Date of Award

8-2021

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Ph.D.

Organizational Unit

College of Arts Humanities and Social Sciences, English and Literary Arts

First Advisor

Joanna Howard

Keywords

Creative writing, Fiction

Abstract

The Days Beyond Recall is a dissertation project comprised of two parts. Part One consists of a creative submission titled, The Days Beyond Recall. The book is about a character, Amelia, who returns to the region where she was born to confront the discrepancy between the person she aspired to be, leaving her home and extreme poverty to pursue a career in the visual arts, and the person that she has become twenty years later. The central setting of the narrative is a seemingly abandoned house in the middle of the foothills of the Arkansas Ozark Mountains and a nearby fictional town of Bear Springs. Themes include conduct of life, solitude, ecological crisis, identity, economic oppression, and sustainability issues.

Part Two is comprised of a critical component entitled, “What Praise Be A Flea: paradox and multeity in Moby Dick.” The essay situates Melville’s novel in the tradition of literary paradox from Classical paradoxographies to Early Modern scholars such as Robert Burton and Thomas Browne who utilize rhetorical paradox navigate theological and political contradictions. The essay seeks to situate Melville’s use of paradox in Moby Dick as a strategy to reconcile the tensions between the scientific impulse of objectification of whales through description and dissection, and the Romantic idea of subjectivity of whales who exist as examples of multeity in unity. Authors referenced include Chris Baldick, Sir Thomas Browne, Rosalie Colie, Lorrain Datson, Denise Gigante, Herman Melville, Katherine Park, Robert Milder, Guiseppe Olmi, David Reynolds, Laurie Robertson-Loran and Hayden White.

Publication Statement

Copyright is held by the author. This work may only be accessed by members of the University of Denver community. The work is provided by permission of the author for individual research purposes only and may not be further copied or distributed. User is responsible for all copyright compliance.

Rights Holder

Rowland Saifi

Provenance

Received from author

File Format

application/pdf

Language

en

File Size

237 pgs

Discipline

Creative writing

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