ABSTRACT: This dissertation examines the representation of grief and recovery in Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf. I will analyze the transformation of trauma expressed by Woolf’s characters and their embodiment of post-war, post-pandemic English society and consider Elisabeth Kübler-Ross and David Kessler’s theory The Five Stages of Grief” as a guide to understanding the effects of individual and communal trauma. Woolf effectively narrativizes controversial political topics of her time, uses memory to interrupt the stream of consciousness, and questions the consequences of the repression of grief in 1920’s English society. The act of grieving in Mrs. Dalloway falls on two very different sides of the trauma spectrum. It can be a battle for life, or a surrender through death in an attempt to reach a final place of acceptance or healing. Moreover, this dissertation aims to show the validity of grief in literature, as a transitioning stage, and as an adventure rather than just a state of mourning or pain.
ABSTRACT: The thesis primarily aims at portraying a panoramic view of what is commonsense and how it can be applied to children literature. More specifically, the analysis will present the conception of commonsense as defined by innatist philosophers Descartes and Thomas Reid and cultural theorist Gilles Deleuze. The texts that will be examined in detail are: Alice in Wonderland, The Wizard of Oz. The main objective of the analysis is exemplifying how commonsense is the vehicle through which we perceive and consequentially understand the cultural values and anxieties of the time in which the child narratives where produced. The thesis shows how common sense is the only means through which humans can perceive a world and its consequential environment (whether it is a fantastic world or our own world). Thus, it is by relating with the protagonist and accepting their commonsense that we perceive their cultural environment. In depth, the concept of common sense will be understood by analyzing how each protagonist of these child narratives behaves and interacts depending on the trials, tasks and characters they are confronted with. Depending on the plotline and the events that occur within the latter, common sense is be defined as applicable or non-applicable. Furthermore, the thesis will prove how often times the final outcome of a story will present common sense as a problematic theme/conception, depending on who applies it and how it is applied. Each narrative will be respectively presented to exemplify specific traits. Alice in Wonderland, will be analyzed with the objective of proving the non-applicability of common sense, and its consequential challenging, due to the scientific and logical excess within the Victorian Era. It is commonly known that the industrialization of the late 19th century society, along with many scientific discoveries, massively affected cultural ideals and beliefs, and Alice In Wonderland through commonsense exemplifies this radical change. The Wizard of Oz, on the other hand, will be used as a narrative for understanding common sense as applicable, thus as a way to perceive the new 20th century capitalist society.
ABSTRACT: The purpose of my thesis is to analyse Madame Bovary in full depth in order to see it through various angles, which are historical, stylistic or literary. The end of this analysis will give way to a discussion on the way Flaubert accomplishes his task of writing an impersonal novel, in a majorly detached way and with a lack of most temporal or historical references. Realism will be a subject in question and many scenes will be listed as proof and of evidence of the findings. Flaubert did not like to be called a Realist, but most critics list him as a Realist, and Madame Bovary appears to be a primary sample novel of what Realism is. It is often listed with Middlemarch by George Eliot, and Illusions Perdues by Honoré de Balzac.
