Research master thesis | Literary Studies (research) (MA)
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This study examines de Digitale Stad, or the Digital City, a pioneering virtual community in the Netherlands (1994-2001), as a metaphorical urban space. Drawing from urban theory, play theory and...Show moreThis study examines de Digitale Stad, or the Digital City, a pioneering virtual community in the Netherlands (1994-2001), as a metaphorical urban space. Drawing from urban theory, play theory and media theory, this thesis analyzes how users navigated and positioned themselves in the virtual realm. By focusing on DDS and the early Web, it sheds light on the Digital City's significance as an experimental space reflecting and influencing the evolving Dutch internet landscape.Show less
Research master thesis | Literary Studies (research) (MA)
open access
This study examines de Digitale Stad, or the Digital City, a pioneering virtual community in the Netherlands (1994-2001), as a metaphorical urban space. Drawing from urban theory, play theory and...Show moreThis study examines de Digitale Stad, or the Digital City, a pioneering virtual community in the Netherlands (1994-2001), as a metaphorical urban space. Drawing from urban theory, play theory and media theory, this thesis analyzes how users navigated and positioned themselves in the virtual realm. By focusing on DDS and the early Web, it sheds light on the Digital City's significance as an experimental space reflecting and influencing the evolving Dutch internet landscape.Show less
Research master thesis | Literary Studies (research) (MA)
open access
My thesis explores the ways in which Eiichiro Oda’s successful manga series One Piece uses cultural references to prevent singular storytelling. It studies the incorporation, adaptation, and...Show moreMy thesis explores the ways in which Eiichiro Oda’s successful manga series One Piece uses cultural references to prevent singular storytelling. It studies the incorporation, adaptation, and transformation of popular cultural elements in the characters Donquixote Doflamingo and Usopp. This process highlights the continuous flow of cultural capital, which in turn opens up and acknowledges the plurality and diversity of perspectives, voices, and narratives.Show less
Research master thesis | Literary Studies (research) (MA)
open access
2023-08-30T00:00:00Z
In this thesis I use two nineteenth-century novels (Elizabeth Gaskell's North and South [1854] and Émile Zola's Au Bonheur des Dames [1883]) to analyze how novelistic things, depicted in their...Show moreIn this thesis I use two nineteenth-century novels (Elizabeth Gaskell's North and South [1854] and Émile Zola's Au Bonheur des Dames [1883]) to analyze how novelistic things, depicted in their stages of production and exchange, represent the contradictory nature of life under industrial capitalism. In my readings of the two novels I emphasize how, in a new world of industrial production and conspicuous consumption, new ways of relating to things emerged. These things were no longer products of the household or made to measure, as the nineteenth century saw an increase in factory-produced, mass-market goods whose bonds with their human makers and owners were deeply shaped by the new economic system. It is these bonds – complicated, contradictory and sometimes puzzling – that my thesis focuses on.Show less
Research master thesis | Literary Studies (research) (MA)
open access
2023-08-30T00:00:00Z
When we read a book of history, we produce a mental image of the past we read about. That mental image is informed by the text. Sometimes, when we read a book of history, the text is so vivid, the...Show moreWhen we read a book of history, we produce a mental image of the past we read about. That mental image is informed by the text. Sometimes, when we read a book of history, the text is so vivid, the descriptions so penetrating, that we are left with more than an image: emotion, thought, realisation. The text has affected us. This act of communication, the communication of ‘historical experience,' is the focus point of this thesis. To explore this fascinating concept, the main case study is Johan Huizinga's Herfsttij der Middeleeuwen. The choice for this work is twofold: one, Johan Huizinga is the first person to introduce the concept of historical experience, which he called historische sensatie; two, Herfsttij der Middeleeuwen is a work of history known for its affective use of language. Focussing on those textual elements that drive historical experience, this paper will explore how Herfsttij der Middeleeuwen is able to convey this affect of the (imagined) past. Further, the Dutch source text will be compared to the three English translations to see how historical experience transfers in a translation process.Show less
Research master thesis | Literary Studies (research) (MA)
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In popular culture, the European Middle Ages (ca. 500-1500) are commonly portrayed as a culturally homogenous time period in which the supremacy of the white, heterosexual male is taken for granted...Show moreIn popular culture, the European Middle Ages (ca. 500-1500) are commonly portrayed as a culturally homogenous time period in which the supremacy of the white, heterosexual male is taken for granted. This makes the period attractive to the far-right, whose members view the Middle Ages as an alternative to our modern, multicultural times. In the past, Medieval imagery and rhetoric have consequently been appropriated by groups and individuals ranging from the Ku Klux Klan and the Nazis to Anders Breivik, the Charlottesville protesters and Vladimir Putin. In this thesis, Guus van der Peet examines how the appropriation of history has taken place in the Dutch Language Area. He analyses four case studies: 1) an antisemitic sequel to the Middle Dutch classic Vanden Vos Reinarde; 2) the academic publications of Jan de Vries, a national-socialist professor in Leiden; 3) two Youtube videos from the Flemish far-right student association Schild & Vrienden; 4) two speeches by alt-right politician Thierry Baudet. In the end, Van der Peet concludes that there is a significant difference between the Flemish and Dutch appropriation of the past. Whereas the Flemish far-right repeatedly references the Middle Ages, the Dutch far-right deviates from the international tradition by instead appropriating the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.Show less
Research master thesis | Literary Studies (research) (MA)
