This thesis looks at the poetics of colour in Stefan George, Rainer Maria Rilke, Wassily Kandinsky and Else Lasker-Schüler. It argues that focusing on colour words allows us to think more carefully about the sort of making that poetry, around the turn of the twentieth century, was seen to be, its purpose and effects. In doing so it thinks also about this making-about the ways that words can be seen as the material of poetry, the ways poems relate to objects, and are objects, the ways poets negotiate semantic space and communicability. While other accounts argue for the specificity of a particular period, author, or hue, I argue for the specificity of the medium, a conclusion which seems necessary when considering how these particular poets thought about and through colour. While the poets' projects differ, colour can be used in each case like a prism, to separate out their attitudes and commitments towards their medium and its place in the world. The combination of these four poets, which is, to the best of my knowledge, unique, also allows new connections to be seen, whether, facing inward, in terms of colour itself, or outward towards the commitments regarding the poem that an approach via colour exposes. The four poets share an interest in the involvement, and in some cases, aesthetic education, of readers, and in how and what we can learn through reading, and particularly reading colour. What we learn has less to do with colours and how they are experienced than to do with the constructed world of the poem and its mechanisms, and of the role we have to play in animating this world.

This thesis aims to set the Engishiki Norito (hereafter Norito), a group of early Japanese liturgical texts, in the context of the broader Old Japanese textual tradition and, in the process, draw attention to their value as literary artefacts. This is achieved by valorizing the role in the texts of rhetoric - defined broadly as meaningful units of repetitive language - and demonstrating that rhetorical structures similar to those found in the Norito exist throughout the corpus of Old Japanese literature, as far as it is extant. There have only been two substantial attempts to engage with the repetitive language in the Norito as a network of structures or systems recognizable as rhetoric (Inamura & Inamura, 1956; Kameyama, 1995). While still valuable, these studies embody the combined legacies of diverse traditional discourses, borrowed Western notions of veracity versus ornament and narratives of continuity poorly applied to early Japan that have affected Norito scholarship generally. In particular, they do not pay close attention to the syntax, morphology and phonology of Old Japanese encoded in the texts, as distinct from later forms of Japanese. Neither do they emphasize the extent of the close intertextual bonds the Norito share with other Old Japanese texts, or the associative potential of logography in a textual tradition as sophisticated as that within which the Norito were recorded in writing. In Western Japanological discourse, the repetitively structured language termed rhetoric in this study has been openly viewed as detrimental to the Norito's literary worth (Sansom 1931, Philippi 1959, 1990); most likely as a result of the problematic status of rhetoric and repetition in Western modernity. This - coupled with disciplinary divisions in Japan - has resulted in the Norito becoming divorced from the mainstream corpus of Old Japanese literature, despite their close relationship to that corpus and despite their high degree of rhetorical sophistication. After addressing some of the reasons for the Norito's alienation in discourse on Japanese literature, and exploring some theoretical dimensions of rhetoric itself, this study proceeds to set the liturgies in the context of Old Japanese oral and textual cultures and to begin to introduce features of their rhetoric - noting that the interrelatedness of rhetorical structures is a major key to understanding them. The last three chapters of the study are concerned with rhyme, a special feature that is both an analogue of, and interconnected with, other rhetorical structures. Together, the three chapters argue that rhyme is an understudied but pervasive feature of Japanese poetry and song and that - in the Old Japanese case - rhyming structures constitute a significant component of the rhetoric of the Norito and other texts. The development of a robust analytical approach to rhetorical features of Old Japanese texts has been hampered by the persistent reluctance to associate Japanese literature with 'rhyme', or 韻 in - two terms with problematic heritages. In attempting to implement such an approach in the case of the Norito, it is hoped that this study will, in small measure, contribute to a better understanding of rhetorical texts in general and, above all, to the repositioning of the Norito within the mainstream corpus of Old Japanese literature, where they belong.

