This paper uses the concept of mimesis to clarify the debate concerning the representation of reality in music. Specifically, this study defines the audio reality effect and the three main practices of realism as a way of understanding mimetic practices in multiple artistic media, in particular regarding the multimedia works of the "Landscape series." After addressing the historical debates concerning mimesis, this study develops a framework for the understanding of mimesis in sound by addressing the writings of Weiss, Baudrillard, Barthes, Deleuze, and Prendergast and by examining mimetic practices in 19th-century European painting and multimedia performance works. The audio reality effect is proposed as a meaningful translation of Roland Barthes' literary reality effect to the sonic realm. The main trends of realist practice are applied to electroacoustic music and soundscape composition using the works and writings of Emmerson, Truax, Wishart, Risset, Riddell, Smalley, Murray Schafer, Fischman, Young, and Field. Lastly, this study mimetically analyzes "2 seconds / b minor / wave" by Michael Pisaro and Taku Sugimoto and the works of the "Landscape series" in order to demonstrate the relevance of mimesis for understanding current musical practice.

Tom Wolfe was a founding father of New Journalism, revolutionizing journalistic reporting by introducing literary tools of storytelling. The literary influence on New Journalism is well-covered by journalism scholars, but Wolfe was also a fiction writer, and as such he actively tried to rally his generation of fiction writers behind him for a New Social Novel, more grounded in reality and reporting. His post-postmodern novels also amalgamate journalism and literature, but how and to what extent journalism influenced his fiction writing is a story yet untold.  Wolfe provided a normative blueprint for how to achieve verisimilitude in fiction, in his literary manifesto: “Stalking the Billion-Footed Beast”. At about the same time, he started writing the novel A Man in Full. Using A Man in Full as an application of his ideas of the ideal novel, this thesis investigates how Wolfe constructed the reality effect in his fiction and foregrounds the origins of Tom Wolfe’s literary voice, focusing on onomatopoetic language, statuspheric minutiae, expressive punctuation, and Wolfe’s characteristic wake-the-dead prose style. I argue that Wolfe did reinvent verisimilitude in literary realism, but not in the way that he intended, through reporting and status details, but rather through language.

[pt] Esta dissertação analisa como a pós-verdade aliada à performance potencializam o efeito de real nas obras autoficcionais Delegado Tobias e Inquérito Policial – Família Tobias, de Ricardo Lísias, e observa como essa combinação de uso de conceitos tão intrínsecos à atualidade se manifesta na Literatura Brasileira Contemporânea. Sob esse olhar, o estudo estabelece uma análise crítica de como o manejo desses elementos impactam a percepção de leitores inseridos num contexto em que estão cada vez mais expostos ao bombardeio informativo do qual, muitas vezes, é difícil distinguir o fato da ficção. A dissertação também propõe uma reflexão sobre a demanda de realidade em obras ficcionais a ponto de se transformar numa das características mais visíveis da produção literária feita no Brasil no século XXI. / [en] This master s thesis aims at analyzing how the post-truth combined with performance enhance the reality-effect in two autofiction books named Delegado Tobias and Inquérito Policial – Família Tobias both by Ricardo Lísias. Also, we will observe how this combination of these inherent concepts to the present are expressed in Brazilian Contemporary Literature. From this perspective, this study establishes a critical analysis about how the use of these elements impacts the perception of readers who are in a context which leads them to be more and more exposed to the information bombardment and it becomes difficult to distinguish between fact and fiction. This research also provides some considerations about the necessity of reality in fiction books to turn it into one of the most evident characteristics in literary books produced in Brazil in 21st century.

This thesis explores literary code-switching, i.e. multilingual aspects within a single speech, as a key polyphonic structural element in the selected works. First, it analyzes Gloria Anzaldúa's Borderlands: The New Mestiza = La Frontera (1987) as a work, where the author seeks to establish a literary tradition that would reflect the life in borderlands and the given community through a new language. Secondly, the language of photography and multilingual speech patterns in W. G. Sebald's The Emigrants (1992) are considered as vital elements of the authenticity play. The following chapter deals with Franz Kafka's short stories, where gestures form an essential part of, if not the whole stories, and determine the fragmentary nature of such writing. Finally, the importance of language of power, the discourse of social realism altogether with their emergence into private and intimate discussions through repetitions and variations is commented upon in Václav Havel's play The Garden Party (1963).