Browsing by Subject "Postmodernism (Literature)"
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Item A postmodern end for the violent Victorian female(Texas Tech University, 2002-12) McClenagan, Cindy MarlowRecent media attention on the trial and conviction of Andrea Yates, the Texas woman convicted of drowning her five children, as well as on female suicide bombers in Israel, indicates not only "a morbid curiosity in the United States relating to mothers killing their children" (Meyer and Oberman 19), but also a special, intense fascination with women who involve themselves in "masculine" acts of violence, especially murder. Since contemporary examples of violent women abound, why do authors--and the public--continue to turn to the past, to nineteenth-century cases of female aggression, for inspiration? Perhaps it is as Margaret Atwood suggests, that in turning to the past we hope to explore and then expose the possible misconstruction of that past, thereby infusing it with multi-layered meanings for present and future generations {In Search 3 9). Not only Atwood, but also Angela Carter and Toni Morrison have claimed the past of individual violent women, exploring and infusing the stories of Grace Marks, Lizzie Borden, and Margaret Garner with new, alternative endings, thereby redeeming the violent women of yesteryear, and perhaps all women "because we are the ones who need it" (Atwood 39). By rewriting the past with postmodern tools, all three authors offer a brighter tomorrow, one loosened from the grip of a history that is often structured oppressively with respect to women.Item Desire versus conscience : development of the id and the ego in Ian McEwan's fiction.(2009-08-26T13:25:52Z) Sgarlata, Emily.; Losey, Jay Brian.; English.; Baylor University. Dept. of English.Throughout the course of McEwan's writing career, his books have dealt with interpersonal relationships, society, history, and the human condition, but his later works have grown and become more introspective, less shocking, and even more challenging because of their depth. This thesis will argue that the maturation has resulted in a shift from an extremely postmodern position to a more nuanced modern style, thus explaining the tension between and evolution of the concepts of the Freudian id, ego and super-ego or, more simply put, desire and conscience in his works.Item Heretical reading : freedom as question and process in postmodern American novel and technological pedagogy(2007-05) Howard, Jeffrey Lamar, 1978-; Hilfer, Anthony ChannellItem Heretical reading: freedom as question and process in postmodern American novel and technological pedagogy(2007) Howard, Jeffrey Lamar; Hilfer, Anthony ChannellMy dissertation describes a method of reading with literary, disciplinary, and pedagogical implications. In literary terms, heretical reading refers to the way that the postmodern novelists Thomas Pynchon, Vladimir Nabokov, and Philip K. Dick read and appropriate Gnosticism in order to construct narratives about the struggle to regain freedom in novels such as Gravity’s Rainbow, Invitation to a Beheading, and VALIS. On a disciplinary level, heretical reading is an interpretative method I exert to foreground possibilities of freedom within postmodern fiction that intrude into the background of the poststructuralist definition of the world but ultimately transcend it. These four forms of freedom are freedom as presence and transcendence, as liberating knowledge, as a spirituality constituting self-awareness, and as choice conceived navigationally rather than hierarchically. Postmodern authors imply these possibilities consciously and metafictionally, but heretical reading is also my way of foregrounding and intensifying them. I put this theoretical program into practice through the pedagogical use of hypertext and interactive fiction. Students compose interpretative essays that make a “heretical” interpretative choice by choosing a path through the text that has been closed off by a previous group of interpreters. This path consists of the linkages between “sparks”—passages that stand out with particular imaginative and intuitive significance against a background of indeterminacy. Students know these sparks as non-totalizing intimations of presence that their own non-totalizing selves respond to in order to offer a sense of “interior direction” required to navigate through the composition of an essay. I then describe a final pedagogical extension of heretical reading focused around a type of computer game called interactive fiction. Heretical reading seeks to transform printed novels into interactive fictions in order to encourage freedom in the form of interaction, allowing classroom discussion to change the ways the text is imagined and experienced. The convictions underlying heretical reading function within the classroom as a set of rules, but these rules are designed to open up, not to constrain; to energetically orient, not to govern; to yield satisfactions at the expressive level, not to conclude.Item Limbs of life: literature of postmodern anthropomorphic technology and cosmology(Texas Tech University, 