Comparative Literature
http://hdl.handle.net/10211.3/141077
2024-03-29T07:44:23ZThe third state: ethics and agency within hybrid narratives
http://hdl.handle.net/10211.3/213653
The third state: ethics and agency within hybrid narratives
Campbell, Scott Joseph
The Third State is an exploration of the consequences to individual agency in the process of inadvertent hybridization when competing narrative systems come into contact. This work takes as its beginning point the example of Don Quijote who in the course of his adventures becomes entangled in a narrative of hybrid and contradictory expectations that subvert his individual agency. Applying this basic framework to Lord Jim by Conrad and La cena by Aira, I will analyze how each author represents the disconnect between the protagonist’s internal narrative and his experience in a social environment, and then continue on to consider what the consequences of the incorporation of such a rupture into the consequent entangled narrative systems are shown to be in each case. This work will focus on each author’s approach to the question, along with considerations of consequences to individual agency with respect to the pursuit and achievement of the experience of happiness, the success and degree of authenticity in questions of interpersonal relationships, and of the doubtful possibility of authentic subjectivity in narrative contexts.
2018-01-01T00:00:00ZQueer and feminist : Sor Juana and Audre Lorde queering inclusivity
http://hdl.handle.net/10211.3/203734
Queer and feminist : Sor Juana and Audre Lorde queering inclusivity
Kimura, Ashley Kathleen
This thesis focuses on the Mexican writer SorJuana Ines de la Cruz (1648/51-1695) and the
American writer Audre Lorde (1934-1992). It examines their similarities and differences in
the context of their critical work and poetry. In doing so, I will use each of their critical
works to examine their own respective poetry and each other's. This kind of self and other
comparison illuminates how each of them fought for marginalized peoples' rights. For Sor
Juana, these marginalized people were women in colonial Mexico. In addition to asserting
women's rights to superior education, Sor Juana wanted women's education and intelligence
to be valued in her socio-political climate as equal to men's. For Lorde, these marginalized
folks were lesbians and people of color, particularly Black women and Black people facing
oppression. Lorde used her poetry to examine and critique her current political climate and a
eurocentric, heterosexist society. Although occupying radically different spaces in time, each
woman used her writing voice via poetry and critical texts to critique a patriarchal society
which devalued women's voices and intelligence.
2018-01-01T00:00:00ZAgency and space : the women of Don Quixote and Twelfth Night
http://hdl.handle.net/10211.3/199870
Agency and space : the women of Don Quixote and Twelfth Night
Sjoberg, Laura Ellen
The thesis explores how women characters’ agency changes based on their physical
location in Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes (1607) and Twelfth Night by William
Shakespeare (1602). It uses a feminist and spatial narrative theory approach to
analyze what different roles women characters are allowed to fill and what roles they take
on themselves despite expected societal circumscription. It also looks into what they have
the freedom to be and do depending on the natural or social space that surrounds them
and if and when this freedom requires them to take on male roles or dress. How do their
agency and representation change when they are disguised as men and not presenting as
themselves? This analysis of space and agency is undertaken in conjunction with an
analysis of the genre under which each work operates and the literary tradition each
upholds or modifies.
2017-01-01T00:00:00ZUncanny identities in Elena Ferrante and Oscar Wilde
http://hdl.handle.net/10211.3/196526
Uncanny identities in Elena Ferrante and Oscar Wilde
Mingrone, Alessia Joanna
This project studies the implications of the multiplicity and fragmentation of
identity as portrayed in Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray (1890) and
Elena Ferrante’s L’amica geniale (My Brilliant Friend) (2011). These two texts
have yet to be compared side by side, but, as this project intends to demonstrate,
their comparison leads to fruitful analysis of literary identity as the catalyst for an
uncanny reading experience. This brings us to Freud, the father of
psychoanalysis, who is known to have expounded the concept of the uncanny as
related to literature and vision. I use his theory to guide my exploration of the
paradoxically attractive and repulsive faces of Dorian Gray as well as the
complex, mystifying friendship in Ferrante’s novel as manifestations of the
uncanny. Uncanny feelings are ultimately experienced on two levels in this pair of
novels: by the characters themselves as well as by readers. Both Wilde’s and
Ferrante’s text use the uncanny to problematize the concept of a fixed,
identifiable personal identity in restrictive societal circumstances. In turn, this
literary setting compels readers to face their innate fears and anxieties regarding
the concept of identity that derive from paradoxical thoughts and emotions the
texts’ protagonists may arouse in them.
2017-01-01T00:00:00Z