DSpace Community: Llenyddiaeth Saesneg ac Ysgrifennu Creadigol / English & Creative Writing

Alterity, Religion, and the Metaphysics of Postmodernism

Title: Alterity, Religion, and the Metaphysics of Postmodernism

Authors: McNab, Christopher

Abstract: Postmodernism privileges figures of negativity, figures defined under such terms as alterity, absence, aporia and the Other. The ostensible function of these tropes is the disruption of logocentrism through the introduction of the indeterminate. However, byarguing that the 'metaphysics of presence' is all that exists in social communication,alterity can be reinterpreted as a metanarrative trope whose language and function repeat attributes previously defined by theology. Much postmodern fiction, with itsindeterminate style, acts like a negative theology by systematically negating otherthematic presences in the text in order to present alterity itself as a dominant with finaljurisdiction over all areas of language and being. Because of its dominance, thisalterity comes to exercise conceptual powers akin to the metaphysical expressions ofthe divine: ineffability, infinity, omnipotence, atemporality, ethical force. Thereligious and mystical references that often crowd postmodern fiction, therefore,support alterity's shift from the aporetic to the transcendent. By examiningmetaphysical alterity in postmodern treatments of character, death, allegory andhistory, I argue that postmodern literature is a limited theological discourse thatquestions postmodern pluralism and populism. The reified negative has such aprivilege in postmodernism that it creates an aporetic politics that is only capable ofrepresenting otherness rather than others. I suggest that this is a 'natural' philosophyfor late-capitalism in that it refuses broad social praxis in favour of a value-freemarket and anti-foundational argument. I set aside Salman Rushdie as someone whosefiction manages to use metaphysics and fragmentation in a non-transcendentalmanner. Rushdie locates meaning in the dialogue between the metaphysical and thematerial, rather than an abstracted absence and presence, and thus he is able to portraymetanarratives without transcendence or dogmatism. As such, Rushdie shows thatpostmodernism's insistence on alterity fafls to engage meaningfully with socialconditions.

"An Idiosyncratic Scribe". A Study of the Practice and Purpose of Rate, the Scribe of Bodleian Library MS Astmole 61

Title: "An Idiosyncratic Scribe". A Study of the Practice and Purpose of Rate, the Scribe of Bodleian Library MS Astmole 61

Authors: Blanchfield, Lynne Sandra

Abstract: Ashmole 61 contains five popular romances: Sir Isumbras,The Earl of Tolouse, Libeus Disconeus, Sir Cleges, and Sir Orfeo.These are compiled with 38 preaching, teaching and entertaining versetexts. This thesis examines the practice, purpose and personality ofRate, a scribal editor working around 1480-1500. Chapter 1 provides afull palaeographical description of the manuscript, with discussion ofthe often perplexing features of its make-up. Chapter 2 examines thenature and purpose of Rate's scribal editing. Chapter 3 suggests thepossible identity of the scribe and his social background. Chapter 4provides information in tabular and note form on the manuscriptcontext of each item. In volume two, all 43 texts are transcribed,with editorial notes and pertinent collations, ending with a criticalsurvey and the bibliography. The study explores thecreative-destructive function of a medieval scribe, demonstrating howa deliberate policy of adaptation in Ashmole 61 is at work, underminedby a lack of expertise in assimilating changes. Variants have beenattributed to Rate only if consistent with modes of omission, additionand alteration that are well-attested throughout the manuscript as awhole. The texts themselves are re-shaped in order to express familyunity and piety on the one hand, and on the other a stronganti-Semitic devotion to the Passion of Christ in the cult of the FiveWounds, which provides a significant interpretation of Rate's sketchesof fish, roses, hexafoil and shield. Since the scribal dialect waslocalized in North-East Leicestershire, the combination of the scribalediting, the devotional bias and the curious sketches, suggests linkswith the Corpus Christi Guild of Leicester, and with medievalpilgrimage. Far from being a "minstrel's storybook", the manuscriptwas either the library of a devout, literate merchant, or, withslightly more evidence, the handbook of a family chaplain.