2000-05) Kim, IlguThe postmodern's inevitable coexistence with machines changes humans into a machine-like processing entity while machines become more autonomous like humans. Especially focusing upon Artificial Intelligence, many postmodern writers deal with the newly emerging third space between human and nonhuman. This dissertation argues that as the cognitive base of human thoughts and languages, this paranormally blended space of quasi-objects (such as cyborgs) suggests the new insightful direction of paratactic postmodern culture, which in certain ways parallels anthropomorphic mythologies. As the term "matrix" means "womb" in Greek, the metaverse in postmodern cyberpunk fiction is inherently related to creation myths. If "new technologies," as Marshal .McLuhan says, "amputate as much as they amplify," postmodern science fiction writers use anthropomorphic creation myths to reunite those dismembered limbs of the natural body, the human's instinctive transpersonal subconscious. Richard Powers's Helen and Neal Stephenson's avatars are mechanical anthropomorphic technologies (Mechs in McHale's terms) whose dilemmas are allegorically reflected in their parallels with the Gilgamesh and Galatea myths. Although homogeneity is seriously criticized through Pygmalion's incestuous relation with Galatea and Bob Rife's recovery of glossolalia via a computer virus. Transcendental visions in mechanical anthropomorphic narratives are limited to a less satisfactory level. By contrast, Marge Piercy's Yod and Octavia Butler's Oankali, as the biological anthropomorphic hybrids ("biopunks" in McHale's terms) show the higher reality which is neither matter nor mind. Their parallel to creation myths, to the Gaia hypothesis and to Golem, like chaos theory, reveals that mind and matter are interdependent and correlated. While answering both "why" questions in science and "how" questions in literature, the entrapment and escapism (mostly in mechanical hybrids) as well as excitement and joy (mostly in machines of blood and flesh) of these anthropomorphic technologies are theoretically applied to some important topics in the postmodern literature of science such as the sublime, metamorphoses, information, chaos theory, allegory and linguistics. Finally, this dissertation examines the potential self-idolatry tendency in these "fractal" anthropomorphic hybrids where the finite is reflected as the small scale of the infinite. In the information-flowing society of masquerade, transcendental and sublime moments are safely illuminated by implosive personifications, such as Octavia Butler's transcultural and persistent metaphor of the humble seed.Item Mixing the modern and the postmodern: Judge Holden and the kid in Cormac McCarthy's "Blood Meridian"(Texas Tech University, 1998-05) McClenagan, Cindy MarlowNOT AVAILABLEItem The permeability of history and literature in Santa Evita and La fiesta del Chivo(2005) Ruiz, María Regina; Fierro, Enrique H.The present study provides an analysis of two New Historical Novels: Santa Evita (1995) by Tomás Eloy Martínez and La Fiesta del Chivo (2000) by Mario Vargas Llosa. I will approach these novels from the perspective of Postmodernism. Both works deal with the topic of history and literature. How history and literature relate is a focal component of this project. The “writing” and “rewriting” of history are essential topics. Therefore, a revision of the historical reading and writing processes requires more than a unilateral vision of past events. In fact, numerous points of view are essential in order to understand how those in power have influenced the recording of history. The power of knowledge then introduces the idea of the legitimization of history. This project also reviews the differences between Modernism and Postmodernism. Several critical views are covered. Tomás Eloy Martínez’s novel Santa Evita illustrates a variety of postmodern characteristics. Since Postmodernism allows the artist to revise and question conventional and dogmatic structures, then parody and myth are explored. At the same time, examples of myth show how Martínez constructs his narrative and how history portrayed Eva Perón. Fiction and history therefore open the discussion of the use of the documents in Martinez’s novel. On the other hand, an explanation of simulacra and simulation shed light on the different ways in which Eva created herself and the ways in which others recreated her. In contrast, La Fiesta del Chivo is a novel about a dictatorship, it is important then to understand how dictatorships have controlled and molded societies for years in Latin America. I approach this novel from the perspective of the postmodern text. The way in which reality and fiction come together will introduce the topic of metafiction. Vargas Llosa´s novel shows how memory and myth play an important role in literature. In the case of the Dominican Republic, it is clear how history has perpetuated myths. The author also includes a variety of voices, which do not fall in the category of the official history. These voices shed light onto previous ideas about the past and our understanding of it.