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, 2017, EDU Teaching and Learning

Children with disabilities began to appear with increasing frequency as characters in children's books following the United States Congress's passage in 1975 of the Education for All Handicapped Children Act, the precursor to the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. Researchers have done important work over the past forty years by examining these books while thinking about the effects that this literature can have on its readers and their understanding of disability and disabled people, addressing elements including characters, plot, and representations of specific disabilities, pointing out problematic tropes and titles. In this dissertation, I built on this research and brought together concepts in rhetorical narrative theory, specifically narrative progression, and disability studies in order to offer an even more in-depth analysis of the designs and effects of this corpus of children's books. By engaging in a close reading of 178 picturebooks featuring disabled characters from a rhetorical narrative theory approach, my research illuminated how the rhetorical choices that an author makes in both her text and illustrations have consequences for the way that disability is presented to her readers. Specifically, my dissertation undertook a two-step analysis of those rhetorical choices. The first step was to read the books on their own terms and the second was to assess those terms through the lens of disability studies. Each of my five chapters examined the use of one kind of narrative progression, centered around one or more disabled characters—and occasionally non-disabled characters— attending to how this progression situated its readers ethically and affectively. Each chapter also assessed the potential effects, positive and negative, on the reader's understanding of disability, its contexts, and its consequences. I argued that readers need to be more cognizant of authorial purpose, because while many authors attempt to create narratives about (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Barbara Kiefer (Advisor); James Phelan (Committee Member); Amy Shuman (Committee Member) Subjects: American Literature; Asian Literature; British and Irish Literature; Canadian Literature; Early Childhood Education; Education; Language Arts; Literature; Special Education; Teaching

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2005, English

This study explores the use of footnotes in fictional narratives. Footnotes and endnotes fall under the category of what Gerard Genette has labeled paratexts, or the elements that sit above or external to the text of the story. In some narratives, however, notes and other paratexts are incorporated into the story as part of the internal narrative frame. I call this particular type of paratext an artificial paratext. Much like traditional paratexts, artificial paratexts are often seen as ancillary to the text. However, artificial paratexts can play a significant role in the narrative dynamic by extending the boundaries of the narrative frame, introducing new heuristic models for interpretation, and offering alternative narrative threads for the reader to unravel. In addition, artificial paratexts provide a useful lens through which to explore current theories of narrative progression, character development, voice, and reliability. In the first chapter, I develop a typology of paratexts, showing that paratexts have been used to deliver factual information, interpretive or analytical glosses, and discursive narratives in their own right. Paratexts can originate from a number of possible sources, including allographic sources (editors, translators, publishers) and autographic sources—the author, writing as author, fictitious editor, or one or more of the narrators. The second chapter shows that artificial paratexts can have significant effects on narrative progression. Building on the work of James Phelan and Peter Rabinowitz, I show that artificial paratexts introduce tensions and instabilities that complicate narrative development and force readers to rethink their expectations about narrative conventions. In the next two chapters, I look closely at two complex uses of artificial paratexts, one in the short fiction of Jorge Luis Borges and the other in Vladimir Nabokov's novel, Pale Fire . In the concluding chapter of the dissertation, I posit a number of extensions t (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: James Phelan (Advisor) Subjects:

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2018, EDU Teaching and Learning

Despite the long standing association between children's literature and fantasy, most critical discussions on the genre have focused—especially from an educational perspective—on whether or not fantasy is attractive, engaging, and, most important of all, appropriate for young readers. Though recent years have seen an increased interest on the genre from a more text- or content-oriented perspective, there are still relatively few studies focused on the narrative and rhetorical strategies of fantasy, how the fantastic elements of the story are presented, and the way the reader is invited to negotiate and ultimately reflect on the relation between reality and fantasy. The main purpose of this dissertation is to explore how the protagonists' transit between worlds, characteristic of what Farah Mendlesohn calls the portal-quest fantasy, and featured in many children's books, defines both the overall design of the text and the reader's experience with the fantastic. Contrary to Mendlesohn herself, who finds the rhetoric of the form inherently problematic, emphasizing the way the fantasy world is presented, for both the characters and, on a different level, the reader, imposes an authoritative interpretation of the world, reducing the possibility of alternate or contradictory interpretations; I specifically seek to show how the transit between worlds itself serves as an effective rhetorical strategy to invite the reader into the world of the story, and increase our sense of estrangement and wonder, while proposing a serious ethical and metafictional reflection on the fantastic. In order to accomplish this, my study proposes an alternative approach to the form, using some of the key concepts or principles of rhetorical narrative theory developed in various works by James Phelan and Peter J. Rabinowitz, in particular the notion of narrative progression. As I argue in the first part of my study, by expanding the traditional notion of plot to include the interaction bet (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Barbara Kiefer (Advisor); Linda Parsons (Committee Member); James Phelan (Committee Member) Subjects: American Literature; British and Irish Literature; Education; Literature; Modern Literature