published_or_final_version / Comparative Literature / Doctoral / Doctor of Philosophy

Permission from the author to digitize this work is pending. Please contact the ICS library if you would like to view this work.

No description available.

This paper aims to investigate how film neo-noir functions as an ideal medium to engage in a postmodernist critique of our society, focusing on its negotiation in the city of Los Angeles. Through incorporating postmodernism theorists Fredric Jameson and Linda Hutcheon’s arguments of the themes of the Nostalgia Mode, Parody and Pastiche, and the Decentered, Destructured and Dehumanized, this paper will demonstrate how they manifest in neo-noir’s Los Angeles to totalize contradictions in society and evoke a critical awareness.

Denna studie syftar till att fördjupat förstå barnets villkor för en väl avvägd dagsrytm med balans mellan aktivitet och vila i förskolan i talet om barnets tillvaro. Mer specifikt är kunskapsintresset att förstå innebörden i förskollärares och föräldrars barnsyn och kunskapssyn och hur den kommuniceras. Uppsatsens empiriska material består av sju uppföljningssamtal i förskolan. I avsikt att ringa in diskurser och studera det språkliga handlandet inom dessa samtal har en diskursanalytisk teori- och metodgrund använts. Teoretiskt ramverk för bearbetning och analys utgörs av både senmodern och postmodern samhällsteori. Resultatet visar främst upp två diskurser som förskollärare och föräldrar är bärare av och som styr deras kommunikativa handlande: lärandediskursen och förändringsdiskursen. Eftersträvansvärt för lärandediskursen är barns lärande genom driven aktivitet. Signifikant för förändringsdiskursen är tilltron till barns förmåga till lärande genom att hantera förändringar. Resultatet visar även att ett förståelseorienterat handlandet ger större utrymme för barnets perspektiv än ett resultatorienterat språkligt handlande. Rådande diskurser och språkligt handlande inom dessa kan förklaras som en följd av senmodern och postmodern tidsanda. Studiens resultat bidrar därmed till en fördjupad förståelse av barnets villkor för en väl avvägd dagsrytm och indikerar att det råder obalans mellan aktivitet och vila i talet om barnets tillvaro inom rådande diskurser.

This Master's thesis is dedicated to the analysis of Tom Stoppard's plays. It analyses their main themes, protagonists and modern and postmodern literary devices that Stoppard used when creating his plays. The theoretical part briefly introduces postmodernism and some of its major characteristics. It further focuses on the theatre of the absurd. In the practical part, Tom Stoppard's plays are then analysed from different angles. The major areas constitute mainly Stoppard's modern and postmodern literary devices, the themes of his plays and their division. The part of this thesis dedicated to themes also discusses the characters of the plays. Key Words: Stoppard, postmodernism, theatre of the absurd, plays

1 Abstract The thesis examines the relationship of the literary phenomena magical realism and postmodernism. The starting point of the thesis is the statement that both the terms embody various common features (ideological, thematic). The author targets the definition of both styles and their genealogical delimitation in the first part. In the second part, the author relates these two terms to the particular work - the novel The History of Danish Dreams of the danish author Peter Høeg. It is possible to find demonstrable principles of both magical realism and postmodernism in this wider prose. The author of this thesis illustrates principles and themes with examples from the novel and the interpretations.

This thesis investigates the problem of historical representation in the context of the contemporary turns to trauma and memory visible in cultural theory and in wider popular culture and contemporaneous with post-Cold war ‘end of history’ discourse. Rather than apply the theories of trauma to readings of contemporary texts, the present study proposes that trauma theory be seen as part of the wider cultural tendency towards memorialization, characterized by a privileging of the notion of witnessing, an emphasis on the punctuality of the traumatic moment, and the fetishization of the historical trace. This thesis argues that what unites these various features of memorial culture is a notion of history that emphasises both the impossibility of comprehension and representation and yet a sense of proximity to a literal past through the traces that remain. If postmodernism designates a ‘crisis of historicity’ which delegitimizes the authority of representations of history, to think history through the prisms of memory and trauma reasserts a notion of historical truth, albeit relocated in the traumatic memory of the survivor, in the ethical imperative to bear witness, or in an aesthetics of the aporia. The parallel discourses of history as trauma and history as memory conflate the problems of historical representation with problems of historical witnessing, and in doing so conceptualize a notion of an historical event with no actor, proposing instead a passive subject without agency and thus without politics. The thesis is organized through close readings of four key texts, each of which can be read to be in dialogue with wider memorial culture, but which also problematize the orthodoxies of contemporary trauma theory in its application to the literary text—Ian McEwan’s Atonement, Robert Harris’s Fatherland, Philip Roth’s Operation Shylock and Aleksandar Hemon’s The Lazarus Project. Focusing on notions of witnessing, testimony, traumatic memory and the trace, and drawing on the work of Slavoj Žižek and Jacques Rancière, this thesis sets out to resist the theoretical creep that would see all history as trauma and all text as testimony, and instead reasserts the necessary role of fiction and the imagination in constructing a relationship to the past.

This thesis explores the ways that certain artists-including Joseph Conrad, Alan Moore, Richard Attenborough, and Francis Ford Coppola-break from their inherited traditions in order to speak from an alternative perspective to western discourse. Conventional narrative formulas prescribe that meaning will be revealed in a definitive end, but all of the texts discussed reveal other avenues through which it is discerned. In Heart of Darkness, the tension between two divergent narratives enables Conrad to speak beyond his social context and imperialist limitations to demonstrate that identity is socially constructed. In Watchmen, Moore breaks from comic convention to illustrate ways meaning may be ascertained despite the lack of plot ends. The third chapter explores the ways that Attenborough and Coppola subvert technical and plot conventions to resist static constitutions of identity endemic to Hollywood film. The several texts discussed subvert the Self/Other duality by suggesting alternatives to the western narrative model. / by Adam Berzak. / Thesis (M.A.)--Florida Atlantic University, 2010. / Includes bibliography. / Electronic reproduction. Boca Raton, Fla., 2010. Mode of access: World Wide Web.

Flotsam is a collection of writing. Flotsam examines divisions of the self. Flotsam is made of fiction, nonfiction, and visual representations of both. Flotsam is made of the truth. Flotsam is made of lies. Flotsam is pretty. Flotsam is a beast. / by Jacob Henson. / Thesis (M.F.A.)--Florida Atlantic University, 2011. / Includes bibliography. / Electronic reproduction. Boca Raton, Fla., 2011.