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The Politics of Sympathy: Secularity, Alterity, and Subjectivity in George Eliot's Novels
This study examines the practical and political implications of sympathy as a mode of achieving the intercommunicative relationship between the self and the other, emphasizing the significance of subjective agency not simply guided by the imperative category of morality but mainly enacted by a hybrid of discourses through the interaction between the two entities. Scenes of Clerical Life, Eliot's first fictional narrative on illuminating the intertwining relation of religion to secular conditions of life, reveals that the essence of religion is the practice of love between the self and the other derived from sympathy and invoked by their dialogic discourses of confession which enable them to foster the communality, on the grounds that the alterity implicated in the narrative of the other summons and re-historicizes the narrative of the subject's traumatic event in the past. Romola, Eliot's historical novel, highlights the performativity of subject which, on the one hand, locates Romola outside the social frame of domination and appropriation as a way of challenging the universalizing discourses of morality and duty sanctioned by the patriarchal ideology of norms, religion, and marriage. On the other hand, the heroine re-engages herself inside the social structure as a response to other's need for …
Date:
December 2009
Creator:
Koo, Seung-Pon
System:
The UNT Digital Library
Transnational Compositionality and Hemon, Shteyngart, DÃaz; A No Man's Land, Etc.
Contemporary transnational literature presents a unique interpretive problem, due to new methods of language and culture negotiation in the information age. The resulting condition, transnational compositionality, is evidenced by specific linguistic artifacts; to illustrate this I use three American novels as a case study: Nowhere Man by Aleksandar Hemon, Absurdistan by Gary Shteyngart, and The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot DÃaz. By extension, many conventional literary elements are changed in the transnational since modernity: satire is no longer a lampooning of cultures but a questioning of the methods by which humans blend cultures together; similarly, complex symbolic constructions may no longer be taken at face value, for they now communicate more about cultural identity processes than static ideologies. If scholars are to achieve adequate interpretations of these elements, we must consider the global framework that has so intimately shaped them in the twenty-first century.
Date:
August 2009
Creator:
Miner, Joshua D.
System:
The UNT Digital Library
Fictionalized Indian English Speech and the Representations of Ideology in Indian Novels in English
I investigate the spoken dialogue of four Indian novels in English: Mulk Raj Anand's Untouchable (1935), Khushwant Singh's Train to Pakistan (1956), Rasipuram Krishnaswami Narayan's The World of Nagaraj (1990), and Rohinton Mistry's Family Matters (2002). Roger Fowler has said that literature, as a form of discourse, articulates ideology; it is through linguistic criticism (combination of literary criticism and linguistic analyses) that the ideologies in a literary text are uncovered. Shobhana Chelliah in her study of Indian novels in English concludes that the authors use Indian English (IndE) as a device to characterize buffoons and villains. Drawing upon Fowler's and Chelliah's framework, my investigation employs linguistic criticism of the four novels to expose the ideologies reflected in the use of fictionalized English in the Indian context. A quantitative inquiry based on thirty-five IndE features reveals that the authors appropriate these features, either to a greater or lesser degree, to almost all their characters, suggesting that IndE functions as the mainstream variety in these novels and creating an illusion that the authors are merely representing the characters' unique Indian worldviews. But within this dialect range, the appropriation of higher percentages of IndE features to specific characters or groups of characters reveal …
Date:
August 2009
Creator:
Muthiah, Kalaivahni
System:
The UNT Digital Library
Personal Properties: Stage Props and Self-Expression in British Drama, 1600-1707
This dissertation examines the role of stage properties-props, slangily-in the construction and expression of characters' identities. Through readings of both canonical and non-canonical drama written between 1600 and 1707-for example, Thomas Middleton's The Revenger's Tragedy (1607), Edward Ravenscroft's adaptation of Titus Andronicus (1678), Aphra Behn's The Rover (1677), and William Wycherley's The Plain Dealer (1677)-I demonstrate how props mediate relationships between people. The control of a character's props often accords a person control of the character to whom the props belong. Props consequently make visual the relationships of power and subjugation that exist among characters. The severed body parts, bodies, miniature portraits, and containers of these plays are the mechanisms by which characters attempt to differentiate themselves from others. The characters deploy objects as proof of their identities-for example, when the women in Behn's Rover circulate miniatures of themselves-yet other characters must also interpret these objects. The props, and therefore the characters' identities, are at all times vulnerable to misinterpretation. Much as the props' meanings are often disputed, so too are characters' private identities often at odds with their public personae. The boundaries of selfhood that the characters wish to protect are made vulnerable by the objects that they use …
