Matching Items (20)
Filtering by
- All Subjects: literature
- Creators: Broglio, Ronald
- Creators: Urioste-Azcorra, Carmen
Description
The most horrific, darkest, and powerful forms of the sublime take place inside the enclosure of the human psyche; the interior of the mind is the playground for the sublime--not the crag and canyon filled natural world. For Immanuel Kant and Edmund Burke, the driving force of the power of the sublime stems from the feelings of pain and fear: where is that more manifested than in the mind? Unlike the common, traditional, and overwhelmed discussion of Percy Shelley and his contemporaries and the power of the sublime in nature, I will argue that in The Cenci, Shelley, through well-chosen diction and precise composition of terrifying images, fashions characters and scenes in an emotion-driven play that elevates the mind of the reader to a transcendent sublime experience. Through a discussion of the theories of the aesthetic of the sublime laid out by Longinus, Burke, and Kant, I will provide a foundation for the later discussion of the rhetorical sublime evoked by Shelley in the ardent and horrifying play that is The Cenci. Looking at the conventional application of the theories of the sublime to romantic writing will make evident the holes in the discussion of the sublime and romantic writings that have almost forgotten the powerful and psychological rhetorical aspect of the sublime that is emphasized in the theoretical writings of both Burke and Kant. To clarify what is traditionally associated with Shelley and the sublime, a brief analysis of the Shelleyean sublime and Shelley's 1816 poem "Mont Blanc" will prepare the reader for an unconventional, but every bit important and powerful, function of the sublime in the 1819 play The Cenci based on the horrific happenings of a historical 16th century Italian noble family.
ContributorsGowan, Kaitlin (Author) / Lussier, Mark (Thesis advisor) / Corse, Douglas Taylor (Committee member) / Broglio, Ronald (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2011
Description
The hagiographic comedy written by Tirso de Molina Los lagos de San Vicente (1607) presents the journey of Santa Casilda in search of the cure of an illness in her blood that affects her. Casilda rejects the medical assistance offered to her by Muslim doctors and miraculously she finds the cure in the Christian world. In this quest, the intellectual and theological evolution of the future saint in defense of the Christian faith is presented. This dissertation will study the resources that Tirso de Molina employs to show the rejection and displacement against the Islamic world represented by a series of erotic behaviors that, in the effort of dramatizing these impertinences they are characterized within a second discourse. Tirso de Molina takes advantage of the hagiographic comedy's discourse nature and the baroque's obscure literary characteristics to express his messages. This dissertation will study in detail how the combination of hagiographic theatrical elements with linguistic expressions are used to convey a subversive discourse that therefore suggests the application of queer theory as a frame of reference. As a result of this investigation it is concluded that Tirso de Molina promotes the hagiographic model and in order to contrast the triumph of the moral Catholic world over the immoral Muslim world the play writer makes references to the nefarious sin.
ContributorsMurphy, Anayanci (Author) / Foster, David William (Thesis advisor) / Sanchez, Angel (Committee member) / Acereda, Alberto (Committee member) / Urioste-Azcorra, Carmen (Committee member) / Volek, Emil (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2011
Description
The mid-eighteenth century publication of national British folk collections like James MacPherson's Works of Ossian and Thomas Percy's Reliques of Ancient English Poetry, placed a newfound interest in the ancient literature associated with Northern/Gothic heritage. This shift from the classical past created a non-classical interest in the barbarism of Old Norse society, which appeared to closely resemble the Anglo-Saxons. In addition to this growing interest, Edmund Burke's seminal treatise, A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful, provided a newfound aesthetic interest in objects of terror. The barbaric obscurity and exoticism associated with the Norse culture provided the perfect figures to explore a Gothic heritage while invoking the terror of the sublime. This interest accounted for a variety of works published with Gothic themes and elements that included Old Norse pagan figures. Though a few scholars have attempted to shed light on this sub-field of Romanticism, it continues to lack critical attention, which inhibits a more holistic understanding of Romanticism. I argue that "Norse Romanticism" is a legitimate sub-field of Romanticism, made apparent by the number of primary works available from the age, and I synthesize the major works done thus far in creating a foundation for this field. I also argue that one of the tenets of Norse Romanticism is the newfound appreciation of the "Norse Woman" as a democratized figure, thus opening up a subversive space for dialogue in women's writing using the Gothic aesthetic. To illustrate this, I provide analysis of three Gothic poems written by women writers: Anna Seward's "Herva at the Tomb of Argantyr," Anne Bannerman's "The Nun," and Ann Radcliffe's "Salisbury Plains. Stonehenge." In addition, I supplement Robert Miles' theoretical reading of the Gothic with three philosophical essays on the empowerment of the imagination through terror writing in Anna Letitia Aikin (Barbauld) and John Aikin's "On the Pleasure Derived from Objects of Terror" and "On Romances" as well as Ann Radcliffe's "On the Supernatural in Poetry."
