This thesis deals with the topical themes of home, homelessness, exile, and migration as explored in James Joyce's novel Ulysses (1922). The aim is to analyze the manner in which Joyce has...Show moreThis thesis deals with the topical themes of home, homelessness, exile, and migration as explored in James Joyce's novel Ulysses (1922). The aim is to analyze the manner in which Joyce has presented the various perspectives on these notions, and to what extent these themes may be connected to the characters in the text, with an emphasis on the two male leading characters, Leopold Bloom and Stephen Dedalus. The thesis takes an original approach by using as its framework the sociological theories of Georg Simmel (1858-1918), a contemporary of Joyce.Show less
This thesis discusses Victorian gender roles in Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre, George Eliot’s Middlemarch and Bram Stoker’s Dracula. The Victorian Era had strict ideas about gender roles, which can...Show moreThis thesis discusses Victorian gender roles in Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre, George Eliot’s Middlemarch and Bram Stoker’s Dracula. The Victorian Era had strict ideas about gender roles, which can be seen in the literature from that time. Jane Eyre is the earliest novel that is discussed and it presents a complex view of masculinity and femininity. It might seem, at first glance, that the characters are mostly conforming to the gender roles, but it becomes clear that the lines between both genders are blurred. This is also the case in Middlemarch, where meddling wives and insecure husbands destroy their own marriages and happiness. This nuanced view of both male and female characters defies the rigid gender roles of the time. Dracula, on the other hand, is focussed on femininity rather than masculinity. Manliness is still important in the novel, but the main focus is on the transformation women undergo when they are turned into vampires. The perfect woman turns into an evil seductress when she is bitten by Dracula, and her misdeeds are harshly punished. This black and white view of femininity, or gender in general, is absent in the other novels.Show less
Seamus Heaney’s Human Chain, published in 2010, is still in the early stages of being placed in relation to the rest of the poet’s work. However, it seems that in the immediate reception by critics...Show moreSeamus Heaney’s Human Chain, published in 2010, is still in the early stages of being placed in relation to the rest of the poet’s work. However, it seems that in the immediate reception by critics, there has already emerged a consensus regarding two aspects of the collection; it is clear that the poems are written in the shadow of death, but, at the same time, that the poet is in a lifeaffirming mood. For instance, in his essay on Heaney’s appropriation of Virgil in Human Chain, Stephen Heiny refers to the “insistent, urgent vitality” of the collection while acknowledging that “death is the central theme” (305) of the central poem, “Route 110” (HC 48-59), and Colm Tóibín observes an “an active urge to capture the living breath of things” that accompanies this “book of shades and memories”. However, we should not equate this positivity with optimism; instead, we should place it in the context of Václav Havel’s definition of hope (quoted in RP 4-5), which Heaney understands – in his words during an interview with Paul Muldoon – as follows; “it isn’t grounded in the notion that everything will turn out well ... hope means that you believe something is worth working for” (New Yorker 40:50-41:10). In this thesis, I will analyse Human Chain through this concept of hope – cautious, realistic but deeper and more profound than optimism – as a way of explaining the curious combination that critics have identified in the collection: death and the vitality of life. By offering close readings of individual poems, I will demonstrate how “hope” underpins as well as produces this collection.Show less
