Browsing by Subject "Romanticism"
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Item American ruins: nostalgia, amnesia, and Blitzkrieg bop(2006) Briante, Susan; Cvetkovich, Ann, 1957-“American Ruins: Nostalgia, Amnesia, and Blitzkrieg Bop” considers the symbolic role of contemporary urban ruins in the American imagination and in their relationship to America’s past. The United States contains more urban ruins than any other developed nation, yet ruins remain largely ignored as official sites of commemoration. This dissertation takes a look at the prominence of ruins as well as their invisibility, considering their role as sites of cultural memory, as well as how they are represented in literature, film, the visual arts, and the media. Throughout this study, an analysis of ruins as a motif in Romantic literature demonstrates how contemporary ways of seeing American ruins both challenge and conform to Romantic modes of contemplating these structures. In Chapter One, the fate of Civil War ruins is set against the history of Civil War commemoration and preservation in order to trace what narratives have been promoted about the conflict and what narratives have been erased. Chapter Two focuses on amusement ruins in Asbury Park, New Jersey. In popular recollections of Asbury Park, these ruins recall a legacy of racism and corruption as well as inspire nostalgia for the “glory days” of a working-class resort. In Chapter Three, the Aliso Village Housing Project ruins in Los Angeles testify to the ways in which attitudes towards age and ruin can help to justify the displacement and disruption of low-income communities. The final chapter studies the ruins of the World Trade Center in light of a history of New York City ruins beginning with the South Bronx during the 1970s and 1980s. Taken together, these case studies demonstrate how ruins can reflect the cultural memories of communities that remain under-represented by national monuments and memorials. The sites considered in this dissertation highlight examples of insidious traumas that frame the American experience (racism, displacement, economic upheaval), issues that put the process of commemoration/signification in crisis. These examples suggest possibilities for the incorporation of ruins into a commemorative landscape that would recognize America’s violent past and convulsive economic changes, as well offer a place to mourn and learn.Item Art, artist, and artifact in Gogol's Portret and Hoffmann's Der Sandmann(Texas Tech University, 1990-05) Valdez, Monica LynneNot availableItem Family-friendly : homo-affinity in the French sentimental novel, 1770-1850(2016-12) Spinelli, Nicholas Christopher; Wettlaufer, Alexandra; Moore, Lisa L. (Lisa Lynne); Picherit, Hervé; Wilkinson, Lynn; Bennett, ChadThis dissertation investigates the central significance of desire for the self defined as different-than-the-self––of an affect I articulate as homo-affinity––within the domains of Romanticism, Romantic love, and the French Sentimental novel. As expressed in my Introduction, this project is predicated on an analysis of the erotics of sameness, the literary trace of outlaw desire, and the exploration of a queer archive of feelings in the French Sentimental novel. Chapter One pertains to François-René de Chateaubriand’s Atala/René (1801), in which I outline the Romantic topos that serves as a forerunner to the ideal of homo-affinity in the French Sentimental novel. In keeping with Chateaubriand’s autobiographical mode of fiction, the enchanteur’s reliance on reflexive metaphors yields a chiasmatic mirror through which his protagonists might envision another version of themselves and that, as such, conditions the experience of an expansive desire that encompasses passions toward incest, homosexuality, and narcissism––if not a newfound libertinage. In Chapter Two, I examine archival documents that obtain to the manuscripts of Claire de Duras’s Olivier, ou le secret (1821-1824) in order to expose the author’s careful treatment of the closet, which revolves around her creation of a linguistic polari that could furtively portray the eponymous secret and its relevance among writers and intellectuals of Restoration France. Finally––in Chapter Three––I go on to posit that Stendhal, in Armance (1828), deliberately reinscribes and multiplies the erotically charged bonds that figure between knights in pre-Revolutionary novels and chivalric lore, so as to forge a trope for the expression of homosexuality––and even that of a homosexual subject––within his satire of Romanticism. Throughout these chapters, I illustrate how the interconnectivity of these topoi (such as the chiasmatic mirror, parlor polari, and Romantic chevalerie) constitutes a coherent expression of homo-affinity that spans the formation of the French Sentimental novel. In the end, I conclude that the prevalence of a (now queer) attraction toward sameness in Sentimentalism and Romanticism intertextually colored a handful of subsequent literary movements and, ultimately, determined the emergence of homo-affinitive (and equally non-heterosexual) narratives across the evolution of the French novel in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.Item Reconciling the exotic "other" in Nikolai Gogol's Taras Bulba(2015-05) Singer, Eva Lynn; Garza, Thomas J.; Pesenson, MichaelAround the mid-sixteenth century, the