Threads of influence: Greek tragedy and its relevance to the contemporary novel, with specific reference to Donna Tartt's 'The secret history', and my novel, 'The first seven years'

This MPhil concerns the contemporary literary novel and how it has been influenced by the Golden Age of Greek tragedy. It comprises of three parts: the thesis and the novel, hereby presented, and the journal of creative experiences, which was observed at viva. My thesis examines the historical development of Greek tragedy and its structure. It further explores how tragedy has influenced writers through the ages, culminating in the literary tragedy of today. The methodology of tragic form is investigated in the works of writers educated in Greek tragic structure, and also those with no classical background. This thesis aims to show how novelists without a classical education have accessed the tragic form, via threads of literary influence, and utilised it successfully, albeit often unconsciously. My novel, The First Seven Years, is a work of contemporary tragic fiction. It tells the story of one woman’s attempts to do the best for her child. Trapped between raising her young son, Alfie, and caring for an increasingly frail elderly relative, Kate becomes emotionally and physically stretched. When she discovers Alfie has been badly bullied in his failing state school, her attempts to change schools have tragic consequences. Finally, my journal, presented at viva, compiles my creative thoughts, notes and research for both novel and thesis in one portfolio. My original notebooks show much of my novel’s planning and I have included visual images used of characters, buildings, locations, Kate’s photography and Martha’s pottery. Factual research is also integrated; investigating peripheral neuropathy, school league tables and admissions criteria. Thesis research includes relevant newspaper cuttings, programmes to Oedipus Rex and Phèdre, readings by DBC Pierre & Jeanette Winterson, and an interview with David Guterson. This journal has proved invaluable throughout my MPhil, both as an inspiration and an aide-mémoire

Thematic Shifts in Contemporary Vietnamese American Novels

This article examines the thematic shifts in three contemporary Vietnamese American novels published since 2003: Monique Truong\u27s The Book of Salt, Dao Strom\u27s Grass Roof, Tin Roof, and Bich Minh Nguyen\u27s Short Girls. I argue that by concentrating on the themes of inferiority and invisibility and issues related to ethnic and racial relationships in U.S. culture (instead of concentrating on the Vietnam War and the refugee experiences), some contemporary Vietnamese American authors are attempting to merge their voices into the corpus of ethnic American literature, which usually is thematically characterized by identity, displacement, alienation, and cultural conflict, etc. Each author explores the problems confronted by individuals caught up in various phases of the Vietnamese diaspora of the twentieth century. These important works are treated primarily thematically, even as the theoretical approaches of various critics are employed to examine those themes. All three novels take Vietnamese American literature in new thematic directions, which signals great promise for future developments. Key words: contemporary Vietnamese American novels, Monique Truong\u27s The Book of Salt, Dao Strom\u27s Grass Roof, Tin Roof, Bich Minh Nguyen\u27s Short Girls, invisible identity

Masculine crusaders, effeminate Greeks, and the female historian: relations of power in Sir Walter Scott's Count Robert of Paris

Gender employed as a methodological lens in the analysis of historical fiction can help to reveal implicit or explicit evaluative statements. It is deployed here to examine hierarchies in the military, political and cultural context of the encounter between ‘virile’ Westerners and ‘effeminate’ Greeks in Sir Walter Scott’s last novel, Count Robert of Paris (1831), which is set in Constantinople at the start of the First Crusade (1096-7). Scott’s depiction of Westerners and Orientalized Greeks is set against the geopolitical concerns of the author’s own time. The gendered perspective through which Scott constructs relationships in Count Robert makes it clear that the ancestors of modern Britain and France must control the East, represented here by the Byzantine Greeks. On the other hand, Scott’s ambivalent and fluctuating portrayal of the twelfthcentury historiographer Anna Comnena as a fictional character in the novel reveals his own uncertain stance between rejection and admiration of the female historian, as well as a more complex approach to gender dynamics in times of change

Existential angst: a reading of Saul Bellow's Seize the Day

TCC (graduação) - Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina, Centro de Comunicação e Expressão, Curso de Graduação em Língua e Literatura Estrangeira.RESUMO: Existencialismo é uma doutrina filosófica focada no ser humano em face da realidade, que vem atraindo muitos escritores há décadas. Muitos estudiosos vêm discutindo a possibilidade de Saul Bellow poder ser considerado um escritor Existencialista. A presente pesquisa analisa o livro do autor Estadunidense Seize the Day através de uma revisão bibliográfica. Aplicando os pressupostos defendidos por Jean-Paul Sartre ao livro foi possível encontrar conexões com o que defende o pensador Francês, embora falte certa densidade ao livro de Bellow quando comparado aos de outros trabalhos Existencialistas.ABSTRACT: Existentialism is a philophical doctrine focused on the human being inface of reality that has been attracting many writers for decades. Many scholars have been discussing the Existentialism in Saul Bellow's production. This work analysis the American author's novel Seize the Day through a bibliographical review. Applying presupposes defended by Jean-Paul Sartre to the novel it was possible to find connections with the French thinker's ideas though the novel lacks some density when compared to other Existentialist works

