As a reassessment of the southern grotesque, this dissertation places Flannery O’Connor, Carson McCullers, and William Faulkner in context and conversation with the fiction of Fyodor Dostoevsky. While many southern artists and intellectuals have testified to his importance as a creative model and personal inspiration, Dostoevsky’s relationship to southern writers has rarely been the focus of sustained analysis. Drawing upon Mikhail Bakhtin’s deeply positive understanding of grotesque realism, I see the grotesque as an empowering aesthetic strategy that, for O’Connor, McCullers, and Faulkner, captured their characters’ unfinished struggles to achieve renewal despite alienation and pain. My project suggests that the preponderance of a specific type of character in their fiction—a physically or mentally deformed outsider—accounts for both the distinctiveness of the southern grotesque and its affinity with Dostoevsky’s artistic approach. His grotesque characters, consequently, can fruitfully illuminate the misfits, mystics, and madmen who stand at the heart—and the margins—of modern southern fiction. By locating one source of the southern grotesque in Dostoevsky’s fiction, I assume that the southern literary imagination is not directed incestuously inward toward its southern past but also outward beyond the nation or even the hemisphere. This study thus offers one of the first evaluations of Dostoevsky’s impact on southern writers as a group.

Putting Lipstick on a Sculpture is a mixed body of sculptural and two-dimensional work investigating our society’s superficial expectations of beauty. The glitzy covers of glitter and spandex are used over more traditional structural materials to confuse the viewer’s expectations, much like labels categorizing usual fine art. The sculptures are on display for the audience’s aesthetic judgments, while paintings blur lines of what is classified as traditional and acceptable for emphasis.

Diss.--Leipzig--Universität, 2000.

Habilitationsschrift--Philosophische Fakultät--Kiel--Christian-Albrechts-Universität, 2000. / Bibliogr. p. 699-750.

Texte remanié de: Tesis doctoral--Facultad de filología--Madrid--Universidad complutense de Madrid, 2006. Titre de soutenance : Lo grotesco en el teatro español a partir de 1940. / Bibliogr. p. 465-520.

Proefschrift--Letteren--Groningen--Rijksuniversiteit, 2008. / Bibliogr. p. 291-307. Index. Résumé en anglais.

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No description available.

Lietuvių ir latvių literatūra bendrame pasaulio literatūros kontekste išsiskiria kaip unikali terpė, išauginusi savitą rašytojų kartą. Skaudi abiejų šalių istorinė patirtis leido kurtis ypatingai literatūrinei erdvei, reprezentuojančiai baltų kultūrą, jos raidą, vystymosi tendencijas ir formas. Supančiota sovietmečio ideologinių pančių lietuvių ir latvių literatūra stengėsi nenutolti nuo tikrojo meno sampratos, kurio nevaržytų jokie ideologiniai rėmai ir kuriame neliktų būtino tikrovės vaizdavimo bei iškreiptos vertybių sistemos. XX a. antrosios pusės baltų literatūroje kaip itin saviti ir novatoriški iškyla Saulius Šaltenis, Visvaldis Lamas ir Margeris Zarinis. Tai rašytojai, kurie naujai ir moderniai pažvelgia tiek į patį istorinį laiką, tiek į pačią literatūrą. Kritikuodami to meto ideologiją, jie kuria netikėtą meninių ieškojimų ir išraiškos priemonių kupiną sistemą. Atskleisdami absurdišką to meto tikrovę, sutrūkinėjusius žmonių tarpusavio santykius, pakitusią individo savivoką, autoriai į savo kūrybinį lauką įveda groteską ir ironiją kaip būdą pasipriešinti naujai santvarkai ir nevaržomai leidžia kalbėti apie draudžiamus dalykus. Latvių rašytojas V. Lamas vienas pirmųjų savo kūriniuose atskleidžiantis absurdišką sovietmečio sistemos gyvenimo modelį ir parodantis suluošintą individo būtį. Drąsus ir kritiškas žvilgsnis į to meto realybę atveria skaudžias ir tragiškas individo dvasines patirtis. Moderniosios lietuvių prozos pradininkas S. Šaltenis savo kūryboje aprėpia... [toliau žr. visą tekstą] / Both Lithuanian and Latvian prosaic creation work is being distinquished as breeding-grounds of unique litterateur generation in context of whole global literature. The Balts culture and its developing tendency forms were represented and overspread throughout a pecular literature in accordance with grievous historical experiences in these countries. While being fettered by the Soviet ideology, Lithuanian and Latvian prosaists tried not to alienate from the conception of valued art, so they have their ideological framework in requirements to disclose a misunderstanding human value system of the ‘real‘ Soviet regime. The latest time of 20th century in the Balts literature is defined as an uprise of prominent prosaists having their own trend-setting characters: Saulius Saltenis, Visvaldis Lamas and Margeris Zarinis. These authors are characterized as individuals with their new and modern approaches both into the same historical time and literature. In criticizing the ideological system of the Soviet regime, an unexpected search in expressive art system is being composed. The unreasonal viewpoints of the reality, human bust-ups, and changed standpoints into a personal self-image are being described by the authors with some methods of art expressions, i.e. grotesque and irony, as the ways of human resistance against the new regime and unallowed level. A Latvian writer V. Lamas it is noteworthy said to be the first prosaist whose description of a human existence and an... [to full text]

Accompanying a solo gallery exhibition of painting and drawing, SelfSame explores the impact and influence of doubles, twins, and doppelgangers in visual art. Doubles, such as twins and doppelgangers, have an uncanny presence tied to loneliness, melancholy, and death. The presence of doubles in art not only questions the instability of identity and individuality, but calls into play personal reflection, and concepts of mortality. I draw on personal memories growing up as an identical twin to contextualize memory, narrative, and mythology as they are referenced within the artwork.