Literatures, Languages, and Cultures PhD thesis collection
Recent Submissions
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'The stories we tell ourselves to make ourselves come true': feminist rewriting in the Canongate Myths series
(The University of Edinburgh, 2020-06-29)In 2005, Canongate, an Edinburgh-based publisher, launched the first volumes in the Canongate Myths series, a project which commissioned renowned authors to retell ancient mythologies for contemporary audiences. Securing ... -
Absurd black humour as social criticism in contemporary European cinema
(The University of Edinburgh, 2020-06-29)This thesis investigates how contemporary European art cinema establishes an absurd worldview to express social criticism that can be read as evidence of – as well as a response to – European socio-political crises. The ... -
Socialist Realist theatre in the Soviet Union in the 1930s: forming a social identity
(The University of Edinburgh, 2020-06-29)The aim of this thesis is to use the socialist realist theatre example to examine the theatre’s ability to form social identities. This is a difficult task because, for a start, the theory has failed – thus far – to give ... -
Transformation of the Syrian business community after the 2011 uprising: the formation of a war-induced business diaspora and the reorganisation of their networks
(The University of Edinburgh, 2018-07-07)This thesis aims to analyse how the Syrian business community has been transformed by the 2011 revolution and how this transformation has had an impact on Syrian business networks. The thesis draws on a range of previous ... -
Neoliberalism and language shift: the Great Recession and the sociolinguistic vitality of Ireland's Gaeltacht, 2008-18
(The University of Edinburgh, 2020-06-29)The tendency of macro-level economic forces to drive language shift is frequently referred to in scholarship on language planning and policy (LPP). Despite this, there has, to date, been very little research that attempts ... -
'The stories we tell ourselves to make ourselves come true': feminist rewriting in the Canongate Myths Series
(The University of Edinburgh, 2020-06-02)In 2005, Canongate, an Edinburgh-based publisher, launched the first volumes in the Canongate Myths series, a project which commissioned renowned authors to retell ancient mythologies for contemporary audiences. Securing ... -
Revolution in pain(t): a semiotic reading of Chinese Cultural Revolution propaganda posters and female motivated violence (1966-1968)
(The University of Edinburgh, 2020-06-29)This thesis focuses on visual imagery and culture from Maoist China by exploring new methods for interpreting the propaganda posters from the Chinese Cultural Revolution (CR) through a linguistic-based methodology. In ... -
Digital découpage: reading and prototyping the material poetics and queer ephemera of the Edwin Morgan scrapbooks, 1931-1966
(The University of Edinburgh, 2020-06-29)My thesis takes as its object of study sixteen scrapbooks compiled between 1931 and 1966 by Scots Makar Edwin Morgan (1920-2010), which are currently housed in the University of Glasgow Library Special Collections. I focus ... -
Conforming to invisible principles: the significance of meta-physical beliefs for the Heian-period episteme and their articulation in social and political relations
(The University of Edinburgh, 2020-06-29)The Heian period (794-1185) is often associated with rampant meta-physical forces, such as vengeful spirits (onryō 怨霊), which represented the consequences of political manoeuvrings and intrigue in the form of bodily ... -
Masculinity politics in post-Soviet Russian fiction: from Viktor Pelevin to Aleksandr Prokhanov
(The University of Edinburgh, 2020-06-29)Following the turn of the millennium, masculinity became an important lens through which social, cultural and political dynamics in contemporary Russian society could be studied. The debate on masculinity in post-Soviet ... -
Translating Catalan cinema: the functions of multilingualism and their representation in subtitling
(The University of Edinburgh, 2020-06-29)Subtitling norms and guidelines have traditionally encouraged a strategy of invisibility, whereby subtitles are so unobtrusive that the viewer forgets they are reading them. This strategy has become entrenched in the ... -
Diversity of religions in the eyes of Ayatollah ʿAbdullah Javadi and Professor Mahmud Mustafa Ayoub
(The University of Edinburgh, 2020-06-29)Abstract: The question of religions diversity and the related issues of validity, truth and salvation can have a great practical impact on our life in the modern closely-knit global society and can help improve or ruin the ... -
“Prized by the tourist”: souvenir books in Victorian Scotland
(The University of Edinburgh, 2020-06-29)Scotland has been a popular tourist destination for over two centuries, with an intensely romantic reputation that persists to this day. This thesis argues that in the mid-Victorian era, this reputation was developed and ... -
From little acorns: trees and wood in Middle English romance
(The University of Edinburgh, 2020-01-29)Trees occupy a paradoxical place in the genre of Middle English romance. They are central to romance narratives, but their ubiquitous presence is almost completely overlooked by the genre’s protagonists, and has been ... -
Light and the lens: streams of damaged consciousness in post-crash Irish modernist fiction
(The University of Edinburgh, 2020-06-29)This thesis examines the state of Irish literature since the 2008-9 financial crash. I contend that, whilst a supposedly mature Realism was the dominant mode of Irish writing during the ‘Celtic Tiger’ years of economic ... -
Horror of personality: exploring the gothicisation of mental illness in American fiction of the long 1950s
(The University of Edinburgh, 2020-06-29)This thesis examines the gothicisation of mental illness — specifically, disorders of personality — in American fiction, as illustrated through four popular novels written in the long 1950s. In so doing, this thesis aims ... -
Condition of music and Anglophone influences in the poetry of Shao Xunmei
(The University of Edinburgh, 2020-01-28)Shao Xunmei (1906-1968), a Chinese poet, publisher and translator, has long been marginalized by contemporary criticism. His unique poetics, especially when it comes to the condition of music in poetry, remains largely ... -
People, places and texts: re/presenting Islam in Edinburgh, Scotland
(The University of Edinburgh, 2019-12-18)Of Britain’s 2.8 million Muslims, nearly two-thirds originate from South Asia, primarily Pakistan and Bangladesh, with the remainder from North Africa, East Europe and South East Asia. Much of the scholarship on Muslims ... -
Study of Hugh MacDiarmid’s In Memoriam James Joyce
(The University of Edinburgh, 2020-01-07)This thesis is a study of the ways in which Hugh MacDiarmid’s long poem In Memoriam James Joyce incorporates material from various source texts. It argues that In Memoriam’s use of citation is a response to the changing ... -
Modernist theatre, theatricality and twentieth-century physics
(The University of Edinburgh, 2020-01-08)For all of their many differences, Gertrude Stein, Bertolt Brecht, and Samuel Beckett have in common the fact that they have each exerted a significant influence upon the way in which theatre is both conceived of and ...
