School of Culture and Communication - Theses

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    Inspired recklessness and spirited perversity: transformations of the wilful child in neo-Victorian literature
    Direen, Emily Elizabeth ( 2015)
    Though Victorian fiction is rife with doomed wilful children, the same cannot be said of neo-Victorian fiction. Taking this narrative difference as my point of departure, my thesis investigates the transformation of the Victorian figure of the wilful child in neo-Victorian fiction, through a detailed examination of the ways in which wilfulness manifests, or fails to manifest—through spatial practices, thoughts, speech, and self-narrative. Using Peter Carey’s Oscar and Lucinda (1986), A.N. Wilson’s A Jealous Ghost (2005), A.S. Byatt’s The Children’s Book (2005), Carol Birch’s Jamrach’s Menagerie (2010) and John Harding’s Florence & Giles (2010) as case studies, I examine differences in wilful and will-less children’s responses to various forms of adult control, and what impact these responses have on the characters’ narrative trajectories. By drawing attention to repeated narrative patterns of resistance and oppression in the neo-Victorian genre, I track a significant shift in contemporary textual responses to the wilful child, alongside a reverse response to the will-less child. I argue that while the wilful child in Victorian fiction is depicted as a wretched figure of excess, neo-Victorian fiction displaces this abjection onto the child with a lack of will. In neo-Victorian fiction it is will-lessness, not wilfulness, that has severe repercussions. Drawing on Turner’s model of liminality and Kristeva’s concept of abjection, I argue that will-lessness, as it is experienced by children in neo-Victorian fiction, is linked with negative liminality and subsequent troubled identity. Ultimately, I contend that wilfulness plays a pivotal role in the survival of the child who occupies the liminal physical and emotional spaces of neo-Victorian fiction. The neo-Victorian fictional child must cultivate strength of will if he or she is to flourish. In neo-Victorian fiction, wilfulness enables children to plot different pathways for themselves, and allows them to actively manipulate adult regimes of control for their own gain. As a direct result of their drive to will their own way, I contend that wilful children in neo-Victorian fiction repeatedly engage in “surreptitious creativities” and “tactics,” which develop in spite of “networks of surveillance” (de Certeau 96) put in place by adults. In this way, they actively engage with—and manipulate—the socially coded rules of childhood. This thesis seeks to demonstrate that in contrast to Victorian fiction, neo-Victorian fiction reinterprets wilfulness as a positive, enabling trait. I argue that the authorial manipulation of character tropes, point-of-view and narrative sequencing in neo-Victorian fiction ultimately underscore children’s right to exist wilfully.
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    From codex to kindle: exploring the technological mediation of words in the digital era
    HARNETT, MATTHEW ( 2014)
    This thesis argues that like the emergence of the technology of writing in antiquity, digital literacy is also a technology with tremendous cultural, economic, political and cognitive repercussions, and that these technologies partially inform the ways by which contemporary Western society is ordered. The thesis begins by offering a broad definition of ‘literacy’ that takes into account literacy’s potential as a technology to help shape individual understanding of the external world. The first chapter is concerned with exploring the implications of this definition of literacy by investigating how print literacy alters human cognitive function, which in turn affects society more broadly, with particular reference to the work of Ong and Dehaene. It suggests literacy’s influence on the human cognitive system affects the structure of narratives, and that literacy privileges certain modes of cultural consumption over others by reifying cultural artefacts as private property. The thesis goes on to investigate whether emerging digital technologies affect human cognition to the same degree as print literacy, and how this affect may be moderated by cultural forces in the form of digital literature conventions, as well as how digital literacy is taught. An interview was conducted with two University of Melbourne Library staff, who spoke about emerging digital pedagogic practices, as well as the difficulties faced by staff and students in successfully navigating digital systems. It emerged that digital literacy is not yet formally taught, and I suggest that this is one of the largest reasons for the negative conceptions of digital literature as a force of cultural degredation that this chapter explores. Finally, the thesis suggests that – with certain caveats – digital lierature is capable of deepening the conceptual abstration of thought enabled by print literature. It goes on to analyse the implications of this on narrative modes, as well as the economic and political ramifications of digital literature’s lack of physicality.
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    'Gay, innocent and heartless': the ideal child in The Secret Garden
    Tse, Shirlaine ( 2013)
    This thesis argues that the ideal child in Frances Hodgson Burnett’s novel, The Secret Garden (1911), is ultimately not a child but a young man capable of leading Britain into the future. It examines the figure of the ideal child within the context of the late Victorian and Edwardian period. My methodology involves the use of J. M. Barrie’s Peter and Wendy (1911) to identify the investments that were made in the ideal child figure, and to identify what threatens these investments. These investments reveal the ‘adult-child dynamic’, or the power relationship between adult desires and constructions of children. The thesis investigates the influence of the adult-child dynamic in the condemnation of particular kinds of children. I then apply these insights to analyse the narrative representation of Mary Lennox, Burnett’s female protagonist, comparing it with that of Colin Craven, her sickly cousin. The thesis also applies Michel Foucault’s study of the panopticon to the novel to reveal the function of the child in the adult-child dynamic, examining how Mary, a failed child, is transformed through the English, adult gaze into an acceptable child. By revealing who is given the authority to use the adult gaze, the thesis connects the adult-child dynamic with national and imperial discourse of early twentieth-century England. An examination of the meanings of food and air in the mental and physical transformations of the two children is also included. The narrative use of food and air is studied for its support of imperial values and discourses, as seen in the difference between Mary and Colin’s transformed bodies and attitudes. This reveals the ways in which the expectations of the two children differ: while Mary merely becomes more pleasing, Colin comes to embody hope for his community at Misselthwaite Manor. This, I argue, demonstrates that the novel’s primary concern is not Mary but Colin. It is Colin who, like the Lost Boys in Peter and Wendy, is freighted with the responsibility of representing the English nation and its future.
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    After language: Alain Badiou and the linguistic turn
    Eade, Peter ( 2011)
    This thesis aims to explore whether and how theorists in the humanities today can talk about truth and universality after the critical and linguistic turns in philosophy. To approach this problem it examines the work of Alain Badiou, who explicitly seeks a theory of truth which is contemporary with these developments. Whether we are talking about analytic or continental philosophy, language came to dominate philosophical enquiry in the past century. In making the heretofore overlooked or obfuscated link between language and thought apparent, this put into question the nature and limits of reason, the autonomy of the knowing subject, and the representational or realist conception of truth. Moreover, it left in doubt the viability of philosophy itself (outside the perennial or self-effacing investigation of language) insofar as it seemed to rest on the solidity of these very tenets. For Badiou, the outcome of this trajectory is a pervasive sense of the finitude and limits of reason, and of the end or completion of philosophy. He seeks to reverse this by interrupting the linguistic turn with his own turn to mathematics. In particular, Badiou is able to discern in mathematics a mode of thought subtracted from its linguistic or finite determination, and able to grasp the real in a way unaccounted for by critical or linguistic philosophy. On this basis (the separation of thought from language or finitude as evidenced in mathematics) Badiou develops a theory of truth as infinite and eternal, whilst nonetheless realised in and through language. In this way, Badiou’s thought aims to account for the linguistic turn, and for critical philosophy more generally, whilst nonetheless subverting them internally. This leaves us with a compelling and original notion of truth, and of the role of truths in historical change, and in addition resituates philosophy as not so much the discoverer of truths, but their standard-bearer and compiler.