Browsing by Subject "D. H. Lawrence"
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Item Literacy and its discontents: modernist anxiety and the literacy fiction of Virginia Woolf, E. M. Forster, D. H. Lawrence and Aldous Huxley(Texas A&M University, 2008-10-10) DuPlessis, Nicole MaraLiteracy theory, a multi-disciplinary, late-twentieth century endeavor, examines the acts of reading and writing as cognitive and social processes, seeking to define the relationship between reading and writing and other social and cognitive - especially linguistic - acts. As such, literacy theory intersects with discussions of public and individual education and reading habits that surface with the rise of the mass reading public. This dissertation analyzes scenes of reading and writing in the fiction of Virginia Woolf, E. M. Forster, D. H. Lawrence and Aldous Huxley as implicit authorial discourses on the function of literacy, including properties of written language and the social consequences of literate acts. It argues that reading and writing form important thematic concerns in Modernist fiction, defines fiction that theorizes about reading and writing as "literacy fiction," and proposes fictional dramatizations of literate activity as subjects for literacy theory. Chapter I argues that early twentieth-century Britain is an important historical site for intellectual consideration of literacy because near-universal access to education across social classes influences an increase in middle and working class readers. Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway provides a test case for the analysis of scenes of reading because her democratic concern with education is well established in the scholarly literature. Chapter II argues that in "The Celestial Omnibus" and "Other Kingdom," Forster critiques use of literacy as cultural capital. Chapter III argues that Forster's A Room with a View and Howards End portray the dangers of naive reading and the difficulties of autodidacticism for the working class, respectively. Chapter IV argues that Lawrence's "Shades of Spring" and Sons and Lovers introduce the theoretically unexplored topic of literacy's influence on intimate relationships. Chapter V argues that Huxley's Brave New World responds to the Modernist discourse on literacy by addressing the restriction of individual literacy by the State and elite intellectuals. The conclusion summarizes Modernist representation of literacy, states the significance of the methodology and its further applications, and refines the definition of literacy fiction. Because Modernist writers scrutinize the relationship between external forces and the individual psyche, their anxiety-tinged portraits treat both cognitive and social functions of literate acts.Item The Making of Beauty: Aesthetic Spaces in the Fiction of D. H. Lawrence, Muriel Spark, and Virginia Woolf(2013-08-01) Lee, JooriThis dissertation rethinks textual images of the other?s beauty, depicted in works by D. H. Lawrence, Muriel Spark, and Virginia Woolf, whose fascination with the other, called by this dissertation the beloved, urged them to inscribe the beloved?s original beauty in texts. Their works make perceptible the singularity of the beloved, while revealing the writers? predicament in translating the beloved?s ineffability in texts. Taking the untranslatability of the beloved into consideration, this dissertation traces the ways in which these writers? texts capture the beloved?s original beauty at moments of revelation, related to epiphanies entering the terrain of literary modernism. My study thereby scrutinizes the dynamics of images of beauty and their impacts on art and politics in the context of modernism. In doing so, I argue that the texts I consider express the beloved?s singularity in challenge of the beautified images that many other artists invented for self-directed purposes in the early and mid-twentieth century. First, I explore Lawrence?s creation of aesthetic spaces in Lady Chatterley?s Lover (1928) in keeping with his desire for making palpable visual spectacles through the text. Analyzing how this ambition helped to create the novel?s aesthetic scenes, I would like to define Lawrence as an aesthete whose aspiration lay in expressing the beauty of things. Then, I discuss Spark?s affection for her characters and her desire to visualize the figure?s originality in The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (1961) and The Girls of Slender Means (1963). Considering Spark in relation to both modernists and Fascists, I propose that her making of the image of her character breaks away from Fascism?s aestheticization of human figures. Finally, I investigate Woolf?s love for words by focusing on ?The Duchess and the Jeweller? (1938), a short story written for expressing various modes of beauty in words. Drawing to the represented link between words and smell, considered the most ?wasteful? sense, I examine how the sensory medium makes perceptible intrinsic qualities of words, and argues that her depiction of words, linked to smell, reveals the anti-utilitarian nature of words, unconstrained by a craftsman?s manipulation of words.