PhD theses from Department of English
Browse by
This collection contains PhD theses from the Department of English, Aberystwyth University.
Recent Submissions
-
Rhydderch, Francesca (Aberystwyth UniversityEnglish Literature, 2000)[more][less]
URI: http://hdl.handle.net/2160/7759 Files in this item: 1
-
Vaughn Jones, Alan (Aberystwyth UniversityEnglish Literature, 2010)[more][less]
Abstract: 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 In performing this critical act, the thesis makes use of a range of published and unpublished material, including poems, essays, short stories, diaries, journals, letters, and visual images.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. URI: http://hdl.handle.net/2160/6120 Files in this item: 3
Bibliography. AVJ.pdf (263.6Kb)CADAIR version.pdf (322.8Kb)title and preliminaries. AVJ.pdf (114.2Kb) -
Smith, Kenneth Edward (Aberystwyth University, 1974)[more][less]
Abstract: 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. URI: http://hdl.handle.net/2160/5894 Files in this item: 1
510990.pdf (24.45Mb) -
Kaufman, William Kenneth (Aberystwyth University, 1984)[more][less]
Abstract: 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. URI: http://hdl.handle.net/2160/4681 Files in this item: 1
303120.pdf (20.01Mb) -
McNab, Christopher (Aberystwyth UniversityEnglish Literature, 1998)[more][less]
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, by arguing 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 its indeterminate style, acts like a negative theology by systematically negating other thematic presences in the text in order to present alterity itself as a dominant with final jurisdiction over all areas of language and being. Because of its dominance, this alterity comes to exercise conceptual powers akin to the metaphysical expressions of the divine: ineffability, infinity, omnipotence, atemporality, ethical force. The religious and mystical references that often crowd postmodern fiction, therefore, support alterity's shift from the aporetic to the transcendent. By examining metaphysical alterity in postmodern treatments of character, death, allegory and history, I argue that postmodern literature is a limited theological discourse that questions postmodern pluralism and populism. The reified negative has such a privilege in postmodernism that it creates an aporetic politics that is only capable of representing otherness rather than others. I suggest that this is a 'natural' philosophy for late-capitalism in that it refuses broad social praxis in favour of a value-free market and anti-foundational argument. I set aside Salman Rushdie as someone whose fiction manages to use metaphysics and fragmentation in a non-transcendental manner. Rushdie locates meaning in the dialogue between the metaphysical and the material, rather than an abstracted absence and presence, and thus he is able to portray metanarratives without transcendence or dogmatism. As such, Rushdie shows that postmodernism's insistence on alterity fafls to engage meaningfully with social conditions. URI: http://hdl.handle.net/2160/4019 Files in this item: 1
mcnab.pdf (21.86Mb)