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- Creator:
- Bates, Rebecca Joyce
- Description:
- To become part of any literary tradition is to call upon the classics while inventing new and individual ideas and concepts. In my writing I strive to find a balance between the old and the new . I have been heavily influenced by authors in the literary canon such as Jane Austen , Charlotte and Emily Bronte , and George Eliot, while being deeply interested in contemporary writers like Libba Bray and Brad Barkley. This has created a deep fascination in me for finding the balance between the traditional and the contemporary and what will happen when the two clash . The novel seeks to capture a moment in time and wrap its pages around the intense questions of identity in a time and place where traditional and contemporary society are grating against each other. The identity in question is that of eighteen-year-old Tara Worthington , the middle-child in an old-money southern family. The novel 's theme revolves around the idea of holding onto traditions of the past while also struggling to move forward and away from the old . What can stay and what must be left behind when the two worlds will not combine? I intend to set up as many dichotomies as possible such as the left and the right, north and south , the traditional and the contemporary. In placing all these ideas together I hope to illustrate the struggle that happens in one person when faced with all of them.
- Resource Type:
- Thesis
- Campus Tesim:
- Northridge
- Department:
- English
- Creator:
- Henry, Lorelei Lee
- Description:
- My thesis will focus on three of O'Brien's Vietnam War novels: The Things They Carried, Going After Cacciato, and In the Lake of the Woods. I will show how O'Brien develops these stories in terms of individual, social, cultural, and historical aspects in ways similar to, and perhaps indebted to Hemingway and Conrad. However, I will also demonstrate that O'Brien is correct in seei11g differences between his own approach and that of these authors, and other war literature writers. Where the suggestive style of Hemingway and Conrad minimize horrid detail, O'Brien's style highlights horror in an evocative, Gothic depiction of the true horror of war: the degeneration of men, the impossibility of regeneration, and the absolute moral desolation that results from the experience of war. O'Brien will thus be seen as representative of his generation, given to exaggeration, excess, overt disgust, anger, and fear. Chapter I will address the way in which O'Brien's depiction of the Vietnam War aligns it with World War I. In many ways, the cultural climate of the 1960s made the war a battle not unlike The Great War, in which Romantic ideals of nationalism and patriotism crumbled at the hands of a more personal disillusionment with war. The horrific individual, social, and cultural ramifications of war are brought to the forefront in O'Brien's works. Like Hemingway, O'Brien discusses very similar issues, central to the war of his time, in which, like Hemingway, the wasteland of the battlefield becomes an individual wasteland. In many ways, society was not prepared for either war, or for the shock, horror and degradation that war entails. We can see this clearly in the depiction of war as a degenerative force on society and culture in both Hemingway and O'Brien. Aligning the two wars historically also sets up social and cultural parallels between O'Brien and Hemingway. O'Brien is quoted as stating his admiration for Hemingway's work, and critics have noted the similarities between O'Brien's Vietnam stories and Hemingway's A Farewell to Arms. However, a much clearer connection exists between O'Brien's works and Hemingway's In Our Time, which depicts the transformation of Romantic idealism at the hands of Modernist fragmentation and alienation. The similarities between O'Brien and Hemingway are seen most strikingly between "Speaking of Courage," from The Things They Carried and "Soldier's Home" from In Our Time. Like Hemingway, O'Brien points out the failure of a Romantic ideal of war, the loss of patriotism and nationalism, to reveal the impossibility of individual, social, or cultural post-war regeneration. The Modernist wasteland that begins with Krebs ends logically in O'Brien. In Chapter Two, I will compare O'Brien's In the Lake of the Woods to Conrad's Heart of Darkness. Where Hemingway's style mutes some of the awful details of war, O'Brien's style elaborates these details in order that the horror of war, in both the realistic and the Conradian sense, can be more clearly depicted. In In the Lake of the Woods, as in Heart of Darkness, one character's journey toward another through a dark and mysterious outer landscape mirrors an inner, moral journey, and exposes a figurative darkness lurking within the novel's protagonist. John Wade, a Vietnam veteran who now faces the shame and guilt not only of losing a political election, but also of his participation in the My Lai Massacre, is haunted by a past he cannot reconcile with his present life. Wade's psyche, already overshadowed by a traumatic childhood, grows morally darker as a direct result of his violent and horrific Vietnam War experience, which takes place in a dark and chaotic jungle reminiscent of Conrad's Congo. Although O'Brien's works are clearly indebted to Hemingway for the depiction of war as degenerative, and also to Conrad for the depiction of war as horror and moral terror, the most profitable way to read them is in terms of those elements we think of as Gothic, for then they become like confessionals, attempting to justify and resolve the transgressive individual, social, and cultural conflicts created by war. Chapter Three examines O'Brien's novels in terms of the Gothic genre, which sheds new light