This thesis is an inquiry into the creative processes of poetry and poetic expression in documentary. The practice-based element is a 60 minute video about a poet living in Exeter, UK, called James Turner. The documentary is entitled, The Knotweed Factor. This written element of the thesis contextualises the investigation as a discourse on blindness and visual impairment. There are few representations of blindness and/or visual impairment (VI) in The Knotweed Factor. Rather, the documentary is concerned with how visual information (e.g., filming a poet) is translated non-visually (e.g., the sound of the poem being recited). It also addresses the issue of how the non-visual is translated into the visual. I argue in this text that blindness/VI is marginalised in visual studies/culture. This is unfortunate because blindness/VI studies provides valuable context for understanding the dynamics of sound and vision in creative media, which is a central concern of The Knotweed Factor. The rationale for taking this approach is as follows: During the editing, it was noticed that Turner (who is sighted) provides a kind of unprompted audio description (AD) of events in his environment to the audience, as if he is participating in a radio documentary. This raised questions, not only about the ekphrastic possibilities of his technique, but also about the potential to contextualise such scenes as a disquisition on blindness/VI. Blindness/VI is an important and under-theorised element of visual studies/culture (VS/C). Many films, plays, animations, documentaries, and television programmes are audio described. AD enables the blind/visually impaired (also VI) to comprehend and enjoy visual action. It is suggested here that AD theory is an insufficient model for critically reflecting on the creative processes in The Knotweed Factor. This is because the field is presently more concerned with practicability than with aesthetics. It seemed more helpful to address the broader question of how blindness/VI is positioned in VS/C. Doing so has highlighted instances of exclusion and marginalisation in VS/C. In the course of the video production, it was discovered that the interaction of dreams, memories, and ideas (the mindscape) informs the temporal creative process. Most analytical models within VS/C (e.g., Deleuze) offer a dialectical approach to understanding creativity. Henri Bergson, however, proposes a theory of multiplicity, which considers the interplay of phenomenological creativity of the mindscape as a homogenous, multifaceted process, in place of a dialectical one. Martha Blassnigg interrogates Bergson’s responses to audiovisual media and argues that Bergson’s multiplicity formula is more useful for understanding these processes, both for artist and audience. Blassnigg interprets Bergson’s theory as a universality of idea communication. This thesis considers what the universality of audiovisual experience implies for blindness/VI studies. It does so by contextualising the written research as a discourse on VS/C. In The Knotweed Factor, the emotions, sounds, and visual ideas, memories, and dreams which inform James Turner’s creativity are conveyed to the audience in two ways: 1) By sound (Turner’s recitations, interviews, and conversations), and 2) by the documentary’s abstracted audiovisualisations of Turner’s poetry and mindscape. For Turner, the ‘image’ is a personalised, innate phenomenon. It is ephemeral, intangible imagination. Turner’s experience (audiovisualised in The Knotweed Factor) is compared in this written part of the thesis to pre-Socratic ideations of image-making. It is argued that for many cultures, the image was (and for some remains) an emanation of spirit or idea. In other words, the image was considered a transcendent force, and the ‘soul’ of the image eternal and universal. This transcendence is considered in this written element of the thesis as a bridge between the present academic gap in the fields of blindness/VI studies and visual studies/culture. In this text, The Knotweed Factor serves as a case-study to test how non- and minimal-visual elements of audiovisual art and media are positioned in VS/C. Constructed here is a history of the interpretation of blindness and the image, from pre-Socratic aesthetics to the Enlightenment, where ideas concerning the phenomenology of blindness and visual impairment were transformed into epistemological inquiries. This approach enables the researcher to reflect critically on the aesthetics of The Knotweed Factor, using the framework of the non-visual (in this case recited poetry) to test and interrogate the visual (i.e., ‘poetically’ visualised poetry).

This thesis is focused on the poetics of the czech hip hop lyrics. Analyzed texts increasingly represent the mainstream hip hop as a musical style and capturing the period from the beginining of the nineties until almost the present day. It deals with the appereance and description of the recurring patterns, their changeability in time, or sometimes even this what these schemes beyond. It also deals with the description of the specific atributs typical for certain kind of authors. The thesis is based on hermeneutics and poetics or stylistics.

The thesis research is situated within the field of Architecture. Its principle objective is the articulation of arguments for a new theory of architecture as an architectural poetics, and related to this, a new form of discourse as poetry of an architectonic order. The research was initiated through a series of questions that architects confront when asked to create and to speak about what can be understood to be(come) frameworks for (unknown) life. It thus deals with the question of the unknown and, related to this, the question of open form. It develops on the idea that a concept of inhabitation may be feasible exclusively on the basis of a theory that extends the well known two-valued logic that has been dominant in the Western world since the times of classical metaphysics. Rooted in philosophy, the research extends contemporary architectural and critical theory, notions from poets such as Paul Celan, Marguérite Duras and Samuel Beckett, and research in second order cybernetics – the latter with an emphasis on Gotthard Günther’s writings on Non-Aristotelean logic. The text’s focus is on the notion of Architecture as a transcendental concept. It advances the understanding of Architectural Design as a performative process that creates borders rather than borderlines, limits rather than limitations and, is therefore, a discipline of radical communication that always seeks to extend itself towards an Other – the unknown – addressing it without previously quantifying it to render it provable. The research furthers the field of Architecture by contributing to it a new theory in the form of an architectural poetics. It addresses questions of design with a procedural framework in which critical engagement is an intrinsic principle, and offers an alternative to existing discourses through a poetry of architectonic order that is open to the future.