ContributorsLines, Sydney (Author) / Lussier, Mark (Thesis advisor) / Broglio, Ronald (Committee member) / Bivona, Daniel (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2013
Description
What does it mean to be human or for that matter, posthuman, according to a cyberpunk? This paper navigates the experience of being human in the dystopian and highly technologized future worlds found within the cyberpunk literary tradition of the 1980s and early 1990s. This work explores the implication of what it means to be posthuman in these worlds, which are comprised of virtual realities and disembodied identities. This project first addresses posthumanism as a critical theory and its destabilization of the traditional concept of humanism with particular attention to the relationship between the human being and technology. After building a theoretical framework of posthumanism based on works by Martin Heidegger, Jacques Derrida, and Bernard Stiegler, this paper then offers a survey of the cyberpunk tradition and the key themes developed and examined within the genre. The project then investigates two seminal works of the cyberpunk movement, William Gibson's 1984 novel, Neuromancer, and Neal Stephenson's 1992 work, Snow Crash, in order to trace a becoming posthuman as it is found within cyberpunk. As this paper further explains, the process of uncovering the posthuman within these texts produces a sense of loss and also nostalgia for a previous experience of being human which was already posthuman. The cyberpunk tradition and these novels in particular, reveal that there has always already been a degree of indeterminacy surrounding the question of what it means to be human. Through destabilizing traditionally held conceptions of humanism, cyberpunk and posthumanism offer the potential to rethink ourselves and our comportment towards the world knowing that technology always already informs our experience of being human.
ContributorsCarr, Joshua (Author) / Broglio, Ronald (Thesis advisor) / Lussier, Mark (Committee member) / Finn, Edward (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2013
Description
En el siglo XXI nuestra vida se está cruzando constantemente con la tecnología, tanto que algunos declaran que nuestro mundo se ha hecho posthumano, ya que no se puede separar al ser humano de la máquina. Aunque algunos se sientan amenazados por estas tecnologías, otros están abrazando la Red Mundial, aprovechándose de las infinitas oportunidades que ofrece. Uno de estos elementos fundamentales que internet posibilita es la capacidad de comunicarse directamente con otras personas. El blog por ejemplo, o bitácora en español, permite que los usuarios se proyecten a sí mismos o a sus pseudo-identidades, sus pensamientos e ideas a través del texto que escriben en internet. También sus lectores pueden responder a estos autores inmediatamente. Los posts publicados--entradas en una página web--, aunque aparecen cronológicamente, son episodios fragmentados. Pero el blog no se limita a la producción de un texto sino que el autor puede también "jugar" con el cuerpo del texto para añadir hipervínculos y multimedia. Esta forma de escribir está cambiando lo que se considera "válido" como texto, incluso lo que se considera literatura. El objetivo de este trabajo no es estudiar la literatura digital en su totalidad, sino específicamente en algunas obras escritas por mujeres en internet. Si se considera la escritura digital como una forma de arte marginalizada, se podría decir que la escritura realizada por mujeres en internet experimenta una doble-marginalidad debido al hecho de que la literatura de mujeres siempre ha sido marginal al canon. Este estudio tomará un punto de vista transatlántico, incluyendo en el mismo a varias escritoras hispanohablantes de diferentes edades, experiencias y con variados motivos en su trabajo que publican sus obras en internet. Estas autoras incluyen las blogueras Almudena Montero (española) yMaría Amelia López Soliño (española); la periodista ciudadana Yoanis Sánchez (cubana); y la poeta digital/crítica Belén Gache (española-argentina). En esta tesis he explorado y considerado la noción de que el internet sirve como un medio de democratización puesto que, hasta cierto punto, las fronteras de género y nacionalidad desaparecen. Por esta razón, este trabajo va a considerar varias teorías tales como el postmodernismo, las teorías sobre la escritura de mujeres y teorías sobre la democratización de la tecnología para analizar la literatura que se encuentra en la red. Aunque las escritoras analizadas en este proyecto son distintas, y usan la tecnología de maneras diferentes, tienen una misma meta: expresarse libremente y comunicarse directamente con sus lectores al conectarse a internet. Mi hipótesis de trabajo consiste en que estas mujeres escriben de una manera particular--es decir, que no escriben igual a los hombres que escriben en internet--y que la red ofrece una plataforma única a las mujeres: en este espacio ellas son más activas--en oposición a la literatura tradicional-- en cuanto a compartir y publicar su propio trabajo e ideas.
