This concise introduction provides a general survey of various aspects of textual studies for college students who intend to specialize in English or American literature and want to acquire a basic familiarity with the entire field.

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An Introduction to Literary Studies

............................................................................................................................. ii Preface ............................................................................................................................... iii Table of

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Sweat, tears and nightmares : textual representations of sexual violence in Heian and Kamakura monogatari

This article situates Desperate Housewives in a broader sociocultural context by examining its treatment of gender and genre. It is argued that the audience's knowledge of the generic conventions and gender stereotypes upon which the show draws allows them access to Desperate Housewives's interrogation of contemporary social convention.

Gender and Genre: Situating Desperate Housewives

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Allusive Mechanics in Modern and Postmodern Fiction As Suggested by James Joyce in His Novel Dubliners

Foreign governesses and tutors were a ubiquitous presence on the Russian country estate. This thesis is an attempt to study their presence in Russian life and culture in two media. Firstly, I have conducted a historical data analysis of memoirs and diaries written by British governesses who worked in Russia and by their employers, members of the Russian nobility, who wrote about their upbringing under foreign tutelage. Secondly, the resulting impression was then compared with the representation of the foreign educator in literature. The aim of this approach is to highlight the noteworthy differences between the way these foreigners are referred to in historical sources and their literary image. In order to do so, this thesis first establishes the environment in which the presence of Western Europeans in Russian noble households was deemed an indispensable necessity. Owing to Peter the Great's forcible Westernisation of the country and his insistence on a service nobility, the Russian elite found its class consciousness not in titles and genealogy, but in service rank and "Western" accomplishments, such as the knowledge of foreign languages and genteel behaviour. In its endeavour to "Europeanise" the elite, Russia became a desirable source of employment for governesses and tutors. Especially for British governesses, who were faced with enormous competition and poor working conditions at home, teaching in Russia was both lucrative and an opportunity to live in an unusual, distant and exotic land. In their memoirs about their childhood and upbringing, Russians remember these foreigners with love, loathing or indifference. In literary texts, however, W estern educators are portrayed as types rather than as human beings, as minor characters with a literary textual function rather than as individuals. Furthermore, the general tenor of their depiction is mostly negative and their presence is frequently a source of ridicule. This thesis concludes that the distorted representation of foreigners in Russian literature is owing to the desire in the discourse of prose narratives to improve the image of Russia, to represent aspects of it as civilised and European. In encounters with the Western "other" most frequently governesses and tutors the potential to improve the portrayal of the Russian protagonists is enhanced when debunking the representatives of the "superior" West.

The representation of Western European governesses and tutors on the Russian country estate in historical documents and literary texts

Introductory definitions history, genre, culture types of a novel the short story and the novella realism, modernism, postmodernism analyzing fiction studying the novel critical approaches to fiction.

Jeremy Hawthorn

Papers

Studying the novel : an introduction