Date:
December 2009
Creator:
Bender, Ashley Brookner
System:
The UNT Digital Library
Rhetorical Transformations of Trees in Medieval England: From Material Culture to Literary Representation
Literary texts of medieval England feature trees as essential to the individual and communal identity as it intersects with nature, and the compelling qualities and organic processes associated with trees help vernacular writers interrogate the changing nature of this character. The early depiction of trees demonstrates an intimacy with nature that wanes after the tenth-century monastic revival, when the representation of trees as living, physical entities shifts toward their portrayal as allegorical vehicles for the Church's didactic use. With the emergence of new social categories in the late Middle Ages, the rhetoric of trees moves beyond what it means to forge a Christian identity to consider the role of a ruler and his subjects, the relationship between humans and nature, and the place of women in society. Taking as its fundamental premise that people in wooded regions develop a deep-rooted connection to trees, this dissertation connects medieval culture and the physical world to consider the variety of ways in which Anglo-Saxon and post-Norman vernacular manuscripts depict trees. A personal identification with trees, a desire for harmony between society and the environment, and a sympathy for the work of trees lead to the narrator's transformation in the Dream of the Rood. …
Date:
December 2008
Creator:
Grimes, Jodi Elisabeth
System:
The UNT Digital Library
The Map and the Territory in the Poetry of Wallace Stevens
In this dissertation, Wallace Stevens' imagination-reality problem as depicted in his poetry is discussed in terms of an eco-critical map-territory divide. Stevens's metaphor of "the necessary angel" acts to mediate human necessity, the map, with natural necessity, the territory, in order to retain contact with changing cultural and environmental conditions. At stake in this mediation are individual freedom and the pertinence of the imagination to the experience of reality. In Chapter 2, the attempt at reconciliation of these two necessities will be described in terms of surrealism. Stevens's particular approach to surrealism emphasizes separating and delineating natural necessity from human necessity so that through the poem the reader can experience the miracle of their reconciliation. In Chapter 3, this delineation of the two necessities, map and territory, will be examined against Modernist "decreation," which is the stripping bare of human perception for the purpose of regaining glimpses of the first idea of the external world. And in Chapter 4, Stevens's approach to the problem of the map-territory divide will be considered against his alienation or internal exile: balancing nature and identity through mediating fictions results in a compromised approach to the marriage of mind and culture in a historically situated …
Date:
December 2009
Creator:
Thompson, Erik Robb
System:
The UNT Digital Library
Laying the foundation for successful non-academic writing: Professional communication principles in the K-5 curricula of the McKinney Independent School District.
Traditionally, K-5 students' writing has had a primarily academic aim-to help students master concepts and express themselves. Even if students take a professional writing course later, they typically do not have the opportunity to practice-over the long period of time mastery requires-the non-academic writing skills they will be required to use as part of their jobs and in their civic life. Based on a limited K-5 study, Texas' McKinney Independent School District is doing a good job of preparing students at the elementary-school level in the areas of collaboration and presentation. A fair job of helping elementary-school students understand the communication situation, define audience, clarify purpose, gather and evaluate resources, and test usability. [And] a poor job of helping elementary-school students with analysis and organization. With their teachers' help, K-5 students eventually grasp the communication situation and can broadly identify their audience and purpose, but they do not appear to select words, format, communication style, or design based on that audience and purpose. Their writer-based focus affects their presentations as well, although they do present frequently. If teachers routinely incorporated audience and purpose considerations into every aspect of communication assignments (format, communication style, design), students would be better prepared for …
Date:
December 2009
Creator:
Treviño, Marlea
System:
The UNT Digital Library
Hand Amputees have an Altered Perception of Images at Arm's Length
The preface to this collection "Dust Clouding: Ambiguity and the Poetic Image," highlights the ways in which poets such as W.S Merwin and Donald Revell use ambiguity and the poetic image to strengthen their poems and encourage equality between reader and writer. Hand Amputees have an Altered Perception of Images at Arm's Length is a collection of poems and poem like adventures.