on the victory of fear over bravery, of terror over courage, of the loss of self at the hands of "the other," and of ghosts, the memories of war that arise from that dark landscape to haunt those that survived. By placing soldiers within a haunted landscape, issues of bravery and courage no longer lie solely within the realm of the characters' will, but, as in Gothic novels, are subject to outside forces that are constantly at odds with reality. When we examine O'Brien's Vietnam stories as discussing the failure of a Romantic ideal, as the reflection of individual, historical, social, and cultural anxiety, then they can be seen in terms of horror, where the stripped-down wasteland of Hemingway and the festering horror of Conrad come together in a Gothic world. O' Brien's The Things They Carried, In the Lake of the Woods, and Going After Cacciato, mediated by Gothic elements, reveal an individual, historical, social, and cultural anxiety beyond that which can be accomplished within the war literature genre.
- Resource Type:
- Thesis
- Campus Tesim:
- Northridge
- Department:
- English
- Creator:
- Theriault, Jennifer Marie
- Description:
- This thesis explores the moral evolution of Joseph Conrad's protagonist, Marlow, in Heart of Darkness and Lord Jim. Marlow appears uniquely in literature as the omnipotence of cloistered Victorian moral ideals began to fade and just as the shattering of all forms of ideals that would come to characterize Modernism as a literary movement began to emerge. I show how Marlow transforms what would ordinarily be characterized as nihilistic lies into affirmations of life in order to sustain the illusion that traditional notions of Western morality are still in tact. Until Marlow reveals the truth about his lies and the corrupt European imperialism that they conceal in Heart of Darkness, he tells a series of untruths that effectively perpetrate for European bourgeois culture the myth that "civilizing" is benevolent. In telling lies that appear to compromise Marlow's own moral fidelity so that the existence of vast evil is concealed, Marlow comes into the "hard wisdom" that conventional morality is a facade. Despite Marlow's revelation about this, some twenty years later his aiding the criminal Jim in Lord Jim continues to sustain this illusion about morality. This is because in Marlow's collision -- and collusion -- with the European imperial enterprise in the African Congo, he learns that in the moral vacuum of "civilizing" lies that have a saving and stabilizing power are preferable to the truth that barbarism, and not benevolence, is at the "heart" of civilization. In illustrating this thesis, I show how Marlow's lies function as part of a Nietzschean "revaluation" of his rigid Victorian morality. In this process, Marlow reinterprets the traditional values that he associates with notions of "good" and "evil" so that his lies, once considered equivalent to death, are transformed into acts of "good" that sustain European colonial progress. These lies initially appear to compromise Marlow's own fidelity to his Victorian values because they make him what he has always loathed to become, a liar. However, these lies are really the hallmarks of Marlow's "revaluation." Marlow skews the truth in such a way that for a time his lies successfully function to confirm his allegiance to what he thinks is redeeming about the idea of a moral system - the efficiency and progress that sustain civilization.
- Resource Type:
- Thesis
- Campus Tesim:
- Northridge
- Department:
- English
- Creator:
- Siegel, Stacey Beth
- Description:
- Women today are taught to believe that mothering is instinctual and that when they have children they are supposed to love taking care of them. This notion perplexes many women who give birth without immediately feeling kinship with their baby. Some, in fact, experience panic and guilt wondering what is wrong with them, and while they watch and listen to �other mothers, they desperately attempt to figure out if what they feel is justifiable. Often they keep their anxiety to themselves, fearing that they will not be accepted by society if they voice their refutation of the concept of intuitive maternity. What no one has told them is that the concept of inherent mothering is actually socially constructed. Although previously genre was defined exclusively in terms of form and content and referred to literary works, modern rhetorical theorists have recently redefined the term genre and applied it more broadly. Contemporary genre theorists have come to the conclusion that while form and content are still integral in examining genre, function and context are equally important. In other words, the social, historical and rhetorical forces that shape writing, the way writers use these forces, and the effect on the reader can reveal a great deal about a particular text. These forces strongly influence the purpose or function of a text, and it is the rhetorical activity or exigence behind that purpose which helps to classify genre. The exigence, which is something that strongly invites a response, helps to provide meaning and rhetorical character to writing. By examining the purpose and exigence of a text, the function and context can help to classify its audience or discourse community and therefore its genre. This project will examine parenting literature, specifically parenting magazines, beginning with an analysis of the rhetorical situation, which is the relationship between the reader, writer and social context in which the text is created. I intend to suggest that the audience of parenting magazine articles are significantly influenced by the social and rhetorical forces used by writers of these texts, and that the relationship is recursive because of the effect the readers have on their creation.