The unruly rules of the game : writing game and writing practice in George Gissing's New Grub Street

In The Pleasure of the Text, Roland Barthes likens the reader-writer relationship to a game, the play of which is made possible by the writer's imaginative seeking out of his reader, and the reader's openness to being found. If each does his or her part—if neither bores the other—‘there can still be a game’. This model of writing and reading as exploratory, amorous gamesmanship is troubled by the literary equivalent of spectator sports, literature for a mass audience. According to this new model, described by Marshall McLuhan, ‘Without the audience, there is no game. It would be a practice’, a rehearsal without a play. Within mass culture, then, the game is determined not by the players' mutual efforts to defer the rules, but by the presence of an anonymous public, well-versed in rule and convention before first pitch is thrown or first sentence is read. How one writes, or fails to write, in the context of this new configuration of the game is the main question posed in George Gissing's New Grub Street (1891). I contend that, while the novel’s successful writers play to audience demand, their counterparts yearn for a proper writing practice. Boredom marks the latters’ refusal of the new rules of the game, flagging the novel’s construction and allocation of artistic authenticity.peer-reviewe

Film Adaption and Transnational Cultures or Production: The Case of Guillermo Arriaga

The circulation of Latin American cinema in a transnational context has widened the options that actors and directors from the region have regarding their involvement in the different aspects of film production. In order to analyze Guillermo Arriaga’s transnational career as a writer of novels and screenplays I contrast his work with that of other writers and filmmakers who have participated in both the cinematic and literary fields. The fact that Arriaga has crossed the lines between writing, adapting, and directing his own works in Spanish and English leads me to review the current relations of film and literature in general. Finally, by comparing Arriaga’s novels and films, I propose that the contemporary practice of film adaptation contributes to the “flexibilization” in the roles writers, actors, and directors play in filmmaking and in the circulation of cultural capital between film and literature in the current media markets

The Temple of Morality: Thomas Holcroft and the Swerve of Melodrama

Roll 43a. Repository (Col.Ch.) / Tre Ore (Col.Ch.). Image 12 of 59. (2 April, 1953; 3 April, 1953) [PHO 1.43a.13]The Boleslaus Lukaszewski (Father Luke) Photographs contain more than 28,000 images of Saint Louis University people, activities, and events between 1951 and 1970. The photographs were taken by Boleslaus Lukaszewski (Father Luke), a Jesuit priest and member of the University's Philosophy Department faculty

