Den här studien syftar till att undersöka elevers attityder till läsning av skönlitteratur och skönlitteratur i undervisningen. Syftet är även att undersöka lärares syn på elevers attityder till läsning och skönlitteratur i undervisningen, samt hur lärare använder sig av skönlitteratur i svenskundervisningen. Studien genomfördes med hjälp av två enkätundersökningar, en för lärare och en för elever. 79 elever från två olika högstadieskolor deltog, liksom 29 lärare från 16 olika högstadieskolor. Resultatet visar att majoriteten av eleverna har en negativ inställning till läsning av skönlitteratur, men anser det ändå vara viktigt att läsa. De flesta av dem föredrar tv/film eller datorspel vid möte av fiktiv värld och majoriteten av eleverna läser aldrig skönlitteratur på fritiden. Resultatet visar också att många av dem är negativt inställda till användandet av skönlitteratur i undervisningen och känner inte att det inspirerar dem till att läsa på fritiden. Vidare visar resultatet att lärarna använder sig av flera olika arbetsmetoder vid användningen av skönlitteratur i undervisningen, och likaså när det gäller arbetet att öka elevers läsmotivation. Majoriteten av lärarna upplever att det finns ett motstånd till läsning av skönlitteratur hos elever och att läsintresset bland elever har minskat. En stor majoritet av lärarna tycker även att läsförståelsen hos elever har försämrats. Lärarnas inställning till skönlitteratur i undervisningen är positiv och många av dem anser också att den kan ha en positiv inverkan på elevers attityder till läsning.   Nyckelord: skönlitteratur, läsning, läsförståelse, reception, motivation

Thesis advisor: Gerald M. Easter / This dissertation explores the factors that influence immigrant reception and integration in new immigration spaces like Dublin and Madrid. Through the case studies of Poles and Nigerians in Dublin and Ecuadorians and Bulgarians in Madrid, the thesis provides a response to three research questions: 1) How do Western European receiving societies construct inclusion and exclusion of the immigrant?; 2) Why do immigrants belong or fail to fit in?; 3) How do inclusion-exclusion dynamics and immigrants’ perceptions affect incorporation outcomes? The project contributes to migration scholarship by emphasizing the understudied cultural and local aspects of incorporation and bringing immigrant agency back into the integration equation. The central argument is that culture and identity matter. While acknowledging the significance of material self-interest, social contact, or national policy regimes, the dissertation finds that identity characteristics, both those of the newcomers and their host societies, are primary in determining the welcome or rejection of different ethnic communities in receiving cities. Further, the study shows that migrants are agents who form their own perceptions of belonging or isolation on the basis of cultural identity. These perceptions determine the foreigners’ stake in the host context and what they do with the openings and closures they face. The thesis concludes that political, economic, and social incorporation outcomes are ultimately conditioned on the interplay between the inclusion-exclusion dynamics in the receiving context and the immigrants’ perceptions of welcome or rejection. Analysis of in-depth interviews, survey data, and relevant documents and legislation for all four case studies confirms the main argument. The comparison among European and non-European immigrants in Dublin and Madrid attests to the significance of culture and identity for integration outcomes and contributes to the broader understanding of immigrant incorporation in Europe and beyond. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2015. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Political Science.

Damon Galgut has been a prolific contributor to South African literature since the early 1980s, but has only recently gained recognition as a significant presence in our cultural landscape. This thesis considers what the vicissitudes of Galgut’s critical reception — which have seen him, by turns, celebrated, ignored and even explicitly discounted as a noteworthy South African author — reveal about the shifting standards of cultural legitimacy which have been set for local writers since the late apartheid years. It offers, in turn, an extended close reading of each of his novels and considers the challenges which they pose to hegemonic assumptions about developments within the field of South African literature over the past three decades. I demonstrate that no coherent line of transition can be traced across the individual novels which make up Galgut’s oeuvre. They represent, instead, shifting degrees of discordance and concordance with an epochal metanarrative of South African literature and the progressive transformation of the field which it implies. In so doing, they enliven us to the thematic and aesthetic heterogeneity which has always already constituted the field.

