The purpose of this essay is to investigate how Joseph Conrad has used animal imagery and religious symbolism in “Heart of Darkness,” and determine if these tools are somehow linked to the theme of the story. Close reading has been applied in order to be able to go through the entire story in search of these often well-hidden tools. Considering the fact that the story in focus of the analysis is believed by some, including myself, to be a long short story rather than a short novel, this method of approach has proved to be highly useful. First a discussion about a possible theme in “Heart of Darkness” is presented, followed by a brief comment on Conrad’s personal life philosophy and view on the use of symbolic devices in literary works. In order to determine the differences between symbols and imagery, as well as theme, subject and topic, a short discussion of terminology has been included. Much of the discussion in the analysis relies heavily upon articles and books by critics who have focused exclusively on symbolism and imagery in “Heart on Darkness” and other works by Conrad. The scholarly names worth mentioning in connection with the discussion about animal imagery are Olof Lagercrantz, John A. Palmer, and Samir Elbarbary. The critics Anthony Fothergill and Cedric Watts explore religious symbolism in general, whereas P.K. Saha and Rita A. Bergenholtz focus on particular aspects of it, such as Buddhism and Greek mythology. The analysis section is for the most part a combination between my own personal interpretations of “Heart of Darkness” and those made by others. It is divided into two major sections, Animal Imagery and Religious Symbolism. The latter, furthermore, comprises two subgroups. The conclusion suggests that Conrad used symbolism and imagery as narratological tools in order to present us with the theme of morality in the story.

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李智浩. / Thesis (doctoral)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2007. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 230-248). / Electronic reproduction. Hong Kong : Chinese University of Hong Kong, [2012] System requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader. Available via World Wide Web. / Abstracts in Chinese and English. / Li Zhihao.

Contained herein is a close examination of self-awareness and self-portraiture as it applies to the works of artist Jeffrey Hoffman. Water, frozen into various forms and combined with natural elements of wood, slowly melt over an indeterminable amount of time, each droplet documented as the process transforms the elements. Through this process, we see change. We see time. We see truth. This documentation of change and time through natural elements is where the artwork comes full circle. Working with new media to explore man's interconnectivity to life, energy, and the cosmos, he produces time based installations, photographs, videos, and sculptures that serve as both existential metaphors and Tantric symbols. With the use of digital cameras and video, a record is created by which the disintegration which occurs from the unseen forces of gravity, heat and time upon sculptures made from natural elements and ice is examined. In its sculptural form, his work can be categorized as Installation art and Performance art due to its evolving nature. Each piece is intended to either change over time or to have that change halted by another temporal force like that of flowing electricity. The possibility of allowing varying levels of self-awareness to emerge through self portraiture is also examined. The existential, as well as the metaphysical, can be present in a physical form when the form is imbued with evidence of an evolutionary process. In many ways, the work serves as a self portrait. It is a means for Hoffman to examine his own existentialism as a student of the modern western world and life.

L'objectif de cette thèse est d'étudier trois romans écrits par des auteurs anglophones du Pakistan ou de l'Inde, à savoir Bapsi Sidhwa, Bharati Mukherjee et Hanif Kureishi. On pourrait être tenté de placer les trois écrivains de cette étude dans la catégorie «littérature des immigrants». Ils écrivent tous à un moment de migration de masse lorsque l'idée de «choc culturel» parmi les peuples occidentaux commence à être plus évidente. Les trois écrivains sont affectés par des thèmes qui apparaissent seulement de manière marginale dans le débat évoqué ci-dessus, l'accent étant principalement mis sur les difficultés culturelles et sociales des femmes dans la société indo-pakistanaise. Quant à Kureishi, la polarisation mentionnée ci-dessus suppose un accent très différent, impliquant la situation d'un Asiatique né et élevé dans la société occidentale. Dans cette évaluation globale du contexte idéologique et historique commun aux trois écrivains, il sera important d'examiner les attitudes spécifiques adoptées par chaque écrivain par rapport à son expérience personnelle. L'objectif principal de cette étude sera donc thématique, en se concentrant sur les préoccupations spécifiques de ces écrivains et sur la manière dont cela se manifeste dans leur représentation particulière des tensions en jeu. / The objective of this thesis is to study three novels written by English-speaking authors of Pakistan or India, namely Bapsi Sidhwa, Bharati Mukherjee and Hanif Kureishi. One might be tempted to place the three writers of this study in the category of "literature of immigrants." They all write at a time of mass migration when the idea of "cultural shock" among Western peoples begins to be more evident. All three writers are affected by themes which appear only marginally in the debate evoked above, much of the emphasis being on the cultural and social difficulties of women in Indo-Pakistani society. As for Kureishi, the polarization mentioned above assumes a very different emphasis, involving the situation of an Asian born and brought up inside Western society. Within this overall assessment of the ideological and historical context common to all three writers, it will thus be important to examine the specific attitudes adopted by each writer in relation to his or her own personal experience. The main focus of this study will therefore be thematic, centering on these writers’ specific preoccupations and the way this is seen in their peculiar depiction of the tensions at stake.

