Browsing by Author "Ramraj, Victor J."
Now showing 1 - 19 of 19
Results Per Page
Sort Options
Item Open Access A binding of community: storytelling and identity construction in black Canadian literaure(2006) Isaacs, Camille A.; Ramraj, Victor J.Item Open Access Biocritical Essay (Mordecai Richler)(University of Calgary Press, 1987) Ramraj, Victor J.; English; Humanities; University of CalgaryItem Open Access Europe's poisoned kiss: navigating hybrid space in Shauna Singh Baldwin's fiction(2007) Ruprai, Sharanpal Kaur; Ramraj, Victor J.Item Embargo First Statement and Contemporary Verse: a comparative study(1977) Morton, Mary Lee Bragg; Ramraj, Victor J.Item Embargo Lighting the dark passage: contrasting images in Jean Rhys's novels(1983) LeBlanc, Armand John, 1952-; Ramraj, Victor J.Item Open Access Lines and circles: structure in the novels of Jack Hodgins(1988) McCaig, JoAnn; Ramraj, Victor J.Item Open Access Mutability in Samuel Selvon's novels(1986) Banner, Caroline Nicolette; Ramraj, Victor J.Item Embargo Naipaul's unnecessary and unaccommodated man(1975) Hanen, David Jad Markham; Ramraj, Victor J.Item Open Access Outside the colonial whale: Salman Rushdie's post-colonial vision in Midnight's children(1990) Mathur, Ashok; Ramraj, Victor J.Item Embargo Pessimism in Wole Soyinka's poetry(1978) Mbon, Friday M.; Ramraj, Victor J.Item Open Access Selective memory: diaspora writing in Rohinton Mistry's fiction(2003) Sarwar, Seema; Ramraj, Victor J.Item Open Access Simulation, mediation, and transformation: a study of Derek Walcott's poetry(1989) LeBlanc, Armand John, 1952-; Ramraj, Victor J.Most critics approach Derek Walcott's poetry as the attempt of one individual to achieve a mature poetic style that is the equal of such canonized poets of the English literary tradition as Donne and T.S. Eliot. As a result, their assessment of Walcott's literary abilities often focuses exclusively on the role his particular personality plays In his work and on how that developing personality reflects his growth as an artist towards a stable subjectivity that they perceive to be characteristic of artistic mastery. This tendency to associate a stable personality with an accomplished artistry, however, compromises the preoccupation in Walcott's work, and in particular in his poetry, with how his own personality, the Caribbean cultural landscape, and the world political scene are characterized by conflict and contradiction. In this dissertation, I shall focus on how Walcott uses his poetry not as a means of stabilizing his personal identity but of establishing how conflicting personal and social elements can interact, undergo mediation, and become transformed without becoming subject to facile resolutions. In my first chapter, I discuss how Walcott grounds his poetry in a quest for an unfettered individuality that, following mainstream twentieth century poetic practice, rejects history and established literary practices for an 'elemental' poetry that is 'created out of nothing.' My second chapter, however, reveals that, in practice, Walcott's poetry actually exposes the unavoidability of a mediating artistry that is rooted in the fluctuations of history. The third and fourth chapters discuss how Walcott's tendency toward a use of artifice manifests itself in a fondness for the Gothic and for an allegorical rather than a realist literary practice. The fifth chapter illustrates how these characteristics of Walcott's poetry combine in an esthetic practice of simulation or displacing and destabilizing repetition that, resulting a collage-like artistic structure, encompasses and highlights the diversity of his artistic heritage. Throughout these first five chapters, I shall use Walcott's autobiographical long poem, Another Life to show how these characteristics operate in his poetry. The last four chapters of the dissertation concentrate on a close reading of Walcott's major poetry collections, revealing how his esthetic of simulation manifests itself in an increasingly complicated structure that brings diverse elements into relation with each other. Chapter Six -- focusing on one of Walcott's earliest and one of his most recent poems shows how his structuring impulse first manifested itself in a fondness for formalism that gradually evolves into a concern for the self-reflexive nature of poetry and language itself. Chapters Seven and Eight concentrate on how Walcott's tendency to highlight the interrelationships among distinct poems develops into a preoccupation with poetic sequence that becomes more deliberate as his poetic career advances. The concluding chapter examines two collections of his poetry from the 1980s as the culmination of his experiments with structure, carried out according to his artistic practice of simulation.Item