Date:
May 2010
Creator:
Irizarry, Justin Lee
System:
The UNT Digital Library
"Among Waitresses": Stories and Essays
The following collection represents the critical and creative work produced during my doctoral program in English. The dissertation consists of Part I, a critical preface, and Part II, a collection of seven short stories and two nonfiction essays. Part I, which contains the critical preface entitled "What to Say and How to Say It," examines the role of voice in discussions of contemporary literature. The critical preface presents a definition of voice and identifies examples of voice-driven writing in contemporary literature, particularly from the work of Mary Robison, Dorothy Allison, and Kathy Acker. In addition, the critical preface also discusses how the use of flavor, tone, and content contribute to voice, both in work of famous authors and in my own writing. In Part II of my dissertation, I present the creative portion of my work. Part II contains seven works of short fiction, titled "Among Waitresses," "The Lion Tamer," "Restoration Services," "Hospitality," "Blood Relation," "Managerial Timber," and "Velma A Cappella." Each work develops a voice-driven narrative through the use of flavor, tone, and content. Also, two nonfiction essays, titled "Fentanyl and Happy Meals" and "Tracks," close out the collection. "Fentanyl and Happy Meals" describes the impact of methamphetamine addiction …
Date:
May 2010
Creator:
Hobbs, Jessica
System:
The UNT Digital Library
Can These Bones Live? A Collection of Stories
The collection concerns itself with race, gender, masculinity, marginalization, the act of violence as a means of self expression, identity and the performance of identity, love, and loss. The collection also uses historical events-more specifically, events that are central to black culture in Northeast, Ohio- to situate the characters and witness their response to these historical events. I strive to illustrate blackness as both political and fragmented with the characters in my collection. My characters believe that what they are doing-exacting violence, abusing women, disrespecting each other- is somehow the normative; that somehow what it is that they have learned is how they should perform black identity.
Date:
May 2010
Creator:
Hoey, Danny M., Jr.
System:
The UNT Digital Library
Jeans, Boots, and Starry Skies: Tales of a Gay Country-and-Western Bar and Places Nearby
Fourteen short stories, with five interspersed vignettes, describe the lives of gay people in the southwestern United States, centered around a fictional gay country-and-western bar in Dallas and a small town in Oklahoma. Various characters, themes, and trajectories recur in the manner of a short story cycle, as explained in the prefatory Critical Analysis, which focuses on exemplary works of James Joyce, Ernest Hemingway, William Faulkner, Shirley Jackson, Italo Calvino, Yevgeny Kharitonov, and Louise Erdrich.
Date:
May 2010
Creator:
Gay, Wayne Lee
System:
The UNT Digital Library
Letters from Jack and Other Cadavers
My dissertation, Letters from Jack and Other Cadavers, developed out of my interest in using persona, narrative forms, and historical details collected through thorough research to transform personal experience and emotions in my poems. The central series of poems, "Letters from Jack," is written in the voice of Jack the Ripper and set up as a series of poems-as-letters to the police who chased him. The Ripper's sense of self and his motivations are troubled by his search for a muse as the poems become love poems, contrasting the brutality of the historical murders and the atmosphere of late 19th century London with a charismatic speaker not unlike those of Browning's Dramatic Monologues. The dissertation's preface further explores my desire for a level of personal removal while crafting poems in order to temper sentimentality. Drawing on Wallace Stevens's notion that "Sentimentality is failed emotion" and Tony Hoagland's assessment that fear of sentimentality can turn young poets away from narrative forms, I examine my own poems along with those of Scott Cairns, Tim Seibles, and Albert Goldbarth to derive conclusions on the benefits distance, persona, narrative, and detail to downplay excessive emotion and the intrusion of the personal. Poems from the …
Date:
May 2010
Creator:
Leis, Aaron
System:
The UNT Digital Library
Love Poem with Exiles
Love Poem with Exiles is a collection of poems with a critical preface. The poems are varied in terms of subject matter and form. In the critical preface, I discuss my relationship with poetry as well as the idea that we inherit poems, and that if we are inspired by them, we can transform them into something new.
