13 research outputs found
‘Synge we now alle and sum’: three Fifteenth-Century collections of communal song: a study of British Library, Sloane MS 2593; Bodleian Library, MS Eng. poet. e.1; and St John’s College, Cambridge, MS S.54
Get PDFThe manuscripts British Library, Sloane MS 2593, Bodleian Library, MS Eng. poet. e.1, and St John’s College, Cambridge, MS S.54 are compact collections of song lyrics written during the fifteenth century, largely without notation. My thesis seeks to develop responsive ways of reading these anthologies and uses the manuscripts to illumine the creative processes that produced and circulated their songs. I integrate attention to song lyrics within the material books and exploration of wider textual networks. As many of the anthologies’ texts are in
carol form, a combination of refrain parts and stanzas, the books provide an opportunity to examine the form’s identity and significance within fifteenth-century English songwriting.
The thesis is in three parts and the first introduces critical approaches to the manuscripts and the carol, followed by an examination of the books and their contexts, especially manuscripts with which the anthologies have textual connections. The central section investigates the songs’ production and circulation by examining textual networks, how the anthologies were written, how the songs may have been performed, and the role of memory in shaping the songs and anthologies. The final part explores women’s role in the songs, the range of forms used, and the centrality of the many imagined voices and performances within the texts.
This is the first extended study focused upon these three sources, which as anthologies offer insight into ways songs were shared and organised. I investigate the role of short collections and booklets in the construction of longer
anthologies, and the possibility of an especially productive song culture within fifteenth-century East Anglia. Rather than repeating assertions familiar from
earlier studies of carols that the anthologies’ songs are either popular or clerical productions, I suggest how the anthologies engage with communal performance cultures and participate in varied song traditions, from liturgy to lullaby
Changing perceptions and meaning of Cyberfeminism
Get PDFCommunication is the basis for the existence of social life. As per history of humans’ evolution the patterns of communication, modes of communication, sources of communications, ways to disseminate the information were a major part and reason of Human growth. Communication by signs, by sounds, by signals, by words, face to face communication, communication in groups, communication in masses were the chapters in history. With the advent of written words, printing press and books a revolution of thought was observed in the world. With the newspaper and television, radio, new modes of societal life, development emerge. The industrial development demanded the public interaction beyond personal circle catering the needs of new emerging societal structures. The birth of new inventions brought new methods of communication facilities that were able to attend and affect and involve large number of people that too in different locations. World Wide Web was a revolution still surprising the world with its strength and hidden aspect
The limits of feminism
Get PDFWhat is it about feminism that invites so many different opinions on what 'counts' and what doesn't? People from vastly different cultural situations variously categorise feminist practices as extreme, radical, reactionary, unbalanced, co-opted, revolutionary, elite, exclusive, progressive, passe, and hysterical. The desire of both feminists and anti-feminists to control feminism emerges as the limiting of what feminism is, whom it is for, and where it is going. The urge to limit feminism seems, in some cases, to overtake the urge to spread the word and celebrate feminism's successes. And it is not just anti-feminists who attempt to limit feminism - even feminists spend an inordinate amount of time defining certain practices out of the feminist spectrum. In this thesis, I document and analyse the way we limit feminism - its participants, meaning, practices, language, history, and future. I explore the reasons why we need to contain feminism in this way, looking in particular at those who have an investment in keeping feminism comfortably small. I invite back into the realm of feminism a wide range of activities and theories we generally invalidate as feminism, including the words of several 'unofficial' feminists I interviewed for this project. In essence, this project goes towards the rethinking of the term 'feminism' by examining the widely differing and often contradictory definitions of 'what counts.
Eyewitness accounts of 'the Indies' in the Later Medieval West: reading, reception, and re-use (c. 1300-1500)
Get PDFDespite increased mercantile and missionary contact between the Latin West and India and China between the thirteenth and fifteenth centuries, scholars have often
noted that Western Europe's knowledge of India, as judged by geographical texts from the period, changed surprisingly little during this time. This thesis employs
some of the methodologies of reception studies in order to investigate the role played by first-hand travel accounts in the construction and change of concepts of the Indies
during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. It investigates in particular the reception in Italy, France and England of the information about the area known as
India or the 'three Indies' presented in the texts produced by two Italian travellers to the East: the Divisament dou monde of the Venetian merchant Marco Polo (c. 1298),
and the Relatio of the Franciscan missionary Odorico da Pordenone (1330).
The thesis falls into three distinct parts. In the first section, I contextualise the project with a broad survey of the Latin European ideas of India in the late thirteenth
and early fourteenth centuries and with an outline of the travellers' journeys and their contexts. The second part of the thesis provides a broad overview of the
circumstances of diffusion of the two travel accounts in England, France and Italy over the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, before conducting a detailed, manuscriptbased
investigation of the ways in which the two accounts of India were approached by their early readers. This investigation focuses principally upon the presentation
and possible modes of reception of the texts' geographical and ethnographic details and relies heavily on the evidence of presentation, paratext and the traces of reading
present in the physical texts of the accounts.