宋黎昀. / "2011年9月". / "2011 nian 9 yue". / Thesis (M.Phil.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2011. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 130-135). / Abstract in Chinese and English. / Song Liyun. / Chapter 第一章： --- 導論 --- p.1 / Chapter 一. --- 論文之背景和目的 --- p.1 / Chapter (一). --- 背景 --- p.1 / Chapter (二). --- 研究目的 --- p.5 / Chapter 二. --- 文獻回顧 --- p.7 / Chapter (一). --- 民族性與商業 --- p.7 / Chapter (二). --- 商品化與「本真性」 --- p.13 / Chapter (三). --- 宗教與商業行為 --- p.18 / Chapter 三. --- 田野地之選擇與研究方法 --- p.23 / Chapter (一). --- 田野點的意義所在 --- p.23 / Chapter (二). --- 研究方法 --- p.25 / Chapter 四. --- 本論文之結構安排 --- p.29 / Chapter 第二章： --- 「藏族街」在成都 --- p.31 / Chapter 一. --- 成都的少數民族 --- p.31 / Chapter 二. --- 成都的藏族 --- p.32 / Chapter 三. --- 成都與藏區的地緣關係及往來淵源 --- p.33 / Chapter 四. --- 「藏族街」生意的發展歷程 --- p.40 / Chapter 五. --- 「藏族街」在成都 --- p.47 / Chapter (一). --- 成都大眾眼中的「藏族街」 --- p.49 / Chapter (二). --- 政府眼中的「敏感地帶」 --- p.50 / Chapter (三). --- 當地社區漢人對「藏族街」藏人的看法 --- p.53 / Chapter 六. --- 藏族商人之間的關係 --- p.59 / Chapter 七. --- 城市的邊緣人 --- p.60 / Chapter 八. --- 小結 --- p.63 / Chapter 第三章： --- 佛教道德觀與藏族商人的商業行為 --- p.65 / Chapter 一. --- 藏地經濟之變遷 --- p.66 / Chapter (一). --- 80年代以前的藏族社會經濟 --- p.66 / Chapter (二). --- 80年代以來市場經濟體系下的藏地經濟 --- p.69 / Chapter 二. --- 藏傳佛教藝術品買賣當中的禁忌 --- p.76 / Chapter (一). --- 對佛像生意的爭議 --- p.76 / Chapter (二). --- 其他禁忌物品 --- p.81 / Chapter 三. --- 佛教道德對商業觀念的影響 --- p.83 / Chapter 四. --- 「積德」的行為 --- p.86 / Chapter 五. --- 分析和小結 --- p.88 / Chapter 第四章： --- 何為「正宗的」藏傳佛教藝術品 --- p.91 / Chapter 一. --- 與尼泊爾的貿易網絡 --- p.91 / Chapter 二. --- 藏族商人對其產品「正宗性」的建構 --- p.99 / Chapter (一). --- 尼泊爾產品與藏地、 漢地產品的區分 --- p.100 / Chapter (二). --- 藏式風格與漢式風格的區分 --- p.102 / Chapter (三). --- 宗教用品與旅遊紀念品的區分 --- p.104 / Chapter 三. --- 有區分的本真性概念 --- p.114 / Chapter 四. --- 小結 --- p.120 / Chapter 第五章： --- 結論 --- p.121 / Chapter 一、 --- 族群性與商業之間的關係 --- p.121 / Chapter 二、 --- 商品化和「本真性」的建構 --- p.125 / Chapter 三、 --- 宗教對商業行為的影響 --- p.127 / 參考文獻 --- p.130

