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Full-Text Articles in English Language and Literature

Anxieties About The Future: Ecocriticism And Dystopian Landscapes In The Three Stigmata Of Palmer Eldritch And Selected Fiction By Philip K. Dick, Nickolas Michael Sykora Jan 2024

Anxieties About The Future: Ecocriticism And Dystopian Landscapes In The Three Stigmata Of Palmer Eldritch And Selected Fiction By Philip K. Dick, Nickolas Michael Sykora

Cal Poly Humboldt theses and projects

In a literary analysis of selected fiction by Philip K Dick through an ecocritical framework, the focus of this study reveals the consequences of ecological destruction on futuristic societies reflecting the Anthropocene. Drawing correlations between various texts by the author, the separation of nature from humanity demonstrates how dystopian landscapes influence the identity of the characters in these settings and how dystopia serves as a prism which distorts or reflects what it means to be human. With this, ontology and artificial intelligence are analyzed as a notable facet of his literature which addresses the progress of innovation in society and …


Narratives Of Existence And The Narrative Existence: Ontological Unity In The Border Trilogy And Quantum Theory, Rebecca Leigh Mcintosh May 2023

Narratives Of Existence And The Narrative Existence: Ontological Unity In The Border Trilogy And Quantum Theory, Rebecca Leigh Mcintosh

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Because the humanities and the sciences approach philosophical questions in contrasting ways, the study of literature and the study of physical science are often viewed as unrelated realms of scholarly inquiry. Science aims to provide a methodological approach for gathering knowledge about the world, while the humanities focus on criticism or analysis of cultural artifacts. However, even though the conceptual frameworks applied in scientific study and literary study are often incompatible or remarkably divergent, their methods for conceptualizing and transmitting ideas are the same, for humanity understands the world and experience of this world through narratives composed of referential metaphors. …


Agnotologies Of Modernism: Knowing The Unknown In Lewis, Woolf, Pound, And Joyce, Jeremy Colangelo Aug 2018

Agnotologies Of Modernism: Knowing The Unknown In Lewis, Woolf, Pound, And Joyce, Jeremy Colangelo

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Agnotologies of Modernism examines the productive role of ignorance in the work of several key modernist authors. Borrowing concepts from speculative realist philosophers like Quentin Meillassoux, Graham Harman, and Jane Bennett, as well as such thinkers as Gilles Deleuze, and Jacques Derrida, the dissertation endeavors to read modernism epistemologically, and treats ignorance as an active and creative force that often plays a key structuring role in the imaginative world of the text. Drawing from Bruno Latour’s notion of a “black box,” the study shows how ignorance can be transposed into an ontological entity which can then be attributed positive traits …


Buddhism In Progress: Ecstasy, Eternity, And Zen Sickness In The English Romantics, Logan M. Rohde Mar 2018

Buddhism In Progress: Ecstasy, Eternity, And Zen Sickness In The English Romantics, Logan M. Rohde

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This dissertation addresses the philosophical similarity between English Romanticism and Buddhism from a Zen Buddhist perspective. In contrast to scholars such as Mark Lussier and John G. Rudy, who have focused on the similarity between Romantic and Buddhist philosophy, I explore their differences. I argue that Romanticism represents a “Buddhism in progress”: both philosophies seek to overcome “the self,” but do so through different means. Lacking direct access to Buddhist teachings, the authors considered in this study (Beckford, Coleridge, De Quincey, Shelley, and Keats) developed their own practice of self-transcendence through writing, often prompted by experiences of ecstatic intoxication that …


The Ontology Of Immanence: Arriving At Being In Nan Shepherd's The Living Mountain, Rachel R. Gilman Dec 2016

The Ontology Of Immanence: Arriving At Being In Nan Shepherd's The Living Mountain, Rachel R. Gilman

Theses and Dissertations

In response to the economic and political upheaval of World War I, Scottish Modernism explored the cultural and linguistic changes of a nation trying to identify itself amidst a world-wide conflict. Scholars and critics have considered Nan Shepherd's fiction in this context—focusing on issues of gender, female identity, language, and land—but have yet to look seriously at her work The Living Mountain and its contributions to the Modernist movement. More recently, critics like Louisa Gairn and Robert MacFarlane have called attention to Shepherd's small but powerful text in an ecocritical and philosophical light, reframing her contribution to issues of Scottish …


Politics Of Affect, Object-Oriented-Ontology, And Multitudes In "The Monk" And "Obi", Caitlin Elizabeth Scheufler Jan 2016

Politics Of Affect, Object-Oriented-Ontology, And Multitudes In "The Monk" And "Obi", Caitlin Elizabeth Scheufler

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

This thesis will examine the potential viability of a “politics of affect”. The analysis will begin by evaluating Spinoza’s theory of affect and its connection to object-oriented-ontology and quasi-objects. This will include a discussion of Spinoza’s specific brand of “affect” and its ability to influence politics. This paper will also address the theory of Bruno Latour, which utilizes Spinoza’s theory of bodies and affect while examining the political implications of Spinozist ideas. The goal of this analysis is to use a discussion of affect, quasi-objects, and object-oriented-ontology to delineate what exactly a politics of affect might be and how this …


The Being Of Art And The Art Of Being : Hermeneutic Ontology In Gadamer And Woolf., Adam Noland, Aug 2015

The Being Of Art And The Art Of Being : Hermeneutic Ontology In Gadamer And Woolf., Adam Noland,

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Overall, the point of this project is to plumb the affinities between Gadamer’s notion of hermeneutic ontology and Virginia Woolf’s novels—how these affinities illuminate and contribute to an improved understanding of Gadamer’s philosophical hermeneutics and Woolf’s novels. For their part, Gadamer and Woolf belong to a similar cultural and historical milieu, each, in one way or another, a participant in the intellectual and artistic movement known as Modernism. This movement arose in response to the encroaching impersonality of scientific objectivity: both Woolf and Gadamer recognized the pitfalls of this objectivity, as it necessarily discounts the interpretive opportunity and responsibility of …


Bradbury's Guy Montag: An Ontology Of Conflict And Fire, Kelcy Dolan Apr 2015

Bradbury's Guy Montag: An Ontology Of Conflict And Fire, Kelcy Dolan

Senior Capstone Theses

Using the literary theory of Deconstruction, this paper explores the ontology of Guy Montag, the protagonist of Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451. By tracing Montag's journey towards individuality, as seen throughout his relationship to characters, but also the motif of fire itself, throughout the novel we find that in his search for it Montag simultaneously negates any individuality he may gain.