The third and final part of the thesis considers the evidence of the reception of elements from first-hand travel accounts in other textual and cartographic
productions. Proceeding on the basis of case studies, it demonstrates that first-hand accounts of 'the Indies' were used by the authors and compilers of cosmo graphical
texts in this period in a variety of ways. It suggests, however, that the manner and context of the deployment of elements from such accounts often tended to assimilate
these with, rather than distinguish them from, the writings of accepted authorities. This section also contrasts the way that details from travel accounts were re-used in
texts with the way the same information was handled in the composition of maps. Finally, by analysis of the ways eyewitness accounts of the Indies were re-used in
certain ambiguous and comic texts produced in this period, the thesis sheds light on an underexplored aspect of the reception both of eyewitness information and of the
genres in which it appeared. The appendices contain tables presenting information relative to the manuscripts discussed that support the arguments presented in section
two
Chronographies: Performance, Death and the Writing of Time
No full textPhDThis thesis explores the interconnecting themes of time, death and the subjective in relation
to performance, the performative and the critical act of writing. It is structured as a
heterogenous series of case studies of a range of performed and petformative events, each
offering a focus for an investigation of how the key terms of time and death operate in and
around that event, and of how those terms lead to other areas of investigation. It deploys
analytical and conceptual frameworks from, amongst others, the disciplines of
psychoanalysis, queer theory, cultural studies, the visual arts, literary theory and
performance studies to develop a series of interdisciplinary readings of subjects including
the perfonnative construction of subjectivity, the temporality of photography, the temporal
and spatial aspects of domestic architecture in relation to performance and installation, and
the epistolary exchange as performance event.
The thesis also addresses the problematics of how to engage in the process of critical
writing in response to the ephemerality of performance, and theorises "performative
writing" in relation to the broader themes of time and death. A range of textual forms are
deployed in the text, including fictional autobiography, love letters, instructions for
scientific experiments, prose poems and fragmented essays in multiple voices. By
repeatedly reinventing the form through which the writing is presented, the thesis also
implicitly explores the limits of textuality in the context of the creation and presentation of
the doctoral thesis itself
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Writing US identities in the wars without frontlines: literary perspectives on the Persian Gulf and Iraq wars
No full textFor many cultural commentators, the Persian Gulf War (1990-1991) signalled a new era in which technological advances transformed warfare into what Jean Baudrillard refers to as a virtual experience epitomised by “surgical strikes” and “smart-bombs”. In contrast, the Iraq War (2003-2009) was hailed by many as a return to a more conventional form of combat in which soldiers fought their enemy in face-to-face interactions. This thesis argues that such an analysis of the conflicts overlooks the complexity of the war experience for many Gulf and Iraq War combatants. It therefore seeks to construct a reading of the literary responses to these conflicts, including novels, memoirs, and poetry, as well as alternative forms of narrative, which acknowledges the complexity of each war. Whilst it is important to recognise the ways in which Gulf War combatants experienced virtual war and Iraq War soldiers experienced guerrilla warfare, it is equally important to acknowledge the ways in which these conflicts resisted popular perceptions of them, and how this incongruence affected the combatants
Gender, Politics, Subjectivity: Reading Caryl Churchill.
Get PDFThis doctoral dissertation approaches three plays written by British playwright Caryl Churchill (1938- ): Cloud Nine (1979), Top Girls (1982), and Blue Heart (1997). Her plays deal mainly with systems of oppression and their effects on the individual or on groups of people. These systems of oppression, reminiscent of the Foucauldian power structures, exert their restrictive power over the dispossessed -the working class, women, or gays and lesbians. The main objective of this dissertation is to demonostrate how a gender and politics-oriented approach to theatre can help to subvert some of the patriarchal and conservative assumptions implicit in traditional theatre. In this respect, the three plays analysed share the presence of recurrent themes: patriarchal society, the nuclear family, colonisation at several levels (race, gender, sexuality), and the capitalist system
'The cracked mirror': Anne Sexton's poetics of self-representation
No full textThis thesis re-evaluates the work of the poet Anne Sexton (1928-1974), concentrating, in particular, on the indeterminacies, contradictions and aporia which it finds to be characteristic of her ostensibly frank and self-revelatory writing. The study is based on a close textual
analysis of Sexton's writing, is informed by oststructuralist theories, and is sustained by an
examination and discussion of archive collections of her previously unpublished papers. In seeking an understanding of Sexton's poetics, the thesis identifies and interrogates the strategies of denial and obfuscation apparent in her own explication of her work - principally, by scrutiny of the unpublished, and previously unresearched, drafts of a series of lectures
which she delivered in 1972. Chapters One and Two consider the origins of `confessional' or - Sexton's preferred term - 'personal' poetry and reassess her place within contemporary poetry. They suggest that
