School of Culture and Communication - Theses
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ItemThe environment in English versions of the Grimms' and Hans Christian Andersen's fairy tale literature, 1823–1899( 2016)This dissertation explores the intersections between literature and environmental history in nineteenth-century English versions of Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm and Hans Christian Andersen’s fairy tale literature. While the success of the Grimms’ and Andersen’s fairy tale literature in England can be attributed to the inclusion of Christian principles, the privileging of individualism, the omission of licentious content and the focalisation of child protagonists, this dissertation argues that the tales were also valued for presenting an environmental ethos. English versions of the Grimms’ and Andersen’s fairy tales relayed anthropocentric ideas about nature which competed with a developing sense of environmentalism during a period of rapid environmental change. While these tales idealised the tremendous possibilities offered by the environment, nature is not prioritised above human interest; rather, these versions effectively highlight humanity’s destructive disposition by disempowering female and animal characters. By focusing on depictions of nature during a century of environmental devastation, this thesis contributes to our understanding of humanity’s relationship with the natural world as relayed in literary texts.
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Item(Re-)examining Blank Fiction: an excerpt from Barely Anything, a novel & Sex, narcissism and disconnection in Australia and the United States( 2016)(Re-)Examining Blank Fiction: Sex, Narcissism and Disconnection in Australia and the United States analyses works of ‘Blank Fiction’ from Australia and the United States within a selection of novels, including: Less Than Zero (1985) by Bret Easton Ellis, Loaded (1995) by Christos Tsiolkas, Rohypnol (2007) by Andrew Hutchinson, The Delivery Man (2008) by Joe McGinniss Jr., and Snake Bite (2014) by Christie Thompson. It examines the use of images drawn from celebrity and lifestyle magazines, music videos, advertising, pornography, television, and Hollywood cinema and argues that these novels co-opt images of mass culture in an effort to critique contemporary social practices, values, and lifestyle. Additionally, this dissertation provides an excerpt of a novel entitled Barely Anything. Barely Anything, like other Blank Fiction novels, details the social practices of a small group of young adults, addressing themes of sex, boredom and privilege on both sides of Melbourne’s Yarra River.
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ItemComplex conformities: Tibetan women's life writing and the en-gendering of national history in Exile( 2016)This thesis examines the ways in which the life writing of Tibetan women in exile negotiates the place of gender in the (re)writing of Tibetan history, within the larger project of ideological nation building. Located at the intersection of literary, cultural and historical studies, this study is concerned with the alternative histories contained within women’ s life stories and their relation to ‘ official’ Tibetan national history and the structures of power that maintain the gendered nature of the historical archive in the Tibetan exile community. Engaging questions of gender, nationalism and life writing through the lens of postcolonial feminism, I use a historically contextualized close-textual analysis to show how five selected exile Tibetan women’ s life narratives present previously neglected national histories that both challenge and uphold the dominant exile political history of Tibet during the first half of the twentieth century. This research project is thus also an inquiry into our understanding of what constitutes Tibetan national history and the possibility of transforming the Tibetan historical archive, within which women and their histories have mostly remained hidden from view.
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ItemFemale desire and agency in selected short stories by Lorrie Moore & Thrill: short stories( 2016)This dissertation employs Simone de Beauvoir’s and Jessica Benjamin’s theories of female subjectivity to perform a gynocritical feminist exploration of women’s desire and agency as depicted in selected short stories by Lorrie Moore. Examining Moore’s short stories ‘You’re Ugly, Too’ (Like Life 67–91), ‘Willing’ (Birds of America 5–25), ‘Two Boys’ (Like Life 3–19) and ‘Amahl and the Night Visitors: A Guide to the Tenor of Love’ (Self-Help 97–116), the thesis aims to discuss the ways in which Moore’s stories call into question both the objectification of women under patriarchy, and the impact that this objectification has on female subjectivity, desire and agency. It is my hypothesis that, key to Moore’s critique of the objectification of women, is the portrayal in her short fiction of straight women whose complex romantic and sexual encounters with men compromise their sense of themselves as subjects capable of desire and agency. My research attempts to show that Moore’s stories comment on the often-compromised desire and agency of women under patriarchy, and can be considered creative solutions to the question of how short fiction might function to broach the complexities of female subjectivity. The creative component of the dissertation, Thrill, comprises seventeen short stories that explore female desire and agency. Thrill responds to Moore’s work, and to the thinking of Beauvoir and Benjamin, by depicting young heterosexual women grappling with issues of desire, agency, and subjectivity. These stories hinge on the idea that female subjectivity is controlled and negated by a patriarchal sexual politics which is at its most potent in the interpersonal sexual arena.