This dissertation argues that the modern concept of literary character was an unintended consequence of Renaissance moral poetics. The evolution of "character" as a term of literary analysis, from the rediscovery of Aristotle's Poetics in sixteenth-century Italy to the establishment of modern English usage in the late seventeenth century, is the focus of the first half of my work. Aristotle invented a theory of mimetic realism whereby the representation of types of character renders transparent the moral ideology operative in a culture. By placing types into a plot revealing how they do or do not conduce to human flourishing, the Aristotelian poet engages in ideological critique. As I claim, Renaissance humanists revived the form of the Aristotelian character type yet looked to the ethics of Christian Neo-Platonism or Neo-Stoicism to ground any ideological critique. The result was an array of eclectic accounts of poetic character's relation to the political subject. Through close examinations of three authors in the second half of my work, I elucidate the internal tensions and creative opportunities posed by such accounts. Michel de Montaigne's statements concerning the representation of moral character in the Essais test various criticisms and partial recuperations of Stoic-Aristotelian epideixis. I argue that Montaigne eventually attaches to the humanist image of the inspired poet, because poetic inspiration provides a model of heuristic utterance that avoids the aggression of political factions in France. In a chapter devoted to Edmund Spenser's The Faerie Queene, I argue that the Neo-Platonic metaphysics taken for granted by Spenser in the "Letter to Raleigh" implies a more comprehensive hermeneutics of allegorical character than either the "Letter" or existing scholarship acknowledges. Interpreting Spenser's representations of the "morall vertues, as Aristotle hath devised" through the lens of this hermeneutics brings us closer to the experience of Spenser's contemporaries reading his poem. In my final chapter, I study William Shakespeare's thoughtful deployment of a Ciceronian model of exemplarity. I argue that in the character of Henry V, Shakespeare unmasks the ideology of patriotism and historical triumphalism shared by Cicero and the Tudor regime.

This dissertation examines new media by taking as its starting point the definition offered by Lev Manovich, "the shift of all culture to computer culture"--new media are new not so much because they have not existed before but because they must adhere to the conventions of a computer. Media, according to Manovich, become programmable, and in their new programmability, along with a host of other implications and repercussions of that programmability, we human beings experience something new. Articulating that something remains no easy chore, and Manovich continually makes his case that "the language of new media" much resembles the language of that older medium, cinema.However, to nod in agreement with Manovich is not the present task; instead, I take Manovich and place his notion of new media in direct dialogue with rhetorical theorists Aristotle, Plato, Kenneth Burke, Barry Brummett, Jeffery Walker, Michel Foucault, and other writers and thinkers in order to pursue a portion of that "shift of all culture": I ask, "If new media has a language, what is the poetics of that language?" In order to pursue an answer to this question, I take individual new media objects--the film Saving Private Ryan; the video game Medal of Honor: Frontline; the computer worm MyDoom; the media coverage of the 1996 presidential campaign trail, including the "Dean Scream"; the SanDisk's cooperation with the Alzheimer's Association's "Take Action against Alzheimer's" campaign; the film The Manchurian Candidate; and the modern database--and analyze how they make meaning. In order to do this, I frequently reach back into antiquity, specifically into the early and predisciplinary areas of philosophy, rhetoric, and poetics.

