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

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2024, English

This dissertation probes into three contemporary fictional stories about dementia, two of which are not traditionally seen as examples of the genre of “illness narratives.” The first of these two (Edwidge Danticat's “Sunrise/Sunset”) is an intergenerational story about a mother and daughter pair, and the second (Alice Munro's “The Bear Came over the Mountain) is a redemption story of a husband whose wife becomes afflicted with dementia. The third story, Lisa Genova's Still Alice is a proper “dementia narrative,” but previous discussions of it have focused on its representation of the progress of Alice's dementia rather than on her exercise of agency. By analyzing the three primary texts in a fashion of literary analysis, I not only contend that narrative resources of focalization, progression, and intersubjectivity can be employed to make moving stories about illnesses such as dementia but demonstrate they can also serve as resources for dementia narrative identities' (re)formation during the illness's progress, with or without the help of other agents. By highlighting the insights into dementia identity offered by these stories—and by literary fiction more generally—this study can benefit specific groups of actual audiences such as professional and family caregivers, patient advocates, and narrative medicine scholars. In this way, the study can enrich critical conversations about dementia within the medical humanities, whether those conversations focus on its nature, its treatment, or its effects on caregivers and loved ones.

Committee: James Phelan (Advisor); Hannibal Hamlin (Committee Member); Angus Fletcher (Committee Member) Subjects: Literature; Medical Ethics

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2023, EDU Teaching and Learning

This dissertation aims to expand how LCYA scholars think about and use narrative theory in the context of YA literature. It also aims to demonstrate the literary quality and merit of YA literature featuring gay characters, advocating for its uses in classrooms. To achieve these aims, I will conduct narrative analyses of three contemporary, award-winning books of young adult fiction featuring gay characters: Benjamin Alire Saenz's Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe (2012); David Levithan's Two Boys Kissing (2013); and Adam Silvera's They Both Die at the End (2017). Specifically, I will use narrative theory to identify, analyze, and discuss various narrative elements and techniques in the three texts, using the process and findings to model specific interventions in LCYA research. The study finds that these books' narrative situations create distinctive themes and rhetorical dynamics, implicating their implied readers and authorial readers uniquely; however, their broader narratives and rhetorical situations converge to articulate a general rhetorical purpose of LGBTQ+ YAL, too. As examples of LGBTQ+ YAL, these books suggest the wider genre can and should be defined by its rhetorical situation, in particular a rhetorical purpose these three narratives seem to share: loving the implied reader and authorial reader. As discussed in Chapters Three, Four, and Five, these narratives as examples of books featuring gay characters and of LGBTQ+ YAL are purportedly defined by the sexual and romantic orientations of their narrators and/or characters. Instead, my framework and broader analysis show that these books actually define love, family/community, and connection as the central themes and purposes of their rhetorical situations and that they articulate them in rhetorically and ideologically robust ways. This re-emphasis on love, family/community, and connection as the books' major rhetorical themes and purposes should inform how LCYA researchers and (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Caroline Clark (Advisor); Michelle Abate (Committee Member); Lisa Pinkerton (Committee Member) Subjects: Composition; Curricula; Early Childhood Education; Education; Elementary Education; Language Arts; Library Science; Literacy; Literature; Pedagogy; Rhetoric; Secondary Education; Teacher Education

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2003, English

This study examines four narrative techniques in William Faulkner's fiction in order to accomplish two things: 1) see what applying contemporary narrative theory to Faulkner can tell us about his narratives; and 2) see how examining Faulkner's narratives can cause us to revise or extend concepts in narrative theory. In other words, the study establishes a recursive relationship between Faulkner's fiction and narrative theory, one in which each subject matter can illuminate the other. The four narrative techniques examined include shifts in focalization, shifts in voice, hypothetical narration, and representations of time. Each chapter examines background theory, gives examples of the technique, offers explication of the technique, and analyzes the technique's effects. The first chapter takes “Barn Burning” as its main example and looks at how to identify shifts in focalization (vision), develops a model of layers of focalization, and investigates their effects. Chapter two focuses on As I Lay Dying and “Old Man” and examines narrative voice, works at defining voice, distinguishes conventional markers of narrative voice from voice features, and explores the effect of narrative voice. The first two chapters in combination work to define the boundary between vision and voice. The third chapter looks at hypothetical narration. Of the three epistemic modes of narration, it is the uncertain form, and Faulkner makes extensive and innovative use of it particularly in my main example here, Absalom, Absalom!. The fourth chapter returns to “Barn Burning” and Absalom, Absalom! and examines Faulkner's portrayal of time. The effect of Faulkner's techniques suggest a temporal understanding similar to that of Henri Bergson: time is non-linear, more experiential than scientific. The conclusion suggests how the four techniques taken together contribute to an understanding of Faulkner's quite Platonic epistemology: perfect knowledge is ultimately unattainable, yet humanity continues t (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: James Phelan (Advisor) Subjects: