Dissertations on Wodehouse
Peter Nieuwenhuizen
This is the first time that I send a question to the alt.fan group. I
hope you will respond.
I did some research for scientific papers on P.G.Wodehouse and found
20 dissertations. The 9 most recent ones are new to me (the other 11
have been described earlier in the book "What about Wodehouse - a
biographers bibliography", 1994).
To my knowledge only 3 out of these 20 are described in the McIlvaine
Checklist (H9,H10 and H13).
My questions for you are:
1] Has anyone read/seen these recent 6 theses?
2] What is your opinion of the contents of them?
3] Have I overlooked a thesis in this summary?
Peter Nieuwenhuizen a.k.a. Sam the Sudden, in The Netherlands from the
WRC (Wodehouse Research Centre).
The recent ones (9 records):
Record - 1
L’UMORISMO DI WODEHOUSE: ANALISI DELLE STRATEGIE UMORISTICHE E
PROPOSTE DI RESA IN ITALIANO: TESA DI LAUREA IN TRADUZIONE
Author: RUGGIERO, ANTONELLA
Degree: PH.D.
Year: 2001
Institution: TRIESTE UNIVERSITY, ITALY (Trieste, 193 pp.)
Record - 2
METHODS OF COMIC IN THE LANGUAGE OF P.G.WODEHOUSE’S WORKS
Author: SVIRIDOV, YAROSLAV
Degree: BACC.
Year: 2001
Institution: VORONEZH STATE UNIVERSITY
Record - 3
ENGLISH LITERATURE’S PERFORMING FLEA IN THE LIGHT OF THE
QUISLINGS
Author: SMITH, THOMAS L.
Degree: PH.D.
Year: 1999
Institution: SYRACUSE UNIVERSITY
Record - 4
RELEGATED RELATIONS: THE BRITISH AUNT IN THE NINETEENTH-CENTURY
FICTION (VICTORIAN NOVELS)
Author: PALMER, SALLY BROADBENT
Degree: PH.D.
Year: 1998
Institution: UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, DAVIS
Record - 5
THE THEMES AND TECHNIQUES OF HUMOUR IN THE WRITING OF P.G.WODEHOUSE
Author: PETERS, STEVEN
Degree: PH.D.
Year: 1998
Institution: ?? UNIVERSITY, GREAT BRITTAIN
Record - 6
NOT A BEDSPREAD, BUT A COUNTERPANE: UNDER THE COVERS WITH GAY MEN AND
ARISTOCRATS IN TWENTIETH CENTURY BRITISH LITERATURE (RONALD FIRBANK,
NANCY MITFORD, P. G. WODEHOUSE, EVELYN WAUGH)
Author: BACCHUS, MICHAEL
Degree: PH.D.
Year: 1997
Institution: UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
Record - 7
KLOSSOWSKI AND COMEDY (KLOSSOWSKI, PIERRE, CORSO, GREGORY, LEAR,
EDWARD, SOUPAULT, PHILIPPE, BRETON, ANDRE, WODEHOUSE, P. G.)
Author: OLSON, JOHN KIRBY
Degree: PH.D.
Year: 1994
Institution: UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON
Record - 8
"THE PURITY OF THE TURF": A DISCOURSE ANALYSIS AND ITS THEORETICAL
IMPLICATIONS
Author: DE VILLIERS, JESSICA
Degree: M.A.
Year: 1994
Institution: YORK UNIVERSITY (CANADA)
Record - 9
COMEDY, MORALITY, STABILITY AND CHANGE: THE BRITISH STAGE, 1917-1942
Author: PETERS, SUSAN LOUISE
Degree: PH.D.
Year: 1993
Institution: UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND
The older ones (11 records):
Record - 10
DEVELOPMENT AND INTERPRETATION OF THE ELEMENTS OF INTEGRATION IN THE
PRINCESS THEATRE MUSICALS (NEW YORK CITY)
Author: MARTIN, PHILIP JOHN
Degree: PH.D.
Year: 1993
Institution: THE UNIVERSITY OF UTAH (Utah, 263 pp.)
Record - 11
THE INTERNAL DEVELOPMENT OF THE PRINCESS THEATRE MUSICAL SHOWS (KERN
JEROME, BOLTON GUY, WODEHOUSE P. G. )
Author: SMART, JEFFREY HILTON
Degree: PH.D.
Year: 1991
Institution: UNIVERSITY OF MISSOURI - COLUMBIA (314 pp.)
