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GENDER-BENDING GENRES: QUEERNESS, FEMALE MASCULINITY, AND WARRIORSHIP IN C.L. MOORE’S JIREL OF JOIRY
Title
GENDER-BENDING GENRES: QUEERNESS, FEMALE MASCULINITY, AND WARRIORSHIP IN C.L. MOORE’S JIREL OF JOIRY.
Creator
Toland, Jacqueline, MacDonald, Ian P., Florida Atlantic University, Department of English, Dorothy F. Schmidt College of Arts and Letters
Abstract/Description
The aim of this thesis is to examine the trailblazing work of C.L. Moore’s Jirel of Joiry in light of themes of queerness, gender, and female masculinity, which has seldom been analyzed. In this thesis, I will juxtapose Moore’s work with other contemporaries like Robert E. Howard’s Conan the Barbarian and J.R.R. Tolkien’s Éowyn to highlight Moore’s trailblazing gendered portrayal. This thesis utilizes Judith Butler’s Undoing Gender and Jack Halberstam’s Female Masculinity as lenses to codify...
Show moreThe aim of this thesis is to examine the trailblazing work of C.L. Moore’s Jirel of Joiry in light of themes of queerness, gender, and female masculinity, which has seldom been analyzed. In this thesis, I will juxtapose Moore’s work with other contemporaries like Robert E. Howard’s Conan the Barbarian and J.R.R. Tolkien’s Éowyn to highlight Moore’s trailblazing gendered portrayal. This thesis utilizes Judith Butler’s Undoing Gender and Jack Halberstam’s Female Masculinity as lenses to codify the uniquely gendered portrayal that Moore has left for us to interpret. Furthermore, through examining Jacques Lacan’s interpretation of phallocentricity, this thesis will argue that the art of being a warrior (or warriorship) should be a non-binary conception.
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Date Issued
2020
PURL
http://purl.flvc.org/fau/fd/FA00013575
Subject Headings
Moore, C L, Gender & genre in literature, Fiction--Criticism and interpretation
Format
Document (PDF)
There's A New Sheriff in Town: Caribbean Rewriting of the American Western in Perry Henzell and Michael Thelwell's The Harder They Come and Paule Marshall's Praisesong for the Widow
Title
There's A New Sheriff in Town: Caribbean Rewriting of the American Western in Perry Henzell and Michael Thelwell's The Harder They Come and Paule Marshall's Praisesong for the Widow.
Creator
Wilson, Paula J., Machado, Elena, Florida Atlantic University, Dorothy F. Schmidt College of Arts and Letters, Department of English
Abstract/Description
The purpose of this investigation is to analyze the ways in which the American Western genre has been reworked in an Anglophone Caribbean context. This paper focuses on the role of the cowboy figure as it pertains to both a postcolonial Jamaican context a more globalized, diasporic Anglophone Caribbean setting. The Western genre, while not typically associated with the Caribbean, has tropes that certainly occur in both film and literature. There is not much scholarship that details the...
Show moreThe purpose of this investigation is to analyze the ways in which the American Western genre has been reworked in an Anglophone Caribbean context. This paper focuses on the role of the cowboy figure as it pertains to both a postcolonial Jamaican context a more globalized, diasporic Anglophone Caribbean setting. The Western genre, while not typically associated with the Caribbean, has tropes that certainly occur in both film and literature. There is not much scholarship that details the importance of this reimagination as a positive association in the region, and I have chosen both the film and novel The Harder They Come by Perry Henzell and Michael Thelwell, respectively, and Praisesong for the Widow by Paule Marshall to trace these ideas. Together, these works provide a multifaceted understanding of how the American Western helps to interpret the Anglophone Caribbean as a participant in an increasingly globalized world.
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Date Issued
2015
PURL
http://purl.flvc.org/fau/fd/FA00004557, http://purl.flvc.org/fau/fd/FA00004557
Subject Headings
Caribbean Area -- Fiction -- Criticism and interpretation, Caribbean Area -- In literature, Henzell, Perry -- Harder they come -- Criticism and interpretation, Jamaica -- Fiction -- Criticism and interpretation, Marshall, Paule -- Praisesong for the widow -- Criticism and interpretation, Thelwell, Michael -- Harder they come -- Criticism and interpretation, Western films -- United States -- History and criticism
Format
Document (PDF)
SOCIAL GHOSTS OF THE DOMESTIC SPHERE: THE HAUNTING PRESENCE OF THE MONSTROUS MOTHER IN CONTEMPORARY FICTION
Title
SOCIAL GHOSTS OF THE DOMESTIC SPHERE: THE HAUNTING PRESENCE OF THE MONSTROUS MOTHER IN CONTEMPORARY FICTION.
