Theses and Dissertations
This collection includes both ASU Theses and Dissertations, submitted by graduate students, and the Barrett, Honors College theses submitted by undergraduate students.
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6
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- All Subjects: literature
- Creators: Maring, Heather
Description
While tournaments, duels, and challenges were analyzed within literary texts prior to the 1980's, the most recent trend in scholarship has been to focus on how these proceedings fit into a historical context. Many authors have noted how medieval rulers used tournaments, duels, and challenges as a way to keep their militaristic knights under control; however, there has been relatively little study on the way that these three events function as a means of social control in medieval romances. This paper examines how the public nature of these events and the chivalric nature of their participants combine to subvert the agency of not only the nobles, but also King Arthur himself in four of the Sir Gawain romances, "Ywain and Gawain", "The Knightly Tale of Gologras and Gawain", "The Awntyrs off Arthur at the Terne Wathelyne" and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.
ContributorsWilhite, Amanda (Author) / Bjork, Robert (Thesis advisor) / Sturges, Robert (Committee member) / Maring, Heather (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2012
Description
My thesis, titled Female Agency in the Canterbury Tales and Telling Tales, compares Geoffrey Chaucer’s fourteenth century work and Patience Agbabi’s modern adaptation in regards to their portrayal of female agency. While each work contained a whole selection of tales, I focus on four tales, which were The Miller’s Tale, The Clerk’s Tale, The Physician’s Tale, and The Wife of Bath’s Tale. I also include relevant historical information to support and assist in the analysis of the literary texts, and secondary sources were also used supplementarily to enhance the analysis. I argue that female agency is irrationally believed to be dangerous, and the consequent attempts at protection manifest as limitations, which are themselves damaging. The paper is divided into two main sections, which are themselves separated into three smaller categories. The first of the two main sections concerns what actions and options are available to women influenced by a distinction of gender; this section is divided into female gender ideals, marriage, and occupation. The second of the two main sections addresses the entities or individuals enacting the limitations upon female agency, and its three subsections are society, men, and women. I ultimately conclude that not only is it irrational to believe that female agency is dangerous, but also that making gender-based judgment on the capacity of a group of people or an individual is inherently flawed.
ContributorsStemmons, Zaydee (Author) / Newhauser, Richard G (Thesis director) / Maring, Heather (Committee member) / Historical, Philosophical & Religious Studies (Contributor) / Department of English (Contributor) / Historical, Philosophical & Religious Studies, Sch (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2021-05
Description
Selected Poets’ Lived Experience of the Seventh Avenue Streetscape Project: A Phenomenological Study of Meaning and Essence addresses a specific public art project. Public art has a long history of eluding a definition of consensus, and it continues to do so. There is very little in the way of accountability for its effect, and most of what is available is anecdotal. The Seventh Avenue Streetscape (SAS) is no exception in that no follow-ups were ever asked of the community, even though the Melrose Neighborhood District has been revitalized and rescued from its decline with the inception of SAS. It brought residents and business owners together in coordination with the City of Phoenix and Arizona State University to create the unique infrastructure of SAS that presents itself as a sheltered bus stop/outdoor gallery displaying art and poetry on large platform panels to the delight of the citizenry. The purpose of this study was to explore, describe, and interpret the meaning given to the Seventh Avenue Streetscape by poets who participated in that project. The central question guiding the research was “What is the essential meaning and understanding of the lived experience given by poets who participated in the Seventh Avenue Streetscape project and its creation?”
The study was conducted through the qualitative research tradition, guided specifically by the theoretical base known as phenomenology. Phenomenology lends itself particularly well to the study of phenomena such as SAS as its focus is finding the essential in the “everyday” through the expression of lived experience. My primary data source were the poets themselves, those whose poems had been selected to be publicly presented. Once cleared by the Institutional Review Board, my method of data collection involved one-on-one recorded interviews. The interviews were then transcribed and subjected to various methods of data reduction, including coding and themeing the data from the thick description given by the poet-participants. The data revealed patterns among the poets which could be divided into six essential themes, confirming a plausible description and interpretation of SAS. Recommendations included conducting the same study again with the remaining qualifying SAS poets and comparing the results.
