Literatures, Languages, and Cultures PhD thesis collection

Dostoevsky's storm and stress: Notes from Underground and the psychological foundations of Utopia

King-Salter, John Luke (The University of Edinburgh, 2020-07-29)

Notes from Underground is Dostoevsky’s most intense examination of the fundamental psychological basis of society and politics, and was conceived as a polemical response to the utopian socialism of Nihilists like Nikolai ...

Modernist literature at the museum: history, memory, and aesthetics in Proust, James, and Joyce

Jones-Williams, Benedict Colm (The University of Edinburgh, 2020-07-29)

This thesis brings together three well-known authors of the early 20th century, Henry James, Marcel Proust, and James Joyce, in order to explore the similarities and divergences in their work when it comes to the treatment ...

Of all the places - a novel & A life in search of a narrative: the construction of narrative identity in the autobiographical fiction of J.M. Coetzee.

Licata, Ryan Anthony (The University of Edinburgh, 2020-06-29)

A novel – Of All the Places. Drawing on parallels between apartheid South Africa and the present far-right politics of Italy, Of All the Places explores matters of race, nationalism, and language, and the inevitable ...

Mapping Middle-earth: tracing environmental and political narratives in the literary geographies and cartographies of J.R.R Tolkien's Legendarium

Behrooz, Anahit (The University of Edinburgh, 2020-06-30)

In 1954, shortly before the publication of The Lord of the Rings, J.R.R. Tolkien wrote to friend and author Naomi Mitchison, “I wisely started with a map, and made the story fit” (Letters 177). This reciprocal relationship ...

Collaborative individualisms in the autobiographical writings of H.D., Djuna Barnes, Gertrude Stein and Emily Coleman

Perrin-Haynes, Hannah Sara Jean (The University of Edinburgh, 2020-06-29)

In this thesis I investigate how far ‘collaboration’ can be used an aesthetic interpretative category to examine the subjectivities narrated in the autobiographical writing of H.D., Gertrude Stein, Djuna Barnes and ...

'The stories we tell ourselves to make ourselves come true': feminist rewriting in the Canongate Myths series

MacMillan, Harriet Mary Mackintosh (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

Simor, Eszter (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

Polychronidou, Sofia (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

Chang, Ching-An (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

Kelly, Benjamin Edward Joseph; Ó Ceallaigh, Ben (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

MacMillan, Harriet Mary Mackintosh (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)

Avina, Avital Zuk (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

Moynihan, Bridget Christine (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

Phillips, Nathalie (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 ...

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