Record - 12
LIMEYS IN THE ORANGE GROVE: THE BRITISH NOVEL IN LOS ANGELES
Author: BANKS, SHERYL GAIL
Degree: PH.D.
Year: 1986
Institution: UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA (Los Angeles)
Record - 13
USE OF THE NON-HEROIC NARRATOR AS A MEDIUM FOR SATIRE IN P. G.
WODEHOUSE'S BERTIE AND JEEVES SAGA
Author: PORTER, DELMA MCLEOD
Degree: M.A. (master)
Year: 1986
Institution: STEPHEN F. AUSTIN STATE UNIVERSITY (136 pp.)
Record - 14
A HISTORY OF "VANITY FAIR"; A MODERNIST JOURNAL IN AMERICA
Author: HOFFMAN, KITTY
Degree: PH.D.
Year: 1980
Institution: UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO (CANADA)
Record - 15
LE MONDE DE P.G.WODEHOUSE (1881-1975)
Author: GINESTET-D'AUZAC DE LAMARTINIE, EVELYNE
Degree: PH.D.
Year: 1980
Institution: UNIVERSITE DE LA SORBONNE NOUVELLE (FRANCE) (Paris, 4
volumes)
Present in the McIlvaine Checklist and Bibliography as item: H13
Record - 16
WODEHOUSE, THE FICTIONIST
Author: SHARMA, MAHA NAND
Degree: PH.D.
Year: 1980
Institution: MEERUT UNIVERSITY (INDIA) (Meenakshi Prakashan, 224 pp.)
Record - 17
JEEVES: HEROS COMIQUE DE P.G.WODEHOUSE
Author: ARQUIE, MARIE-JOSE
Degree: PH.D.
Year: 1975
Institution: UNIVERSITE DE ROUEN (FRANCE) (Rouen, 235 pp.)
Present in the McIlvaine Checklist and Bibliography as item: H9
Record - 18
ETUDE STRUCTURALE DE RECIT CHEZ P.G.WODEHOUSE
Author: GAUTHIER, EVELYNE
Degree: PH.D.
Year: 1975
Institution: UNIVERSITE FRANCOIS RABELAIS (FRANCE) (Tours, 235 pp.)
Record - 19
THE GROWTH OF SWEETNESS AND LIGHT: A STUDY OF THE NOVELS OF
P.G.WODEHOUSE
Author: MILSTEIN, ELLIOTT
Degree: BACC.
Year: 1975
Institution: TORONTO STATE UNIVERSITY, CANADA (Toronto, 73 pp.)
Record - 20
AN ANALYSIS OF P.G.WODEHOUSE'S TEAM OF BERTIE WOOSTER AND JEEVES
Author: CARLSON, RICHARD STOCKS
Degree: PH.D.
Year: 1973
Institution: MICHIGAN STATE UNIVERSITY (192 pp.)
Present in the McIlvaine Checklist and Bibliography as item: H10
Cyril Delancey
>Record - 6
>NOT A BEDSPREAD, BUT A COUNTERPANE: UNDER THE COVERS WITH GAY MEN AND
>ARISTOCRATS IN TWENTIETH CENTURY BRITISH LITERATURE (RONALD FIRBANK,
>NANCY MITFORD, P. G. WODEHOUSE, EVELYN WAUGH)
>Author: BACCHUS, MICHAEL
>Degree: PH.D.
>Year: 1997
>Institution: UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
An intriguing title, but how does P. G. Wodehouse fit in to that
excellent company?
--
Cyril Delancey
Quick Results Agency
Neil Midkiff
Many would consider that being third cousin to an Earl falls within the
bounds of being an aristocrat.
(The Earl in question is John, third Baron Wodehouse, who in 1866 became
the first Earl of Kimberley. The first Baron Wodehouse was PGW's
great-great uncle.)
-Neil Midkiff
Picadillyjim
"Peter Nieuwenhuizen" <peter.nie...@freeler.nl> wrote in message
news:ab10db45.03020...@posting.google.com...
> Dear Plum-fans,
<snip>
> Peter Nieuwenhuizen a.k.a. Sam the Sudden, in The Netherlands from the
> WRC (Wodehouse Research Centre).
>
Hi,
I am afraid that I am not able to answer your questions on the
dissertations, but was struck by the coincidence that I am also Sam the
Sudden. It is a small world what.
Pip P.
