Thesis Defence: Sulphuric Songs and Other Great and Holy Litanies

Dante Nieuwold, supervised by Professor Anne Fleming, will defend their thesis titled “Sulphuric Songs and Other Great and Holy Litanies” in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing.

An abstract for Dante Nieuwold’s thesis is included below.

Defences are open to all members of the campus community as well as the general public. Registration is not required for in-person defences.

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ABSTRACT

Sulphuric Songs and Other Great and Holy Litanies is a black comedy with contemporary fantasy and horror elements that follows Ketterith, a demon trying to establish a functional and friendly relationship with the woman she’s possessing in order to enact a plan that will allow her to quietly remove herself from the ongoing celestial conflict and retire to a farmstead in the middle of nowhere with her chosen demonic family. It explores themes of finding the sacred in the mundane, rebelling against large systems of oppression through small kindnesses, and committing oneself to a deliberate practice of compassion and understanding even if it goes against deeply ingrained behavioural patterns to do so, because it’s the only way forward to some sort of peace one can see. Written in free indirect speech, the novel experiments with unconventional use of language and heavily stylized prose to postulate how a being originating from a very different dimensional/existential framework than ours might articulate and understand their own personhood, and how that understanding informs the way they engage with the world around them.