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http://hdl.handle.net/11375/16779
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DC Field | Value | Language |
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dc.contributor.advisor | Chakraborty, Chandrima | - |
dc.contributor.advisor | Goellnicht, Donald | - |
dc.contributor.advisor | Hyman, Roger | - |
dc.contributor.author | Apong, Andrew | - |
dc.date.accessioned | 2015-02-27T19:18:15Z | - |
dc.date.available | 2015-02-27T19:18:15Z | - |
dc.date.issued | 2015 | - |
dc.identifier.uri | http://hdl.handle.net/11375/16779 | - |
dc.description.abstract | This thesis provides a reading of Anita Rau Badami’s novels The Hero’s Walk and Can You Hear the Nightbird Call? The interpretive frame constructs a theory of affect to explore the human experience of beauty through a reading of Badami’s texts. This work’s approach to beauty is derived largely from Elaine Scarry’s On Beauty and Being Just and from musings on beauty by Simone Weil. Following Weil, I understand beauty as the ascription of value or worth to various things, actions, or ideas, and I position beauty as an undergirding affective experience that is always present in the human encounter of the world. This thesis examines how Badami’s novels depict the ways in which a Weilian sense of beauty leads characters to develop affectual attachments to various ideologies and discourses represented in the diasporic landscape of the texts. Through a critical consideration of the depicted effects of such attachments on Badami’s characters’ lives, this study also locates potential instances of what Lauren Berlant calls cruel optimism. I contend that the novels often portray instances of cruel optimism to critique traditional practices and perspectives while ever working towards building their own pronouncement of what constitutes a more genuine, higher sense of the beautiful. | en_US |
dc.language.iso | en | en_US |
dc.subject | Anita Rau Badami | en_US |
dc.subject | Beauty | en_US |
dc.subject | Affect | en_US |
dc.subject | Diaspora | en_US |
dc.subject | Value | en_US |
dc.subject | Ethics | en_US |
dc.subject | Elaine Scarry | en_US |
dc.title | Walking toward the Call of Beauty: Beauty and Affect in Badami | en_US |
dc.type | Thesis | en_US |
dc.contributor.department | English and Cultural Studies | en_US |
dc.description.degreetype | Thesis | en_US |
dc.description.degree | Master of Arts (MA) | en_US |
Appears in Collections: | Open Access Dissertations and Theses |
Files in This Item:
File | Description | Size | Format | |
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Apong_Andrew_E_FinalSubmission2015Feb_MA.pdf | Main Article | 670.3 kB | Adobe PDF | View/Open |
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