Esta pesquisa busca articular problemas de invenção e de recepção dos testamentos e das outras formas poéticas atribuídas ao Mestre François Villon. Na primeira parte, tratamos do gênero dos dois testamentos enunciados pela personagem do Vilão (Villon), com base nos preceitos e modelos poéticos que orientavam a invenção das letras na França do séc. XV. Paródias do testamento amoroso da época, o Pequeno e o Grande Testamento de Mestre François Villon são unificados pelo exemplo do arrependimento do Vilão antes da morte. Na segunda parte, estudamos a constituição do corpo poético transmitido sob a sua autoridade desde as primeiras edições nos sécs. XV e XVI, passando pelas edições modernas nos sécs. XIX e XX até as traduções em português no final do séc. XX. Ao mesmo tempo, analisamos a sua recepção em cada um desses três momentos, segundo as concepções de autor como autoridade, como homem e como personagem, respectivamente. Assim, pretendemos investigar os sentidos do nome de François Villon, utilizado para unificar aquele corpo poético. / This work articulate problems of invention and reception of the testaments and other poetic forms attributed to Master François Villon. In the first part, we examine the gender of the two testaments enounced by the Villain (Villon), using the poetic precepts and models based on which the writing was invented in the 15c in France. Parodies of the lovers testament from that time, the Small and the Greater Testament of Master François Villon are unified by the exemple of the Villains repentance before dying. In the second part, we study the establishment of the poetic corpus transmitted under his authority since his first editions in the 15th and 16th century, passing throught his modern editions in the 19c and 20c, until his portuguese translations at the end of the 20c. Simultaneaously, we focus its reception in each one of those three moments, based of the conceptions of author as a authority, as a individual and as a character, respectively. We aim to investigate the senses of the name of François Villon, which has been used to unify that corpus.

As Ilusões do Romance: Estrutura e Percepção em São Bernardo de Graciliano Ramos é um estudo e análise da narrativa, dos efeitos do ato de leitura (ISER; 1996) produzido pelo romance, que se finaliza com uma compreensão histórica da obra, segundo sua recepção crítica surgida na década de 1930. A fim de dar conta deste último item de pesquisa, lançou-se mão das noções teóricas da estética da recepção (JAUSS: 1994). A partir do estudo, portanto, da estrutura do romance (segundo a teoria e análise do discurso), dos efeitos produzidos no ato da leitura e da recepção histórica dos textos, defende-se a tese de que São Bernardo é uma obra em que seus personagens funcionam como máscara de ideais literários, o que permite ao autor criticar os supostos efeitos causados pela ilusão do texto ficcional. Fato que faz com que São Bernardo deva sua modernidade exatamente à pluralidade discursiva, à indução da expectativa de valores literários, chegando quase a parecer-nos polifônico no sentido que Bakhtin estuda e propõe que seja a obra de Dostoiévski. Daí seu narrador, Paulo Honório, ainda hoje ser visto como um narrador pouco comum, atraindo as atenções da crítica e a deixando na situação embaraçosa da contradição, exigindo dela critérios de análise mais ético-moral que literários. / As Ilusões do Romance: Estrutura e Percepção em São Bernardo de Graciliano Ramos is a study and analysis of the narrative, of the effects produced by the act of reading (ISER: 1996) and ending with a historical perspective of the novel at the moment of his publication (1934). In order to contemplate the last aspect, it made use of the aesthetic of reception (JAUSS: 1994). So, in conformity to this succession, the work proposes the following hypothesis: namely, that the novels personages are masks of literary patterns. That was allowed to the author of São Bernardo to criticize the conventionality of some literary ideals by that time. What is almost the same observed by Bakthin in the novels of Dostoiévski and which he named dialogism. The novel\'s personages of Graciliano Ramos are effects from illusions produced by literary ideals embodied and established in his actions. Therefore, São Bernardo allows many interpretations. In general, the second novel of Graciliano Ramos has been read like a confession of the authors style: by Paulo Honório apparently to be a kind of narrator who hardly would write a book, most readers are induced to make choice of the morale criteria of valuation, instead of a methodology of literary analysis: what intercepted a modern point of view into São Bernardo.

A pesquisa analisa o conjunto de mudanças que nas últimas duas décadas ampliaram a projeção da arte contemporânea brasileira no exterior, tendo como ponto de partida a obra e a projeção internacional do artista Hélio Oiticica, deflagradas com a mostra do PS1 Brazil Projects, onde aconteceu seu (re)lançamento. Através de uma análise crítica sobre a percepção da produção artística nacional em território estrangeiro, o estudo visa contribuir para a compreensão do campo da arte e das diversas variáveis que incidem no processo de reconhecimento do valor de uma trajetória artística, quer potencialize sua difusão, quer contribua para intensificar sua produção. O trabalho identifica os atores que compõem este circuito, nomeadamente os estrangeiros-críticos, curadores (independentes ou ligados a instituições), colecionadores, marchands e artistas. Apresenta e compara diversos pontos de vistas e ações quanto a produção contemporânea brasileira e permite que sejam identificadas ressonâncias e confrontos entre a recepção internacional e a local. Ao detectar um conjunto de pensamentos, foi possível revelar elos e assimetrias estabelecidas com a cultura brasileira. / The present work analyzes the foreign reception of Brazilian contemporary art in the last two decades. The exhibition of the work of Hélio Oiticica, starting from the show Brazil Projects held in PS1, is the reference point for this analysis. The critical examination of the reception of Brazilian art abroad intends to expand the comprehension of contemporary art practices, as the multiple influences that may contribute to the value of an art object and intensifying the production of an artist. This research identifies the persons involved with Hélio Oiticica\'s work - critics, independent curators, collectors, marchands and artists - and compares different points of view related to Brazilian contemporary art. In particular, the work contrasts the foreign and national attitudes toward Brasillian art, unveiling convergences and divergences in the perception of Brazilian culture.

