Premonitions of the Past: An Analysis of Pastiche in the films of Quentin Tarantino

This dissertation examines the work of contemporary director Quentin Tarantino in light of the concept of pastiche. After beginning with an outline of recent scholarship on postmodern pastiche, an analysis of criticisms of Tarantino’s use of pastiche in both Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction will provide a reference point for engaging with his later use of the mode. Richard Dyer and Ingeborg Hoesterey’s concept that pastiche can facilitate a critical potential in cinema will be privileged. Accusations of mistreatment and nontreatment of females, and of prioritizing a white masculine cool nostalgia for performative cool black masculinity will be challenged by Jackie Brown and Death Proof. A textual breakdown of both films showcases Tarantino’s proposed re- contextualization of gender in regard to genre. Through a grounding of history the use of pastiche allows Tarantino to comment on the nature of nostalgia and what this can tell us about our relation t ohistory. The purpose of this analysis is to assess both the films’exploration of cultural memory in relation to film history, and to document how Tarantino reframes his own conventions for screening both gender and race

Characterizations of otherness in the sixteenth century moral plays and their morality actecedents

Beginning with an analysis of the nature of the Morality play and its near relative, the moral play, this thesis finds both forms to be founded on an adversarial view of the world (Chapter One). The nature of the adversary is variable, and that variation is, in turn, revealing about the plays' philosophical position. The theories of Jacques Lacan suggest a reading of Mundus & Infan s, The Castle of Perseveraunce, and Youth as descriptions of selfhood via language- acquisition (Chapter Two). Psychoanalytic theory also suggests that otherness may involve both the rule-making Other of authority and a transgressive 'other', broadly analogous to repressed desire. The moral plays discuss the latter version of otherness through their construction of an increasingly elaborated 'vice figure'. A reading of Mankind demonstrates the interpretative power of this approach (Chapter Three). In the 1560's and 70's, vice behaviour becomes more complex, and so more ambiguous. Deconstructive theories suggest that this change can usefully be read as equivalent to the tendency of linguistic terms towards meaninglessness. The Tyde Tarrieth No Man is an example. Otherness comes to be located in certain 'abjected' social groups. In addition, vice play radically alters the original structure of the moral play, tending to replace narrative with showmanship. Enough is as Good as a Feast and Like Will to Like demonstrate this point. All For Money, however, uses dramatic structures symbolically, restoring meaning to vice play (Chapter Four). Feminist theory leads me to consider the place of woman as other in the moral plays. In The Play of the Wether, the endightement of mother messe and Lingua the 'female vice' figure is developed (Chapter Five). The social implications of that figure are considered through analyses of The Rare Triumphs of Love and Fortune and Lingua (Chapter Six). Finally, the figure of the 'good woman' is found to undergo increasing criticism, as the plays come to encode virtue as undesirable, and perhaps impossible (Chapter Seven). A Conclusion summarizes the main arguments of the thesis

Writing The Nation

A concise introduction to American Literature from 1865 to present. The book is broken into chapters based on time period and writing style from Late Romanticism to recent post-modernism