This thesis examines the Castilian work of Fray Luis de Leon from the perspective of phenomenological hermeneutics as a literary approach. I discuss the lack of serious studies on 16th Century Spanish poetic theory, and propose that Fray Luis de Leon’s work offers a model of literary theory and creation that can be considered a philosophical poetics, in contrast to the rhetorical approach of Renaissance humanistic poetics. I examine the formation of Fray Luis de Leon’s literary work as a process that follows four stages of both hermeneutic understanding and literary creation. I examine the first stage in his translations of Horace and Virgil, his rendering of Tuscan lyric love poetry, and his interpretation of the Psalms. In the literary structuring of his work, I identify images and poetic devices he later expands into all his work. Simultaneously, I suggest that throughout his work, Fray Luis understood the role of language in its literary function as a way to describe reality. In stage two, I analyze Fray Luis de Leon’s biblical expositions, confirming the first stage findings. Fray Luis develops the meaning of poetic configuration, relating it to the literary function of Scripture. The interplay between the biblical text and his reflection on his own reality, forms a sub-text representing a true literary theory. First he attempts a practical literary work in La perfecta casada, a biblical commentary with clear literary pretensions. I extensively analyze Fray Luis de Leon’s main prose work, De los nombres de Cristo as a literary structure resulting from his reflection on literature’s role in understanding reality. Therefore, I approach this important work as literature, not simply as a philosophical treatise or as piece of superb writing. I use Aristotle’s categories, interpreted by Northrop Frye and Paul Ricoeur. Following Frye, literature is a symbolic, verbal structure with different levels of meaning; a structure which in the process of its configuration, gives understanding to the poet and reveals reality. Ricoeur suggests, following Augustine and Aristotle, that the configurating process attempts to redescribe reality to understand it. De los nombres thus expresses the poet’s understanding and insight into the configurative process of the Scriptures, offering it as a way to produce in the reader a poetic experience that is the true experience of reality’s structure. Fray Luis organizes the verbal structures of his work, the “nombres” (names), so the characters of his dialogue, as they discuss the meaning of the names, themselves go through different stages of understanding while literally moving through a physical setting configured by language symbolic of mythical ascent and descent. a practical literary work in La perfecta casada, a biblical commentary with clear literary pretensions. I extensively analyze Fray Luis de Leon’s main prose work, De los nombres de Cristo as a literary structure resulting from his reflection on literature’s role in understanding reality. Therefore, I approach this important work as literature, not simply as a philosophical treatise or as piece of superb writing. I use Aristotle’s categories, interpreted by Northrop Frye and Paul Ricoeur. Following Frye, literature is a symbolic, verbal structure with different levels of meaning; a structure which in the process of its configuration, gives understanding to the poet and reveals reality. Ricoeur suggests, following Augustine and Aristotle, that the configurating process attempts to redescribe reality to understand it. De los nombres thus expresses the poet’s understanding and insight into the configurative process of the Scriptures, offering it as a way to produce in the reader a poetic experience that is the true experience of reality’s structure. Fray Luis organizes the verbal structures of his work, the “nombres” (names), so the characters of his dialogue, as they discuss the meaning of the names, themselves go through different stages of understanding while literally moving through a physical setting configured by language symbolic of mythical ascent and descent.

John Donne’s poetry has long been famous for its metaphysical conceits, which powerfully register the impact of the “New Philosophy,” yet the question of how his work is implicated in the new forms of knowledge-making that exploded in the early seventeenth century has remained unanswered. “Donne and the Sidereus nuncius” examines the relation between method and metaphor on the cusp of the Scientific Revolution by reading the poetry and prose of Donne in the context of developments in early modern astronomy, anatomy and natural philosophy. I focus primarily on two texts, Ignatius, his Conclave (1610) and the Anniversaries (1611-2), which are linked not only by chronology, but also by their mutual concern with the effects of distorted perception on the process of understanding the universe. Written directly after the publication of Galileo’s Sidereus nuncius (1610), these works offer a historicized perspective on Donne’s changing use of scientific metaphor in relation to the transformative crux of the discovery of the telescope, which provided a startling new optical metaphor for the process of knowing. In this context, “Donne and the Sidereus nuncius” considers the conceptual work performed by scientific metaphor as part of an ongoing transformation from emblematic to analogic figuration. Donne’s search for material that is, in his phrase, “appliable” to other subjects, depends on an analogic conception of metaphor, a comparison that enables new thinking by identifying underlying commonalities between disparate objects. Building on this understanding of metaphor as comparative, I examine Donne’s self-conscious use of metaphors of methodical knowledge making—invention, innovation, anatomy and progress—in the context of instrumental metaphors, such as the telescope, spectacles, perspective, and travel narratives. In doing so, I suggest that Donne’s metaphorical conceits explore the conflict between scientific attempts to discern order in nature and the distorting effects of methodological frameworks imposed on the object of analysis.

John Donne’s poetry has long been famous for its metaphysical conceits, which powerfully register the impact of the “New Philosophy,” yet the question of how his work is implicated in the new forms of knowledge-making that exploded in the early seventeenth century has remained unanswered. “Donne and the Sidereus nuncius” examines the relation between method and metaphor on the cusp of the Scientific Revolution by reading the poetry and prose of Donne in the context of developments in early modern astronomy, anatomy and natural philosophy. I focus primarily on two texts, Ignatius, his Conclave (1610) and the Anniversaries (1611-2), which are linked not only by chronology, but also by their mutual concern with the effects of distorted perception on the process of understanding the universe. Written directly after the publication of Galileo’s Sidereus nuncius (1610), these works offer a historicized perspective on Donne’s changing use of scientific metaphor in relation to the transformative crux of the discovery of the telescope, which provided a startling new optical metaphor for the process of knowing. In this context, “Donne and the Sidereus nuncius” considers the conceptual work performed by scientific metaphor as part of an ongoing transformation from emblematic to analogic figuration. Donne’s search for material that is, in his phrase, “appliable” to other subjects, depends on an analogic conception of metaphor, a comparison that enables new thinking by identifying underlying commonalities between disparate objects. Building on this understanding of metaphor as comparative, I examine Donne’s self-conscious use of metaphors of methodical knowledge making—invention, innovation, anatomy and progress—in the context of instrumental metaphors, such as the telescope, spectacles, perspective, and travel narratives. In doing so, I suggest that Donne’s metaphorical conceits explore the conflict between scientific attempts to discern order in nature and the distorting effects of methodological frameworks imposed on the object of analysis.