O presente trabalho dedica-se ao estudo da leitura praticada pelos leitores missivistas da revista Realidade, editada mensalmente pela Editora Abril, de São Paulo. As cartas de leitores publicadas na seção de correspondência da revista durante os seus três primeiros anos de circulação (1966-1968) serviram de fonte para esta pesquisa cujo principal objetivo foi mostrar que estes leitores não são apenas consumidores, receptores passivos das mensagens veiculadas pela revista. Ao contrário, são também produtores capazes de surpreender editores e autores ao escapar das armadilhas que estes tentam lhes impor. / This study examines the response of readers to the content published in Brazilian magazine Realidade. The magazine, which was published monthly by Editora Abril (Sao Paulo, Brazil) starting in 1966, featured a prolific section of letters to editor during its first three years of publication (until 1968). From those letters, we conclude that Realidade's readers were not mere passive consumers, indifferent to the editorial content reflected in the magazine's messages. Instead, they presented themselves as active producers, often surprising editors and authors by escaping the traps those tried to impose over them.

Thesis advisor: Olivier Boulnois / Thesis advisor: Stephen F. Brown / The Dissertation Text has Three Parts. Each paragraph is referred at the end to the Part it summarizes. My dissertation places Saint Anselm’s Ontological Argument within its original Neoplatonic context that should justify its validity. The historical thesis is that Anselm’s epistemology, underlying the Proslogion, the Monologion and De Veritate, was a natural, often unaccounted for, reflection of the essentially Neoplatonic vision that defined the pre-thirteenth century mental culture in Europe. (Introduction and Part I) This thesis is shown through the reception of Anselm’s argument by 27 XIIIth-XIVth century thinkers, whose reading of it exhibits a gradual weakening of Neoplatonic premises up to a complete change of paradigm towards the XIVth century, the first reason being the specificity of the Medieval reception of Aristotle’s teaching on first principles that is the subject of Posterior Analytics (Part II), and the second reason being the specificity of the Medieval reception of Dionysius the Areopagite (Part III, see sub-thesis 4 below). The defense of this main historical thesis aims at proving three systematic sub-theses, including a further historical sub-thesis. The Three Systematic Sub-Theses: 1) The inadequacy of rationalist and idealist epistemology in reaching and providing apodictic truths (the chief one of which is God’s existence) with ultimate ontic grounding, as well as the inadequacy of objectivistic metaphysics that underlies these epistemologies, calls for another, non-objectifying epistemic paradigm offered by the Neoplatonic (Proclian theorem of transcendence) apophatic and supra-discursive logic (kenotic epistemology) that should be a better method to achieve certainty, because of its ability to found logic in its ontic source and thus envisage thought as an experience and a mode of being in which it is grounded. Within such a dialectic, there cannot be any opposition or division either between being and thought, or between faith and reason, faith being an ontic ground of reason’s activity defined as self-transcendence. The argument of the Proslogion is thus an instance of logic that transcends itself into its own principle – into ‘that than which nothing greater can be conceived’. Such an epistemological vision is also supported by contemporary epistemology (Russell’s Paradox and Gödel’s Incompleteness Theorem) (Introduction and Part I) 2) In virtue of this apophatic and supra-discursive vision, God’s existence, thought by human mind (as expressed in the argument of the Proslogion), happens to be a common denominator between God’s inaccessible essence and the created essence of human mind, so that human consciousness can be defined as ‘con-science’ – the mind experiencing its own being as co-knowledge with God that forges being as such. (Part I) 3) However, God’s existence as a common denominator between God’s essence and the created essence of human mind cannot be legitimately accommodated within the XIIIth-XIVth century epistemology and metaphysics because of the specificity of relation between God’s essence and His attributes, typical of Medieval scholasticism and as stated by Peter Lombard and Thomas Aquinas. If this relation is kept, while at the same time God’s existence is affirmed as immanent to the human mind (God as the first object of intellect), God’s transcendence is sacrificed and He becomes subject to metaphysics (Scotus’ nominal univocity of being). In order to achieve real univocity between the existence of human thinking and God’s existence, one needs a relation between God’s essence and His attributes that would allow a real participation of the created in the uncreated. The configuration of such a relation, however, needs the distinction between God’s essence and His energies that Western Medieval thought did not know, but that is inherent to the Neoplatonic epistemic tradition persisting through the Eastern Church theologians and Dionysius the Areopagite up to Gregory Palamas. (Part III) Another Historical Sub-Thesis: 4) One of the reasons why Medieval readers of Anselm’s Proslogion misread it in the Aristotelian key, was that they did not have access to the original work of Dionysius the Areopagite, in which the said distinction between God’s essence and His energies is present. This is due to the fact that the Medievals read Dionysius through Eriugena’s translation. However, Eriugena was himself influenced by Augustine’s De Trinitate that exhibits an essentialist theology: in fact, it places ideas within God’s essence, which yields the notion of the created as a mere similitude, not real participation, and which ultimately makes the vision (knowledge) of God possible only in the afterlife. Since already with Augustine the relation between grace and nature is modified (grace becomes a created manifestation of God, instead of being His uncreated energy), God’s essence remains incommunicable. Similarly, God’s existence is not in any way immanent to the created world, of which the created human intellect is a part, so that it remains as transcendent to the human mind as is His incommunicable essence. This should explain why for the Medievals analogy, and eventually univocity, was the only way to say something about God, and also why they mostly could not read Anselm’s Proslogion otherwise than either in terms of propositional or modal logic. (Part III) The dissertation concludes that whilst Anselm’s epistemology in the Proslogion is an instance of Neoplatonic metaphysical tradition, the question of the possibility of certainty in epistemology, as well as the possibility of metaphysics as such, depends on the possibility of real communicability between the immanence of human predicating mind and the transcendence of God’s essence through His trans-immanent existence.