Creator
Dvorak, Alicia, Miller, Timothy, Florida Atlantic University, Department of English, Dorothy F. Schmidt College of Arts and Letters
Abstract/Description
This thesis argues that the numerous widespread fears about deviant domestic behavior that rose to prominence in Western nations during the post-World War II era can still be observed in contemporary fictional representations of what I term the “monstrous domestic”: when mothers and the domestic spaces that they occupy are depicted as “bad,” “evil,” or otherwise threatening. Using psychoanalytic, feminist, and monster theory, as well as sociocultural context, I examine four works that...
Show moreThis thesis argues that the numerous widespread fears about deviant domestic behavior that rose to prominence in Western nations during the post-World War II era can still be observed in contemporary fictional representations of what I term the “monstrous domestic”: when mothers and the domestic spaces that they occupy are depicted as “bad,” “evil,” or otherwise threatening. Using psychoanalytic, feminist, and monster theory, as well as sociocultural context, I examine four works that prominently display and condemn the monstrous domestic: Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House (1959), Neil Gaiman’s Coraline (2002), Jennifer Kent’s The Babadook (2014), and Gillian Flynn’s Sharp Objects (2007). Ultimately, I contend that the continued presence of wicked mothers who utilize their domestic power to control and harm their children within fiction indicates that, despite social progress, an unconscious cultural uneasiness about (un)acceptable maternity and domesticity still remains.
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Date Issued
2022
PURL
http://purl.flvc.org/fau/fd/FA00013892
Subject Headings
Jackson, Shirley, 1916-1965. Haunting of Hill House, Gaiman, Neil. Coraline, Kent, Jennifer, 1951-, Flynn, Gillian, 1971-, Fiction--Criticism and interpretation
Format
Document (PDF)
Foundations of a Scientific Cognitive Theory for Literary Criticism
Title
Foundations of a Scientific Cognitive Theory for Literary Criticism.
Creator
Bronsted, John C., Augustyn, Prisca, Florida Atlantic University, Dorothy F. Schmidt College of Arts and Letters, Department of Languages, Lingustics and Comparative Literature
Abstract/Description
Based on Noam Chomsky’s argument that the faculty of language is primarily a tool of thought whose purpose is to interpret the world, this dissertation argues that reading literature provides a cognitive experience like John Gardner’s “Fictive Dream” that mimics our interpretive experience of the world. Literary experience exploits language as an epistemological faculty that makes aspects of the external world intelligible. Yet the faculty of language is also capable of evoking entirely...
Show moreBased on Noam Chomsky’s argument that the faculty of language is primarily a tool of thought whose purpose is to interpret the world, this dissertation argues that reading literature provides a cognitive experience like John Gardner’s “Fictive Dream” that mimics our interpretive experience of the world. Literary experience exploits language as an epistemological faculty that makes aspects of the external world intelligible. Yet the faculty of language is also capable of evoking entirely mental worlds that do not reflect the mindexternal world. Because the literary experience is entirely mindinternal, even the cultural knowledge we bring into play for its understanding still relies on innate features of language. Thus, during the act of reading, we hold this cultural knowledge in abeyance, allowing the text to structure how we bring it to bear on the experience as a whole. A scientific approach to literature can help uncover principles to further elucidate the literaryepistemological experience. Whereas much literary criticism assumes that a critic’s purpose is to mine a text for its deeper meaning, this dissertation argues for a Cognitive Formalist approach in which criticism serves not simply to explain the experience evoked by any particular text according to linguisticepistemological principles, but also to evaluate the moral implications of that specific textual experience. As a means of demonstrating potential implications of a scientific cognitive approach to literary criticism based on linguisticepistemological understanding, the current study offers sample passages from J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings. These passages allow us to offer first approximations of some explanatory principles of the literaryepistemological experience, such as the importance of fictive time and fictional event sequences, which in turn gives us greater insight into how, for example, verb tense and aspect contribute to the evocation of the action of fiction in the reader’s mind. Ultimately, the fictive vantage point constructed by the text allows the reader access to a complex moral framework in which fictive characters are understood to make choices that will in turn set the stage for the reader’s own ethical reception of the text and the experience it offers.
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Date Issued
2017
PURL
http://purl.flvc.org/fau/fd/FA00004845, http://purl.flvc.org/fau/fd/FA00004845
Subject Headings
Tolkien, J. R. R.--(John Ronald Reuel)--1892-1973.--Lord of the rings--Criticism and interpretation., Gardner, John--1933-1982.--On moral fiction--Criticism and interpretation., Criticism., Discourse analysis, Literary., Philosophy of mind in literature., Language and languages--Style--Psychological aspects., Literature--History and criticism--Theory, etc.
Format
Document (PDF)