn: Phyllis Webb's And Timothy Findley's Psychic Connection. A Comparative Analysis., Sally Joyce. Burkhart

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Abstract Not Available.Dept. of English Language, Literature, and Creative Writing. Paper copy at Leddy Library: Theses & Major Papers - Basement, West Bldg. / Call Number: Thesis1995 .B88. Source: Masters Abstracts International, Volume: 34-06, page: 2167. Adviser: L. Mackendrick. Thesis (M.A.)--University of Windsor (Canada), 1995.

Gibberish: A Digital Hiding Place For Pomo Sapiens., Marcel Mervin Gerard. O'Gorman

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Abstract Not Available. Source: Masters Abstracts International, Volume: 34-06, page: 2169. Adviser: Eugene McNamara. Thesis (M.A.)--University of Windsor (Canada), 1995.

The View From Here: A Two-Act Play (Original Writing)., Eve Susan. Pidgeon

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The View From Here is a project that intended to challenge traditional theatre forms, and traditional uses of stage space and time. In the play, three distinctly individual women are drawn together through common experiences and emotions by the catalyst that is art--be it literature, theatre, or the photography that is projected onto the set and the characters as part of the staging and the theme of the play. Essentially transformed and merged in the end, their solidarity is an affirmation of their belonging in a feminine, but not necessarily feminist, world that is definitively "theatrical" in its complexity. The …

The Victorian Prima Donna In Literature And The Ghosts Of Opera Past, Grace Lynn Kehler

Digitized Theses

This dissertation explores the non-disjunction between eighteenth-century discourses on the early opera and the castrato and nineteenth-century discourses on the prima donna. Early opera was predicated on a series of fissures, particularly those between ideal and popular art, between a transcendent voice and a mutilated body, and between the supernatural and the unnatural. Officially, these fissures served to demarcate oppositions, but opera, from its inception, was drawn to transgression, and the fissures were crossed and recrossed, alternately endowing the castrato with transcendence and abjection. Paradoxically, then, one of the pivotal concepts in the construction of the castrato is the immanence …

Other Frontiers: Female Vagrants And Mother Outlaws In American Literature And Film Of The 1980s, Jacqui Marie Smyth

Digitized Theses

The thesis examines female vagrant and outlaw figures in a selection of fictional texts produced in the 1980s. Using the idea of vagrancy in their characterizations of female protagonists, these texts revise persisting assumptions about women that are inherent in American culture. Beginning with a discussion of the reasons why women have been excluded, at least theoretically and ideologically, from a culture based on mobility, the thesis then considers two dominant and interrelated discourses in the American imagination--those of the frontier and of the myth of home--which are inescapable in any discussion of the American female outlaw and/or vagrant. This …

Jelly Beans For Mental Health., Daniel Jeremiah. Sullivan

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Abstract Not Available.Dept. of English Language, Literature, and Creative Writing. Paper copy at Leddy Library: Theses & Major Papers - Basement, West Bldg. / Call Number: Thesis1995 .S92. Source: Masters Abstracts International, Volume: 34-06, page: 2170. Adviser: Eugene McNamara. Thesis (M.A.)--University of Windsor (Canada), 1995.

John Donne's Epithalamia: The Marriage Of "Text" And "Context"., Kimberly Ann. Feyen

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

John Donne's epithalamia, "Epithalamion made at Lincolnes Inne," "An Epithalamion, Or marriage Song on the Lady Elizabeth, and Count Palatine being married on St. Valentines day," and the "Epithalamion" for the Earl of Somerset, when compared to other groups of poems written by Donne, especially the Songs and Sonets, receive relatively little critical attention. Perhaps Donne's marriage songs are so often overlooked because they are believed to be restricted not only by the patronage system, but by the nature of the genre itself. In this thesis, I have attempted to illustrate that, despite the tendency of critics to dismiss them …

Robert Herrick's "Hesperides" And The Renaissance "Querelle Des Femmes"., Maria. Magro

