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Kiran Nagarkar, who won the Sahitya Akedemi Award in India for his English language writing, is a man who attracts controversy. Despite the consistent strength of his literary works, his English novels have become a lightning rod - not because they are written in English, but because Nagarkar was a well-respected Marathi writer before he began writing in English. Although there are other writers who have become embroiled in the debate over the politics of discourse, the response to Nagarkar's move from Marathi and his subsequent reactions perfectly illustrate the repercussions that accompany such dialectical decisions. Nagarkar has been accused of myriad crimes against his heritage, from abandoning a dedicated readership to targeting more profitable Western markets. Careful analysis of his writing, however, reveals that his novels are clearly written for a diverse Indian audience and offer few points of accessibility for Western readers. Beyond his English language usage, which is actually intended to provide readability to the most possible Indian nationals, Nagarkar also courts a variegated Indian audience by developing upon traditional Indian literary conceits and allusions. By composing works for a broad Indian audience, which reference cultural elements from an array of Indian ethnic groups, Nagarkar's writing seems to push toward the development of the seemingly impossible: a novel that might unify India, and present such a cohesive cultural face to the world at large.
ContributorsRochester, Rachel (Author) / Bivona, Daniel (Thesis advisor) / Mallot, J. Edward (Thesis advisor) / Horan, Elizabeth (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2011
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
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 dissertation considers the literary and cultural response of the labor-class poets to the emerging forces of Foucauldian biopolitics in early modern Britain to shed new light on the cultural impacts of biopower upon the rural community in early modern Britain. The analysis demonstrates how the labor class literary response is characterized by an exterior experience with the nonhuman in an alternative mode to the Wordsworthian experience of the interior. I then use labor-class poets to counter Wordsworthian notions of the immaterial State population through a critical expose of state-Subject, subject-object, and human nonhuman exterior relations as they are depicted in the labor-class poetry of late eighteenth and early nineteenth century Britain. Employing an object-ontological reading of community, I explore how the effects of biopower were inscribed in the literary artifacts of the labor-class. As a final consideration, I explore the response to postcolonial biopolitics in J.M. Coetzee's 1999 novel, Disgrace. The research takes a focused historical view, surveying a range of literary, political, and historical texts between 1760-1840 to offer new readings of Robert Bloomfield, Robert Burns, John Clare, William Cobbett, Ebenezer Elliott, Olivier Goldsmith, James Hogg, and William Wordsworth. In complement, the research offers a new reading of postcolonial biopolitics in the contemporary work of J.M Coetzee.
ContributorsBisnoff, Robert W (Author) / Lussier, Mark S. (Thesis advisor) / Bixby, Patrick (Committee member) / Broglio, Ron (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 thesis examines the role of the media and popular culture in defining the shape and scope of what we think of today as "science." As a source of cognitive authority the scientific establishment is virtually beyond dispute. The intellectual clout of science seemingly elevates it to a position outside the influence of the general population. Yet in reality the emergence and evolution of the public sphere, including popular culture, has had a profound impact on the definition and application of science. What science is and how it relates to the life of the ordinary person are hardly static concepts; the public perception of science has been molding its boundaries since at least the 18th century. During the Enlightenment "natural philosophy" was broadly accessible and integrated nicely with other forms of knowledge. As the years passed into the 19th century, however, science became increasingly professionalized and distinct, until the "Two Cultures" had fully developed. The established scientific institution distanced itself from the nonscientific community, leaving the task of communicating scientific knowledge to various popularizers, who typically operated through the media and often used the mantle of science to further their own social or political agendas. Such isolation from orthodox science forced the public to create an alternate form of science for popular consumption, a form consisting mainly of decontextualized facts, often used in contrast to other forms of thought (i.e. religion, art, or pseudoscience). However, with the recent advent of "Web 2.0" and the increasing prominence of convergence culture, the role of the public sphere is undergoing a dramatic revolution. Concepts such as "collective intelligence" are changing consumers of information into simultaneous producers, establishing vast peer networks of collaboration and enabling the public to bypass traditional sources of authority. This new hypermobility of information and empowerment of the public sphere are just now beginning to break down science's monolithic status. In many ways, it seems, we are entering a new Enlightenment.
ContributorsSmith, Robert Scott (Author) / Lussier, Mark (Thesis advisor) / Broglio, Ronald (Committee member) / Bivona, Daniel (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2012
Description
"The Hunger Games: What a Dystopic World Reveals about Modern Society" is an interdisciplinary thesis that examines the impossibility of revolutionary stories or concepts in popular culture by specifically analyzing the Hunger Games project. First, an analysis of what young adult fiction is and how it is written is provided. The formulaic way in which modern adolescent literature is written provides the basic structure for Suzanne Collins' Hunger Games trilogy. The second chapter examines the main character of the Hunger Games series, Katniss Everdeen. The way in which this young female heroine relinquishes her independence and courage due to being consistently undermined by the men and political leaders in her life is traced by following the development of the story throughout the three novels. The third chapter of the thesis delves into how the entire Hunger Games project of novels and films fits into current popular culture. An analysis of the mass production of the novels, and then turning the books into films, merchandise, and further commercialization of the story is discussed in detail throughout the chapter. Finally, the thesis discusses the responsibility authors of young adult literature should assume when addressing a young impressionable audience and how Collins took advantage of the position she had in telling the story of Katniss Everdeen.
ContributorsHeath, Elisabeth Rose (Author) / Gruber, Diane (Thesis director) / Bixby, Patrick (Committee member) / Roy, Sohinee (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / School of Social and Behavioral Sciences (Contributor) / School of Humanities, Arts, and Cultural Studies (Contributor)
Created2015-05
Description
This paper explores how marginalist economics defines and inevitably constrains Victorian sensation fiction's content and composition. I argue that economic intuition implies that sensationalist heroes and antagonists, writers and readers all pursued a fundamental, "rational" aim: the attainment of pleasure. So although "sensationalism" took on connotations of moral impropriety in the Victorian age, sensation fiction primarily involves experiences of pain on the page that excite the reader's pleasure. As such, sensationalism as a whole can be seen as a conformist product, one which mirrors the effects of all commodities on the market, rather than as a rebellious one. Indeed, contrary to modern and contemporary critics' assumptions, sensation fiction may not be as scandalous as it seems.
ContributorsFischer, Brett Andrew (Author) / Bivona, Daniel (Thesis director) / Looser, Devoney (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / School of Mathematical and Statistical Sciences (Contributor) / Economics Program in CLAS (Contributor) / School of Politics and Global Studies (Contributor) / Department of English (Contributor)
Created2014-12
Description
I write a modern revamp of the 1960 romantic comedy-drama film The Apartment, intentionally filling it with topical issues and touching upon (post)modern concepts such as intertextuality and parody. Additionally, I contextualize my creative work with an academic supplement that gives weight to my various stylistic and content choices, and bring them into conversation with those utilized by the original 1960 film.
ContributorsDenler, Cameron Nicholas (Author) / Bixby, Patrick (Thesis director) / Amparano Garcia, Julie (Committee member) / School of Mathematical and Natural Sciences (Contributor) / School of Humanities, Arts, and Cultural Studies (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2021-05
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