Matching Items (404)
Description
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
"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 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
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
The following study is an attempt to analyze the idea of the abject through the grotesque representation of the female body in contemporary visual art. The focus of the paper will remain within the scheme of the modern Western ideology of physical female beauty, social affirmations, and restraints. My hypothesis is that the grotesque imagery of the female body in modern art redefines beauty and liberates the female subject by turning the gaze upon itself. The proposition of this study emerges from Julia Kristeva’s theory of the abject as it applies to the viewer and the viewed. There is a distinct relationship between grotesque ideas and the female body as it is viewed in the late 20th and 21st centuries. Visual imagery has become increasingly bold in its presentation for good or for bad. I chose the selected artists because they present dark, often socially ‘ugly’ depictions of the female body in honest, straightforward ways. I question why the grotesque is not popularly recognized on the ‘beauty scale’, yet our society craves this kind of imagery. The purpose of this study is to identify and explain abjection within depictions of the grotesque. This exploration of the female figure and its portrayal through the eyes of modern sculptors, painters, and designers aims to highlight that 20th and 21st century aesthetics have moved towards themes of grotesqueness in beauty, amidst cultural objectification and materialization. These themes perhaps present Western culture’s underlying physical insecurities and self-loathing.
ContributorsWillson, Ariane Lolita (Author) / Dove-Viebahn, Aviva (Thesis director) / Miller, April (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / Economics Program in CLAS (Contributor) / Department of English (Contributor)
Created2015-05
Description
The video-on-demand marketplace in film has usually been reserved for independent distributors like Magnolia Pictures and IFC Films, who cannot secure widespread theatrical exhibition like the major studios do (which include Sony, 20th Century Fox, Warner Bros., and Disney, amongst other), therefore opting for the in-home launch of films through on-demand services. These include cable providers, iTunes, Google Play, and even Netflix and Amazon Instant Video. A drastic change to this model came with the launch of The Interview exclusively on VOD platforms and in independent cinemas, challenging the established norm in the industry of major studios releasing their films with major exhibitors like AMC and Regal. Sony's controversial film provided a breakthrough in the VOD marketplace as it became the highest-grossing film ever released on the platform. There remains mystery and secrecy in the VOD realm, though, as independent distributors fail to provide accountable data on their releases and rarely measure financial successes in public. Whereas theatrical box office are available every weekend, VOD numbers do not have to be disclosed at any time, further driving ambiguity behind just how successful the technology must be when the films are often low-key, character-driven efforts rather than the blockbusters that pervade the theatrical landscape around the world. This paper explores the ramifications of video-on-demand on the theatrical marketplace, and attempts to counter the recent claim of The Interview being the game-changing success for VOD.
ContributorsForthun, Eric Matthew (Author) / Sandler, Kevin (Thesis director) / Green, Michael (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / School of Historical, Philosophical and Religious Studies (Contributor) / Department of English (Contributor)
Created2015-05
Description
This thesis examines contemporary cinematic adaptations of the Ovidian Pygmalion story. The films Blade Runner (1981), Lars and the Real Girl (2007), Ruby Sparks (2012), and Her (2013) are analyzed. This thesis seeks to understand why this particular myth is so resonant in today's popular culture and what this relevance reveals about modern society. The roles of female subjugation, sexualization, and relationship with technology will be major areas of concern. Research includes film criticism, Ovidian scholarship, and new advances in computer technology.
ContributorsStory, Sara Katherine (Author) / Corse, Taylor (Thesis director) / Ellis, Lawrence (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / Department of English (Contributor)
Created2015-05
Description
The relationship between mental illness (or "madness," as Socrates labeled psychosis, as well as a wide range of states of thought and emotion [Jamison, 1993]) and creativity has been noted since before the times of Socrates. The questions that this noted relationship pose are significant. Famous authors, poets, artists, and musicians who suffered from various forms of mental illness are littered throughout history. Edgar Allen Poe himself noted, "Men have called me mad but the question is not yet settled, whether madness is or is not the loftiest intelligence \u2014 whether much that is glorious \u2014 whether all that is profound \u2014 does not spring from disease of thought \u2014 from moods of mind exalted at the expense of the general intellect." Only in recent years have researchers begun to classify these disorders of past artists using modern diagnostic measures. While the concept of a relationship between creativity and mental illness is fascinating in and of itself, understanding the implications of a possible correlation is essential to the care and treatment that individuals with the diseases are given. If, indeed, creativity is linked with affective disorders, what does this mean for the treatment of these disorders? By eliminating the symptoms of mood disorders, are we also inadvertently eliminating creativity? It is important to acknowledge the possibility that mental illnesses like bipolar disorder include benefits to those afflicted. How can we treat the negative symptoms of mood disorders while enhancing the positive symptoms? In order to conclude that there is a link between creativity and mood disorders, it is first necessary to reexamine and reestablish the processes by which mood disorders are diagnosed. Although currently diagnosed on a categorical scale \u2014 meaning the patient is diagnosed under the black-and-white category of manic or depressive at a given point in time \u2014 this paper will argue that mood disorders can be better diagnosed and treated on a continuum of mood states. Furthermore, by viewing mood disorders on such a continuum, writers like Anne Sexton and Sylvia Plath, whose diagnoses are debated by historians and professionals, can be established as having a diagnosable affective disorder, since both experienced symptoms of depression and mania, if not in the precise timing and manner proscribed by the Diagnostic Manual. Finally, by determining these writers' diagnoses, a relationship can be explored between their creative states and their mood states.
ContributorsKugler, Danica Eileen (Author) / Montesano, Mark (Thesis director) / Holbo, Christine (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / College of Letters and Sciences (Contributor) / Department of Psychology (Contributor) / Department of English (Contributor)
Created2015-05
Description
I travelled and worked in international fisheries policy for 7 months in preparation for this thesis. During this time I completed one internship in Rome, Italy with the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (UNFAO) and another internship on the island of Pohnpei with the Secretariat of the Western and Central Pacific Fisheries Commission (WCPFC). From these experiences, I selected the subject of this thesis. My thesis analyzes the management system for South Pacific albacore tuna, the source stock for brands like "Chicken of the Sea" and "Starkist". South Pacific albacore tuna pass through international waters and the waters of several Pacific Island countries and territories, necessitating States to cooperate and coordinate to sustain the future viability of the stock. A case study for transboundary natural resource management, I discuss the institutional complexity that arises from managing such a resource. I use common-pool resource (CPR) theory to describe this complexity, which frames natural resource management as a collective-action problem among resource users. I first conceptualize the management system as having multiple institutional scales and multiple levels of organization. Then, employing Ostrom's 8 design principles for successful CPR management, I conduct a multi-institution analysis of the international, regional, and subregional institutions that participate in the management system. Finally, I also conduct a cross-institution analysis by examining the interactions between these institutions. I find that significant space for theoretical development exists in CPR theory for understanding complex management systems for transboundary natural resources. Furthermore, I find that interactions between institutions create linkages that could be retooled to improve the performance of the South Pacific albacore tuna management system.
ContributorsAbolhassani, Angela Maryam (Author) / Abbott, Kenneth (Thesis director) / Schoon, Michael (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / School of Politics and Global Studies (Contributor) / School of Life Sciences (Contributor) / Department of English (Contributor)
Created2015-05