This thesis formulates a practice-based approach to performances of breathlessness on the page. It investigates breathlessness as a subject of creative practice through performance writing, creating different works that function as material object, site as well as score for future performance permutations. These works each examine different aspects of breathlessness, with a focus on the corporeal, affect and between-ness. The relationship of these performance works to the body, affect, time and duration establish the performative possibilities of writing and how this specific form of artistic practice contributes to discourse surrounding live work. My research does not distinguish between the contributions of practice and critical analysis. The outcome of the research is three works, one of which is embedded within this document, and a critical analysis that explores the different ways breathlessness performs on the page. Key to my research is a negotiation of understandings of lessness. Breathless performance writing posits a concept of lessness as other than absence. The ability of the practice-based work to initiate experiences that engage with the body, time and duration also demonstrate forms through which writing can generate as well as directly participate in performance. This research contributes to the field of contemporary performance and theatre practice by defining the live in relation to writing as well as developing a concept of lessness. The distinction between writing and performance leads to unnecessary schisms between the two disciplines. This body of research demonstrates the ways in which performance writing bridges these disciplines to initiate live work. This research disrupts conventional and binary definitions of breathlessness, performance and writing. Performance writing initiates live experiences for audiences of one or many, unbound to any one point in time, capable of generating multiple but unique live encounters with performance.

The argument of the thesis is that the literary forms of Thomas Merton's prose writings embody theological claims he makes elsewhere at the level of content. Specifically, the five chapters of the thesis show that Merton not only writes about the themes of self-denial, simplification, observing the 'thereness' of the world, and (in two distinct ways) apprehending God in darkness and obscurity, but that he also enacts those themes in the way he writes prose. The thesis offers an original and significant contribution to three main fields of enquiry. Firstly, when analysing Merton's prose I employ methods espoused by New Formalist literary critics, but I apply their reading strategies to the theological dimensions of literary form. Secondly, my work builds upon claims made by theologians of form about the link between literary genres or forms and issues surrounding, for instance, the character of God, but it does so in a novel way, by employing New Formalist close reading strategies. Thirdly, the thesis offers a new method of enquiry for Thomas Merton Studies, by performing the first extended literary-critical account of his prose. In sum, the thesis opens up new theoretical territory for Formalism, new specific material for the theology of form, and a new methodology for Merton Studies. Besides the introductory and concluding chapters, all of the chapters of the thesis are structured in the same way. Each includes an expositional section in which I quote from Merton's thoughts on, for example, self-denial, and a literary-critical section, in which I read the forms of Merton's prose in terms of the content-claims already outlined. The goal of this methodology is, at every stage, to show that Merton enacts his own theologically-rooted content claims in the forms of his prose.

Esta pesquisa tem por objetivo investigar práticas relacionais visando à verificação de lugares que são/foram capazes de gerar e/ou garantir interações sociais a partir de narrativas mnemônicas, propondo novos enlaces. Utilizamos o método da pesquisa ação no qual a captação da informação se dá de forma coletiva, participativa e ativa. Destacamos o processo de aproximação à comunidade da Mangueira, a constituição de um mapeamento sobre os pontos de encontro entre moradores e destes com pessoas de fora do morro, e a reativação do jornal comunitário Bate Boca experiência que se efetivou através de diferentes ações colaborativas. Verificamos a relevância dos espaços de convivência para os mangueirenses: a conformação e a sedimentação de laços relacionais entre os moradores são experiência compartilhada nos lugares. Estes são a base onde às inter-relações podem se efetivar e onde são gerados os sentimentos de pertença e reconhecimento. As intervenções de urbanização, de segurança e de ordem pública alteram ou eliminam de forma drástica esses lugares e, portanto, das relações que estão ali consolidadas. Essas mudanças trouxeram à tona lembranças de outros espaços significativos que sucumbiram na comunidade / This research aims at investigating relational practices in order to detect places which are/were able to generate and/or ensure social interactions from mnemonic narratives offering new connections. We have used the method of action research, in which the uptake of information is done in a collective, participatory and active approach. We highlight the process of approximation within a community called Mangueira, the establishment of a mapping concerning the meeting points between the dwellers and the people who do not live in the community, and the reactivation of the community newspaper Bate Boca - experience that was accomplished through different collaborative actions. We have examined the relevance of the living spaces for the ones who live in Mangueira: the conformation and the sedimentation of relational ties among residents are experiences shared in places. These are the basis on which the interrelationships can be effective and the feelings of belonging and recognition are generated. The urbanization, security and public order interventions either alter or eliminate these living places drastically and therefore, they do the same with the relationships that are consolidated there. These changes have evoked memories of other significant places that have also succumbed in the community