The Unfinished Scream: The Disintegration of the Self and Society in the Works of Paul Bowles

Title: The Unfinished Scream: The Disintegration of the Self and Society in the Works of Paul Bowles

Authors: Campbell, Neil

Abstract: This thesis shows how Bowles's style and themes have developed from a number of sources, including Dada and Surrealism and Edgar Allan Poe, but moved beyond them to a writing which is unique and radical. The thesis traces the progress of Bowles's work from his examination of representative Western characters undergoing immensely testing journeys into their deepest selves, to his fascination with altered states of perception and Moroccan culture. It argues that Bowles has recognised a double division within humanity; from the natural world itself, and from a true and authentic relationship to our unconscious. As a result of this double division, the self and society which Bowles examines are distorted and corrupted. The thesis explores how Bowles has consistently worked to undermine the system of values and perceptions which permit such divisions to exist. In order to do this, he attacks the self, as the centre of our own importance within the world, and society, because it conditions us into an acceptance of values and ways of seeing life. Much of his fiction aims to disintegrate and destroy these two key areas in order that he might expose their failings and suggest alternative ways of existing. In particular, Bowles has grown more interested in preserving elements of Moroccan culture as remnants of a more open, less rational way of life. This thesis, therefore, examines the final balance between a destructive urge and a desparate need to preserve and learn from what remains when the distorted and corrupt has been stripped away.

Politics of Anxiety: The imago turci in early modern English prose, c.1550-1620

Title: Politics of Anxiety: The imago turci in early modern English prose, c.1550-1620

Authors: Schmuck, Stephan

Abstract: In sixteenth- and early seventeenth-century England, portrayals of the Turk reflected aspects of Christian thinking. More specifically, these views varied according to ideological outlook, place and time. To complicate matters further, while there are a variety of images of the Turk responding to a range of Christian concerns, the nexus of images of the Turk - the imago Turci – is essentially contradictory. English portrayals and responses to the Turks are not uniform, but vary, while the Turk operates at once both from within and at a distance from English culture in the sixteenth and early seventeenth century. In other words, the Turk is both real and imagined. This project is a response to these issues. It examines the ways in which Turks - both real and imagined - not only figure in early modem English prose texts as a site of their cultural production, perpetuation, and negotiation, but also the ways in which these images relate to and participate in current political and cultural debates that also informed these prose texts. As a consequence of the diversity of the imago Turci in a wide range of available, printed prose works, I adopt five categorical distinctions representing five groups of overlapping genres, or modes for my analysis: history, religion, travel, mercantile writings and romance. Reading the material in their historical contexts, one of the arguments to arise from this is that the use of the Turk in these English texts reflects the wider cultural and political developments in Western Christendom and England, and between Christendom and the Ottoman Empire. The central argument of this project is that the imago Turci in early modem English prose emerges as a complex discursive site in which a variety of competing interests are negotiated.

Patriotic women: Shakespearean heroines of the 1720s

Title: Patriotic women: Shakespearean heroines of the 1720s

Authors: Marshall, Louise

Abstract: This paper discusses three adaptations of Shakespeare's history plays written during the 1720s. These texts, I contend, counter claims that positive representations of women during this period were confined to the domestic sphere. In these plays women are active participants in the public realm of politics and commerce. The heroines of Ambrose Philips’ Humfrey Duke of Gloucester (1723), Aaron Hill's King Henry the Fifth (1723) and Theophilus Cibber's King Henry the Sixth (1724), rather than being driven by love and domestic duty, act on political motivation. Patriotism, which characterises these women, is the primary political slogan of all three plays. These female protagonists exemplify the value of a patriotic political conduct that crosses party lines. Their unpartisan or universal brand of patriotism anticipates the opposition views expressed by Bolingbroke in the following decade. This paper also addresses the broad consensus amongst Feminist critics that women in adaptations of Shakespeare provide little more than mere ‘breeches roles’ titillation. The histories of Philips, Hill and Cibber represent heroines who, no less than their male counterparts, exercise control during political crises. These women are not objects of titillation but subjects for emulation.

