Literatures, Languages, and Cultures PhD thesis collection Tue, 17 Sep 2019 00:16:59 GMT 2019-09-17T00:16:59Z Rethinking the concept of obscenity: the erotic subject and self-annihilation in the works of Blake, Shelley and Keats Rethinking the concept of obscenity: the erotic subject and self-annihilation in the works of Blake, Shelley and Keats Chen, Kang-Po This doctoral thesis aims to examine how certain sexual images and motifs commonly deemed “obscene” are represented as a unique aesthetic phenomenon in the works of English Romantic poets, William Blake, Percy Bysshe Shelley, and John Keats. It can be observed that sexual desire becomes an emblem that the Romantics use to rebel against political and religious oppression and to establish individual subjectivity free from the restraint of scientific rationalism, further accessing a transcendental state of the “Poetic Genius.” Departing from the long-established readings of sexual desire in the Romantic poetry, this thesis first situates the idea of obscenity in the historical contexts of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries to reconceptualise it as an alternative form of aesthetics of self-annihilation correlated with the sublime. In the main chapters, by exploring the oft-ignored dark and violent aspects of eroticism in Blake’s Visions of the Daughters of Albion and Milton, Shelley’s The Cenci and Laon and Cythna, and Keats’s “Isabella” and “The Eve of St. Agnes,” I argue that “obscenity” emerge in English Romanticism as a unique aesthetic phenomenon of self-annihilation, particularly empowered in the experiences of sex, religious ecstasy, and poetic creation itself. The research results of this thesis delineate that in the works of these poets, religion, art, and eroticism form an essential trinity in the human psyche that constantly seeks to build, reshape, escape from, and eventually destroy existing identities. It also epitomises the desire to go beyond the status quo and the ordinary experience of limited selfhood. An examination of this heterogeneous trinity provides an alternative angle to approach other canonised literary works of English Romanticism and explore within them the elements that are “less canonised” and “obscene.” Furthermore, it resonates with the recent studies that have highlighted the material and somatic aspects in the Romantic poets and their works. Fri, 29 Nov 2019 00:00:00 GMT 2019-11-29T00:00:00Z (Re)negotiating boundaries in German concentration camp poetry (Re)negotiating boundaries in German concentration camp poetry Robinson-Self, Elizabeth Louise Goodwin German-language concentration camp poetry has been repeatedly undervalued and misrepresented. When not overlooked entirely, these texts have primarily been conceptualised as historical documents, testimony, or cultural artefacts, and their identity as poems has been of secondary (or no) importance. Concerns over both the historiographical and aesthetic merit of this poetry have also contributed to critical neglect. Whilst a small number of more in-depth studies – those by Moll (1988), Jaiser (2001) and Nader (2007) – have helpfully asserted the value of these poems, my thesis contributes to filling the significant research gap that remains. It is, crucially, a gap which is not only quantitative but also qualitative. Building upon the work done by Nader in particular, my thesis sets out from the assumption that these texts deserve to be considered as poems, as well as testimonial and historical documents, and therefore uses detailed textual analysis to provide a more nuanced picture of the corpus. Crucially, the poems are considered to be valid and valuable forms of witnessing and subsequently allowed to speak for themselves. Close readings of these texts reveal that inmates used poetry to regain agency and make sense of their circumstances in a diverse range of ways. The creation and removal of boundaries was often central to these attempts. Whilst boundary negotiation is occasionally mentioned in the three previous in-depth studies, it has never been examined systematically, despite its prevalence and ability to further our understanding of these texts. Analysing the poems under this rubric provides a deeper insight into daily reality in the camps and some of the diverse and creative ways in which inmates sought to survive and resist this. The focus is no longer on what these poems are and whether they can be successful in such a role; instead, I concentrate on the rather more enlightening question of what these poems do and how and why they do it. Fri, 29 Nov 2019 00:00:00 GMT 2019-11-29T00:00:00Z Comic license and extreme figurations in contemporary American storytelling Comic license and extreme figurations in contemporary American storytelling Sullivan, Emma Lalage Mair In this project I examine the significance and sophistication of comedy in contemporary American storytelling, in order to get beyond its frequent characterisation as either a superficial sweetener or a form of escapism. My thesis argues instead for comedy’s usefulness as a strategy for effecting multiple responses: intimacy, recognition, attachment, de-familiarisation, celebration and catharsis, all in the service of confronting the unbearable. Examining work by George Saunders, Miranda July, Donald Antrim, and the filmmaker, Jordan Peele, I argue that comic license allows for the forthright address of troubling issues; class in Saunders’s short fiction; sexuality in July’s first novel; national identity for Antrim and race in Peele’s film, Get Out. This license is effected in multiple ways: through the obliviousness of characterological traits such as naivety and pedantry for instance, as well as through the mechanisms of incongruity and relief. Given that the works I examine are challenging, ‘edgy’, both in terms of style and content, I suggest that the comedy is inflected by what we might loosely call extremity. While extremity is arguably foundational to comedy, in that the comic violation of conventional boundaries necessitates it to one degree or another; I also argue that the comic license enables the work’s ‘extreme figurations’ by ensuring the reader’s or the viewer’s consent. Comic pleasure thus keeps us close to what might otherwise be overwhelming. In addition, comedy’s tendency towards the material and the particular – the proverbial slip on the banana skin - helps to ground or embed the extremity of the work’s abstract or fantastical aspect. Tue, 09 Jul 2019 00:00:00 GMT 2019-07-09T00:00:00Z Zhang Tianyi’s selective acceptance of Charles Dickens Zhang Tianyi’s selective acceptance of Charles Dickens Ge, Chunxu This research is a comparative study on the works of Charles Dickens (1812-1870) and Zhang Tianyi 張天翼 (1906-1985). The former was one of the greatest novelists of the Victorian era; the latter, a Left-wing writer in Republican China. The study analyses five short stories from Zhang’s corpus and compares his works with ten novles of Dickens. The study argues that Dickens is one among other writers that have parallels with Zhang, through the exploration of several aspects of their works. At the beginning of the twentieth century, Dickens’s novels were introduced to China by Lin Shu. Since then, they have influenced a great number of Chinese scholars and writers. First, considering the contents of Zhang’s short stories, I roughly categorise them into five modes, respectively focusing on bureaucrats, villains, social climbers, revolutionary propa-ganda and wartime intellectuals. One short story of each type is analysed in detail. Second, this study explores both the similarities and the discrepancies between Zhang and Dickens’s inner worlds and the projections of those worlds within their texts. I find that the two authors have much in common in their character portrayals, humour, language, children’s perspectives and focus on social issues, whereas they differ considerably in what they hoped to achieve with their works, partly due to their different social settings, and this in turn gives their works very different qualities. Where Dickens believed in the goodness of human nature and hoped for gradual reform, Zhang Tianyi was a proponent of radical change and revolution. This study expands the scope of the existing research on Zhang Tianyi, clarifies and establishes important factors in Zhang’s literary development, and explores how Zhang imitated Dickens’s artistic techniques and then creatively transformed them. Moreover, this study provides new perspectives and deepens existing studies. This investigation will thereby enable others to better understand Zhang’s literary works, and will simultaneously help map Dickens’s influence outside Britain. Tue, 09 Jul 2019 00:00:00 GMT 2019-07-09T00:00:00Z