The modern Arabic term for national homeland, waṭan, derives its sense from the related yet semantically different usage of this term in classical Arabic, particularly in classical Arabic poetry. In modern usage, waṭan refers to a politically defined, visually memorialized territory whose expanse is cognized abstractly rather than through personal experience. The modern waṭan is the geopolitical locus of national identity. The classical notion of waṭan, however, is rarely given much geographical content, although it usually designates a relatively localized area on the scale of a neighborhood, town, or village. More important than geographical content is the subjective meaning of the waṭan, in the sense of its essential place in the psyche of an individual. The waṭan (also mawṭin, awṭān), both in poetry and other types of classical writing, is strongly associated with the childhood/youth and primary love attachments of the speaker. This sense of waṭan is thus temporally defined as much as spatially, and as such can be seen as an archetypal instance of the Bakhtinian chronotope, one intrinsically associated with nostalgia and estrangement. The waṭan, as the site of the classical self’s former plenitude, is by definition lost or transfigured and unrecoverable, becoming an attachment that must be relinquished for the sake of virtue and glory. This paper argues that the bivalency of the classical waṭan chronotope, recoverable through analysis of poetic and literary texts, allows us to understand the space and time of the self in classical Arabic literature and how this self differs from that presupposed by modern ideals of patriotism.

Ce mémoire cherche à évaluer la culpabilité de Socrate face à l’échec et à la corruption d’Alcibiade, telle que la question se pose dans le Banquet de Platon. Il comprend quatre chapitres. Le premier démontre que le cadre dramatique lui-même fait occuper une place centrale à la vie et au déclin d’Alcibiade et au problème de la responsabilité de Socrate face aux accusations de corruption de la jeunesse qui ont pesé sur lui. Le deuxième chapitre interprète le discours d’Alcibiade comme une tentative de disculpation qui repose sur une critique acerbe du comportement de Socrate. Il se serait détourné de Socrate et de ses enseignements en raison de son ironie, de son arrogance et de son indifférence – de son hybris. Le troisième chapitre étudie le discours de Socrate sur l’accession à la beauté intelligible. Il expose la nature particulière de son éros, qui repose sur l’ironie et l’inversion des rôles comme moyens d’exhorter à la philosophie. Le quatrième chapitre pose la question de l’efficacité de ce type de pédagogie et de la responsabilité du philosophe vis-à-vis de ses disciples. L’étude conclut que l’amour et l’ironie de Socrate sont essentiellement des moyens d’inviter l’autre à se remettre lui-même en question et à prendre soin de son âme. Socrate n’est donc pas coupable d’avoir corrompu Alcibiade. La faute est entièrement celle du jeune homme. Il s’est montré incapable, par égocentrisme et fierté excessive, de réagir correctement à l’énigme posée par le comportement érotique de Socrate. / This essay on Plato’s Symposium assesses to what extent Socrates could be held guilty for Alcibiades’ failure and corruption. The first of the four chapters shows that Alcibiades’ life and decline and the accusation against Socrates of youth corruption are central to the dramatic structure. The second chapter interprets Alcibiades’ speech as a sharp criticism of Socrates’ behaviour meant to exculpate himself. Alcibiades justifies his walking away from Socrates and his teachings on the basis of the philosopher’s irony, arrogance and indifference – his hybris. The third chapter looks at Socrates’ speech, which sets out the path to the highest form of Beauty. It explores the particular nature of his eros, which relies especially on irony and role inversion to induce philosophical thinking. The fourth chapter asks how effective this kind of pedagogy is, and what is the responsibility of the philosopher to his students. It is concluded that Socratic love and irony are essentially to be conceived of as means of inciting followers to put themselves into question and take greater care of their souls. Socrates is thus not guilty of corrupting the young man. The fault is entirely Alcibiades’. His pride and selfishness are what prevented him from meeting the challenge that Socrates’ erotic behavior put before him.

This study analyzed The Children's Hour, The Little Foxes, Watch on the Rhine, Toys in the Attic in terms of the forms of human love delineated by Erich Fromm in The Art of Loving. The motives and actions of one or more principal characters and their dramatic situations were studied. It was discovered that, in the plays that were examined, each character responded to his or her situation in a loving or a hateful manner and that these choices with regard to love provided the dramatic matrix of the play.

This thesis is concerned with the establishment of an underlying philosophy for Robert Browning's many themes. It asserts that a notion found in II Corinthians 3:6, "the letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life," is basic to ideas such as Browning's belief in the superiority of life over art, of the wisdom of the heart over the intellect, and of honest skepticism over unexamined belief. The sources used to establish this premise are mainly the poems themselves, grouped in categories by subject matter of art, love, and religion. Some of his correspondence is also examined to ascertain how relevant the philosophy was to his own life. The conclusion is that the concept is, indeed, pervasive throughout Browning's poetry and extremely important to the man himself.

