Browsing by Author "DeCoste, Marcel"

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Open Access
“Curiously Alive and Vital”: D.H. Lawrence, Gender and the Body
(Faculty of Graduate Studies and Research, University of Regina, 2020-05) Griffin, Laura Kimberly; DeCoste, Marcel; Purdham, Medrie; Riegel, Christian; Martin, Ann
In this thesis, I examine the importance of the body to identity and fulfilment in three of D.H. Lawrence’s best-known novels. In Lady Chatterley’s Lover, The Rainbow, and Women in Love, each written in the early twentieth century before Lawrence’s death in 1930, Lawrence represents the bodies of his characters as equally as integral to their identities as their minds. Also prominent in these works are Lawrence’s criticisms of modern technology, as well as of the privileging of the mind and mental processes that this technology encourages. Lawrence offers the “life of the body” as an alternative to mental, mechanical life. For him, the body has a consciousness of its own, and the body’s sensations are as informative as the mind’s thoughts. Additionally, Lawrence explores the relationship between masculinity and femininity, and its interaction with the relationship between the mind and body; Lawrence’s female characters, in these works, more successfully achieve the life of the body. Their embodiment, I argue, facilitates their more complete identities and greater, more fulfilling relationships with others, compared to those characters, mostly male, who work primarily with machines and privilege their minds at the expense of their bodies. Motherhood and pregnancy are also, for these women, ways to re-evaluate the links between the body, the self, and the wider community. Furthermore, I examine Lawrence’s concept of the posthuman through these texts, showing that in his ideal vision of a future humanity, the body must remain integral to human life if true identity and fulfilling relationships are to be preserved.
Open Access
Glimpses of Pashtunwali in Hosseini's The Kite Runner, A Thousand Splendid Suns, Hashimi's A House Without Windows and Ackerman's Green on Blue
(Faculty of Graduate Studies and Research, University of Regina, 2018-08) Jahan, Rashid; Lane, Dorothy; Johnston, Susan; DeCoste, Marcel; Mulholland, Valerie
Writers and scholars have used a variety of approaches to understand novels written in English about Afghanistan. One approach that most of the writers have used is the sociocultural approach. My approach is quite similar to other researchers but my framework is different. My work focuses on an unwritten code of life, Pashtunwali, which the Pashtuns of Afghanistan have been practicing for centuries. This code strictly guides the lives of Pashtun people living in Afghanistan and North-West Pakistan. By using the framework of Pashtunwali, this thesis provides a new perspective and understanding of Hosseini, Hashimi, and Ackerman’s novels. It not only provides a different perspective, but also helps readers to understand these texts in the Afghani cultural context. Some of the key topics that this thesis discusses using the framework of Pashtunwali are honor, revenge, blood feuds, hospitality, role of religion and culture, marginalization of Afghan women, and the system of justice. Thus, the goal of this thesis is to provide a new dimension for readers who are unaware of the cultural codes that people practice in Afghanistan and to highlight the social issues and problems that Afghan people face. Not only does it highlight those social concerns, but it also traces their root causes.
Open Access
handwringers
(Faculty of Graduate Studies and Research, University of Regina, 2019-12) Fahie, Sarah Dawn; Trussler, Michael; DeCoste, Marcel; Battis, Jes; Ellerhoff, Steven
Lying on his couch, reflecting on his life, Moses E. Herzog “thought awhile of Mithridates, whose system learned to thrive on poison. He cheated his assassins, who made the mistake of using small doses, and was pickled, not destroyed. Tutto fa brodo” (Bellow 4). Saul Bellow’s titular character offers an excellent metaphor for a complicated figure: the schlemiel. Herzog reflects on Mithridate’s inability to die with honor: having fortified himself against poisoning, he botches his suicide. The Italian phrase Bellow uses to describe Herzog’s state of mind is an idiom meaning literally “everything makes broth” suggesting that every little bit helps. In Herzog it is used ironically: every little bit helps self-sabotage; everything that helps is also everything that hurts. A schlemiel’s best efforts will inevitably come to foolishness. handwringers is a collection of short stories which revolve around Jewish identity and the figure of the schlemiel. The critical introduction, “‘Everyday’ Scraps and the Metacomedic Schlemiels of handwringers,” looks at the form of the stories, the genre of metacomedy in relation to the form, and the schlemiel of the collection as a metacomedic character. The stories are short, ranging from 17 to 2020 words. The length of the stories contributes to the theme of mediation, evoking something of a chaotic media experience of clips, soundbites, advertisements, shows, film, and the internet. Moments of epiphany and/or crisis unfold within these short forms. Collectively, these moments suggest a fragmented sense of self, one assembled through bits of cultural information gleaned from various media. Throughout the critical introduction, examples from both my work and the creative and theoretical work of others are used in order to clarify abstract ideas as well as to suggest a matrix of influence. Ultimately, in this collection, Jewishness as understood through pop-culture is manifested in a kind of anxiety around identity, authenticity, religion, and culture.
