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The shape of history

Descriptive

TypeOfResource
Text
TitleInfo (ID = T-1)
Title
The shape of history
SubTitle
literary form and the First World War
TitleInfo (ID = T-2); (type = alternative)
Title
Literary form and the First World War
Identifier
ETD_2911
Identifier (type = hdl)
http://hdl.rutgers.edu/1782.1/rucore10001600001.ETD.000056481
Language
LanguageTerm (authority = ISO639-2); (type = code)
eng
Genre (authority = marcgt)
theses
Subject (ID = SBJ-1); (authority = RUETD)
Topic
Literatures in English
Subject (ID = SBJ-2); (authority = ETD-LCSH)
Topic
World War, 1914-1918--Literature and the war, [revolution, etc.]
Subject (ID = SBJ-3); (authority = ETD-LCSH)
Topic
World War, 1914-1918--Historiography
Subject (ID = SBJ-4); (authority = ETD-LCSH)
Topic
Autobiographical fiction
Subject (ID = SBJ-5); (authority = ETD-LCSH)
Topic
Literary form
Abstract (type = abstract)
This dissertation argues that the literature of the First World War takes account of the epistemological crisis affecting historiographic discourse in the early twentieth century through experiments with literary form. Despite a lack of temporal distance, First World War writers understood themselves as witnesses to a crucial event and conceived of their work as both literature and history. These aspirations, however, were complicated by the fact that the writing of history in the early years of the twentieth century took place in the shadow of the crisis of historicism, the late-nineteenth-century debate between positivist (or objective) and relativist (or subjective) conceptions of historical knowledge. First World War literature reflects a complex historical sensibility that is always aware of the problematic nature of historical writing. The first part of my dissertation, which considers war novels and autobiographies, proposes that the crisis in historicism, intensified by the war, propelled a search for forms that legitimize subjective and partial historical representations of the war. The first chapter considers Rebecca West’s The Return of the Soldier, R.H. Mottram’s The Spanish Farm Trilogy, Ford Madox Ford’s Parade’s End, and Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway, and argues that the manipulation of perspective in the novel emphasizes the partial and subjective quality of both fictional and emerging historical representations of the war. The second chapter proposes that the autobiographical writing of the First World War adopts a failed conversion narrative that makes visible the difficulty of narrating personal and national history simultaneously. The latter two chapters of the dissertation explore works that renovate traditional literary forms to accommodate historiographic uncertainty. Thus, the third chapter evaluates the revisions of the implicit historical framework of allegory, whether Christian or cyclical, in Vernon Lee’s closet drama Satan the Waster, David Jones’s long poem In Parenthesis, and ee cummings’s The Enormous Room. The final chapter traces the emergence of a self-conscious strain in Louis Napoleon Parker’s wartime pageantry that eventually manifests itself in Noël Coward’s Cavalcade and Virginia Woolf’s Between the Acts. In each of these instances, formal innovation, whether distinctly modern or visibly indebted to literary tradition, enables the writing of history.
PhysicalDescription
Form (authority = gmd)
electronic resource
Extent
ix, 291 p. : ill.
InternetMediaType
application/pdf
InternetMediaType
text/xml
Note
Supplementary File: Figure 1
Note
Supplementary File: Figure 2
Note (type = degree)
Ph.D.
Note (type = bibliography)
Includes bibliographical references
Note (type = vita)
Includes vita
Note (type = statement of responsibility)
by Meghan Lau
Name (ID = NAME-1); (type = personal)
NamePart (type = family)
Lau
NamePart (type = given)
Meghan
NamePart (type = date)
1981-
Role
RoleTerm (authority = RULIB)
author
DisplayForm
Meghan Lau
Name (ID = NAME-2); (type = personal)
NamePart (type = family)
DeKoven
NamePart (type = given)
Marianne
Role
RoleTerm (authority = RULIB)
chair
Affiliation
Advisory Committee
DisplayForm
Marianne DeKoven
Name (ID = NAME-3); (type = personal)
NamePart (type = family)
Flint
NamePart (type = given)
Kate
Role
RoleTerm (authority = RULIB)
internal member
Affiliation
Advisory Committee
DisplayForm
Kate Flint
Name (ID = NAME-4); (type = personal)
NamePart (type = family)
Williams
NamePart (type = given)
Carolyn
Role
RoleTerm (authority = RULIB)
internal member
Affiliation
Advisory Committee
DisplayForm
Carolyn Williams
Name (ID = NAME-5); (type = personal)
NamePart (type = family)
Potter
NamePart (type = given)
Jane
Role
RoleTerm (authority = RULIB)
outside member
Affiliation
Advisory Committee
DisplayForm
Jane Potter
Name (ID = NAME-1); (type = corporate)
NamePart
Rutgers University
Role
RoleTerm (authority = RULIB)
degree grantor
Name (ID = NAME-2); (type = corporate)
NamePart
Graduate School - New Brunswick
Role
RoleTerm (authority = RULIB)
school
OriginInfo
DateCreated (qualifier = exact)
2010
DateOther (qualifier = exact); (type = degree)
2010-10
Place
PlaceTerm (type = code)
xx
RelatedItem (type = host)
TitleInfo
Title
Rutgers University Electronic Theses and Dissertations
Identifier (type = RULIB)
ETD
RelatedItem (type = host)
TitleInfo
Title
Graduate School - New Brunswick Electronic Theses and Dissertations
Identifier (type = local)
rucore19991600001
Location
PhysicalLocation (authority = marcorg); (displayLabel = Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey)
NjNbRU
Identifier (type = doi)
doi:10.7282/T33J3CR3
Genre (authority = ExL-Esploro)
ETD doctoral
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Rights

RightsDeclaration (AUTHORITY = GS); (ID = rulibRdec0006)
The author owns the copyright to this work.
Copyright
Status
Copyright protected
Availability
Status
Open
Reason
Permission or license
RightsHolder (ID = PRH-1); (type = personal)
Name
FamilyName
Lau
GivenName
Meghan
Role
Copyright Holder
RightsEvent (ID = RE-1); (AUTHORITY = rulib)
Type
Permission or license
DateTime
2010-09-27 11:46:27
AssociatedEntity (ID = AE-1); (AUTHORITY = rulib)
Role
Copyright holder
Name
Meghan Lau
Affiliation
Rutgers University. Graduate School - New Brunswick
AssociatedObject (ID = AO-1); (AUTHORITY = rulib)
Type
License
Name
Author Agreement License
Detail
I hereby grant to the Rutgers University Libraries and to my school the non-exclusive right to archive, reproduce and distribute my thesis or dissertation, in whole or in part, and/or my abstract, in whole or in part, in and from an electronic format, subject to the release date subsequently stipulated in this submittal form and approved by my school. I represent and stipulate that the thesis or dissertation and its abstract are my original work, that they do not infringe or violate any rights of others, and that I make these grants as the sole owner of the rights to my thesis or dissertation and its abstract. I represent that I have obtained written permissions, when necessary, from the owner(s) of each third party copyrighted matter to be included in my thesis or dissertation and will supply copies of such upon request by my school. I acknowledge that RU ETD and my school will not distribute my thesis or dissertation or its abstract if, in their reasonable judgment, they believe all such rights have not been secured. I acknowledge that I retain ownership rights to the copyright of my work. I also retain the right to use all or part of this thesis or dissertation in future works, such as articles or books.
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