Ukrainian Cossacks arose out of the desire to create free and equal communities outside the control of the imperial powers of Russia and Poland. In the nineteenth century, the Cossack was brought to the forefront of cultural myth making in the search for identity during the historical periods of Nationalism and Romanticism. The Zaporozhian Cossacks were central in the conceptualization of the modern Ukrainian identity and development of national consciousness because they represent independence, fighting suppression, and the simple values of honor and love of nature. While Russian national identity relies on the direct lineage from Kyivan Rus' and on the idea of a Slavic brotherhood to justify their imperial actions, Ukrainian national identity is based on the distinct origins of Russians and Ukrainians. Nikolai Gogol's nineteenth century story, Taras Bulba, depicts the Cossacks through the medium of historical epic and addresses the anxiety with foreigners and identity. The theoretical framework of "Orientalism" sheds light on the relationships between the Cossacks and their neighboring nations of Russia, Poland, and Turkey and their liminal existence. The Cossacks of Taras Bulba exhibit contradictory thoughts and values that somehow coexist; the identities of exotic Cossack and nationalist Russian are reconciled. The representations of foreigners ("others") and women as well as the exotic eye are indicators of the tension in the Ukrainian Cossacks' imperial relationships. The twenty-first century films produced by Ukraine and Russia, demonstrate how both Ukrainian and Russian cultural myths can be extracted from the same text. Gogol showed how the Cossacks reconciled the exotic "other" in Taras Bulba, establishing identity based on contradictions in the geographical space of the borderlands.Item Romanticism in Dylan Thomas' poetry(Texas Tech University, 1970-08) Williams, Donald MaceNot availableItem The romantic imagination: a study of romantic thought in the critical writings of J.R.R. Tolkien(Texas Tech University, 1967-05) Elgin, Don DNot availableItem Transgressive agency and the English Romantic poets(2016-11-16) Bitgood, Nathan Daniel; Demson, Michael; Murfin, Audrey; Child, PaulThe theology of the Protestant Reformation, in particular, that of Calvinism, complicated the English Romantic poets’ approach to free will in diverse ways. In particular, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Lord Gordon George Byron, and John Keats were profoundly affected by metaphysical concerns about individual agency. This thesis argues that while the Romantic poets wanted to believe in and advocate for individual liberty, their religious upbringings and subsequent development as reflective thinkers prompted a skepticism about free will and its ability to effect change for the better. In Coleridge and in Byron, individual liberty only affects chaos and, in the end, destruction. Keats, on the other hand, proved more ambivalent. Nonetheless, the critical response to his poetry, especially the long narrative poem Endymion, exposes a literary culture uncomfortable with the idea of free will effecting positive change.Item Writing in blood : compassion, character, and popular rhetoric in Rousseau and Nietzsche(2011-12) Field, Laura; Pangle, Thomas L.; Pangle, Lorraine; Stauffer, Devin; Jacobsohn, Gary J.; Marks, JonathanThis study explores the normative role of emotional rhetoric and the social passions (with an emphasis on compassion) in politics through a consideration of the divergent perspectives of Rousseau and Nietzsche. These two invite comparison not only because of the wide range of ideas they represent, but also because each employed rare rhetorical skill to effect extensive cultural change. To analyze this dynamic relationship between theory and practice, I focus on how each philosopher sought to transform the sentimental basis of social and political life. I argue that Rousseau, through his intentional use of sentimental rhetoric, inspired cultural romanticism and the equity of the political left, and that Nietzsche, through his extreme attack on ordinary compassion, and his invocation of tragic pity and the “pathos of distance,” hoped to prevent nihilism from taking root in the modern spirit by bringing about an age of renewed cultural depth and robust individualism. My study is unique in its investigation of the autobiographical rhetoric of the two philosophers. I argue that both Rousseau and Nietzsche wrote autobiographies that exemplify their respective philosophical teachings on the sentiments, which is to say that in the autobiographical works they employ personal rhetoric aimed at illuminating and reinforcing these teachings. Rousseau’s pathos-filled self-presentation serves his vision for a withdrawn cultural elite that, while tolerated and quietly influential, does not enjoy public honors; Nietzsche, I suggest, worries that the cost of privatizing great individual virtue will be too high; his bombastic self-portrait not only satirizes faux Rousseauian vulnerability, but also serves personally to exemplify the possibility of a new cultural super-authority. In both cases, I suggest, a fundamental consistency exists between their theoretical teachings and their self-presentations, such that their autobiographical works should be understood as integrated parts of their greater philosophic projects.