O maior diferencial entre o trabalho aqui proposto e outros já realizados por doutorandos em literatura brasileira é o olhar voltado para os aspectos lingüísticos. Em outros termos, esta tese visa provar que Mário Quintana foi um poeta da língua, pois soube, como poucos, manejar os recursos expressivos do nosso vernáculo com a finalidade de transmitir sua mensagem poética. Outro objetivo desta pesquisa seria o resgate da obra de Quintana para as novas gerações. Assim, busco analisar de que forma a morfossintaxe, a semântica, a fonética e a estilística em Mário Quintana contribuem para a construção da sua poética. O corpus constitui-se de poemas, prosas poéticas e epigramas pertencentes aos livros Apontamentos de história sobrenatural e Caderno H (não exclusivamente) que são trabalhados estilisticamente nos aspectos lingüístico-literários essenciais. As características principais estudadas são: a intertextualidade, as marcas de oralidade, a poética e a linguagem em Mário Quintana / The major difference between the work proposed here and the others that have already been performed by experts (PHDs) in Brazilian literature is the focus on linguistic features. In other words, this thesis aims at proving that Mário Quintana was a language poet because he knew how to manipulate the expressive Portuguese resources to communicate his poetic message. Besides, another objetive of this research is to recover Quintanas work for the new generations. So, I intend to analyse, in detail, how morphosintaxes, semantics, phonetics and stylistics in Quintanas work contribute to the construction of his poetics. The corpus consists of poems, poetic proses and epigrams from the books Apontamentos de história sobrenatural and Caderno H (not exclusively) which are analised in the essencial linguistic and literary aspects. The main studied features are Mário Quintanas intertextuality, orality marks, poetics and language

This PhD dissertation examines narrative in early Welsh and English poetry, and more particularly how, where, and why we find temporal progression and radiality in the poetic narrative of both literatures. The term ‘radiality’ is discussed by Joseph Clancy, who, in introducing his translations of medieval Welsh poems, describes them as generally having ‘“radial” structure, circling about, repeating, and elaborating the central theme’. In making this investigation, this PhD dissertation is informed by narrative theory, particularly the model proposed by William Labov, and it contains a detailed methodological section, highlighting how I adapt this model to make it work better with my corpus. The model is further developed so as to enable the creation of some statistical data, which is deployed alongside close reading in looking at trends over a corpus and between different corpora. My corpus consists on the one hand in all Welsh poems composed before c. 1250 with significant narrative elements or containing a list-like narrative. These are set in contrast with English poems composed before c. 1250 narrating the same subjects or containing the same stylistic features. Although the comparison is primarily between Welsh and English poetry, I also compare texts to their sources or analogues, primarily in Latin or French, as looking at how the poems depart from shared traditions is key in examining the particular tendencies of each literature. Following the model developed by Sarah Higley, the Welsh and English texts are contrasted with one another to highlight the idiosyncracies of both. In the first chapter, I examine the role temporal markers and direct speech play in the progression and radiality of early Welsh and English secular battle poetry. In most but not all cases, there is a clear opposition between extended and clearly marked narrative in the English and shorter narratives with less temporal deixis in the Welsh. Following this, Chapter 2 moves to the future to look at narrative at the End of Days, where markedly different patterns of contrast are found between the poems. I seek to explain why this is the case, looking in particular at the role of time-reference in determining narrativity. Chapter 3 begins with a detailed study of Iesu a Mair a’r Cynhaeaf Gwyrthiol (‘Jesus and Mary and the Miraculous Harvest’) and compares the way it tells its story with the narration found in its analogues, noting how and why this Welsh text has particularly clear, in some ways almost prose-like, narrative. The chapter then expands to compare narratives of Christ’s birth and early life in early Middle Welsh and Middle English poetry more generally, while investigating their relative absence in Old English. IChapter 4 moves away from thematic comparison to examine a particular structure: the list. Y Gofeiss6ys Byt, an early Welsh narrative poem in many ways exceptional, is studied in detail, and the way in which listing interacts with narrative in that text serves as a springboard for a wider discussion of list/narrative interplay in early Welsh and English poetry.