ContributorsByron, Jennifer E. (Author) / Urioste-Azcorra, Carmen (Thesis advisor) / Tompkins, Cynthia (Committee member) / García-Fernández, Carlos Javier (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2013
Description
William Blake created a large body of artistic work over his lifetime, all of which is a testament to a unique man, a man who would not live by standards that he felt were binding and inadequate. Blake stated that he needed to create his own system so as not to be enslaved by a paradigm not of his own making. The result of this drive can be seen in his mythology and the meaning that he attempts to inscribe upon his own world. Throughout the corpus of his writings, Blake was working with complex systems. Beginning with contraries in The Marriage of Heaven and Hell and The Songs of Innocence & Experience, he then took his work in the contraries and applied it to history and psychology in Europe a Prophecy and The First Book of Urizen. In Blake's use of history and psychology, he was actually broaching the idea of social systems and how they interact with and effect psychic systems. This paper looks at the genesis of Blake's systems through the contraries, up to the point where he attempts to bring social and psychological systems together into a universal system. He uses projection and introjection to try to close the gap in double contingency. However, grappling with this problem (as well as the issue of a universal system) proves to be too much when he reaches The Four Zoas. In his later works, some of these issues are resolved, but ultimately Blake is not able create a universal system.
ContributorsFacemire, Challie (Author) / Lussier, Mark (Thesis advisor) / Broglio, Ronald (Committee member) / Mann, Annika (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2012
Description
"Romantic Cyber-Engagement" offers a new type of dissertation organized around three projects that combine the core values of the Digital Humanities with the hypertext tradition of scholarly pursuits in the field of Romanticism. The first of the three Digital Humanities contributions is to the profession. "A Resource for the Future: The ICR Template and Template Guide" articulates a template for the construction and operation of an advanced conference in Romantic studies. This part of the project includes the conference web site template and guide, which is publicly available to all interested organizations; the template guide includes instructions, tutorials, and advice to govern modification of the template for easier adaptation for future conferences. The second project, "Collaborative Literature Projects in the Digital Age: The Frankenstein Project" is a functional pedagogical example of one way to incorporate Digital Humanities praxis as an interactive part of a college course. This part of the dissertation explains the "Frankenstein Project," a web site that I created for an undergraduate critical theory course where the students contributed various critical approaches for sections of the novel Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus. The final project, "'[W]hat they half-create, / And what perceive': The Creation of a Hypertext Scholarly Edition of 'Tintern Abbey;'" is a critical approaches section in which I created an interactive web site that focused on the primary work, "Lines Written a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey: On Revisiting the Banks of the Wye during a Tour, July 13, 1798." This advanced, multimodal site allows viewers to examine various critical approaches to each section of the primary work, and the viewer/reader can interactively engage the text in dialogue by contributing their own interpretation or critical approach. In addition to the three products and analysis generated from this dissertation, the project as a whole offers an initial Digital Humanities model for future dissertations in discipline of English Literature.
ContributorsMatsunaga, Bruce (Author) / Lussier, Mark S (Thesis advisor) / Broglio, Ronald (Committee member) / Wright, Johnson K (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2013
Description
Victorian London was often confronted with the filth and waste that was the result of urban civilization. The Victorians saw themselves as a race of humanity above the savage tribes. While steps were taken to repress these natural and instinctual products of humanity, human waste and filth were powerfully incorporated in the fictional writings of Charles Dickens and George Gissing. I argue that this incorporation of filth and waste in both OUR MUTUAL FRIEND and THE NETHER WORLD serves as a metaphorical statement on the living conditions of the Victorian lower class. Using the urban travelogues of Dickens and Gissing's contemporaries, along with the analysis on waste and filth done by Sigmund Freud and Julia Kristeva, I argue that the interpretation of waste by Dickens and Gissing define a permeable boundary between London's residuum and the rest of urban society. Oftentimes, the definition of waste and filth become entangled with the definition of value and money. While Dickens chooses to focus on an optimistic outcome of the use value of waste; Gissing sees no hopeful future for the inhabitants of London's slums. I argue that Dickens, throughout his novel, showcases a modernistic use value for the waste of civilization through the recyclable qualities of waste. Gissing, in opposition to Dickens' optimism, sees a more fatalistic future for civilization. Both novels are able to provide a blueprint for the future of urban society, by establishing that filth and waste is a unifying element of civilization, and by establishing the important role that filth can play within the value system of Victorian London.