This thesis is concerned with transnational literature and writers of the Middle Eastern and South Asian diasporas. It argues that the diasporic position of the authors enables their roles as comprador subjects. The thesis maintains that the figure of the comprador is always acted upon by its ontological predisposition, so that diasporic positionality often involves a single subject which straddles and speaks from two or more different subject positions. Comprador authors can be said to be co-opted by Western metropolitan publishing companies who stand to benefit by marketing the apparent marginality of the homelands about which these authors write. The thesis therefore proceeds from the notion that such a diasporic position is the paradoxical condition of the transnational subject or writer. I submit that there is, to some degree, a questionable element in the common political and cultural suggestions that emerge upon closer evaluation of diasporic literature. Indeed, a charge of complicity has been levelled against authors who write, apparently, to service two distinct entities – the wish to speak on behalf of a minority collective, as well as the imperial ‘centre’ which is the intended interlocutor of the comprador author. However, it is this difference, the implied otherness or marginality of the outsider within, which I argue is sometimes used by diasporic writers as a way of articulating with ‘authenticity’ the cultures and politics of their erstwhile localities. This thesis is concerned, therefore, with the representation of ‘the East’ in four novels by diasporic, specifically comprador writers, namely Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children, Hanif Kureishi’s The Buddha of Suburbia, and Khaled Hosseini’s The Kite Runner and A Thousand Splendid Suns. I suggest that the ‘third-world’ and transnational literature can also be a selling point for the transnational subject, whose representations may at times pander to preconceived ideas about ‘the Orient’ and its people. As an illustration of this double-bind, I offer a close reading of all the novels to suggest that on the one hand, the comprador author writes within the paradigm of the ‘writing back’ movement, as a counter-discourse to the Orientalist representations of the homeland. However, the corollary is that such an attempt to ‘write back’, in a sense, re-inscribes the very discourse it wishes to subvert, especially because the literature is aimed at a ‘Western’ audience. Moreover, the template of the comprador could be used to explain how a transnational post-9/11 text from an Afghan-American, for instance, may be put to the service of the imperial machine, and read, therefore, as a supporting document to the U.S. policy on Afghanistan.

Early Buddhists undisputably considered Nirvana to be the ultimate goal of their practice. However, not only was the meaning of Nirvana disputed, but so were the means (e.g., right view and no view) conducive to its achievement. The thesis proposes to examine the controversial status that scholars have accorded to faith and reason as elelments of the path. In this respect, the Buddha's attitude toward tradition, reasoning and experience is examined, along with the epistemological foundations of Pali canonical thought. Related issues such as identifying the ultimate criterion of reality advanced by Buddhism are also discussed. Moreover, since the Buddha suggested various ways leading to Nirvana, an attempt is made to discover how the paths of sila, samadhi and panna relate to each other and to the final goal.

This dissertation consists of a novel, The Buddha on Page 13 and a dissertation of limited extent, "Buddhist symbolism and metaphoric, and the perception of sin, guilt and punishment in The Buddha on Page 13." In the dissertation of limited extent the role that guilt plays in the motivation of an individual's actions is investigated. The Christian and Buddhist views of sin are compared, and the conclusion is made that neither Christianity nor Buddhism can explain why mankind experiences the feeling of guilt. The central character, Toit Brink, finally accepts this "so-ness" of things: "thathatha". The dissertation explains how the style of the text wishes to be neutral, and how this neutrality is harnessed for Buddhist reasons. The Buddhist element in the novel's symbolism and metaphoric is illuminated, as well as the apparent contradiction of some of the metaphors. / Afrikaans & Theory of Literature / M.A. (Afrikaans)