Seminar paper from the year 2008 in the subject American Studies - Literature, grade: 2, University of Innsbruck (Institut fur Amerikastudien), course: On the Edge of Sanity: Mental Illness and Disordered Behavior in American Literature, language: English, abstract: In her autobiographical novel Girl, Interrupted Susanna Kaysen deals with the probably most difficult and influential period in her life. At the end of the 1960s, when she was eighteen, she was committed to a mental institution after a half-hearted suicide attempt and diagnosed with Borderline Personality Disorder. She spent two...

Seminar paper from the year 2010 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Literature, printed single-sided, grade: 2, University of Innsbruck (Anglistik), course: British and/or Postcolonial Literature: The Urban and the Rural in (Black) British Literature, language: English, abstract: Bernardine Evaristo's novel The Emperor's Babe is about the Sudanese girl Zuleika, who gets married at the age of eleven to a much older man in the Londinium of 211 AD. Zuleika gives us an insight in her everyday life and introduces the partly authentic, partly virtual Londinium with all its...

Research paper from the year 2012 in the subject American Studies - Literature, grade: 2, University of Innsbruck, language: English, abstract: "The Jolly Corner" is one of the last stories written by Henry James, in the famous style of his final years. The story shows the "complexity of his mind" through which his unique style developed. It also shows many connections to the author's own experiences. Like Spencer Brydon, James has also spent many years in Europe, and it can be argued that he also at some point felt haunted by his past and was concerned with the question of the unlived life....

Research Paper (postgraduate) from the year 2012 in the subject American Studies - Literature, grade: 1, University of Innsbruck, language: English, abstract: This paper will be dealing with the process of making sense of suffering. On the basis of Richard Selzer's short story "Witness," an analysis will be given with the focus on the experience of the doctor as a witness of suffering. It will show that suffering is an interpersonal process and that, in order to understand and to make sense of it, it is important to share the experiences we make. To deal with the pain rather than to repress...