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This dissertation addresses the representation of women in the poetry of the Irish poet Thomas Kinsella. Using a variety of theoretical approaches, including historical criticism, French feminist theory and Jungian psychoanalytical theory, I argue that although women are an integral part of Kinsella's ongoing aesthetic project of self-interrogation, their role in his poetry is deeply problematic from a feminist perspective. For purposes of my discussion I have divided my analysis into three categories of female representation: the realistically based figure of the poet's wife Eleanor, often referred to as the Beloved; female archetypes and anima as formulated by the psychologist C.G. Jung; and the poetic trope of the feminized Muse. My contention is that while the underlying effect of the early love and marriage poems is to constrain the female subject by reinforcing stereotypical gender positions, Kinsella's aesthetic representation of this relationship undergoes a transformation as his poetry matures. With regard to Kinsella's mid-career work from the 1970s and the 1980s I argue that the poet's aesthetic integration of Jungian archetypes into his poetry of psychic exploration fundamentally influences his representation of women, whether real or archetypal. These works represent a substantial advance in the complexity of Kinsella's poetry; however, the imaginative power of these poems is ultimately undermined by the very ideas that inspire them - Jungian archetypal thought - since women are represented exclusively as facilitators and symbols on this male-centered journey of self-discovery. Further complicating the gender dynamics in Kinsella's poetry is the presence of the female Muse. This figure, which becomes of increasing importance to the poet, transforms from an aestheticized image of the Beloved, to a sinister snake-like apparition, and finally into a disembodied voice that is a projection of the poet and his alter-ego. Ultimately, Kinsella's Muse is an aesthetic construction, the site of inquiry into the difficulties inherent in the creative process, and a metaphor for the creative process itself. Through his innovative deployment of the trope of the Muse, Kinsella continues to advance the aesthetics of contemporary Irish poetry.
ContributorsLeavy, Adrienne (Author) / Castle, Gregory (Thesis advisor) / Hummer, Terry (Committee member) / Hogue, Cynthia (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2013
Description
This work aims to deepen the construction of identity of the Korean-argentinian through the "koreanity" and "koreanism". Therefore, we will analyze the short story collection La peonia y su sombra (2002) in search of evidence that discover the difficult definition of the "koreanism", or the practice of Korean culture, in which the language is included. The "koreanity" is a feature based on physical traits, while the "koreanism" is defined by the use of the language and the culture. While the "koreanity" is an exogenous factor, and it is well defined, the "koreanism" is defined through cultural impressions that are more difficult to distinguish. To do this we will use the Argentine native vision to find the "koreanism" and, if necessary, will exhibit different forms of subsistence of the "koreanism" in Argentina.
ContributorsLee, Jaekeun (Author) / Foster, David W (Thesis advisor) / De Jesús Hernández-G., Manuel (Committee member) / Tompkins, Cynthia (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2013
Description
"Modernist Vintages" considers the significance of wine in a selection of modernist texts that includes Oscar Wilde's Salomé (1891), Dorothy Richardson's Honeycomb (1917), James Joyce's Ulysses (1922), and Evelyn Waugh's Brideshead Revisited: The Sacred and Profane Memories of Captain Charles Ryder (1945). The representations of wine in these fictions respond to the creative and destructive depictions of wine that have imbued the narratives of myth, religion, and philosophy for thousands of years; simultaneously, these works recreate and reflect on numerous wine-related events and movements that shaped European discourse in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The modernists use wine's conventional associations to diverse and innovative ends: as the playwright August Strindberg writes, "New forms have not been found for the new content, so that the new wine has burst the old bottles." Wine in these works alternately, and often concurrently, evokes themes that were important to the modernists, including notions of indulgence and waste, pleasure and addiction, experimentation and ritual, tradition and nostalgia, regional distinction and global expansion, wanton intoxication and artistic clarity. This project also discusses various nineteenth- and twentieth-century contexts that informed these works and that continue to shape our reading of them, including the propagation of restaurant culture; the development of a gastronomic literary tradition; the condemnation of alcohol by temperance strategists; the demarcation of wine as a "luxury good"; the professionalization and slow democratization of wine drinking and buying; the rise of popular, philosophical, and professional interest in the psychological and physiological effects of intoxication; and the influence of war on wine markets and popular attitudes toward wine. "Modernist Vintages" aims to demonstrate that the inclusion of objects like wine in modernist fiction is purposeful and meaningful, and thus inspires new and fruitful discussion about the works, writers, and nature of literary modernism in Europe.