National Myth and Imperial Fantasy: Representations of Britishness on the Early Eighteenth-Century Stage

Title: National Myth and Imperial Fantasy: Representations of Britishness on the Early Eighteenth-Century Stage

Authors: Marshall, Louise

Abstract: Although eighteenth-century drama has been dismissed as stylistically homogenous, aesthetically uninteresting, and even politically complacent, National Myth and Imperial Fantasy reveals the intriguing and intricate nature of the period’s history plays. As a body of texts, these plays disclose the conflicts and concerns of contemporary political and private lives, creating, for modern readers, a picture of the period’s instabilities. Through their often messy dramatisations of the complexities of patriotic rhetoric and national identification, they reflect a world of contrasts, where the shrinking globe gives rise to increasing commercial and imperial possibilities, and where fantasies and mythologies of Britishness vie to construct a cohesive image of the nation as a dominant colonial power. Examining representations of the nation’s imagined patriotic predecessors and historical enemies, both foreign and domestic, National Myth and Imperial Fantasy offers one of the first close readings of a series of lesser known yet historically vital dramas.Introduction: Dramatising Britain: Nation, Fantasy and the London Stage, 1719-1745Ancient Britons and LibertyKings, Ministers and Favourites, the National Myth in PerilShakespeare, the National ScaffoldBritain, Empire and Julius CaesarTurks, Christians and Imperial FantasyConclusion: History, Fantasy and the Staging of BritishnessBibliographyIndexLOUISE MARSHALL lectures in Restoration and eighteenth-century literature at the Department of English and Creative Writing, Aberystwyth University, UK. She has written several articles that discuss the political resonance of the early eighteenth-century stage and the dramatic representation of mythologies of Britishness.

Negotiating Identities in Asian American Women's Writing: Gender, Ethnicity, Subjectivity

Title: Negotiating Identities in Asian American Women's Writing: Gender, Ethnicity, Subjectivity

Authors: Grice, Helena

Abstract: A central concern of much of the emergent literature of Asian American women is the question of how identity is defined. Living in, and writing from, what has been called the `between worlds' condition engenders an often contradictory and frequently shifting sense of identity in Asian American women's texts. The `hyphenated identity' is further destabilised and complicated by gender. This precarious female subjectivity is often reflected textually through shifting narrative voices and fractured narratives. A self-consciousness can be detected in the relation between the structures of narrative and the construction of self. Conventional genre distinctions are often traversed so that in particular the demarcations between fiction and autobiography are challenged. I refract current theoretical discussions of identity and the processes of identity formation through a series of texts by Asian American women which are preoccupied to varying degrees with the question `Who am I?’ Several possible answers are suggested to the question of where identity actually originates. They are: the maternal, language; physiognomy; `home' and the prominent cultural marker of national identity. It is around these locations of cultural identity that I organise my analysis. Chapters One and Two introduce a discussion of the ways in which identity is negotiated in this group of texts, and analyse the ways that genre is used and abused by these writers to suit their purposes. Chapter Three addresses the prevalence of mother/daughter writing in this body of work, suggesting that in their depiction of alternative maternal-daughterly arrangements, several Asian American women writers actually challenge dominant analyses of the mother/daughter dyad. As I discuss in Chapter Four, linguistic identity is also a focus of extended interest for many writers, for whom bilingualism is an uneasy condition. In Chapter Five, I address the Asian American feminist re-writing of the body as signifier. The body is often a battleground of identity. Asian American women's texts repeatedly address the practice of reconstructing the body to project less racially marked identities, as part of a wider project of recovering a positive sense of self-identity. This emphasises the corporeality of identity as well as the connections between the internal and external body. Chapter Six stresses the roles of culture and the polity in defining and creating identities, through the culturally and legislatively defined identity afforded by citizenship. I argue that particular texts by Asian American women may be read as challenges to dominant constructions of national identity, constructions which sought to exclude certain Asian American groups at critical moments in American history. Chapter Seven addresses the dynamics of space and home, a preoccupation with the idea of return as fundamental to the negotiation of identity. The search for `home', both as psychological construction and real location, is a recurrent preoccupation in many texts.

