Arts and Humanities Commons^™

The Orpheus Figure: The Voice In Writing, Music And Media, Jason R. D'Aoust

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This study traces a historical trajectory of the voice as it encounters the Orpheus figure in writing, music, and other media. Following a critical discussion of Auerbach’s literary figuration, the author questions certain aspects of phonocentrism in relation to opera and texts using the voice for authoritative or rhetorical purposes. Grounded in the prefiguration of opera’s earlier displacement of the singing voice, the understanding of mass media and digital media then developed is critical of theories of immersion in media. The analyses of the series of works and figures (Orpheus, Ossian, and Tristan) in this study lead the author to …

Entre El Juego Y La Memoria: El Detective Y La Ciudad En La Narrativa Neo Policiaca De Paco Ignacio Taibo Ii Y Leonardo Padura Fuentes., Carlos Pardo

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This dissertation examines the development of the characters in the detective series of Paco Ignacio Taibo II (Mexico) and Leonardo Padura Fuentes (Cuba) and their relationship with their Hispanic-American cities: Mexico D.F. and Havana. To accomplish it, this dissertation initially deals with the connection between the “neo policiaco” and the narrative tradition that precedes it: the classical detective story or whodunit and the American hardboiled crime story, as well as its link with Spanish contemporary detective fiction. As a result, the Hispanic-American “neo policiaco” explores new possibilities of detective narratives in which complex characters and the Hispanic American city as …

Talking Nonsense: Spiritual Mediums And Female Subjectivity In Victorian And Edwardian Canada, Claudie Massicotte

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This study traces the development of mediumship in Canada in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Especially popular among women, this practice offered them an important space of expression. Concealing their own identities under spiritual possession, mediums ubiquitously invoked well-known historical figures in séances to transmit their opinions on current issues. As such, they were able to promote new ideas to interested audiences without claiming responsibility for their potentially controversial words.

While many studies have been conducted in the United States, Britain, and France regarding the significant role of mediumship in the emergence of women on the political scene, …

Magic(Infra)Realism: Jetztzeiten Of Believability And Latin American History In García Márquez’S Cien Años De Soledad And Otoño Del Patriarca., Katarzyna Jasinski

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This thesis examines the idea of Colombian history as ‘random coincidence’ in Gabriel García Márquez’s Cien años de soledad and El otoño del patriarca. Walter Benjamin’s Theses on the Philosophy of History and Michel Foucault’s Nietzsche, Genealogy, History provide the theoretical framework for the research. This thesis examines magic realism as a way of representing the true invisible past of Latin America. The combination of Foucault’s concept of genealogy, Walter Benjamin’s ‘messianic historical materialism’ and García Márquez’s ‘magic realism’ demonstrates that the combination of living and telling produce a Jetztzeit of believability that redeems Latin American history from historicism. …

Interstory: A Study Of Reader Participation And Networked Narrative In Media Convergence, Elika Ortega Guzman

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Recently we have seen the proliferation of narratives developing in media convergence: simultaneously on websites, blogs, multimedia platforms, books, magazines, etc. In this thesis, I propose the term interstory to characterize this narrative tendency. Interstory is a narrative constituted by a network of story pieces published in different media and compiled by readers. To illustrate the concept of interstory I take as a study case Hernán Casciari’s and Christian Basilis’ Orsai, which in two years has incorporated into its narrative three blogs, a print magazine, and a web magazine. Orsai has been a successful project thanks to the formation of …

Enunciation And Plurilingualism In The Francophone And Anglophone African Novel, Ndeye F. Ba

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Abstract:

My dissertation proposes to analyze the problematic of language and power in African literature written in French and English. Focusing on novels produced within the controversial contexts of La Francophonie and The Commonwealth, this thesis investigates the tight relationship between language, power and identity. By going beyond normative approaches which focus on the variations of the authorial languages inherited from colonization and nativist readings that continuously seek to establish the primacy of orality, this project analyzes how Francophone and Anglophone African writers—typically authors who chose to write in a language other than their maternal ones—write resistance. It exposes how …

Through The Carnival Looking Glass: A Carnivalesque Reading Of Bruno Schulz's A Street Of Crocodiles And Guy Davenport's A Table Of Green Fields, Tamara A. Kowalski

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Bruno Schulz’s A Street of Crocodiles (1934) and Guy Davenport’s A Table of Green Fields (1993) feature a collection of short stories and events that occur within the realm of dream and nightmare. Their stories transgress the boundaries of fiction and reality, and do not adhere to traditional literary forms of narrative. They present worlds where all inhibitions are let loose, and allow for the expression and pursuit of desires that would normally be hindered by societal hierarchies and moral codes. A carnival reading of the texts, based on Bakhtin’s theory of the carnival as literary genre, allows for an …

Beyond The Suffering Of Being: Desire In Giacomo Leopardi And Samuel Beckett, Roberta Cauchi-Santoro

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

In this dissertation, I question critical approaches that argue for Giacomo Leopardi’s and Samuel Beckett’s pessimism and nihilism. Beckett quotes Leopardi when discussing the removal of desire in his monograph Proust, a context that has spurred pessimist and nihilist readings, whether the focus has been on one writer, the other, or both. I argue that the inappropriateness of the pessimist and nihilist label is, on the contrary, specifically exposed through the role of desire in the two thinkers. After tracing the notion of desire as it developed from Leopardi to key twentieth-century thinkers, I illustrate how, in contrast to …

From Nizam To Nation: The Representation Of Partition In Literary Narratives About Hyderabad, Deccan, Nazia Akhtar

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This dissertation examines literary representations of the Partition of India in 1947 as it affected the southern princely state of Hyderabad, Deccan. Through my focus on Hyderabad, I interrogate and reject the assumption generally made in scholarly analyses of Partition that this momentous, life-changing event did not significantly affect South India. In doing so, I also question the origins of the self-professed secular, egalitarian, and democratic Indian nation by shedding light on the invasion of Hyderabad and the subsequent erasure of this event from Indian historiography and mainstream culture.

Different literary texts respond differently to this fraught, suppressed history. Engaging …