Browsing Theses by Subject "English (Literary Studies)"
Now showing items 1-20 of 23
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Defragmenting Identity in the Life Narratives of Iraqi North American Women
(University of Waterloo, 2014-05-02)This dissertation examines contemporary Iraqi North American women’s life narratives within the frame of postcolonial autobiography theory. Through narrating their experiences of oppression, war, and displacement these ... -
Deviant Society: The Self-Reliant "Other" in Transcendental America
(University of Waterloo, 2013-08-23)This dissertation utilizes theories of deviance in conjunction with literary methods of reading and analyzing to study a range of deviant or transgressive characters in American literature of the 1840s and 50s. I justify ... -
Dickens, Education, and Social Enrichment
(University of Waterloo, 2014-09-26)This thesis examines Charles Dickens’s criticism of Victorian education systems. This thesis considers three of Dickens’s novels: Hard Times, Nicholas Nickleby, and Great Expectations. By demonstrating the failure of ... -
Drawing on the Margins of History: English-Language Graphic Narratives in Canada
(University of Waterloo, 2013-09-26)This study analyzes the techniques that Canadian comics life writers develop to construct personal histories. I examine a broad selection of texts including graphic autobiography, biography, memoir, and diary in order to ... -
Elements of the Gothic in the Works of Judith Thompson
(University of Waterloo, 2012-02-23)This thesis is an examination of the Gothic elements present in a selection of works by Canadian playwright Judith Thompson. The Gothic genre is marked by continual flux and adaptation, ensuring that its ability to inspire ... -
Hannah More and Cheap Repository Tracts; Lessons in "Religious and Useful Knowledge"
(University of Waterloo, 2010-09-02)My thesis will discuss British Romantic period author and philanthropist Hannah More. I aim to portray her from a perspective that demonstrates her compelling and varying nature, that includes religion and rhetoric as ... -
Healing Through Presence: The Embodiment of Absence in the Plays of Daniel David Moses
(University of Waterloo, 2010-01-19)ABSTRACT In this thesis, it is argued that the performance of three plays written by Daniel David Moses: Brébeuf's Ghost, The Indian Medicine Shows and Almighty Voice and his Wife function as healing ceremonies. This ... -
"Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand And Eternity in an hour": William Blake's Visions of Time and Space in the Light of Eastern Traditions
(University of Waterloo, 2013-07-23)This thesis examines William Blake’s conceptions of time and space in the light of the philosophies of Hinduism and Islam. In order to perform this analysis, source material, often from rare and neglected texts, is utilized ... -
Horticultural Landscapes in Middle English Romance
(University of Waterloo, 2008-09-23)Gardens played a significant role in the lives of European peoples living in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. By producing texts in which gardens and other cultivated landscapes are used as symbol and setting, ... -
Marriage and the Social Contract in British Romantic Discourse
(University of Waterloo, 2014-09-29)This thesis investigates non-domestic discourses of British Romanticism to argue that there is no “outside” of the domestic; its key constituents, family and the marriage that legitimizes that family, are absent presences ... -
Private People in Public Places: Contemporary Canadian Mennonite Life Writing
(University of Waterloo, 2015-10-14)This study examines the autobiographical writing of five contemporary Canadian Mennonite authors in order show how these texts, when read collectively, work to disrupt conventional ways of thinking about life writing. Life ... -
Renaissance Texts, Medieval Subjectivities: Vernacular Genealogies of English Petrarchism from Wyatt to Wroth
(University of Waterloo, 2012-07-03)This dissertation investigates the symbolic presence of medieval forms of textual selfhood in early modern English Petrarchan poetry. Undertaking a systematic re-reading of a significant body of English Petrarchism through ... -
Resisting Transculturation: The European Woman in English Travel Writing
(University of Waterloo, 2013-01-25)Comprised of four separate case studies – one on the Eastern novels of Penelope Aubin and Eliza Haywood written in the 1720’s, one on Lady Mary Wortley Montagu’s Turkish Embassy Letters, one that features female castaway ... -
Rethinking Maritime Literary Regionalism: Place, Identity, and Belonging in the Works of Elizabeth Bishop, Maxine Tynes, and Rita Joe
(University of Waterloo, 2014-10-08)In this dissertation I argue that the dominant concept of Maritime literary regionalism is informed by a Euro-settler definition of belonging, one that prescribes an author’s long-term residency and family history in a ... -
Shakespeare, Youth, and Comic Books
(University of Waterloo, 2014-04-29)This thesis examines how Shakespearean play-texts are adapted into comic books in order to appeal to young readers. By analyzing four different adaptations including two comic book series and two manga series, it seeks to ... -
Signature Event C*ntext
(University of Waterloo, 2008-01-25)This thesis examines how context in Derridean signature theory is taboo and underutilized, and calls signature theory to embrace the contaminating mark of context. Signature theory, as proposed by Jacques Derrida and Peggy ... -
"This Third Space": Real-and-Imagined Spaces in Turn-of-the-Century American Settlement Fiction
(University of Waterloo, 2012-06-22)This thesis is a literary analysis of American settlement fiction, using a spatially-informed cultural historicist approach. The settlement movement in the U.S. was both a Progressive Era reform movement and a precursor ... -
Till We Have Faces: C. S. Lewis's Textual Metamorphosis
(University of Waterloo, 2012-09-12)C. S. Lewis’s novel, Till We Have Faces, has been misunderstood by both scholars and readers alike. This paper seeks to read the text through the lens of Lewis’s own literary criticism. It begins by presenting Lewis’s ... -
Transposition of Joy in C.S. Lewis
(University of Waterloo, 2015-02-09)C.S. Lewis’s lifelong pursuit of ‘Joy,’ in addition to being the focus of two autobiographical texts (Surprised by Joy and The Pilgrim’s Regress) is also manifested throughout his fiction writing. His earliest poetry ... -
Trauma and Beyond: Ethical and Cultural Constructions of 9/11 in American Fiction
(University of Waterloo, 2012-06-19)My dissertation focuses on a set of Anglo-American novels that deal with the events of 9/11. Identifying thematic and stylistic differences in the fiction on this topic, I distinguish between novels that represent directly ...