Description: Published from this thesis: ‘Asian American Writing in Europe: Problems and Paradigms’, in Hitting Critical Mass: A Journal of Asian American Cultural Criticism, Vol. 4, no. I.‘Asian American Women's Prose Narratives: Genre and Identity', in Esther Ghymn, ed., An Asian American Studies Reader (New York: Peter Lang, 1998)‘Faceing/De-Face-ing Racism: Physiognomy and Racism in Eur/Amerasian Texts by Women', in Yuko Matsukawa, Josephine Lee and Imogene Lim, eds., RelCollecting Early Asian America: Reading in Cultural History (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1998).

Dramatic Histories and Party Politics, 1719-1745

Title: Dramatic Histories and Party Politics, 1719-1745

Authors: Marshall, Louise

Abstract: Early eighteenth-century politics were dominated by the rise to power and fall from grace of Sir Robert Walpole. This thesis examines varied responses to the Walpole regime from opposition Whig, Tory, Jacobite and pro-government writers. The discussion focuses on history plays from the period 1719-1745 and considers the role of these texts as vehicles for political comment and propaganda. Of key concern throughout the thesis is the rhetoric of patriotism. Patriot ideology pervades the texts and crosses conventional party boundaries. Alongside patriotism other themes pertinent to political commentary of the period are discussed. In chapter one, 'Ancient Britons and Liberty' texts appropriating Saxon and Celtic history are discussed in relation to contemporary concerns for maintaining the political liberty of the British nation. In chapter two, 'Kings, Ministers, Favourites and Patriot Rhetoric' plays that focus on favouritism are examined alongside contemporary criticism of Walpole as 'favourite' of the Hanoverians. In chapter three, 'Gender and Party Politics in Adaptations of Shakespeare's Histories' the updating of Shakespeare to suit contemporary taste and the impact of these alterations are reflected in a repoliticisation of the plays for party agendas. In chapter four, 'Britain, Empire and Julius Cæsar' representations of Cæsar that suggest positive interpretations of the Emperor conflict with contemporary opinion regarding his contribution to the fall of the Roman republic. Implications for Britain’s own colonial endeavour are also considered in chapter five, ‘Religion and the Ideology of Empire in Turkish History Plays'. This chapter examines plays in which the Scanderbeg history is appropriated to offer a model of British colonialism. Reflecting on Britain's past glories or, past failings, the plays discussed in this thesis offer not only comment on contemporary politics but also representations of an idealised Britishness. By demonstrating what Britons had once been these texts suggest what modem Britons should be. Now available in revised text entitled, 'National Myth and Imperial Fantasy: Representations of Britishness on the Early Eighteenth-Century Stage', (Basingstoke: Palgrave MacMillan, 2008).

Mr Joyce and Dr Hydes: Irish selves and doubles in 'The Dead'

Title: Mr Joyce and Dr Hydes: Irish selves and doubles in 'The Dead'

Authors: Thurston, Luke

Abstract: My aim in the following essay is a double one: both to revisit an old haunt of Joycean criticism – a political interpretation of „The Dead‟, that dangerous textual supplement Joyce added to Dubliners in the autumn of 1907 – and to explore a new set of questions there concerning the Joycean „self ‟; concerning, that is, not so much the writer himself as the developing sense of selfhood, as both concept and lived experience, in his early work. I want to start from the familiar notion of „The Dead‟ as a text fully embroiled in the antagonistic politics of Irish identity in the early twentieth century; but then to link it to another question of identity, one usually reserved for discussions of Joyce‟s late work: namely his preoccupation with so-called multiple personality.However, it is not until Finnegans Wake (FW ) that the intertextual imbrication of these two questions of the self – one obviously political, the other seemingly psychological – is explicitly spelt out by Joyce. For it is there that we read of „. . .hides and hints and misses in prints‟ (FW 20.11), where a duplicitous textuality, clearly itself the site of multiple identities, also contains a riddling hint at the debate over true Irish identity. The key term is „hides‟, which in itself hides (from the reading voice) the name Hydes: in other words, there is more-than-one Hyde hiding in the Joycean text. And since the „misses in prints‟ – at once designating and themselves constituting typographical slips – can also be read, as I have argued elsewhere, as the „misses in Prince‟, those young women treated by Morton Prince, prophet (or inventor) of Multiple Personality Disorder, we start to recognize in Hyde the name of Stevenson‟s famous double.[2] Indeed, later in the Wake, we come across „the Mr Skekels and Dr Hydes problem‟ (FW 150.17), where the slippage of names and titles points directly to what may be thought the master-text of multipleidentity: The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde.

