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Likeness In Utopia: Situation And Metaphor From Thomas More To Edward Bellamy, Sage Rachmiel Bard Gilbert
Likeness In Utopia: Situation And Metaphor From Thomas More To Edward Bellamy, Sage Rachmiel Bard Gilbert
Electronic Theses and Dissertations
As a literary genre, utopia is notably didactic. It seeks to teach desire and to educate hope. As such, utopia provides a unique site to examine the way metaphor and imagination enable one to be convinced, and the way those same elements facilitate misunderstanding. Following the theorization of Ernst Bloch, the goal of critiquing these literary utopias is not to reject hope but, rather, to educate our own daydreams, to learn and move forward. These chapters examine didacticism and the development of colonial metonymy in Thomas More’s Utopia, the way metaphor operates through time in Edward Bellamy’s Looking Backward: …
The Politics & Poetics Of Audience Creation In Contemporary Epistolary Memoir, Sarah M. Davis
The Politics & Poetics Of Audience Creation In Contemporary Epistolary Memoir, Sarah M. Davis
Electronic Theses and Dissertations
This thesis examines Ocean Vuong’s On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous and Kiese Laymon’s Heavy as works of life writing that leverage the epistolary form to engage their direct maternal addressees and audiences beyond them in revision and reconstruction of identity. Secondary audiences are considered in light of Michael Warner’s “Publics and Counterpublics,” and the social affordances of the epistolary form and self-constructive affordances of life writing are analyzed in tandem as a hybrid epistolary memoir form. Specifically, this project explores how the epistolary memoir form affords Vuong and Laymon opportunities for the process of personal, relational, and communal identity construction, …
Historical Realism And Stoic Heroes In The Work Of John Williams, Cameron Sepede
Historical Realism And Stoic Heroes In The Work Of John Williams, Cameron Sepede
Electronic Theses and Dissertations
This thesis investigates how John Williams’s three major works of fiction — Butcher’s Crossing, Stoner, and Augustus — are narratively structured around three main characters who embody the tenets of stoic and Emersonian transcendental philosophy, respectively. Williams uses these characters to promote and critique preconceived notions of heroic masculinity as structured within these philosophies. Through an analysis of form, this thesis will explore how Williams scaffolds his three main characters around the language and ideas present within each philosophical school. Williams’s portrayal of heroic masculinity, as seen through a feminist perspective, questions the ideal masculine hero, which will be …
Destruction And Resiliency: Decolonizing Settler Knowledge In Native American Literature Through The Peoplehood Matrix, Renissa R. Gannie
Destruction And Resiliency: Decolonizing Settler Knowledge In Native American Literature Through The Peoplehood Matrix, Renissa R. Gannie
Electronic Theses and Dissertations
This thesis explores the complex dynamics of settler colonialism and the construction of peoplehood within the Laguna Pueblo, Lakota, Jemez Pueblo, Anishinaabe, and Blackfeet culture through a comparative analysis of literary works focusing on Leslie Marmon Silko’s Ceremony, Frances Washburn’ Elsie’s Business, N. Scott Momaday’s House Made of Dawn, Gerald Vizenor’s The Heirs of Columbus, and Stephen Graham Jones’s Ledfeather; these authors employ narrative strategies to depict the destructive impacts of settler colonialism on indigenous identities and communities. Drawing upon postcolonial and indigenous literary theories, this research uses a comparative framework to analyze the diverse …