- Resource Type:
- Thesis
- Campus Tesim:
- Northridge
- Department:
- English
5. Two trees
- Creator:
- Caruth, Elissa S.
- Description:
- Two Trees explores writing from a post-modern, post-sturcturalist perspective and experiments with form. Some of the works include elements of conventional poetry and fiction. Other poems combine the two genres of writing to create a poetic-fiction that expresses, through a poetic vision, non-conformity and rejection of accepted ideals. Two Trees is divided into four sections. Each section addresses different elements of survival from seemingly unimportant aspects of day to day coping to the societal victimization of women and different forms of rape.
- Resource Type:
- Thesis
- Campus Tesim:
- Northridge
- Department:
- English
- Creator:
- D'Andrea, April Lynn
- Description:
- A teenage girl grows up in the early nineteen eighties. Her parents are divorced, she rarely sees her father, and she doesn't get along with her stepfather. She moves to a new town and makes friends with popular kids. She meets an older boy and has a relationship. The relationship falls apart and her best friend moves to Oregon, so she struggles to with the loss. She gets closer to an old friend, makes new friends, and dates other boys; however, she holds on to the dream of winning her old boyfriend back and moving out with her best friend. When she finds out her best friend is pregnant and planning to get married, she does something that alienates her from all of her friends. Eventually she reconnects with her old boyfriend but decides she has outgrown him.
- Resource Type:
- Thesis
- Campus Tesim:
- Northridge
- Department:
- English
- Creator:
- Kolarek, Tara
- Description:
- As a writer I have positioned myself within the framework of lesbian writing. The term 'lesbian writing', however, is varied and constantly in a state of definition. Yet, both in spite of, and because of this, I must construct a framework of lesbian writing that shapes and defines my writing. Lesbians disappear within the dominant ideology of heterosexuality as we are positioned/ defined in relation to heterosexual, as other, as object. This position is manifested in the institutions which reflect and affirm the heterosexual ideology, one of which is conventional narrative plot structure. If, as a lesbian writer, I utilize this structure and simply insert lesbians as central characters, I have only substituted pronouns and merely replicated gendered ideas, for at once there are butch(male) and femme(female) constructs and there exists only male desire. As a lesbian I am neither entirely outside nor entirely inside this dominant ideology and, as a lesbian writer, I must simultaneously challenge the structure and work within the structure to locate/define/identify a narrative as lesbian. In doing so, the work also seeks to create a narrative space in which the writer/ reader/ text come together in a relationship which can be defined as lesbian.
- Resource Type:
- Thesis
- Campus Tesim:
- Northridge
- Department:
- English
- Creator:
- Maechler, Julie L.
- Description:
- The plays of Lanford Wilson have interested scholars, critics and playgoers for more than three decades . Among other things, critics have focused on Wilson's use of language. Some assert that Wilson's evocative language has captured the voice of the American people, resulting in the generally accepted notion that Lanford Wilson is an �American Voice.� In this study I examined the way Wilson uses language to create characters that speak in an �American� way about "American" concerns. My objective was to develop a criteria by which Wilson's language could be judged "American." This criteria includes three general features: elements of sound in terms of dialect, rhythm and colloquialism( aspects of national personality, identity, experience and mythos; and the themes and associations made available through the expanding signs of Roland Barthes' semiotic codes. This study applies the definition to three of Lanford Wilson's plays: Fifth of July, Talley's Folly, and Talley and Son. These three plays all focus on members of a single Midwestern family, the Talleys, during significant times in American history, and all take place on the uniquely American and semiotically significant Independence Day. Wilson's "American voice" is established linguistically in the elements of "sound" that can be detected through dialect and colloquialism; it is also present in the national identity and perspective as expressed by the characters.
