This thesis examines the potency of film dialogue as an articulator of fear in Robert Eggers’ The Witch (2015) and The Lighthouse (2019). Using extant studies on film dialogue as its groundwork,...Show moreThis thesis examines the potency of film dialogue as an articulator of fear in Robert Eggers’ The Witch (2015) and The Lighthouse (2019). Using extant studies on film dialogue as its groundwork, this thesis employs a close reading of the dialogue in Robert Eggers’ films. Ultimately, it argues that Eggers’ films utilise dialogue in order to articulate their contextual fears, rather than the visual language that predominates the horror genre.Show less
This thesis analyses how the character and stories written by Arthur Conan Doyle have been adapted in season three and four of the BBC’s Sherlock and how the character of the detective develops...Show moreThis thesis analyses how the character and stories written by Arthur Conan Doyle have been adapted in season three and four of the BBC’s Sherlock and how the character of the detective develops throughout these two seasons. This analysis was performed through the lenses of both Adaptation Theory (Hutcheon, Joyce, Kline) and Character Studies (Eder, Jannadis & Schneider, Redmond), in order to achieve a complete picture as to how the character of Sherlock Holmes was adapted from Doyle’s stories and further developed for the television series. This study, first critically explores the stories and the character of Holmes in Arthur Conan Doyle’s stories and how the detective handles the situations in which he finds himself as well as how he interacts with other characters. The second chapter studies the development of the character of Sherlock throughout both seasons of the series, with an emphasis on season three, as well as explore the cases Sherlock gets involved in, since they are starting to bleed into his personal life. The third chapter focuses on season four of BBC Sherlock, in which the character of Sherlock and his relationships completely overshadow the cases, shifting the series towards the genre of melodrama. The series is compared to the content of Doyle's stories throughout all chapter in order to explore how the creators of the television series adapted the Victorian Holmes to a twenty-first century Sherlock.Show less
Robert Heinlein is not only one of the most influential science fiction writers of the twentieth century, he is also one of the most controversial science fiction writers of this century. Heinlein...Show moreRobert Heinlein is not only one of the most influential science fiction writers of the twentieth century, he is also one of the most controversial science fiction writers of this century. Heinlein implemented his political convictions into his work, evolving through his career from a socialist viewpoint to a libertarian – arguably even anarchistic – viewpoint. This thesis tracks this development through a critical analysis of three novels from the early, middle, and late stages of his career. In Beyond this Horizon, which is a reaction to the Great Depression in the United States, Heinlein describes a utopian society based on a socialist economy in which all problems of the twentieth century are solved. In Starship Troopers, which is Heinlein’s response to President Eisenhower’s decision regarding the end of nuclear testing, he explores the ideology of a society which promotes individual freedom, arguing that freedom and responsibility ultimately leads to patriotism. The third novel, The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, is Heinlein’s libertarian retelling of the American revolution and is the culmination of his political development from socialist to libertarian ideology.Show less
A strong argument can be made that both Robert Louis Stevenson and Arthur Machen were aware of contemporary degeneracy theories as formulated by naturalist and biologist Darwin and criminologist...Show moreA strong argument can be made that both Robert Louis Stevenson and Arthur Machen were aware of contemporary degeneracy theories as formulated by naturalist and biologist Darwin and criminologist and physician Lombroso and of contemporary dual brain theories as formulated by neuroanatomist and physiologist Franz Joseph Gall and psychologist Arthur Ladbroke Wigan. Stevenson incorporated these theories in his novel The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1886) and Machen incorporated these theories in his novel The Great God Pan (1890). Both authors incorporated scientific theories in their novel as a tool to demonstrate their resent towards the moral dimension of Victorian science, which was used by scientists to attribute mental and physiological aspects of an individual with ideological constructs such as good and evil. Both authors also demonstrated that the scientific discourse of the Victorian age upheld not only the dominant moral framework, but also the dominant gender ideology.Show less
This thesis analyses the function and meaning of the depiction of landscapes in Ann Radcliffe’s The Mysteries of Udolpho in relation to contemporary paintings, the emergence of the Gothic as a...Show moreThis thesis analyses the function and meaning of the depiction of landscapes in Ann Radcliffe’s The Mysteries of Udolpho in relation to contemporary paintings, the emergence of the Gothic as a genre, and the notions of the picturesque, the beautiful and the sublime.Show less
