Literatures, Languages, and Cultures PhD thesis collection
Recent Submissions
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W. G. Sebald's emblematics: opaque images of broken rebellion
(The University of Edinburgh, 2023-05-18)This thesis represents perhaps the first extensive study of allegorical imagery in general, and emblematics in particular, across the œuvre of W. G. Sebald (1944-2001). In so doing, it seeks to place Sebald in a long, ... -
Margery Kempe's words: an examination of register and vocabulary in the context of autohagiography
(The University of Edinburgh, 2017-07-04)This thesis examines the use of vocabulary in the Book of Margery Kempe, as a means of exploring register in the context of autohagiography. It analyses the way in which Margery ascribes words to different protagonists ... -
Gothic engagements in contemporary Scottish and postcolonial fiction
(The University of Edinburgh, 2023-04-21)This thesis contributes to the debate on Scotland’s postcolonial connections, adopting a transnational and comparative approach to examine the ways in which contemporary Scottish and postcolonial literatures engage with ... -
Distribution of distributivity in syntax and discourse
(The University of Edinburgh, 2023-03-29)In this thesis, I will explore the semantics of overt distributors and investigate how it interfaces with syntax and discourse. The main claims are as follows. (1) a. Syntax-semantics interface: Denotations of quantifiers ... -
Young Eco's library: mass culture and interpretive freedom in the Fascist period
(The University of Edinburgh, 2023-07-12)This thesis carries out an in-depth study of Umberto Eco’s novel The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana (2004) and highlights its contribution to two fundamental yet inadequately explored aspects of Eco’s oeuvre: its links ... -
Values and attitudes in the Early American 9/11 novel: representing the terrorist, the 'war on terror', and the reactions to 9/11
(The University of Edinburgh, 2023-03-15)The 9/11 novel has already enjoyed extensive scholarly interest in the previous decades, and while the earlier research has offered some great insights, it has focused on a rather limited set of novels, revolved around ... -
Okanagan story and Women in the woods: a critical reflection on pioneer women and their legacy in Canadian literature
(The University of Edinburgh, 2023-03-14)AN OKANAGAN STORY: A NOVEL Historian Mike Dunbar is at a crossroads in his career: it’s publish or perish. He chooses publish, his subject: Scottish Settlers in the Okanagan, British Columbia, a fertile valley in the ... -
Sticky stories: affect and Biblical myth in women’s speculative fiction, 1970-2020
(The University of Edinburgh, 2023-03-08)A regular feature of feminist speculative fiction, a world threatened by disease, climate change, war or political regime, often provokes its characters to feel nostalgic about a romanticised past or hopeful about an ... -
Syntactic change during the anglicisation of Scots: insights from the Parsed Corpus of Scottish Correspondence
(The University of Edinburgh, 2023-03-02)Variation and change in syntax is particularly challenging to measure quantitatively, as such investigation requires syntactically annotated (parsed) corpora; a parsed digital corpus allows for retrieval of all instances ... -
English translations of gender nonconformity in shōjo manga and anime: a trans-queer materialist feminist analysis
(The University of Edinburgh, 2023-02-21)Shōjo, a category of manga and anime (Japanese comics and animation) primarily marketed to young girls, has a notable history of depicting gender nonconformity — i.e. gender/sexual identities, expressions, or embodiments ... -
Family norms negotiation: discourse analysis of a Russian talk show
(The University of Edinburgh, 2023-02-15)The study examines identity and ideology construction in family discourse in Pust’ Govoriat top-rated Russian tabloid talk show. Previous research mostly focused on family discourse in workplaces and natural family ... -
Disappearance of the romantic monster: a genealogical study of the female monster in Chinese cinema
(The University of Edinburgh, 2023-02-06)The anthropological conception of the ‘monster’ is defined as the ‘other’: the unknown beings that surpass the boundary of human civilization. However, there is a sort of female monster on the Chinese screen that could ... -
Shariʿa Supervisory Boards and reform of the Islamic finance industry: assessing limitations of authority and frameworks of Islamic jurisprudence
(The University of Edinburgh, 2023-01-30)The Islamic banking industry provides services based on Islamic legal principles as an alternative to conventional banking. Established in the 1970s, the industry has continued to expand, but on a trajectory which diverges ... -
“A self in process”: contemporary biofictions of Virginia Woolf
(The University of Edinburgh, 2023-01-25)This thesis studies the presence of Virginia Woolf as the protagonist-subject in a sudden plethora of contemporary biofictions published within decades or so from the end of last century. The main hypothesis of this research ... -
Representations of girlhood trauma in Aotearoa, New Zealand literature written by women
(The University of Edinburgh, 2023-01-20)In “Representations of Girlhood Trauma in Aotearoa New Zealand Literature Written by Women”, I investigate the way literary genres affect trauma-telling and how culturally sensitive forms of trauma-reading allow girl ... -
Black culture and appropriation in the American novel from 1960 to the present day
(The University of Edinburgh, 2023-01-18)This thesis examines how the work of six American novelists engages with some of the key questions and arguments associated with contemporary debates and controversies surrounding the subject of appropriation in the context ... -
Manifestation: masculinity on the female body in Elizabethan and Jacobean drama
(The University of Edinburgh, 2023-01-17)At the end of Michael Shapiro’s highly influential Gender in Play on the Shakespearean Stage (1996) was an appendix comprising a “Chronological list of Plays with Heroines in Male Disguise” from 1570-1642 (221). This ... -
Dream, fantasy, and illness: exploring the carnal imaginary
(The University of Edinburgh, 2023-01-16)This thesis addresses the predominance of visual and spatial metaphors in literary critique, which has resulted in a hierarchy of the senses that fragments and excludes the body from the reading process. In response, I aim ... -
Obeying the (unjust) ruler: tracing a political ideology in the hadith corpus
(The University of Edinburgh, 2023-01-13)Within Sunni political discourse is the question of one’s relationship with the state and more specifically, the ruler. The majority opinion upholds a quietism requiring obedience to the ruler, even if he is unjust. ... -
Exophonic word and image relations in the work of Yoko Tawada, Vladimir Nabokov and Bruno Schulz
(The University of Edinburgh, 2023-01-13)This thesis explores the relationship between exophony and intermediality in the works of Yoko Tawada, Vladimir Nabokov and Bruno Schulz. All three authors refer to and incorporate images into their texts, while also ...