Sexton's writing is engaged in a process of negotiation and contestation, both with the boundaries and expectations of confessionalism, and with the strictures of T. S. Eliot's theory of `impersonality'. In support of these arguments, Chapter Two offer a reading of Sexton's
little-known poem, `Hurry Up Please It's Time', alongside its intertext, Eliot's The Waste Land. Chapter Three reassesses received views of the supposedly beneficial interrelationship between confessional speaker and reader. It examines Sexton's appropriation of dramatic
masks and personae and her use of metaphors of striptease and prostitution, and suggests that these are employed simultaneously to appease and to repel an intrusive audience. Similarly, Chapters Four and Five trace Sexton's problematisation of two previously-accepted tenets of confessional poetry: its status as autobiography and its truthfulness, drawing attention to the techniques employed in order to give the impression of both. Chapter Six considers Sexton's
problematic engagement with a language which is not malleable, transparent, and referential but, rather, is experienced as uncooperative and occlusive. Finally, the thesis recuperates Sexton from the common charge of narcissism, arguing that it is the writing, rather than the poet, which is self-reflexive and self-conscious. In this respect, it concludes that her work - perhaps unexpectedly - anticipates many of the tendencies of postmodernist writing
Te Tuhirau i Rehu i Ringa: Translating Sacred and Sensitive Texts: An Indigenous Perspective
No full textThis thesis centers on translator cognition. Through a series of interviews and think-aloud protocols (Chapters 3 – 5), it explores the ways in which a sample of translators (both Māori and non-Māori) negotiate the complex issues involved in translating between a local, Indigenous language (Māori) and an international one (English) and, in particular, how they approach the definition and translation of texts that could be regarded as being ‘sacred’ and/or ‘sensitive’. In their definitions of ‘sacred’ texts and ‘sensitive’ texts, all of the participants exhibited a peculiarly postmodern positioning, focussing primarily on perspective rather than on any absolute concept of truth or reality. With the exception of the Māori participants’ traditional definition of, and approach to texts deemed to be ‘tapu’ (see Chapter 3), all of the participants expressed beliefs about the translation process which were largely structurally-orientated. They emphasized the importance of respecting the cultural context out of which texts emerged and of attempting, in translation, to reflect the meanings deemed to reside in the source texts by virtue of the intentions of their authors. As witnessed in their think-aloud protocols, however, when involved in the actual process of translation the translators did not always adhere to the views expressed in their interviews, with translation procedures ranging from one that was primarily modernist and structural in orientation (but also reflecting the careful attention to co-text and cohesion that is characteristic of much recent research on discourse analysis) to one that was primarily postmodern and post-structural in orientation, being highly personal, autonomous and individualistic.
In the absence of any clear agreement about translation theory in the literature on translation (see Chapter 2), and at a time when pre-modern, modern and postmodern positioning and structural and post-structural perspectives vie for acceptance, each of the participants in this research project appears to have found his or her own way of traversing the complex terrain of translation practice without necessarily being fully aware of the way in which the decisions they made positioned them theoretically. What this suggests is the need for a type of training that introduces novice translators in an explicit way to a variety of theories about human language and communication and the ways in which they can impinge upon translation practice, thus creating a context in which translators are able to make critically informed decisions about how they will proceed in any particular instance, why they will proceed in these ways, and what is required in order to ensure that their beliefs about translation are in accord with their actual practices. Critical awareness of these issues is likely to be particularly important in the case of those involved in translating between international languages such as English and more localized, Indigenous languages such as Māori, where discontinuity in the transmission of the language has occurred and where, therefore, texts that are deemed to be of particular significance would otherwise be unavailable to those for whom the texts form part of their cultural heritage
Reforming nationhood : England in the literature of the Tudor imperial age, 1509-1553
Get PDFThe thesis explores the relationship between empire and nationhood in the literature of the Royal Supremacy. In so doing, it contests the assumptions of the social historians Michel Foucault, Benedict Anderson, Jürgen Habermas, and Ernest Gellner - all of whom have dated the dawn of the nation-event on our Western political horizons from the end of the eighteenth century. The thesis invites important outcomes for our perception of early Tudor political culture, and for our wider appreciation of the origins of English national identity. It differentiates the Habsburg imperial idea from the Tudor ideology of empire inherited by Henry VIII upon his accession in 1509. It then distinguishes both these imperial ideologies from Henry's pretensions, as enshrined in the 1533 Appeals Act, to
empire in the English Church. Despite these differences between the Habsburg and Tudor ideologies of empire, each received identical expression in propaganda that identified both England and the Holy Roman Empire with Virgil's Golden Age. The first two chapters explore the Golden Age motif in pageantry produced for the joint London Entry of Henry
VIII and Charles V (1522), and for the Entry of Anne Boleyn in 1533. Chapter Two concludes that the function of the 1533 Entry as propaganda for the Royal Supremacy was
undermined by the similarities between its stagecraft and that of the 1522 Entry