E. E. Cummings' reputation as America's pre-eminent avant-garde poet obscures his significant use of schemes and tropes in his traditional and free verse poems. Because of his influence as a sonneteer and lyricist, his poetics constitute an important facet of our modern definition of poetry. However, he did not formulate a coherent statement of his aesthetic theories. Therefore, inductive research is necessary to define "the necessary anything"--those elements which Cummings' practice indicates are essentially poetic.Cummings' traditional poems include his "Epithalamion," ballade-derivations, and a large body of sonnets. All of his sonnets are fourteen lines long; and most maintain line lengths of approximately ten syllables; follow rhyme schemes based on five, six, or seven rhymes; and adhere to traditional rhetorical patterns of development. Deviations from the prescribed scheme include experimental rhymes and rhyme schemes, metrical and rhetorical variations, and a wide variety of subjects and themes. Freedom to deviate from prescribed forms renders the choice to use traditional schemes and tropes significant. Cummings elects to use meter, rhyme, allusion, allegory, personification, metaphor, simile, irony, paradox, onomatopoeia, and economy in his sonnets and free verse.Besides esoteric typography and innovative syntax, half-rhyme and rhetorically significant rhyme and metrical patterns are his trademarks. Additionally, this study demonstrates that Cummings' typography is generally organic and that his aesthetic theories are grounded in the modern romantic movement. While innovation is primary in Cummings' poetics, traditional schemes and tropes are highly significant in the composition and artistic achievement of his poetry. In Cummings' poetry, "the necessary anything" is a product of his formal education in classical and contemporary literatures and his eccentric invention. / Department of English

Spaces are determined not only by their physical qualities, but also by the narratives created during their occupation. These persistent yet ephemeral stories infuse our experience of space with meaning and can be the vehicle through which we consciously express our world view and explore our evolving identity. In architecture, the immaterial is explained as a ‘genius loci’, a spirit tied to a physical space that gives it a specific character and allows for deep connection and identification to occur. Through an exploration of metaphors that have traditionally conveyed the presence of immaterial forces, this thesis reveals how the relationship between psyche and space is embedded in a logic of the imagination; interpreting the experience of space in a language of light and shadow. Additionally this thesis examines how spaces are transformed through the psychological process of mental projection and explores how associations that are deeply rooted in the collective unconscious affect the inner world of the individual. Architecture is therefore seen not as a practice that is psychologically neutral but one that is filled with rich emotional content. To build, constitutes a way to bring order, to set boundaries, to transform the apparent chaos of the world into a comprehendible form. This thesis investigates how the experience of inhabiting can be a catalyst for the imagination to project layers of memory, myth and symbolism onto a location, thereby facilitating the translation of space into place. For Architects the conscious incorporation and evocation of the immaterial is seen as a vital and necessary process that can uniquely contribute to the ensouling of architecture, and the creation of meaningful places.

This thesis proposes the Poetics of Mosaic Narrative as a tool for theorising the creation and telling of cinematic stories in a digital environment. As such the Poetics of Mosaic Narrative is designed to assist creators of new media narrative to design dramatically compelling screen based stories by drawing from established theories of cinema and emerging theories of new media. In doing so it validates the crucial element of cinematic storytelling in the digital medium, which due to its fragmentary, variable and re-combinatory nature, affords the opportunity for audience interaction. The Poetics of Mosaic Narrative re-asserts the dramatic and cinematic nature of narrative in new media by drawing upon the dramatic theory of Aristotle’s Poetics, the cinematic theories of the 1920s Russian Film Theorists and contemporary Neo-Formalists, the narrative theories of the 1960s French Structuralists, and the scriptwriting theories of contemporary cinema. In particular it focuses on the theory and practice of the prominent new media theorist, Lev Manovich, as a means of investigating and creating a practical poetics. The key element of the Poetics of Mosaic Narrative is the expansion of the previously forgotten and undeveloped Russian Formalist concept of cinematurgy which is vital to the successful development of new media storytelling theory and practice. This concept, as originally proposed but not elaborated by Kazansky, encompasses the notion of the creation of cinematic new media narrative as a mosaic – integrally driven by the narrative systems of plot, as well as the cinematic systems of visual style created by the techniques of cinema- montage, cinematography and mise-en-scene.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Wollongong, 2004. / Typescript. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (PhD. Philosophy) -- University of Western Sydney, Nepean, 1998. / "Submitted in fulfilment of the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the School of Communication and Media, University of Western Sydney, Nepean" Bibliography : p. 358-373.