Harish T K a.k.a Samthesudden
Cyril Delancey
>Cyril Delancey wrote:
>>
>> peter.nie...@freeler.nl (Peter Nieuwenhuizen) wrote:
>>
>> >Record - 6
>> >NOT A BEDSPREAD, BUT A COUNTERPANE: UNDER THE COVERS WITH GAY MEN AND
>> >ARISTOCRATS IN TWENTIETH CENTURY BRITISH LITERATURE (RONALD FIRBANK,
>> >NANCY MITFORD, P. G. WODEHOUSE, EVELYN WAUGH)
>> >Author: BACCHUS, MICHAEL
>> >Degree: PH.D.
>> >Year: 1997
>> >Institution: UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
>>
>> An intriguing title, but how does P. G. Wodehouse fit in to that
>> excellent company?
>>
>> --
>> Cyril Delancey
>> Quick Results Agency
>
>Many would consider that being third cousin to an Earl falls within the
>bounds of being an aristocrat.
But he held a *job*. Surely that disqualifies him.
OK, Lord Peter Wimsey worked in advertising, but that was a disguise.
Frank R.A.J. Maloney
news:kdsg4von525gkcsht...@4ax.com...
For most of his life, I do not think Wodehouse could be said to have "held a
job"; wasn't his last job per se at the Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank, a
two-year interruption he secured through friends of his father? He left the
City to support himself as a writer and thereafter was self-employed.
Also, working hardly disqualifies one from membership in the aristocracy,
especially in the post-war years; paying your tailor, maybe, but working? I
think not. Look at all those nephews and younger sons who are constantly
being foisted off on their relations and friends of the family. Remember in
"Ring for Jeeves" (U.S. title "Return of Jeeves") the impecunious
brother-in-law of Lord Towcester who works at Harrods?
But what draws my curiosity in the dissertation's title is the reference to
"Gay Men and Aristocrats" in re Waugh, Mitford, Firbank, and Wodehouse. Both
the association of the Master with gay men and at least with some of the
other authors strikes me as a little surprising.
I'm almost tempted to break a long-standing aversion to scholarship and look
this one up. (Anyone writing anything about Firbank at this late date is
probably worth noting, but that's another issue, one assumes.)
--
Mortimer Rackstraw, the Great Boloni
Peter Nieuwenhuizen
if you are able to get hold of a copy of this thesis, maybe you can
send me one also, of give an exerpt of the contents.
Kind regards, Sam the Sudden
"Frank R.A.J. Maloney" <fr...@blarg.net> wrote in message
>peter.nie...@freeler.nl (Peter Nieuwenhuizen) wrote:
>
>Record - 6
>NOT A BEDSPREAD, BUT A COUNTERPANE: UNDER THE COVERS WITH GAY MEN AND
>ARISTOCRATS IN TWENTIETH CENTURY BRITISH LITERATURE (RONALD FIRBANK,
>NANCY MITFORD, P. G. WODEHOUSE, EVELYN WAUGH)
>Author: BACCHUS, MICHAEL
>Degree: PH.D.
>Year: 1997
>Institution: UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
>
Joann Zimmerman
peter.nie...@freeler.nl says...
I took advantage of the notion of scholarly fair use, and am sticking my
neck out and posting the abstract, as found on the Dissertation Abstracts
website:
======================================================================
Each of these chapters in this project is a discrete unit, an essay
which is linked to the essays surrounding it by an encircling notion,
based in anxiety over a dilapidated upper-class, which is remarkable
primarily for its vagueness: Modern constructions of an enfeebled
aristocracy famed for its 'delicacy' tend to have much in common with
constructions of the emasculated gay man. Both groups have been
consistently coded as excessive, and Anglo-American culture has come to
construct, at once, the excessive as threatening and the threatening as
excessive, often motivating a desire that the threatening be expelled and
the excessive be contained. Their status as excessive has necessitated
the employment of strategies of restriction, particularly the application
of different technologies of disguise. This is not, however, the
identification of an aristocratic closet. It is not a case of the textual
presentation of aristocrats masked as any other one thing. Instead,
anxieties over an effete aristocracy and over a threatening homosexuality
result in the deployment of disguises of many kinds on many intra-,
inter-, and extra-textual levels. The project investigates the ways that
these methods, which include imposture, encoding, and the uses of silence
and illness, become not simply tools to cover the offending concept, but
also the means of presenting it, often becoming a figure for and example
of that which they are intended to obscure.
========================================================================
Note that he's not saying that Wodehouse is gay, or indeed any of his
characters; instead, he's examining writing strategies that are common to
the portrayal of gay and aristocratic characters and situations. (At
least that's how I read it.)
--
"I never understood people that don't have bookshelves."
--George Plimpton
Joann Zimmerman jz...@bellereti.com