Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Representing Modern Female Villain: On Feminine Evil, Perverse Nationhood, And Opposition In Rómulo Gallegos’ Doña Bárbara And Salman Rushdie’S Midnight’S Children, Barbara Guerrero

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This thesis aims to contribute to the scholarship on modern female villainy by further exploring the ways in which 20^th century female villains are represented as well as the functions they carry out in the text. In this study, I look at Rómulo Gallegos’ doña Bárbara from Doña Bárbara (1929) and Salman Rushdie’s Indira Gandhi from Midnight’s Children (1981). I argue that both villains are a combination of already-existing forms of evil in more recognizable contexts as well as a rejection of and opposition to modern values. Firstly, I examine how the villains both conform and resist the formula …

Saturnine Constellations: Melancholy In Literary History And In The Works Of Baudelaire And Benjamin, Kevin Godbout

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Aristotle famously asked the question: why are extraordinary people so often melancholics? “Problem XXX,” written by Aristotle or one of his disciples, speculates that black bile, the humour once believed to cause melancholy, can promote a form of genius, a profound intellectual power. Walter Benjamin and Charles Baudelaire are two writers for whom this theory was true: though they suffered from gloominess and despondency, they also recognized that in the interior of sadness, and even madness, is a kernel of aesthetic, artistic, and philosophical truth. Melencolia illa heroica – whose theory was authoritatively formulated by Ficino, taking after Aristotle’s Problems …

Organizations Of Knowledge About The Orient In German And British Romanticism 1780-1820, Naqaa Abbas

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This dissertation examines the various literary modes in which German and British Romantic literature and culture organize knowledge about Islam and the Middle East. I explore how the Orient exceeds and troubles the “place” it is given in a historical and geographical classification systems. I argue that many Romantic writers challenge the constructedness of the Oriental narrative during their time, thus questioning what really constitutes knowledge and the limits of knowledge. In this context, I re-evaluate Edward W. Said’s socio-historical generalizations regarding Orientalism as a form of Western control over the East. While studies on Romantic Orientalism have focused on …

Of The Last Verses In The Book: Old Age, Caregiving, And Early Modern Literature, Emily M. Sugerman

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This dissertation examines the representation of old age in the textual representations of the centenarian Thomas Parr, including verse by John Taylor; in The Old Law by Thomas Middleton (and others); and in four plays by William Shakespeare, King Lear, As You Like It, and 1 and 2 Henry IV. This examination shows how old age in the early modern period exceeds chronological and numerical definitions and is instead a contested social construction. By historicizing the representation of early modern old age and also by tracking its changing representation throughout Shakespearean reception history, this dissertation argues that …

"The Sense Of An Ending": The Destabilizing Effect Of Performance Closure In Shakespeare's Plays, Megan Lynn Selinger

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

What makes a good ending? How do we know when something ends? In performance, it is difficult to characterize that nebulous and highly subjective — yet nonetheless theatrically powerful — “sense” of an ending. Previous scholarly work on Shakespearean endings, even when emphasizing performance, has largely focused on understanding endings from a narrative viewpoint, questioning how endings reach textual closure. These works examine the lingering questions or problems at the end of Shakespeare’s texts, and discuss how performance tackles these issues.

This dissertation takes performance as its starting point. It argues that Shakespearean performance endings naturally trouble textual conclusiveness, as …

Rhetorical Ductus In Chaucerian Ekphrasis, Emily Laura Pez

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

My thesis investigates how the rhetorical device of ekphrasis functions in Geoffrey Chaucer’s poetry, specifically The Book of the Duchess, The Parliament of Fowls, The House of Fame, and The Knight’s Tale. I argue that Chaucer’s ekphrases incorporate medieval memory techniques, which connect the ekphrases integrally to their respective texts. Chaucer’s early uses of ekphrasis in The Book of the Duchess and The Parliament of Fowls guide the audience’s interpretation and therefore contribute to the ductus, defined by Mary Carruthers as the text’s “overall direction” (“Concept of Ductus . . .” 196). In the …