Splinters of Being: Fernando Pessoa as Multiple Singularity

Title: Splinters of Being: Fernando Pessoa as Multiple Singularity

Authors: Thurston, Luke

Abstract: “We’re splinters & mosaics; not, as they used to hold, immaculate, monolithic, consistent wholes,” wrote Virginia Woolf in her diary. We should pause over the two terms neatly joined by Woolf’s ampersand, for they suggest different, perhaps antithetical, ways of thinking about the self. A mosaic, after all, is precisely an arrangement of “splinters,” an assembly of fragments into a new totality or consistency. Today we might see in that difference an index of contrasting aspects of Woolf’s own writing-identity: stylistic innovation on the one hand, personal fragmentation on the other. But Woolf’s sense, at least in her diary note, of the difference between an outdated “whole” self and a modern fragmentary one is not an anxious but an enthusiastic, almost jubilant one. The demise of the “monolithic” Victorian ego was, in her eyes, something to be celebrated, for it corresponded to a liberation from the “ill-fitting vestments” of nineteenth-century prose, with its conventional structures of plot, character, and “plausibility” tailor-made to constrict or misrepresent reality and falsify the “myriad impressions” of the human psyche. For Woolf this aesthetic liberation was, moreover, not simply a matter of literary style. It encompassed a whole new contact with life, beyond the “tyrant” self (an echo there, perhaps, of Freud on “his majesty the ego”), a tyrant that had for so long ruled over social interaction and reduced the existence of the Other to a prescriptive narrative of the Same.

Subjectivity and Society: Mid-Twentieth-Century Reconfigurations of the Self, Family and Community in African American Literature, 1940-1970

Title: Subjectivity and Society: Mid-Twentieth-Century Reconfigurations of the Self, Family and Community in African American Literature, 1940-1970

Authors: Cashman, Nicky

Abstract: The primary historical focus of this thesis falls in the years between 1940 and 1970. My main area of interest lies in the individual subject and how that child, adolescent or adult functions in particular situations and most importantly, how my chosen African American writers have portrayed their male and female protagonists in various environments and circumstances. Each of the seven chapters of this thesis covers specific experiences: an emotional journey toward one‘s sexual orientation; a trans-national urban experience of homosexuality; 1950s suburbia and the socio-cultural issue of interracial relationships; historical and legal concepts of interraciality; rural poverty and childhood trauma; communal responsibility and child abuse; and maturation and intergenerational relationships. An emphasis upon family, community and environment are threads that run throughout the thesis. Accordingly, social, political and legal histories are engaged, as are environmental studies. Furthermore, queer, black feminist, trauma and gender theories are utilised along with sociological studies, child development and psychology. This research has enabled my close textual examination of each narrative so as to ascertain how each writer deals with the relationship between subject and society, thus, I argue how they offer differing viewpoints than the ones we find presented by traditional theories and criticism that predominantly comprise issues of race. Finally, the aim of this thesis is to propose alternative avenues of critical inquiry regarding the treatment of child development and individual trauma through individual readings of these mid-twentieth-century examples of autobiography, drama and novel.

Dream Walker: A Wordsworth Mystery Solved'

Title: Dream Walker: A Wordsworth Mystery Solved'

Authors: Grovier, Kelly