On July 8th, 1980, Raymond Carver wrote an impassioned letter to his editor, Gordon Lish, begging him to cancel the publication of what would soon become Carver’s minimalist masterpiece, What We Talk About When We Talk About Love. Carver argues in his letter that Lish’s heavily-edited versions of his original stories were bound to cause Carver's death. Despite his anxieties, Carver’s authorial demise didn’t come until 2009, 21 years following his physical death, when the unedited versions of the What We Talk About stories appeared in a posthumous collection called Beginners. Beginners excises Lish’s excisions, exposing a Raymond Carver at odds with his minimalist identity. The “restored” text also displaces Carver as the sole author of his work. We learn from Carver’s effacement that any cultural construction of an author is an erroneous effigy. Beginners exemplifies how textual restorations deflate cultural myths as they work with original texts to enrich our understanding

This text is a partial record of the conception and development of Reflections of Red in a Mirror of Desire that opened on February 20th 2006 for a three day run ending on February 22nd. The majority of the text is focused on the events and research that provided the concept for the show. Some of the research includes influential choreographers and companies such as Pina Bausch, Graziela Daniele, Moses Pendleton, Pilobolus, Momix, Julie Tayrnor, and Merce Cunningham. Included in the analysis of this event are the experiences and lessons that came about during the process of directing Reflections of Red in a Mirror of desire. The result of this evaluation is the creation of an approach to choreographing and directing sexual or intimate scenes for the stage. Further reflections on directing, choreographing, collaboration, creative process, and aesthetics serve as the culmination of lessons inherent in both the creation of the production and the author's three years of study at the Virginia Commonwealth University Theatre Pedagogy Program with an emphasis in Movement and Choreography.

L'œuvre à l'étude dans cet essai est la nouvelle intitulée Premier Amour de Samuel Beckett. À travers l'analyse de deux mises en scène de l’acte d'inscription présentes dans cette courte fiction, ce mémoire traite de la question que nous posent les inscriptions lorsque nous les lisons et lorsque nous les inscrivons. Il se divise donc en deux chapitres : le premier déploie l'étude de l'inscription linguistique en tant qu'inscription visible et lisible; le second se concentre sur l'inscription en tant qu'elle est marquée par le concept de legs. En caractérisant et en comparant ces deux inscriptions, d’une part funéraire (l'épitaphe que compose le narrateur pour lui-même suite à la mort de son père) et d’autre part amoureuse (le nom que trace le narrateur au moment où il « tombe amoureux »), ce mémoire expose comment Premier Amour peut être envisagé comme un premier pas dans une compréhension générale de la constitution écrite d'un « legs littéraire ». Surtout, il explicite comment s’orchestre l'imbrication conceptuelle de l’inscription et du legs qu'elle véhicule et présuppose, puisque cette imbrication est inhérente à la compréhension de notre monde et de la littérature. En conclusion, cette étude mène à considérer le rapport conflictuel entre la contemporanéité rêvant d’un monde sans inscriptions et l’inévitabilité de l’inscription. / This dissertation deals with the representations of the act of inscribing in Samuel Beckett’s short story Premier Amour with a particular focus on two specific inscriptions – namely firstly, the funeral (the epitaph the narrator composes for himself after his father’s death) and secondly, the beloved (the name he inscribes once he “falls in love”). By looking at these, the dissertation investigates the notions of both reading and writing. The dissertation is divided into two chapters: the first, which looks at the inscription as something visible and legible; and the second, which focuses on inscribing as an act which has a legacy. By using and comparing these two approaches, this dissertation demonstrates how Premier Amour can be seen as a first step towards a general comprehension of a written “literary legacy”. Specifically, the dissertation shows the linguistic construction of the conceptual interlacing of the inscriptions and the legacy it conveys and presupposes, as this interlacing is inherent to our understanding of the literary and the human world. By means of a conclusion, this dissertation considers the conflicting relationship between, on the one hand, the contemporaneousness which dreams of a world without inscription, and on the other hand, the inevitability of inscription.