ContributorsLanier, Nadine Lynn (Author) / Maring, Heather (Thesis advisor) / de la Garza, Sarah Amira (Committee member) / Lussier, Mark (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2023
Description
The study of genre literature in general, and fantasy or fairy tale literature in particular, by its very nature, falls outside the normal course of literary theory. This paper evaluates various approaches taken to create a framework within which scholarly research and evaluation of these types of genre literature might occur. This is done applying Secondary World theory to better-established literary foci, such as psychological analysis and monster theory while still respecting the premises posited in traditional literary inquiry.
ContributorsAttwood, James (Author) / Bjork, Robert E (Thesis advisor) / Corse, Douglas (Committee member) / Maring, Heather (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2019
Description
This study examines the ways in which translators writing in two contemporary medieval languages, Old Norse-Icelandic and Middle English, approached the complicated doctrine of the bodily Assumption of Mary. At its core this project is dedicated to understanding the spread and development of an idea in two contemporary vernacular cultures and focuses on the transmission of that idea from the debates of Latin clerical culture into Middle English and Old Norse-Icelandic literature written for an increasingly varied audience made up of monastics, secular clergy, and the laity. The project argues that Middle English and Old-Norse Icelandic writing about the bodily Assumption of Mary challenges misconceptions that vernacular translations and compositions concerned with Marian doctrine represent the popular concerns of the laity as opposed to the academic language, or high Mariology, of the clergy.
ContributorsNajork, Daniel (Author) / Bjork, Robert (Thesis advisor) / Sturges, Robert (Committee member) / Maring, Heather (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2014
Description
The question of whether there has been an American Indian genocide has been contested, when genocide is defined according to the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. Yet, I argue that both social and cultural genocide of American Indians has had volatile consequences for both Native and non-Native peoples. Because of the contested nature of this genocide, American Indian Studies scholars contend that Indigenous people's experiences often get marginalized and reconstructed, relegating stories to the category oppression, rather than proof of genocide, which has created intellectual and social absences (Vizenor 2009). Other American Indian Studies scholars argue for reform within American Indian educational settings, where Indigenous nations use their values and traditions within curricula to combat national absences. Despite excellent work on American Indian education, scholars have not addressed the central questions of how such absences affect both Native and non-Native students, why those absences exist, and why the U.S. dialogue around genocide is a rhetoric of avoidance and erasure, once any comparison begins with other genocide victims. Without adequate analysis of both American Indian genocide and absences within curricula, particularly humanities courses such as literature, where stories about American Indians can have a prominent space, we undervalue their impact on America's past and present histories, as well as current knowledges and values. Erasure of American Indian presence affects both Native and non-Native youth. Many American Indians are traumatized and believe their tribe’s stories are not worthy of inclusion. As well many non-Natives are unaware of Indigenous experiences and often left with stereotypes rather than realities.
A Haudenosaunee paradigm of Good Mind can re-situate how we think about the canon, literature, and the classroom. The Good Mind allows for a two-way path where ideas pass back and forth, respecting differences, rather than replacing those differences with one ideology. This path is meant to open minds to connections with others which are kind and loving and lead to peaceful relationships. Theorizing literary erasure and genocide of the mind through experiences from Native and non-Native students and teachers embodies the Good Mind.
A Haudenosaunee paradigm of Good Mind can re-situate how we think about the canon, literature, and the classroom. The Good Mind allows for a two-way path where ideas pass back and forth, respecting differences, rather than replacing those differences with one ideology. This path is meant to open minds to connections with others which are kind and loving and lead to peaceful relationships. Theorizing literary erasure and genocide of the mind through experiences from Native and non-Native students and teachers embodies the Good Mind.
ContributorsMichal, Melissa (Author) / Maring, Heather (Thesis advisor) / Kelsey, Penelope (Thesis advisor) / Poe, Mya (Committee member) / Fredrick, Sharonah (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2017