Embargo The Conquest of isolation among the aged in Canadian fiction(1976) Hanlon, Vincent Maximilian; Ramraj, Victor J.Item Open Access "The rotten people": Mordecai Richler's seminal first novel(2004) Munro, Blair; Ramraj, Victor J.Item Embargo The Significance of poetry, prose and poetic-prose in Leonard Cohen's writings(1983) Clouston, Glenda (Glenda Helen), 1954-; Ramraj, Victor J.Item Open Access The Treatment of fantasy in Katherine Mansfield's short stories(1988) Zhang, Ling; Ramraj, Victor J.Item Open Access The word, the world, and the self: the significance of reading and writing in V.S. Naipal's The Enigma of arrival(1991) Mayhew, Linda E.; Ramraj, Victor J.v.s. Naipaul's interest in the ways in which world, self, and language interact in the reading and writing of texts has manifested itself recurrently in his work. In his latest novel, The Enigma of Arrival, he documents and examines how the acts of reading and writing are related to the individual's self-identity and concept of reality. Putting experience into narrative form involves changing the nature and meaning of that experience and alters the consciousness of the individual who organizes random events in this way. Naipaul presents a narrator in this novel who may be identified as the author himself. His inclusion of obviously autobiographical elements in the narrative directs the reader's attention to the realtionship between fact and fiction. In fictional representations of perceptions of the self and the external world, reality and illusion interact in a way that discloses more than what any prosaic statement of fact could convey. The fusion of autobiography and fiction is a technique that illuminates the enigma and mystery of human life. And expressing the mystery of existence in language, a sign system that conveys absence and presence at the same time, reinforces the impression that it is both paradoxical and profound. For Naipaul, writing about the self may be an attempt at self-preservation, but the writer is always aware that this attempt is sure to fail. Writing thus becomes a courageous act of defiance of the inevitabilty of death. Throughout The Enigma of Arrival, the death motif is persistent and underscores the impulse to preserve that Naipaul believes is at the bottom of all art. Naipaul communicates his "way of seeing" by explaining his own unique understanding of the meanings of words and texts, and takes his readers into an awareness of his perspective that infuses it into their own. He opens up the possibility that readers' ways of seeing themselves and the world will be touched by his own in a way that will enlarge their understanding. In this attempt to portray the essence of his own experience and insights, Naipaul finds it necessary to allude to a wide variety of influences on his way of seeing. He provides an example of the way that fiction comes out of the interaction of perceptions of the world and the needs of the inner self by describing how The Enigma of Arrival grew out of his response to a painting of the same name by de Chirico. He also explores the various ways that the same kind of experience may be perceived by different individuals with different needs. The result of his exploration is an illustration of the intertextuality of self-concept and narrative that is composed out of the raw materials of experience. The Enigma of Arrival is an example of narrative that illuminates the complex interactions of language, world, and self.Item Embargo Thought and action in the novels of Robert Kroetsch(1982) Rocheleau, Edmond Gerald; Ramraj, Victor J.Item Open Access Yin and yang: cultural dichotomy and syncretism in Timothy Mo's trilogy(1994) Li, Guangtian; Ramraj, Victor J.This study explores Timothy Mo's treatment of Chinese and Western inter-cultural relationships in his three novels, The Monkey King, Sour Sweet, and An Insular Possession. Mo sees the two cultures as antithetical yet complementary and capable of existing in an equilibrium or balance. To point up such cultural balance, Mo creatively appropriates the Taoist yin-yang ideology which informs the narrative strategies and cultural ideology implicit in his novels. My introduction discusses the yin-yang concept and its relevance to Mo's cultural ideology. Chapter One considers Mo's first novel The Monkey King, set in Hong Kong, in which Mo' s Chinese-Portuguese protagonist Wallace locates the point of balance between his dual heritage. Chapter Two focuses on Mo's use of androgyny in examining the yin-yang balance that the female protagonist strives to achieve in Sour Sweet. Chapter Three considers cultural balance and harmony in Mo's combining Chinese and Western narrative forms in his account of the founding of Hong Kong in An Insular Possession.