ContributorsWaugh, Laura (Author) / Lussier, Mark (Thesis advisor) / Bivona, Daniel (Committee member) / Bixby, Patrick (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2013
Description
This project examines C.L.R. James, V.S. Naipaul, and George Lamming's appropriation of the European Bildungsroman, a novel depicting the maturation of the hero prompted by his harmonious dialectical relationship with the social realm (Bildung). I contend that James, Naipaul, and Lamming use the Bildungsroman genre to critique colonialism's effects on its subjects, particularly its male subjects who attend colonial schools that present them with disconcerting curricula and gender ideologies that hinder their intellectual and social development. Disingenuously cloaked in paternalistic rhetoric promising the advancement of "uncivilized" peoples, colonialism, these novels show, actually impedes the development of its subjects. Central to these writers' critiques is the use of houses, space, and land. Although place functions differently in Minty Alley, A House for Mr. Biswas, and In the Castle of My Skin, the novels under consideration here, the corresponding relationship between a mature, autonomous self and a home of one's own is made evident in each. Tragically, the men in these novels are never able to find communities in which they cease to feel out of place, nor are they ever able to find secure domestic spaces. Because the discourse of home so closely parallels the discourse of Bildung, I contend that the protagonists' inability to find stable housing suggests the inaccessibility of Bildung in a colonized space. Further, I assert that this literal homelessness is symbolic of the educated male's cultural exile; he is unable to find a location where he can live in dialectical harmony with any community, which is the ideal aim of Bildung. Leaving the Caribbean proves to be the colonized male's only strategy for pursuing Bildung; thus, these novels suggest that while Bildung is impossible in the Caribbean, it is not impossible for the Caribbean subject.
ContributorsPate, Leah (Author) / Castle, Gregory (Thesis advisor) / Codell, Julie (Committee member) / Bivona, Dan (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2012
Description
This thesis examines poems and anecdotes about xiaohuan 小鬟 (little chignon) written by literati of the Song宋 (960－1279). The first chapter of this paper provides a brief history of household courtesans and the popularity of xiaohuan. The second chapter includes eleven poems and one anecdote on xiaohuan. All works are translated and followed by a critical analysis. Through a close reading of these works, I will examine the imagery of xiaohuan in the Song literary context, bring to light the major motif of the works, and reveal the reasons that contribute to literati's penchant for xiaohuan. The imagery of xiaohuan is based on their tender age. Poets use flowers to metaphorize xiaohuan's lithe, slim, short, and delicate figures. A major characteristic of the xiaohuan's youth is their inability to understand qing情 (affection) and this relative innocence and absence of desire becomes a major part of their representation. Consequently, their youth and virginity rather than their beauty are strongly stressed in the poems. This may be explained by poets' desire for longevity, pursued through the "Techniques of the Bedchamber," or fangzhong shu房中術, which suggests intercourse with pre-pubescent girls would bring men longevity or even transmutation.
ContributorsGe, Lihong (Author) / West, Stephen H. (Thesis advisor) / Cutter, Robert (Committee member) / Oh, Young Kyun (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2012
Description
Set in the former Yugoslavia, contemporary Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Midwest America, the collection of short stories follows the complicated trajectory of war-survivor to refugee and, then, immigrant. These stories---about religious prisoners who are not at all religious, about young, philosophizing boys tempting the bullets of snipers, about men retracing their fathers' steps over bridges that no longer exist---grapple with memory, imagination, and the nature of art, and explore the notion of writer as witness.
ContributorsHusić, Vedran (Author) / Pritchard, Melissa (Thesis advisor) / Ison, Tara (Committee member) / Turchi, Peter (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2013
Description
In contemporary Indian literature, the question over which sets of Indian identities are granted access to power is highly contested. Critics such as Kathleen Waller and Sara Schotland align power with the identity of the autonomous individual, whose rights and freedoms are supposedly protected by the state, while others like David Ludden and Sandria Freitag place power with those who become a part of group identities, either on the national or communal level. The work of contemporary Indian author Aravind Adiga attempts to address this question. While Adiga's first novel The White Tiger applies the themes and ideology of the worth of the individual from African American novelists Ralph Ellison, Richard Wright, and James Baldwin, Adiga's latest novel, Last Man in Tower, shifts towards a study of the consequences of colonialism, national identity, and the place of the individual within India in order to reveal a changing landscape of power and identity. Through a discussion of Adiga's collective writings, postcolonial theory, American literature, South Asian crime novels, contemporary Indian popular fiction, and some of the challenges facing Mumbai, I track Adiga's shifts and moments of growth between his two novels and evaluate Adiga's ultimate message about who holds power in Indian society: the individual or the community.