Sideshadow views : narrative possibilities in Charles Dickens's late novels

Cet essai discute du rôle de l’hypothétique (ce qui ne peut être proposé que comme une hypothèse) dans les huit derniers romans de Charles Dickens et de la variété des moyens littéraires utilisés pour l’invoquer. Dans toute communication fondée sur le langage, les mots sont énoncés (et entendus) ou écrits (et lus), l’un après l’autre, dans l’ordre qu’exige la grammaire. La linéarité et l’ordre de telles séquences semblent refléter naturellement une temporalité et une causalité régissant les évènements représentés. En fait, ceci ne peut rendre compte que de leur nécessité et de leur chronologie. Je soutiens que les romans considérés recourent à des actions, des idées, des évènements, des perspectives, des voix, etc. hypothétiques, pour dépasser les limites imposées par le déterminisme apparemment inhérent aux structures narratives. Dans les mondes fictionnels de Dickens, le présent n’est pas la simple conséquence du passé et ce qui arrive n’est pas seulement la conséquence nécessaire d’une cause suffisante. Ce qui se produit est souvent sans nécessité et aurait aussi bien pu ne pas se produire. Un tel évènement, quand il n’était encore qu’une possibilité, a été en concurrence avec d’autres possibilités jusqu’à ce que la chance décide de l’actualiser. Cette réalité contingente -- avec sa « charge » éthique, épistémologique et ontologique -- ne peut être représentée par le discours linéaire et chronologique de la téléologie. La représentation de la contingence exige l’insertion du réel et du spéculatif dans un tissu narratif composé de développements et d’évènements actuels et virtuels. C’est pourquoi, dans les romans de Dickens, l’invisible peut être montré, le silence peut être éloquent et ce qui est en pleine vue peut demeurer secret. D’autres histoires possibles contribuent toujours à l’intrigue. À diverses jonctions du récit, les chemins non empruntés ii pourraient avoir mené ailleurs. Des directions hypothétiques et des mises en intrigues imprécises définissent l’histoire aussi puissamment que les développements poursuivis. Pour produire un monde de possibilités aussi complexe, Dickens, non seulement ne s’en remet pas à une supposée qualité mimétique du langage, mais il envisage aussi la réalité qu’il représente comme un fait naturellement littéraire. Il ne cache pas son art ; bien au contraire, avec une créativité et une fertilité étonnante, il déploie avec flamboyance son habileté à jouer avec le langage, avec une rhétorique luxuriante et avec une profusion d’intrigues potentielles. Tout ce qui constitue l’extravagante économie narrative de Dickens est exposé en permanence et est partie inhérente du plaisir procuré à ses lecteurs. En introduction, je discute du recours de Dickens à l’hypothétique dans son interaction avec un important conflit idéologique de son époque, la confrontation de la téléologie créationniste avec l’indéterminisme existentiel de la théorie de l’évolution de Darwin. Dans les trois chapitres suivants, j’adresse la fonction de l’hypothétique dans les incipit de David Copperfied, A Tale of Two Cities et The Mystery of Edwin Drood. J’examine ensuite comment, maintenant l’angoisse épistémique sur la réalité engendrée dans l’incipit, l’hypothétique se propage au travers du roman, soulevant les questions sans souvent y répondre. Je conclus que dans les huit derniers romans de Dickens -- et je suggère que cela est sans doute le cas pour le roman moderne en général -- le recours à l’hypothétique participe à l’acquisition d’une vérité littéraire, parce que, après tout, la littérature -- comme la science et la philosophie -- est une forme d’expérimentation avec la réalité.This essay discusses the role of the hypothetical – that which can be proposed only as a hypothesis -- in Charles Dickens’s last eight novels and the variety of literary means used to invoke it. In any language-based communication, words are uttered (and heard) or written (and read), one after the other, in the order that grammar demands. The linearity and order of such sequences seem to reflect naturally a temporality and a causality governing the represented events. In fact, this can only account for their necessity and their chronology. I argue that the novels under consideration make use of hypothetical and counterfactual actions, thoughts, events, perspectives, voices, etc., in order to overcome the limits imposed by the determinism apparently inherent to narrative structures. In Dickens’s fictional worlds, the present is not the simple consequence of the past and what happens is not only the necessary consequence of a sufficient cause. What happens is often without necessity and could as well not have happened. Such an event, when it was still only a possibility, competed with other unnecessary possibilities until chance decided its actualization. This contingent reality -- with its ethical, epistemological and ontological “payload” -- cannot be represented by the linear discourse of teleology. The representation of contingency demands the insertion of the real and the speculative in a narrative fabric woven out of virtual and actual developments and events. That is why, in Dickens’s novels, the unseen can be shown, silence can be eloquent, and what is in plain view can remain secret. Other possible stories always contribute to the plot. At various forks in the narrative, paths not taken could have led elsewhere. Hypothetical directions and indistinct emplotments define the narrative as powerfully as the developments that are pursued. iv To produce such a complex world of possibilities, Dickens not only refuses to rely upon a supposed mimetic quality of language, but he also contemplates the reality that he represents as a natural literary fact. He does not conceal his art. On the contrary, with an amazing fertility and inventiveness, he makes a lavish display of his capacity to play with language, with rhetorical flourish and with potential lines of emplotment. Everything that constitutes Dickens’s wild narrative economy is always on permanent display and is an inherent part of the pleasure procured for his readership. In the introduction, I discuss Dickens’s recourse to the hypothetical in its interaction with an important ideological conflict of his time -- the confrontation of the creationist teleology with the existential indeterminism of broadly Darwinian evolution theory. In the next three chapters, I address the function of the hypothetical in the incipits of David Copperfield, A Tale of Two Cities and The Mystery of Edwin Drood. I then examine how, by sustaining the epistemic anxiety generated in the incipit, the hypothetical propagates across the novel, raising questions without often answering them. I conclude that in Dickens’s last eight novels -- and, I suggest that this may also be the case in the modern novel in general -- the recourse to the hypothetical participates in the acquisition of a literary truth, because, after all, literature -- like science and philosophy -- is just another way to experiment with reality