This essay analyses how Mary Shelley challenges speciesist thinking popular at the time of the publication of Frankenstein (1818). Speciesism is a discriminatory belief that favours the human species over any species other than human, and that is manifested in how we perceive and treat nonhuman beings. Much literary criticism has touched upon Frankenstein’s monster’s otherness, mainly in relation

This essay argues that acedia is a helpful concept in illuminating the fiction of the American author David Foster Wallace, particularly his unfinished novel The Pale King. Following a brief biographical sketch of Wallace, the essay explores the development of the term acedia—which means something along the lines of apathy, sloth, and listlessness—and the two types of acedia: personal acedia and t

This thesis investigates similarities and differences between Emily Brontë’s Heathcliff and Anne Brontë’s Huntingdon. Moreover, their conduct is compared to eighteenth- and nineteenth-century masculinities. Neither of the two characters corresponds with ideal masculine behaviour. As the novels progress they become increasingly depraved. But the causes to their wickedness are not self-evident. Howe

This thesis examines queerness in the poetry of John Donne by re-examining same-gender desire in his poetry, proposing metaphysical poetry as having points of similarity with queering strategies and queer theory, and exploring contextual and historical tensions within and around Donne’s body of works. The thesis closely analyses poems which have previously been discussed as queer, such as “Sapho t

This thesis explores the works and personas of Sylvia Plath and Taylor Swift and analyses the popular conflations of their real lives and their works. Jon Helt Haarder’s theory of biographical performativity is introduced to analyse the threshold aesthetics between reality and art and investigate the feedback loops between oeuvres andlives as well as the interpretation of these in the public spher

This thesis examines the representation of rape in J. M. Coetzee’s Disgrace (1999), Shani Motoo’s Cereus Blooms at Night (1996), Ian McEwan’s Atonement (2001), and Joyce Carol Oates’ Rape: A Love Story (2003). The analysis of the novels is introduced by a background chapter that outlines the literary history of the rape metaphor and feminist attitudes towards the representation and definition of r

In the past decades, a field of so-called Wallace Studies, i.e. academic studies dedicated to the investigation of David Foster Wallace’s writings, has emerged and developed. These studies are often connected to the equally new literary concept of new sincerity. However, despite the number of articles published on the subject, the scholarly works going into any textual, exemplifying analysis of Wa

Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels and Terry Pratchett’s Discworld novels set in Ankh-Morpork are similar enough that both can be treated as belonging to the subgenre of comic fantasy. The narratives foreground the fantastic, written to entertain and amuse its readers but also contain societal criticism in the form of satire or parody. This paper compares the unnatural aspects of Gulliver’s Trave

Uppsatsen syftar till att studera konstruktionen av odödlighet i De odödliga genom att undersöka skillnaden mellan hur odödliga gestalter med ett evigt livsspann och hur dödliga gestalter med ett begränsat livsspann framställs. Undersökningen genomförs med hjälp av det grundläggande narratologiska begreppsparet platta och runda gestalter, och utökas därefter med Paul Ricoeurs modell om narrativ idThis thesis aims to study the construction of immortality in Lars Jakobson’s novel The Immortals (De odödliga, 2015) by examining the difference between how immortal and mortal characters are portrayed. Initially the characters of the novel are classified according to E. M. Forster’s narratological division between flat and round characters. It soon becomes evident that the immortal character, wit

Researchers of contemporary literature have noticed a surge in motherhood memoirs and literature that reflects on contemporary motherhood. Kate Zambreno’s three literary works – Book of Mutter (2017), Drifts (2020) and The Light Room (2023) – are examples of contemporary life-writing. In different but prominent and clear ways, these three works acknowledge and contemplate mothering, the act of wri

This dissertation argues that the incongruity between the narrating I and the narrated I in The Shadow of the Torturer produces a site where myth is made. The novel differs from other works in the canon of science fantasy because its science and fantasy are rarely, if ever, juxtaposed. Instead, I argue that whatever technological understandings the narrator obtains throughout their journey are rep

Using Jacques Lacan’s theories of subjectivity, this dissertation analyses the relationships between the ideal selves and the romantic desires of characters in Alice Walker’s The Color Purple, Alasdair Gray’s Poor Things and Junot Díaz’s The Brief Wondous Life of Oscar Wao. Lacan argues that there is an inherent lack in all human beings, stemming from incompleteness and early helplessness, and emp

This essay examines how the characters experience a sense of place in two of Katherine Mansfield’s modernist short stories, “Prelude” (1918) and “Bliss” (1918). Geographers have during the past century developed and problematized the relation between space, place, and human beings. The concepts of space and place are means for us to better understand our place in the world by relating ourselves to

Mark Z. Danielewski's House of Leaves is a stunningly complex work, blending elements of the traditional haunted house tale, postmodernism, and film analysis with innovative approaches to textuality and to the format of the novel. This thesis explores House of Leaves with regard to many of these elements, presenting a reading which unifies its various modes of discourse by relating them back t

This thesis explores the notion of empathy in David Foster Wallace’s short story collection Brief Interviews with Hideous Men (1999). Following a discussion of narrative empathy and theory of mind, an analysis of how empathy is portrayed on the diegetic level, i.e. between characters, is performed. Throughout this analysis, it is demonstrated that Wallace’s collection presents a nuanced picture of

This thesis examines The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao (2007) by Junot Díaz as an example of postmodern fiction. The thesis begins with a background chapter that outlines the central characteristics of postmodern fiction, followed by three chapters that tackle one main postmodern aspect of the novel each: fragmentation, metafiction and intertextuality. First, the novel’s use of fragmentation is

The following master's thesis discusses Virginia Woolf's essays A Room of One's Own and Three Guineas from contemporary feminist points of views in order to define the nature of Woolf's feminism. The two feminist theorists Rosi Braidotti and Judith Butler serve as the bases of the two most widely known branches in feminist theory today, the sexual difference theory on the one hand,

In The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, Stieg Larsson depicts a fiery, independent and highly sexual protagonist in the character of Lisbeth Salander. While many readers fail to notice the subtle reference to Lisbeth’s natural red hair, this quality, along with Larsson’s admittance that his inspiration originated from Astrid Lindgren’s Pippi Longstocking, situates Lisbeth in a long tradition of redhea

The fact that Jane Austen composed and edited her novels during two eventful decades in Britain’s history excites an interest to investigate if this has affected the creation of her characters. This thesis explores whether Austen’s heroes develop in accordance with a shift in masculine ideals that can be discerned around the turn of the nineteenth century. The masculine ideal for gentlemen can be

This thesis aims to provide a case study for a critical theory of mythopoetics, via analysis of four ‘Brexit narratives’: The Bad Boys of Brexit by Arron Banks, Unleashing Demons by Craig Oliver, All Out War by Tim Shipman and The Brexit Club by Owen Bennett. My objective is to demonstrate the prevalence of mythopoetics in political and historical discourse, via analysis of four competing politica