ContributorsGlady, Sarah (Author) / Horan, Elizabeth (Thesis advisor) / Mallot, Jack (Thesis advisor) / Clarke, Deborah (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2013
Description
Chris Miller's Souvenirs of Sleep is as serious as it is whimsical, if this is a possibility. The "Museum of the Zoo-real" may be an equally appropriate title as animals are often in performance. In this visual and spiritual investigation, childhood, dream, and the loss of a mother to suicide are the currents. Miller's work is informed by the cinema of Werner Herzog, Andrei Tarkovsky, Robert Bresson and beyond. Miller believes in the power of implication. The poems begin with intense focus, but are often in the business of expansion. Souvenirs of Sleep is a journey toward sense-making, a search for language that might allow it.
ContributorsMiller, Christopher (Author) / Dubie, Norman (Thesis advisor) / Hogue, Cynthia (Committee member) / Ball, Sally (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2013
Description
Several short term exogenic forcings affecting Earth's climate are but recently identified. Lunar nutation periodicity has implications for numerical meteorological prediction. Abrupt shifts in solar wind bulk velocity, particle density, and polarity exhibit correlation with terrestrial hemispheric vorticity changes, cyclonic strengthening and the intensification of baroclinic disturbances. Galactic Cosmic ray induced tropospheric ionization modifies cloud microphysics, and modulates the global electric circuit. This dissertation is constructed around three research questions: (1): What are the biweekly declination effects of lunar gravitation upon the troposphere? (2): How do United States severe weather reports correlate with heliospheric current sheet crossings? and (3): How does cloud cover spatially and temporally vary with galactic cosmic rays? Study 1 findings show spatial consistency concerning lunar declination extremes upon Rossby longwaves. Due to the influence of Rossby longwaves on synoptic scale circulation, our results could theoretically extend numerical meteorological forecasting. Study 2 results indicate a preference for violent tornadoes to occur prior to a HCS crossing. Violent tornadoes (EF3+) are 10% more probable to occur near, and 4% less probable immediately after a HCS crossing. The distribution of hail and damaging wind reports do not mirror this pattern. Polarity is critical for the effect. Study 3 results confirm anticorrelation between solar flux and low-level marine-layer cloud cover, but indicate substantial regional variability between cloud cover altitude and GCRs. Ultimately, this dissertation serves to extend short term meteorological forecasting, enhance climatological modeling and through analysis of severe violent weather and heliospheric events, protect property and save lives.
ContributorsKrahenbuhl, Dan (Author) / Cerveny, Randall S. (Thesis advisor) / Dorn, Ron (Committee member) / Shaffer, John (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2013
Description
In Everything I See Your Hand is a collection of short stories that takes place in the "Little Armenia" neighborhood of East Hollywood, California--an ethnic enclave made up of immigrants from the former Soviet state who came to Los Angeles following the collapse of the USSR in the early '90s. These fictions are rooted in my own personal experience and are about dispossession, domesticity, and the tangled ties between generations, focusing particularly around the tensions that arose from assimilation and disillusionment, from changing attitudes towards sex and homosexuality, violence and masculinity. Many of the stories grapple with the idea of self-exile, or ruminate on the difference between leaving the motherland, and leaving the mother, or other familial bodies, in order to pursue grander desires: a better life in America, superior education in distant universities, love in marriages with foreigners, etc. The body, therefore, becomes a central motif in the collection, principally the hands and forehead, which are traditionally areas in which the destinies are written for the Armenian people. The Armenian-American protagonists of In Everything I See Your Hand struggle with the belief that their lives are already written, their futures already decided, futures that they can only escape through death or departure--if they can escape them at all.
ContributorsKuzmich, Naira (Author) / McNally, Thomas (Thesis advisor) / Ison, Tara (Committee member) / Pritchard, Melissa (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2013