http://hdl.handle.net/2160/396 PhD theses from Department of English, AU 2013-05-11T17:09:12Z http://hdl.handle.net/2160/7759 Cultural translations: a comparative critical study of Kate Roberts and Virginia Woolf Rhydderch, Francesca 2000-01-01T00:00:00Z http://hdl.handle.net/2160/6120 Modalities of Cultural Identity in the Writings of Idris Davies and Alun Lewis Vaughn Jones, Alan This thesis compares and contrasts the subtle modes and inscriptions of cultural identity in the work of two English-language writers from Wales – Idris Davies (1905-1953) and Alun Lewis (1915-1944). It also deconstructs, and contests, the normative paradigms attached to their personalities and literary work – paradigms that construct Davies as an authentic spokesman for industrialised south Wales, and Lewis as an archetypal soldier-poet. These inherited paradigms, the thesis contends, are limiting and untenable; accordingly, the work of both writers is placed in new and challenging conceptual frames, and viewed in unfamiliar cultural contexts – with the result that each is wholly defamiliarised. In performing this critical act, the thesis makes use of a range of published and unpublished material, including poems, essays, short stories, diaries, journals, letters, and visual images. Its six paired chapters explore this material within three main conceptual frames: the origins and development of Davies’s and Lewis’s critical/cultural profiles; their mediations of Wales; and their representations of wartime experience. 2010-01-01T00:00:00Z http://hdl.handle.net/2160/5894 The Novels of J. B. Priestly Smith, Kenneth Edward This study provides a comprehensive critical account of J. B. Priestley's novels, and attempts a new classification of them according to their fictional modes and overall aims. Part One is intended to supply a general framework for the close studies which follow. It first argues the continued survival and validity of realism in English fiction and the place of Priestley in this continuing tradition. His own critical evaluation of this tradition is then discussed in more detail. The introductory section closes with an attempt to show the place of his fiction in his writing life and to trace its interaction with the other. literary forms he has practised. In Parts Two to Four of the study the novels are analysed in detail and related to particular modes of fiction. Parts Two and Three examine six novels which, by their originality of conception, broad scope and consistent execution seem to stand apart from the typology of Priestley's lesser fiction suggested in Part Four. This section divides the novels into three groups; social problem novels of the years 1933-45; psychological thrillers; and the fables and fantasies. The Conclusion summarises the claims that have been made for Priestley as a novelist, concentrating on two key aspects: the consistency and significance of his leading themes and the relation of his merits as a novelist to a deeper understanding of certain social groups. Finally, the comparisons already made between Priestley and other novelists are brought together and their implications for our final valuation of his fiction discussed. The appendices deal respectively with Priestley's two unfinished novels, and with his changing reputation as a novelist as it has been reflected in the contemporary reviews. 1974-01-01T00:00:00Z http://hdl.handle.net/2160/4681 Mark Twain, Lenny Bruce, and Kurt Vonnegut: The comedian as confidence man Kaufman, William Kenneth This thesis attempts to establish three American comedians and social critics as confidence men whose artistic manipulations allow them to issue warning and criticism under the guise of humourous entertainment. Without suggesting that all comedy is a game of confidence, I try to show that the demands placed on these comic artists by their society have necessitated that their responses, at least, must be effected through deception; hence their designation as confidence men. I first describe in the introduction the American society as a culture which has historically favoured successful confidence men, artistic and otherwise. I then place the comedian in the context of a confidence game, showing that some of the earliest forms, of comedy have effected the unification of pain and pleasure through deception and manipulations of belief, paying special attention to the earliest comedian, the aboriginal Trickster, as well as his descendants in classical theatre and mythology, later European Lore, and American comedy up to the time of Mark Twain, with particular reference to Melville. Then follow the individual analyses of three American comedians: the first addresses the manipulations of the alternately willing and unwilling confidence man, Mark Twain, as evidenced in Huckleberry Finn, Pudd'nhead Wilson, and the biography of Samuel Clemens; the second deals with the aborted career of Lenny Bruce, who seemingly despaired outright of maintaining a comedic game of confidence; and the third depicts Kurt Vonnegut as a comedian of many deceptions, as revealed especially in Slaughterhouse-Five, Breakfast of Champions, and Jailbird. The conclusion then briefly poses some questions about the society that demands the success of confidence games, and the artists who must perpetrate them. 1984-01-01T00:00:00Z