Open Access
A Love That Points: The Teleologies of Evelyn Waugh and Iris Murdoch
(Faculty of Graduate Studies and Research, University of Regina, 2018-04) Otis, Harrison Charles; DeCoste, Marcel; Johnston, Susan; Piercey, Robert; Query, Patrick
Both Evelyn Waugh and Iris Murdoch use their novels to work out the ways in which metaphysical ends undergird and direct the world of lived experience. In other words, both authors are consistently teleological, though they disagree wildly on what (or who) the ultimate teleological good actually is. I have chosen to examine Waugh’s and Murdoch’s teleologies in light of the nature of love, which functions for both authors as a virtue and as a teleological engine. In my first chapter I treat the relationship between love and sex in Murdoch’s The Black Prince and Waugh’s Brideshead Revisited, considering Murdoch and Waugh as exemplars of Platonic and Dantean eroticism, respectively. In my second chapter I treat the relationship between love and art in Waugh’s The Ordeal of Gilbert Pinfold and Murdoch’s A Fairly Honourable Defeat, where Murdoch reflects a Platonic conception of creation and Waugh an Augustinian one. In my final chapter I treat the relationship between love and service in Murdoch’s Bruno’s Dream and Waugh’s Sword of Honour, arguing that Murdoch exemplifies Simone Weil’s understanding of the human self and will, whereas Waugh exemplifies Augustine’s understanding of the same. For Murdoch, I argue, sex and art are teleologically split: that is, they are each by nature at least partially inimical to virtue, and thus must remain imperfect if they are to direct the soul toward the Good. Likewise, the efficacy of service depends on a recognition of the imperfection of the self and its subsequent destruction. For Waugh, on the other hand, sex and art are each by nature good; though that goodness becomes demonic when wrenched from its proper context, it nonetheless continues to point toward God, a lesser and distorted reflection of a greater light. Similarly, service requires not the destruction of the self but rather an affirmation of the self and its particular vocation toward God and others. In all this, Murdoch’s Good gives her a teleology that is markedly impersonal and distrustful of the self, whereas Waugh’s God gives him a teleology that is markedly personal and affirmative of the self.
Open Access
Modern Horror, Halloween, and the Rise of the Slasher
(2023-10) DeCoste, Marcel
On Tuesday, October 31st, 2023 the Dr. John Archer Library & Archives organized a panel discussion in the Administration Humanities Building where we found out more about spine-tingling horror and casted light upon the history of witchcraft and witch hunts. Panelists: Dr. Noel Chevalier – Professor English (Luther College) Dr. Marcel DeCoste - Professor English (University of Regina) Dr. Yvonne Petry - Professor History, Academic Dean (Luther College) Moderator: Kate Cushon - Subject Librarian English, Theatre and Business Administration (Dr. John Archer Library & Archives)
Open Access
A Politics of Inwardness: Rousseau and Kierkegaard in Dialogue
(Faculty of Graduate Studies and Research, University of Regina, 2018-08) Koppert, Stefan Andrew; Pieercey, Robert; Soifer, Eldon; Melancon, Jerome; DeCoste, Marcel
This thesis draws out some political implications of Kierkegaard’s concepts of faith, identity, and ethics. It does so by positioning Kierkegaard alongside Rousseau, whose work evinces a conflict over whether a good person can also be a good citizen. Via Rousseau, Kierkegaard’s religious individual is examined from a political perspective, putting in a new light some of the concerns that Kierkegaard’s believer is unsuitable and even noxious to political life. Kierkegaard’s own critique of Rousseau’s ideal citizen as amoral is then posited as a reason to reject Rousseau’s citizen as an alternative to the life of faith. Finally, Kierkegaard’s believer is shown to have a unique relation to politics. She participates passionately in political life as a gadfly, while maintaining a level of remove from political outcomes. Her identity does not stand or fall with the success or failure of political projects.
Open Access
“Pull Out His Eyes, Apologize”: Confession and the Body in James Joyce
(Faculty of Graduate Studies and Research, University of Regina, 2021-05) Spencer, Katherine Abigail; DeCoste, Marcel; Trussler, Michael; Demers, Jason; Martin, Ann
In this thesis, I trace the development of confession in James Joyce. From A Portrait of The Artist as a Young Man to “Circe” and “Penelope” in Ulysses, Joyce’s model of confession works to forward characters' capacity for community, intimacy, and art, an ethical and artistic approach to art. The framework for confession in Joyce is introduced via depictions of the Catholic Sacrament in A Portrait, albeit its function is maintained even as it develops in “Circe” as a secular, psychoanalytical, and legal expression. It is in “Penelope” where confession transforms into profession in Molly’s monologue and in the way it serves as a theory of art for Joyce. The body, its transgressive role in desire and sex, its private functions, and its inextricable capacity for both life and death, remains the site of guilt and shame for Joyce’s characters. Instead of a perpetual cycle of sin, self-reproach, and confession, Joyce offers an alternative in which an affirmation of the body and its functions, modelled by Molly, can alleviate the guilt that proves so debilitating for Bloom and Stephen. By transforming confession into profession, Joyces offers a promise of reconciliation: a potential homecoming for the exiled Stephen and Bloom, a restoration of intimacy and relationship for son, father, and husband, and, finally, the possibility of genuine creativity is offered. This reconciliation enables, in the end, a remedy for impotence, and, as typified by Molly’s monologue in “Penelope,” guiltless expressions of, and foundations for, intimacy and art.
