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)
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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)
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
Research master thesis | Literary Studies (research) (MA)
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This thesis aims to shed new light on the intersection between the Gawain cycle and its socio-political environment by focusing primarily on the monsters. By analysing the monsters in the...Show moreThis thesis aims to shed new light on the intersection between the Gawain cycle and its socio-political environment by focusing primarily on the monsters. By analysing the monsters in the narratives as cultural projections of a certain period, this thesis aims to gain insight into the feelings and anxieties that accompanied the tensions between the noble houses during the Wars of the Roses. The monsters in the narratives of the Sir Gawain Cycle challenge the Arthurian Court to reflect on different sides of nobility. As outsiders, or as ‘Others’, they try to warn the knights of the Round Table to change their values and beliefs, and they urge them to live by a type of nobility that is more focused on virtue instead of wealth and status. Each monstrous body presents a different flaw within the ideology of the Round Table, and in turn, comments upon real concerns and anxieties that existed in the late-fifteenth century border region.Show less
Research master thesis | Literary Studies (research) (MA)
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this thesis argues that alternative approaches outside of the dominant deconstructive model of trauma theory are in order to more comprehensively represent the (embodied) experience of trauma...Show morethis thesis argues that alternative approaches outside of the dominant deconstructive model of trauma theory are in order to more comprehensively represent the (embodied) experience of trauma amongst women in Western society. In chapter 1 I will start out by tracing the concept of trauma back to its origins. I will pay particular attention to the narratives emanating from the medical discourse surrounding hysteria and trauma, highlighting the paradoxical and problematic conceptualization of the female subject in psychoanalysis. Furthermore, I will show, taking Alias Grace as a case study, how psychoanalysis and the dominant model of trauma theory can be a fruitful epistemological tool when applied to trauma narratives, but also what its limitations are in the face of the female trauma. Chapter 2, then, will further examine the underlying cause of these limitations and the origin of the harmful narratives perpetuated within the trauma theory discourse by exploring the relationship between the phallogocentric nature of Western society and women’s place within it. It will demonstrate why the female experience of trauma warrants additional reflection and that, in some ways, it lies beyond the reaches of the dominant model. And finally, Chapter 3 will propose three alternative approaches that aim at providing a more inclusive account of the female trauma. All three approaches will be characterized by an emphasis on the embodied experience of trauma and treat the female body as a potential site of expression.Show less
Research master thesis | Literary Studies (research) (MA)
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Dutch Antillean writer Boeli van Leeuwen is strikingly absent in the study of Dutch postcolonial literature, despite his status as one of Dutch' most important Caribbean authors. Till this day,...Show moreDutch Antillean writer Boeli van Leeuwen is strikingly absent in the study of Dutch postcolonial literature, despite his status as one of Dutch' most important Caribbean authors. Till this day, only a few articles have been devoted to Van Leeuwen's oeuvre. In this thesis, I aim to formulate an answer to the question: in what way do Van Leeuwen's novels 'Schilden van leem' en 'Het teken van Jona' generate meaning? Why is it that 'plain facts' are insufficient to tackle these works? In my analysis I am proposing six possible readings that account for Van Leeuwen's novels that are overflowing with meaning. By studying their use of intertextuality, allegory, irony, Relation, metafiction and 'Caribbeanness,' I attempt to make the abundance productive that the reader encounters. In my conclusion I will argue that Van Leeuwen is ultimately reflecting on knowledge itself, since his writing constantly redirects the reader, without allowing a singular interpretation. The multiple voices, languages and traditions brought forth resist the monotonous and unambiguous discourse of the referential readings. Van Leeuwens fictional reality ultimately points towards itself and demonstrates the fiction hiding behind so-called plain facts.Show less
Research master thesis | Literary Studies (research) (MA)
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The tale of Peter Pan by J. M. Barrie (1860–1937) has found its way to a children's audience despite the tensions it elicits around the idea of childhood. After the novel "The Little White Bird" ...Show moreThe tale of Peter Pan by J. M. Barrie (1860–1937) has found its way to a children's audience despite the tensions it elicits around the idea of childhood. After the novel "The Little White Bird" (1902), where Peter appears for the first time, and its stage adaptation "Peter Pan" (1904), both explicitly intended for adults, Barrie arrived at his final version for children published in 1911, the novel "Peter and Wendy", through a tormented history of reworkings. My research aims at exploring the significance of Barrie’s constant reshaping of the Peter Pan materials in order to recast the story for a young audience. Moreover, I will investigate as to what extent the ambiguity and instability of the Peter Pan fictions have been tamed in its school and cinema adaptations. These adaptations have deployed strategies to counter Barrie’s rebellious attitude against the didacticism and pedagogic expectations which are conventionally associated with children’s literature. As will become clear in the following, Barrie challenged the traditional barriers between adults and children on many points. Nevertheless, Peter Pan has been singled out to become a cultural icon of children’s literature – hence, my central questions: How, exactly, did Peter Pan grow up into a children’s story? What conflicting discourses and ideologies concerning childhood may be seen to inform Barrie’s different versions of the Peter Pan story?Show less
Research master thesis | Literary Studies (research) (MA)
open access
2018-06-01T00:00:00Z
In this paper I approach the novel Distant Star (1996) by Roberto Bolaño (Chile, 1953-2003) with the goal of rendering visible the reflection and articulation that it undertakes of the fields of...Show moreIn this paper I approach the novel Distant Star (1996) by Roberto Bolaño (Chile, 1953-2003) with the goal of rendering visible the reflection and articulation that it undertakes of the fields of literature/poetics and life/politics. By means of the development of a theoretical and methodological framework mainly influenced by Mieke Bal and Jacques Rancière, I reach the conclusion that the novel offers an original contribution to the problem of political commitment in the Latin American intellectuals of the 20th century. I introduce the concepts of "poetics of juego", "doubling/mirroring" and "menardism".Show less
