School of Culture and Communication - Theses
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ItemThe aesthetic of joy in Old English poetry( 2011)This thesis examines the aesthetic of joy in Old English poetry. Its assessment of the conception and expression of joy works against the perception of Old English poetry as predominantly dark or lacking in positive feeling; in the broadest terms, it seeks to redress this imbalance of critical attention by devoting itself to a survey of joy. The examination of poetic joy-vocabulary defines some important but often overlooked nuances and connotations in the range of key ‘joy-words’ appearing in Old English poetry. The thesis aims to track certain changes in the meanings of the terms, as they are used in different poetic genres, and as the ideological context of their use changes; from this basis, arguments relating to changes in the Old English aesthetic of joy are made. The thesis presents a tentative taxonomy of poetic joy, proposing six major categories of joyful experience, which may be subdivided into ‘joys of place’ and ‘joys of action’. This survey reinforces the breadth and variety in Old English poetic joy; it also begins to clarify some of the lines along which the aesthetic of joy may be divided. Central among these are the distinctions between earthly and spiritual joys, which are often encoded in poetry as ‘hall-based’ and ‘heaven-based’ joys. The thesis argues that aesthetic differences (of style, lexicon and ideology) are apparent between the predominantly female experience of domestic joys, the predominantly male experience of hall-joys, and the religious and spiritual experience of heavenly joys. Where these conceptions share a guiding aesthetic is in the use of the metaphor of the hall as a physical space filled with joy, which journeyers (in both the literal and the spiritual sense) are able to enter. And finally, the thesis suggests that a major impact of the relocation of joy in poetry from an earthly to a heavenly setting is radically to destabilise the role and power of the Anglo-Saxon poet. Poetry’s own joy – which transforms sorrowful experience to joy for those who take delight in artistic narrative – is replaced by the power of Christ to translate the sinful man to the joy of an eternal heaven. The centrality of the positive values of the ‘joy’ aesthetic is presented throughout the thesis as a counterbalance to that emphasis which privileges negative motifs in the appreciation of Old English poetry. The study will thus add to the understanding both of the guiding artistic principles of Old English poetry, and more broadly, to an understanding of the emotional, cultural and linguistic facets of the Old English world.
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ItemAutomotive apotheosis: an exploration of promotional culture as contemporary mythology( 2011)This thesis proposes that contemporary promotional culture is the mythology of today. This hypothesis was first put forth by Marshall McLuhan in his 1951 book, The Mechanical Bride: Folklore of Industrial Man, where he astutely observed that myth and poetry have been effectively colonized by promotional culture. Although it has been mainly overlooked by the academic community, this book is a cornerstone of the field of popular culture and mass media. In it, McLuhan was one of the first scholars to detect that folklore of industrial society is determined, not by education or religion, but by the mass media (McLuhan 1951). Over the decades, many scholars from various academic fields have observed the same trends, concluding that the myth-making faculty is thriving in contemporary society, and situating the strongest mythopoeic forces in worlds of entertainment and promotional culture. Nevertheless, these notions have not been sufficiently explored. Hence, in order to uncover the prevalent myth and poetry operating in contemporary society we must turn to promotional culture, and particularly to advertising, which McLuhan believes is as equivalent to collective society as dreams are to the individual (McLuhan 1951, p. 97). Myth is defined in this work as a universal narrative that reflects humanity’s collective unconscious projections and contains primordial forms, or archetypes. This thesis argues that advertising is mythopoeic and utilizes primordial archetypes. The focus of this thesis is automotive adverting, which draws on the mythology of the car as a godlike entity in contemporary popular culture. McLuhan’s observations detailing the colonization of myth and poetry in contemporary society inform a critical methodology which this thesis builds upon and modernizes. The resulting version of mythical criticism is a valid method of enquiry. It reveals underlying meaning in contemporary promotional texts that could not otherwise be observed by using methods such as semiotics alone.