Date:
May 2010
Creator:
Quintanilla, Octavio
System:
The UNT Digital Library
Self-Portrayal in the Plays of Ben Jonson
The purpose of this study was to discover to what extent Ben Jonson revealed himself in his plays and to explain how this self-portrayal has been effected.
Date:
August 1938
Creator:
Saling, Virgie
System:
The UNT Digital Library
Characterization in the Plays of Robert Greene
This study attempted to classify the characters in Greene's dramas and among other things, the study tried to show which characters are individuals and which are types.
Date:
August 1938
Creator:
Thornton, Ruby D.
System:
The UNT Digital Library
Science and Pseudo-Science in Poe's Works
This study attempts to list subjects in the field of Science, in which Poe had an interest. For the purpose of this study, the writer has divided the field of Science into the following heads: medicine, chemistry, biology, navigation, metrology, astronomy, physics, mathematics, and invention. Pseudo-sciences classified as: psychology, metphysics, phrenolgy, astrology, galvanism, mesmerism, logic reasoning, cryptography, and graphology.
Date:
August 1938
Creator:
Hall, Thomas
System:
The UNT Digital Library
An Evaluation of Junior High School Libraries of Texas
The objective of this study are: -to list and describe activities and methods used in the junior high school libraries of Texas, -to present data regarding the administration, staff, and facilites of the libraries in junior high schools of Texas, -to determine to what extent the junir high school libraries of Texas are exceeding or falling short of meeting the standards for secondary school libraries as set forth by the Southern Association of Colleges and Secondary Schools, and finally, -to propose certain improvements or change to be made to conform to the Standards of the Southern Association.
Date:
August 1938
Creator:
Johnson, Myrtle Crawford
System:
The UNT Digital Library
Some Constructive Ideas in Swift's Gulliver's Travels
This study attempt to find in swift's Gulliver's Travels some constructive ideas which were far in advance of his time. This thesis elaborated on contemporary ideas of education, birth control, and government in order to show how much the present age has thought and written about these subjects, and to throw on this background Swift's thoughts, which are not elaborated.
Date:
August 1937
Creator:
Vivion, Fred Warren
System:
The UNT Digital Library
The Negro as a Character in Recent American Fiction
This study aimed to assess the character in Recent American fiction. It concludes that writers of Negro literature have been quick to see the effectiveness of the use of Negro religious beliefs and practices in giving reality and substance to their racial pictures. Black men have to live in a white man's world. As a whole, contemporary American fiction gives a panorimic view of Negroes of almost every section.
Date:
August 1936
Creator:
Early, Minnie Lee
System:
The UNT Digital Library
An Analysis of Some of Browning's Major Characters.
This study aimed to show the variety and skill of Browning's portrayal of character and to prove that the unifying forces in his treatment of character is the development of the poet himself.
Date:
August 1936
Creator:
Kincaid, Elizabeth
System:
The UNT Digital Library
Types of Characters in Hawthorne's Tales and Romances
The purpose of this study to show that the characters in Howthorne's tales and romances may be divided into various definite types. It also attempted to trace the evolution of these types through their noteworthy representatives and to indicate, the bearing of the notebooks on this process of development.
Date:
August 1938
Creator:
Kendall, Ella Fae
System:
The UNT Digital Library
Some Phases of English Life as Revealed in Jonson's Early Comedies
This thesis aimed to present Johnson's wide knowledge of his own age and to discuss his minute observation of contemporary life in England and to show the satirical and realistic means of detached castigation with which he mirrored his conclusions.
Date:
August 1937
Creator:
Campbell, Mary Tom
System:
The UNT Digital Library
The Treatment of Nature in the Poetry of Sidney Lanier
This thesis attempts to study the sensuous impresions of nature on Lanier and the method uses in telling how those impresions are made. The study try to present the relation of nature and Lanier.
Date:
August 1938
Creator:
Davis, J. Ray
System:
The UNT Digital Library
A Study of the Poetry of Emily Dickinson
This discussion purports to be an original study of the poetry of Emily Dickinson, a study based chiefly on the poems themselves and not on a digest of critical views and opinions.
Date:
August 1937
Creator:
Dickinson, George Truett
System:
The UNT Digital Library