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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
This project examines the intersections between sexual/cultural cross-dressing and un/documented immigration from the point of view of folklore and immigration studies using Sui Sin Far's short story collection Mrs. Spring Fragrance and Karen Tei Yamashita's novel Tropic of Orange. Using the lenses of folklore theory and cross-dressing highlights aspects of immigration (and its intersection with gender and race) that are otherwise missed; it is necessary to examine the evolving ways in which fictionalized cross-dressers re-craft and occupy the spaces from which they are barred in order to address and redress questions of immigration today. Incorporating anthropology, history, folkloristics, and gender studies, this project shows that historical forms of cross-dressing and immigration lead to the development of unstable identities and pressures to "re-dress" and return to one's original space. More recent studies about gender, however, reveal a historical change in how cross-dressers negotiate their identities and the space(s) they inhabit. Therefore, it is crucial to inspect cross-dressing and immigration as both historical and contemporary phenomena. While Mrs. Spring Fragrance (published in 1912) represents more conventional ideas of cross-dressing and immigration, Tropic of Orange (published in 1997) offers alternative ways to navigate borders, immigration, and identity by using these concepts more playfully and self-consciously. Although sexual/cultural cross-dressing and un/documented immigration are not the same in every case, there are enough similarities between the two to warrant investigating whether some of the solutions reached by modern cross-dressers and gender-ambiguous people might not also help un/documented immigrants to re-negotiate their status, identities, and spaces in the midst of an unstable and at times hostile environment. In fact, an examination of such intersections can address and redress immigration by changing the perceptions of how, and the contexts in which, people view immigration and borders. Thus, this project contends that it is the combination of folkloristics, gender and immigration studies, Mrs. Spring Fragrance, and Tropic of Orange together that precipitates such a reading.
ContributorsZheng, Ding Ding (Author) / Sadowski-Smith, Claudia (Thesis advisor) / Adamson, Joni (Thesis advisor) / Horan, Elizabeth (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2013
Description
This paper contains an examination of the impact of the Vampire Hysteria in Europe during the 1700’s on Lord Byron's “The Giaour.” Byron traveled to the continent in 1809 and wrote the poems that came to be known as his Oriental Romances after overhearing what would become “The Giaour ” in “ one of the many coffee-houses that abound in the Levant.” The main character, the Giaour, has characteristics typical of the Greek vampire, called vrykolakas. The vamping of characters, the cyclic imagery, and the juxtaposition of life and death as it is expressed within the poem are analyzed in comparison to vampiric folklore, especially that of Greece.
ContributorsSmith, Rosemary Kristine (Author) / Lussier, Mark S. (Thesis advisor) / Bivona, Daniel (Committee member) / Broglio, Ronald (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2010
Description
In the face of what many scientists and cultural theorists are calling the Anthropocene, a new era characterized by catastrophic human impact on the planet’s geologic, atmospheric, and ecological makeup, Latin American writers, artists, and filmmakers today from various disciplinary and geographical positionalities are engaging in debates about how to respond ethically to this global crisis. From an interdisciplinary perspective that incorporates cutting-edge theories in multispecies ethnography, material ecocriticism, and queer ecology, this study examines multispecies relationships unfolding in three telescoping dimensions—corporealities, companions, and communities—in contemporary Latin American cultural production while uncovering indigenous and other-than-dominant epistemologies about human-nonhuman entanglements. I argue that contemporary cultural expression uncovers long, overlapping histories of social and environmental exploitation and resistance while casting the moment of encounter between individuals of different species as hopeful figurations of human-nonhuman flourishing beyond the Anthropocene. Instead of remaining hopelessly mired in the dire geographies of planetary decline, the works of Uruguayan writer Teresa Porzecanski, Mexican author Daniela Tarazona, Mexican textile sculptor Alejandra Zermeño, Argentine filmmaker Lucía Puenzo, Colombian installation artist María Fernanda Cardoso, Colombian poet Juan Carlos Galeano, Colombian graphic artist Solmi Angarita, and Brazilian poet Astrid Cabral dramatize a multitude of multispecies encounters to imagine the possibility of a better world—one that is already as close as our skin and as present as the nonhuman “others” that constitute our existence. These works imagine the human itself as a product of multispecies interactions through evolutionary time, multispecies companionships as formed around queer kinships, and biocultural communities as emerging through communicative, ethical encounters.
ContributorsColeman, Vera Ruth (Author) / Tompkins, Cynthia (Thesis advisor) / Foster, David (Committee member) / Urioste-Azcorra, Carmen (Committee member) / Adamson, Joni (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2017