Esta dissertação debate algumas das contribuições do arquiteto à construção do pensamento sobre a casa-museu, ao considerar o edifício como acervo nesse tipo de instituição museal, operando como mediador entre a coleção num sentido ampliado, que poderia conter ângulos diversos na biografia, mesclados por visões entre público versus privado, dados emulados do ambiente doméstico, usos e adaptações ocorridos na residência, seu entorno e por sua localização na cidade. Assim, a atuação colaboraria para conectar memórias individuais àquelas coletivas de distintas comunidades, operar na tensão entre museu e monumento, ao lado de potencializar a relação entre a casa-museu e a cidade; igualmente, a formação, a prática e a frequentação de museus se direcionariam para qualificar a relação entre o museu e diferentes segmentos de receptores, voltando-se às demandas técnicas e operacionais dessas instituições. / This thesis analyze some of the architect\'s contributions to the house-museum concept construction. It considers the building as an asset in this type of museum institution that operates as a mediator between the collection -- in an amplified sense -- that could hold diversified points of view from the biography, mixed with perspectives of \'public\' versus \'private\', as well as data from the domestic environment, the uses and adaptations done in the house, its surroundings and its location in the city. Thus, the architect\'s activity would serve to connect individual to collective memories of various communities. It would also operate in the tension between museum and monument, intensifying the relationship between the house-museum and the city; it would equally enhance the creation, practice and attendance to museums, acting as means to qualify the relation between the museum and different types of recipients, serving the technical and operational demands of these institutions.

The purpose of this thesis is to analyse how the books The Case for God and 12 Steps to a Compassionate Life by the historian Karen Armstrong has been discussed and debated in swedish mass media. Very few academics in the discipline of the history of religions has had such a broad public success as Karen Armstrong, and it is therefore important to acknowledge how major themes and issues in her writings are discussed on the public arena. With the aid of reception theory developed by Hans Robert Jauss and by Stuart Hall, I present three conclusions about the mass media reception of The Case for God and 12 Steps to a Compassionate Life. First of all, I show that the reception of the two books by Armstrong is dependent on differences in expectations and experiences, and that it is possible to spot and acknowledge these differences in the actual texts that make up the reception. Second, I give evidence to how central binary constructions in the arguments put forward by Armstrong are used and developed upon in the reception. Third, I demonstrate how differences in perceptions about Karen Armstrong as a person plays a major part in the reception, and that Armstrong herself is an active part in the construction of her own media image.