- Resource Type:
- Thesis
- Campus Tesim:
- Northridge
- Department:
- English
- Creator:
- Saunders, Judith
- Description:
- This thesis suggests that Bertolt Brecht's play, Round Heads and Pointed Heads, has been underserved both critically and theatrically. Although it evolved from a previous attempt Brecht made to adapt Shakespeare's play Measure for Measure, there has been little scholarly discussion of Round Heads and Pointed Heads in light of its Shakespearean original. It is the intention of this thesis to revisit Brecht's play and argue that a comparative analysis of the two plays serves to rescue Brecht's play from its reputation as a failed Nazi satire and a na'ive Marxist account of the rise of fascism in Germany. This thesis also proposes that a study of Brecht's early, incomplete attempt to adapt Measure for Measure, which exists in the Bertolt Brecht Archives in fragmented form, strengthens the link between Round Heads and Pointed Heads and Shakespeare's play. I have included a working translation of these manuscript pages, which comprise the appendix to this thesis. Identifying Round heads and Pointed Heads as Brecht's final, free adaptation of Measure for Measure encourages a critical re-evaluation of the play, rescuing it from its reputation as an anti-Hitler satire and resurrecting it as a complex and sophisticated political parable with multiple implications.
- Resource Type:
- Thesis
- Campus Tesim:
- Northridge
- Department:
- English
- Creator:
- Babayeva, Syuzanna
- Description:
- This thesis explores the manifestation of closed and open consciousness in conventional rhetoric of persuasion and the rhetoric of the rhizome. The rational mode of the Western discursive tradition has determined a pragmatic mode of consciousness, which gravitates toward discovering the rationality of truth opposed to the eternal motion of desire. Desire as a meaningful part of existence is examined in the works of Epicurus, Spinoza, Bergson, Freud, Lacan, Barthes, Derrida, and others. While emphasizing the vital role of desire, these theorists primarily associate desire with pleasure or lack and consider the notion of desire to be an indeterminate and antagonistic attribute in the logical contest of rational and irrational entities. This way of thinking creates a linear type of consciousness expressed in a cause-effect frame of persuasive argumentation dominant in Western thought since Aristotle. French scholars Deleuze and Guattari have problematized the notion of desire by locating desire in the rhizome as the main driving force of organic and nonorganic beings. They describe the rhizome as a nonhierarchical web of connections where all material matters are in a constant process of becoming. The rhizome excludes an idea of the finality of truth, offering a picture of the world based on difference and perpetual movement. The philosophy of the rhizome demonstrates an open type of consciousness which is not defined or limited by any conventions. My thesis demonstrates the manifestation of the conventional, or Aristotelian, type of consciousness through the rhetorical analysis of contemporary US nonfiction texts that offer finality as answers to the problems explored: Don't Sweat the Small Stuff in Love by Richard Carlson and Kristine Carlson, Stiffed by Susan Faludi, and What Shamu Taught Me About Life, Love, and Marriage by Amy Sutherland. I contend that each of these texts has a clear line of argument related to essential concerns of existence such as relationships, love, and the construction of social values framed as a clear-cut resolution presenting answer to the question posed. To illustrate the rhetoric of the rhizome, I analyze a different type of nonfiction that is not organized around one central point of view on the topics explored. Employing Deleuze and Guattari's concept of the rhizome, I call this type of nonfiction "rhizomatic" because it is written in a reflective mode and invites the audience to contemplate the ideas for possibilities and potentials. In the context of the rhetoric of the rhizome, I examine three contemporary works of US nonfiction: Against Love by Laura Kipnis, Close to the Knives by David Wojnarowicz, and Husbandry by Stephen Fried. Addressing principles of deterritorialization, multiplicity, and becoming as the vital categories of the rhizome, I demonstrate through the analysis of the rhizomatic texts an open consciousness of composing ourselves" (Lunsford). I compare the results of the conventional rhetorical approach to the rhetoric of the rhizome and suggest that the limits of truth that we impose on ourselves can be opened through incorporating the open consciousness of the rhizome into our lives.
- Resource Type:
- Thesis
- Campus Tesim:
- Northridge
- Department:
- English