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This thesis examines the depiction of solitude in the novels Caleb Williams, Frankenstein, and A Tale of Two Cities, and the relationship between these depictions and eighteenth- and nineteenth...Show moreThis thesis examines the depiction of solitude in the novels Caleb Williams, Frankenstein, and A Tale of Two Cities, and the relationship between these depictions and eighteenth- and nineteenth-century discourses on solitude. In particular, this thesis shows the tension between philosophies of sociability and sympathy, such as Rousseau’s and Hume’s, and the moral dimension of solitude. While previous research has examined solitude by focusing on either Romantic solitude or on loneliness as an imposed condition by social forces, this thesis aims to investigate the moral value of solitude, and its relation to social criticism. Taking a cultural materialist approach, this thesis examines cultural discourses surrounding solitude and offers close readings of the novels to argue that these novels present sociability as a divisive force in society, and solitude as both necessary to foster a connection to humanity, and a necessary condition for justice and morality. The privileging of solitude over sociability shows how these novels respond to the emphasis of Enlightenment philosophy on sympathy and similarity and suggest an alternative foundation for justice and morality in situations where sociability and similarity are insufficient.Show less
Research master thesis | Literary Studies (research) (MA)
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This thesis examines a possible contribution to the narratological analyses as carried out within the field of Law and Literature by both signalling narrative speaker functions in analyses by James...Show moreThis thesis examines a possible contribution to the narratological analyses as carried out within the field of Law and Literature by both signalling narrative speaker functions in analyses by James Boyd White (1990) and Jeanne Gaakeer (1998) and locating these them in case law. The assumption that lies at the core of this thesis is that with the help of systematic analysis, it is possible to distinguish between four different speaker functions that manifest themselves in written case law: an authoritative author of legal decisions (chapter II), a narrator of the verdict (chapter III), characters that take part in the legal process and that are reflected upon in the judgment (chapter IV) and the text of the judgment itself (chapter V). These four possible speaking entities need to be disentangled to understand what authority or authorities we see when analysing judgments and to systematically conduct comparative research within the field of law and literature.Show less
Research master thesis | Literary Studies (research) (MA)
open access
This thesis explores Woolf’s relationship with eugenics, illness, and disability, a relationship that is characterized by ambiguity and contradictions, and has divided the critics in their...Show moreThis thesis explores Woolf’s relationship with eugenics, illness, and disability, a relationship that is characterized by ambiguity and contradictions, and has divided the critics in their assessment of Woolf’s work in relation to disability and illness. This thesis is an intervention in this debate by analyzing how Woolf conceives of and conceptualizes notions of illness and disability. This thesis further aims to investigate whether she can be considered a proto-crip theorist. It argues that Woolf’s ambiguity and contradiction in her attitudes towards disability allow for and encourage a crip theoretical reading, and that ultimately, Woolf can certainly be called a nascent crip theorist in her rejection of bodily normativity and in her celebration of non-normative bodyminds, as well as in the ways in which she deconstructs ableist ideologies. The result is a thesis that offers us significant insights into how Woolf in particular and modernist art, literature, and culture in general, conceived of disability, but it also allows us to trace the continuities and differences between attitudes toward disability during the early twentieth century and these attitudes in the present day.Show less
Research master thesis | Literary Studies (research) (MA)
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The German Schlager of the 1920s is often disregarded as a medium for entertainment purposes only. This thesis shows that it was also used as a medium for expressing critique.
Research master thesis | Literary Studies (research) (MA)
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In this thesis I want to create an intersectional, queer intervention in animal studies taking previous animal, critical race studies and queer theory intersections – ecofeminism, material feminism...Show moreIn this thesis I want to create an intersectional, queer intervention in animal studies taking previous animal, critical race studies and queer theory intersections – ecofeminism, material feminism and queer ecology – into account within the context of literary studies and cultural analysis. Therefore, I want to ask: In what way do intersectional alliances – both theoretical and artistic – formed from an animal and queer studies perspective, affirmatively (re)imagine (material) queer intimacies human-nonhuman relations to contribute to an nonanthropocentric framework? To answer this question, I want to employ the term/concept queer as both a critical and productive tool that enables transgression of disciplines and even the academy itself, into the material reality of non-human animals to examine human-animal relations and intimacies.Show less
Research master thesis | Literary Studies (research) (MA)
open access
Valeria Luiselli, in her book-length essay, Los niños perdidos, uses an immigration questionnaire to structure her story of the refugee crisis taking place across the US-Mexico border. In Examen de...Show moreValeria Luiselli, in her book-length essay, Los niños perdidos, uses an immigration questionnaire to structure her story of the refugee crisis taking place across the US-Mexico border. In Examen de mi padre, Jorge Volpi uses the schema of his father’s body to structure his “autopsy”—not only of his father but also of the Mexican nation in the depth of an existential crisis. This thesis studies these two pieces of literary non-fiction through the lens of teaching and the interrogative mood in the “Ithaca” episode of James Joyce’s Ulysses. In “Ithaca,” a question and answer structure subverts the Roman Catholic catechism and its drive toward a single truth, as well as the scientific objectivism which the questions and answers themselves mimic stylistically. To what extent does the question and answer structure subvert the scientific and political discourse in Volpi’s essay in 10 lessons and Luiselli’s essay in 40 questions? I borrow from the methodology of secondary language teaching to explore and order the different types of questions and their linguistic relevance to literary style. How do Joyce’s experiences as a language teacher, using the interrogative mood as a teaching method, influence his literary use of interrogatives? The grammatical progression of the interrogative mood serves as an organizing principle for my own research questions. I argue that Luiselli’s use of the interrogative mood, like Joyce’s in “Ithaca” and Volpi’s in Examen de mi padre evades the determinacy and conclusion of an ending as well as any purely objectivist approach to its subject.Show less