La thèse que nous proposons aboutit à une interprétation de l’ouvrage philosophique de Karol Wojtyla qu’est Osoba i czyn ou enfrançais Personne et acte. Dans sa préface, l’auteur présente cet essai non seulement issu de ses travaux concernant Max Scheler,mais également né d’une interrogation jaillie « dans l’esprit de celui qui » le rédigeant « étudia alors saint Thomas ». La présenteétude de ce texte phénoménologique tâche de comprendre un tant soit peu le lecteur de Thomas d’Aquin qui élabore cet ouvrage.Les écrits qui sont les témoins de l’histoire philosophique de Wojtyla et concernent tant Jean de la Croix ou Max Scheler queThomas d’Aquin, aident à comprendre l’auteur de Personne et acte. Leur examen ainsi que celui de ce dernier essai conduisent àrendre compte de l’importance de l’amour qui est seulement évoqué au terme du texte. Pour Wojtyla, la mystique de Jean de laCroix, dans laquelle l’amour joue un rôle primordial, est radicalement conforme à la doctrine thomasienne. Cette dernière se trouvealors enrichie par une prise en compte de la réalité en tant qu’elle est vécue par le sujet. Dans la phénoménologie schelerienne, quitend à manifester la personne dans l’amour, Wojtyla apprécie à nouveau cette considération de l’expérience qui manquait àThomas d’Aquin. Mais il remarque que l’émotionnalisme de Scheler conduit à une erreur résultant « de la radicale séparation del’opérativité de la personne d’avec son amour ». Dans Personne et acte, la pensée thomasienne permet à Wojtyla de corriger lapensée schelerienne en s’appuyant sur la conception de l’actus humanus. Le thomisme carmélitain de l’ouvrage implique uncertain « antithomisme » méthodologique étonnamment adéquat à la pensée thomasienne. A l’instar de la mystique, Personne etacte peut donc être interprété comme la description d’un exercice pratique de connaissance de la personne dans son acte : unexercice qui est une voie d’amour et plus précisément une voie d’extase nocturne où l’amour même est connaissance. / Our Doctoral Thesis is an interpretation of Karol Wojtyla’s philosophical work “Osoba i czyn” (in English Person and Act). In hispreface the author describes his work as emanating not only from his research on Max Scheler, but also as originating from aquestion that arose “from the mind of the one whom”, while writing on St. Thomas, “was at the same time studying him.” Thepresent study of this phenomenological text tries to arrive at a better understanding of the reader of St. Thomas as he develops hiswork. Wojtyla’s philosophical influences include John of the Cross and Max Scheler, as well as Thomas Aquinas. These allcontribute to an understanding of the author of Person and Act. The examination of these works, along with Person and Act, leadsto the revelation of the importance of love, which is however only mentioned at the end of the latter text. For Wojtyla, the mysticismof John of the Cross, in which love has a central role, is completely in accordance with Thomistic doctrine. This doctrine is thenenriched by taking into account the reality as experienced by the subject. In Schelerian phenomenology, where the person revealshimself in the act of love, Wojtyla found here what he thought was precisely lacking in St. Thomas. But he noted that Scheler’semotionalism leads to an error arising from “the radical separation between the person’s actions and his love.” In Person and Act,Wojtyla, by applying the Thomistic doctrine of actus humanus, is able to correct the weakness inherent in Schelerian thought. Thework’s Carmelitan Thomism suggests a certain anti-Thomistic methodology which is paradoxically consistent with Thomisticdoctrine. Like the mystic himself, Person and Act can thus be interpreted as the description of a practical exercise of knowledge ofthe person in action: an exercise which is a way of love, or, more precisely, a way of dark ecstasy where love itself is knowledge.

Master's thesis Don Juan as the character in French literature from 1850 until 1950 is dedicated to the research on the change of Don Juan's character in the selected works of this period. Author concentrated on the sources of inspiration and on contribution of individual authors in relation to previous works with Don Juan's theme. In his work he uses mainly the comparative method. He divides works into three groups. In the first group, there are the works whose authors found inspiration for Don Juan's character above all in the works of Molière and Tirso de Molina. In the second part, there are works that follow the romantic concept by Prosper Mérimée. In the third part, there are atypical works, in which does not prevail any of the previous models. Author concentrates on new elements with which Don Juan's myth was enriched.

Title of the thesis: Female sexual discourse in contrast to the Middle Ages and XX. century Keywords: perception of love, women, troubadours women, society, literature. Abstract: The main theme of this diploma thesis is to understand how the socio-cultural aspects and the changes affect the view on love in medieval literary production and production of writers of the 20th century. The focus of the thesis is primarily the writing of Marie de France, a representative of women author in medieval literature, and the deputy from production of contemporary writers - Simone de Beauvoir. In the introduction of my thesis I depick the development of literary genres in the historical context in the periods mentioned above. Next chapters directly address the theme of love from different perspective and the status of women in society. The last chapter analyzes the way women exhibit their emotions in the times of courtly literature and to devote part of the embattled Simone de Beauvoir and her different view on the concept of love in the contexte of female sexuality and experience life as a couple.