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Robert Herrick's Hesperides is a volume of poetry preoccupied with the feminine. Indeed, the presentation of women in Hesperides reflects a larger cultural preoccupation with the feminine seen in Renaissance literature in general and in the cultural documents of the querelle des femmes (1540-1648) in particular. This Renaissance preoccupation with the feminine, in turn, displays both a blatant and latent cultural misogyny. In the documents of the querelle des femmes women are discussed in their various social roles: mother, wife, and daughter. Though the ostensible concern of these texts is the female role within the family and society, an idiom …

Legitimite Dans L'Oeuvre Biographique Et Autobiographique De Marguerite Yourcenar., Muriel Helene Placet

LSU Historical Dissertations and Theses

This dissertation proposes a close reading of the biographical and autobiographical works of Marguerite Yourcenar: Le Labyrinthe du Monde and Memoires d'Hadrien. The purpose of this reading is to explore the process through which Yourcenar attempts to establish the legitimacy of the individual (be it her own self or one of her characters). Since Yourcenar rejects the "cult of the self", the elaboration of her identity is never explicitly at work in the text. In Le Labyrinthe du Monde, the author-narrator explores her "unicity" by reconstructing her genealogy with the result that she never becomes the narrated "object" of the …

Re: (Writing) Desire In "Fragments D'Un Discours Amoureux" By Roland Barthes And "La Carte Postale" By Jacques Derrida., Laura Elizabeth Volpe

LSU Historical Dissertations and Theses

This dissertation examines the way in which Roland Barthes and Jacques Derrida rework the psychoanalytical constructions of desire through what can be referred to, short of a better word, as play or gaming. Play takes many forms in these two texts; etymological play and structural play are two of the more prominent manifestations of this gaming. In an effort to analyze and at the same time emulate this play and its use by these two authors, I introduce the idea of the dreidel which functions as a device which objectifies the discourse of desire. It also serves as a physical …

The Transcendental Element In The Absent Presence., Maggie Burnaman Martin

LSU Historical Dissertations and Theses

"The Transcendental Element in the Absent Presence" analyzes the absent presence, the rhetorical and literary states of being there in the mind of the perceiving individual, though not there physically. It seeks to answer: What does the term "absent presence" mean? Is there a difference between rhetorical and literary absent presences? If so, how is each manifest through the reading process? And, what sustains these absent presences? Evidenced through selected works of Plato, Aristotle, New Testament writers, Sidney, Shakespeare, and Dickinson, the study argues for the intellectually, spiritually, or aesthetically transcendent quality of the absent presence. Any encounter between reader, …

Henry James And The Process Of Autobiography., Paul S. Nielsen

LSU Historical Dissertations and Theses

James's autobiographies differ from most by dramatizing so extensively the process of recovery and reanimation of memory, the act that signifies autobiographical activity. They therefore reveal a great deal about the generic nature of autobiographical recollection. James's Major Phase, from 1900 to his death in 1916, was chiefly and gloriously autobiographical in purpose and crowns his career with an autobiographical production of astonishing variety, extent, and creativity. The proto-autobiographical material includes biography of a culture (William Wetmore Story and His Friends), travel memoir and cultural analysis (The American Scene), and recapitulation and intimate disclosure of his creative life (the Prefaces …

Race And The Fragmented Self In Twentieth-Century American Literature., Jerold Malcolm Martin

LSU Historical Dissertations and Theses

Beginning with a definition of "race" as a system of discourse about human difference sustained by its symbolic articulations, I approach "race" as analogous to the social disciplines that Foucault describes as constructing the modern subject. Bringing together certain speculations of Lacan, Fanon, and Morrison, I suggest that this racial discipline facilitates a racial "mirror stage" through which "blackness" and "whiteness" are projected as distinct and unified conceptions of identity. My readings of representative texts examine how such racial identity patterns are both seductive as resolutions of self-discord and destructive in tension with the multiple, interpersonal, and historical determinations of …