Open Access
Terrorism Turned Monstrous: An Examination of Post-9/11 Science-Fiction-Horror Films Adapted from Pre-9/11 Source Texts
(Faculty of Graduate Studies and Research, University of Regina, 2015-07) Ager, Farron Jesse; Ruddick, Nicholas; DeCoste, Marcel; Mather, Philippe; Wetmore, Kevin
This thesis explores three post-9/11 film adaptations, War of the Worlds (2005), I Am Legend (2007), and The Mist (2007), in an attempt to better understand societal influences on the adaptation process by examining the alterations that a literary adaptation prepared to go to film undergoes in order to suit a contemporary audience. The ways in which we negotiate cultural trauma are not direct and it may take time and mediation in order for the trauma to be healed. This thesis argues that mediation of the cultural trauma associated with 9/11 is directly connected to Hollywood blockbuster science fiction and horror adaptations from pre-9/11 literary source texts. Adaptations offer stories often known by their audience, ensuring a comforting familiar narrative with a reassuring ending. Simultaneously, adaptations also introduce differences that make them likelier to appeal to contemporary audiences, such as updates, new characters, or modified endings. Beginning by examining imagery that evokes the memory of 9/11 and then comparing each adaptation’s source text and its popular adaptation, this paper seeks to answer how post-9/11 film audiences affected and were affected by the adaptations they watched. No longer are narratives in these adaptations concerned with Social Darwinism, the effects of nuclear war, or technological hubris. In the years following 9/11, these three particular adaptations come to directly reflect major societal concerns: the recognition and negotiation of trauma and loss, the importance of maintaining hope, and the danger of abandoning hope too early.
Open Access
Verses at the Burning of the World: Modernism as a Fulfillment of Decadent Ideals
(Faculty of Graduate Studies and Research, University of Regina, 2015-07) Balas, Don Christopher; Johnston, Susan; Ruddick, Nicholas; DeCoste, Marcel; Ophir, Ella
This thesis studies the transition between Decadent and Modernist poetry in England. The general critical perspectives of the evolution between the fin-de-siècle poetry of the 1890s and the high-Modernist verse of the 1920s were either of too great a separation, or too much a continuation. This study suggests that the Decadents were in fact precursors of the Modernists in their attempts to both stylistically and substantively challenge the dominant modes of poetry, its publication, and its relationship with the reading public in the face of the continued and exponential growth of industrialization, urbanization, commercialization, and other perceived consequences of modernity. For reasons such as the resistance of Victorian morality, the perception of corrupted ideals, belief in influence from the Continent, and the relative disorganization and self-destructive tendencies of its figures, the Decadent poets were largely unable to realize their goal of restructuring poetry and challenging the superiority of modernity. The groundwork they did, however, allowed the Modernist poets who were to become well-known thirty years later to make the revolutionary changes that garnered the Modernist movement the critical and populist importance it had contemporaneously and still has today. Through a mixture of historical and formalist criticism, this thesis attempts to define briefly both Decadent and the Modernist poetry, and trace the transition between the two literary eras. It looks closely at many of the dominant figures in each movement, and links them together within three significant themes that they shared: alienation, disintegration, and reconstruction.
Open Access
Yi Sang and Global Modernism
(Faculty of Graduate Studies and Research, University of Regina, 2016-09) Wenaus, William Donald; DeCoste, Marcel; Bond, Kevin; Riegel, Christian
Yi Sang (1910-1937), born Kim Haegyŏng, wrote in Korea in the early part of the twentieth century under Japanese rule, composing in both Japanese and Korean. His work has been variously labelled as Modernist, Surrealist, and Dadaist. Despite the past fifty years of Yi scholarship acknowledging his stylistic and thematic affinities with Japanese modernists, Yi has typically been read as a specifically Korean, nationalistic figure who wrote experimental works in a spirit of anti-colonial resistance. These readings, however, are complicated by the fact that Yi’s works and life exhibit no sign of such political leanings. Moving away from these interpretations, my thesis aims to answer the following questions: what does it mean that we call Yi a modernist, and what does it mean that his works are similar to those of his Japanese and Western modernist contemporaries? To answer these questions I invite Yi into the methodological context of Global Modernism, a theoretical perspective that has recently emerged from New Modernist Studies. By examining Yi’s relationship to other Japanese modernists such as Yasunari Kawabata (1899-1972), Chika Sagawa (1911-1936), Kōbō Abe (1924-1993), and Osamu Dazai (1909-1948), and to Western modernists such as T.S. Eliot (1888-1965), Virginia Woolf (1882-1941), and James Joyce (1882-1941), I demonstrate that Yi is a modernist who is better understood internationally, whose significance ramifies beyond strictly national concerns. The goal of this thesis is to highlight the contributions Yi made to Korean, East Asian, and global modernisms, and to raise awareness of Korean modernism as an international movement that is crucial to contemporary understandings of global modernism.