Master of Arts, The Ohio State University, 1925, Graduate School

Committee: Not Provided (Other) Subjects:

Master of Arts, The Ohio State University, 1922, Graduate School

Committee: Not Provided (Other) Subjects:

Master of Arts, The Ohio State University, 1956, Graduate School

Committee: Not Provided (Other) Subjects:

Doctor of Philosophy, Case Western Reserve University, 0, English

In this dissertation, I consider a range of texts from the nineteenth century including novels, personal essays, and diaries in which authors attempt to narrate experiences of illness in light of the shifting cultural perceptions of how the physical body and the concept of “self” relate to each other. The Diary of Alice James, Robert Louis Stevenson's “Ordered South,” Harriet Martineau's Life in the Sick-Room, and Henry James's The Wings of the Dove are the main texts analyzed. In each of these examples, I examine the ways that authors compose texts to understand the self alongside the “nerves and fibres” of bodily lived experience. Of primary interest to this dissertation is considering how the texts I examine can be fruitfully analyzed when concepts gleaned from the realm of medical humanities are applied to illness stories. This is a necessary intervention because much of the recent work in the broader field of medical humanities seeks to present illness narratives as artifacts of patient experiences that can be approached as acts of testimony or as evidence of therapeutic exercises. The primary concept that I rely on throughout my dissertation is the “corporeal gap” taken from the work of one of the founders of the practice of Narrative Medicine, Dr. Rita Charon. I use this concept as my way of accounting for some of the ways the texts I examine invent approaches to the difficult work of talking about how sickness disrupts the relationship between bodies and selves. The “corporeal gap,” functions as both feature and analytical tool throughout my dissertation. Primarily, I use the corporeal gap as an interpretive tool that allows me to attend to the various ways the texts I examine deal with the interruptive and disruptive experience of illness.

Committee: Kimberly Emmons (Committee Chair); Erin Lamb (Committee Member); Athena Vrettos (Committee Member); Kurt Koenigsberger (Committee Member) Subjects: British and Irish Literature; Literature; Rhetoric

Master of Arts, Miami University, 2008, English

This thesis explores the function of iconic literary characters in late-Victorian gothic romance as expressed through the contemporary debates they embody as narrative types. Chapter 1 examines the paradoxical position of the Victorian gentleman's public identity through a reading of Robert Louis Stevenson's Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Chapter 2 analyzes the relationship between Sherlock Holmes's position on the social periphery and the tale of imperial corruption he exposes in Arthur Conan Doyle's The Sign of Four. Chapter 3 discusses the dandy's ambiguous moral state as a product of economic and cultural changes among wealthier residents in London's West End that were connected to debates about their group's role in relation to charity, consumerism, and culture. These findings suggest characters that are often read as personifying complex literary aspirations may also be approached productively as vessels that are capable of addressing difficult issues on innocuous terms.

Committee: Susan Morgan PhD (Committee Chair); Mary Jean Corbett PhD (Committee Member); Madelyn Detloff PhD (Committee Member) Subjects: English literature