ContributorsBangerter, Alison (Author) / Bivona, Daniel (Thesis advisor) / Lussier, Mark (Committee member) / Broglio, Ronald (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2012
Description
This dissertation examines neoliberal discourse’s construction and its impact represented in short stories published during the late 1980s and 1990s in the northern and central part of Mexico. Focusing primarily on short stories by authors Luis Humberto Crosthwaite, Rafael Saavedra, Oscar de la Borbolla, and Rosario Sanmiguel, this study analyzes how re-imagined, in their literary texts, the immediate aftermath of neoliberal policies in Mexican’s society, economy, culture, and politics. By re-imagining neoliberalism, I propose that each text creates a dialogue with and a juxtaposition of reality to the rhetoric constructed by the state apparatuses; and, at the same time, by exploring Mexicans’ daily lives, each text offers a different perspective on neoliberalism’s effects on them. Each chapter draws on an interdisciplinary theoretical framework to provide a complete understanding of the origin of neoliberalism, its discursive evolution, its implementation in Mexico, its benefits and consequences, and its influence on the transformation of language, culture, politics, and feminism. Part I discusses the linguistic transformations on the Mexican side of the border after the arrival of neoliberal policies in areas of commerce, as presented in the short stories by Luis Humberto Crosthwaite and Rafael Saavedra. The conclusion of this analysis is that a kind of transitory bilingualism has emerged and, eventually, has become part of Tijuana’s linguistic identity. Part II explores the transformation of Mexico City represented in the book of Ucronías of Oscar de la Borbolla. In this part, I propose that these texts are ucronías políticas (political uchronies) –hybrid, humoristic news reports– that subvert neoliberal discourse by staging the negative effects of neoliberalism through the portrayal of marginalized spaces to make visible those forgotten by an apparently progressive rhetoric. Part III presents a rereading through an economic lens of Callejón Sucre y otros relatos, by Rosario Sanmiguel. The primary argument is that although the short stories in this book present feminist characters, some of them are neoliberal feminists. Neoliberal feminists are women in a privileged position of agency and empowerment; they can or need not accept patriarchal norms, and some characters in these stories decide to accept them.
ContributorsHernandez, Alfredo (Author) / Volek, Emil (Thesis advisor) / Urioste-Azcorra, Carmen (Committee member) / Rosales, Jesus (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2023
Description
The surge of the chola alteña in Bolivia as a woman who, after being historically discriminated, has achieved her empowerment through her practices of resistance and agency is a very particular and new phenomenon hardly studied. The contribution of this research is in principle to describe and discover the complexity of this occurrence, but at the same time to open a field of understanding the works of the chola as a preliminary input for alternative feminisms, in accordance to the particularity of each context. As a result, an eclectic perspective from different non-canonical theories stemming from the Americas has been adopted. For example, intersectionality stemming from various social, cultural, racial, and gender contexts is addressed by Kimberlé Crenshaw, Dora Inés Munévar, Ann Phoenix, Breny Mendoza y Sonia Montecinos. Research from Aníbal Quijano, Walter Mignolo and María Lugones proposes the decolonization of knowledge. From a Bolivian perspective, the proposal of communitarian feminism by Julieta Paredes and the chi’xi approach by Silvia Rivera Cusicanqui. At the same time, the documenting of the chola practices has been obtained from non-conventional digital and oral sources. Thus, this research becomes a referent for future feminist research about the chola, but also for understanding other movements and practices of subaltern and discriminated women in similar or different contexts.
The chola is characterized by her peculiar garment which was imposed by the colonizer in the XVIII century, nullifying her indigenous identity. However, this woman has continued to wear it to the present day as much as a tactic of resistance as of empowerment and agency and has transformed it into a current fashion for the valorization of her identity. She is a chi’xi subject who complements or antagonizes opposites without subsuming them. Finally, what guides her practices and strategies are her native cultural values, such as the principle of Living Well, cooperation, reciprocity, and godfatherhood.
.
The chola is characterized by her peculiar garment which was imposed by the colonizer in the XVIII century, nullifying her indigenous identity. However, this woman has continued to wear it to the present day as much as a tactic of resistance as of empowerment and agency and has transformed it into a current fashion for the valorization of her identity. She is a chi’xi subject who complements or antagonizes opposites without subsuming them. Finally, what guides her practices and strategies are her native cultural values, such as the principle of Living Well, cooperation, reciprocity, and godfatherhood.
.
ContributorsLopez, Norma (Author) / Urioste-Azcorra, Carmen (Thesis advisor) / Foster, David (Committee member) / Thompkins, Cynthia (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2019