We insist upon “green space”, but the term’s vague cast brings little into focus. In this thesis I search out what it is that we look for in green space. I consider some ways, within our North American context, that we interact with it, represent it, speak about it and write about it. Drawing together evidence from a diverse range of sources in myth and mapping, poetry, classical philosophy, feminist theory, language, and personal experience, I find enigmatic but persistent geometries of desire binding us to the notion of green space. These desires for green space manifest themselves in relationships of practical dependence, imaginative dependence, violence, and love. But most of all green space is at work, wherever it emerges, at the core of our becoming-other.

La science-fiction a, depuis ses origines, abordé les questions spirituelles telles que la mort, la transcendance, le sens de la vie et de la condition humaine. Au lieu de se définir comme une littérature d'idées fondée sur la science, elle est bien davantage une littérature d'images qui se fonde sur une " problématisation " de notre monde. Elle construit des configurations fictionnelles qui suscitent, chez le lecteur, un étonnement fondamental, le sense of wonder. Dès lors, elle envisage des problèmes essentiels, qu'ils soient biologiques, politiques, ou spirituels. Ouvrant à un espace-temps potentiellement infini, elle peut mettre en scène des quêtes à l'échelle du cosmos, ouvrir sur l'éternité et le temps du mythe, réinterpréter les grandes traditions religieuses pour les problématiser, ou dessiner un espace du sublime dans la confrontation avec le mystère. Il s'agit de définir la science-fiction comme un genre littéraire problématologique, qui s'appuie sur des récits et des images. Ce travail examine le traitement des questions spirituelles dans la science-fiction française, anglaise et américaine, depuis le XIXe siècle. Il se réfère à une dizaine de romans et trois films. En s'appuyant sur ce corpus spécifique de romans et de films, il s'attache à établir des cadres théoriques et à identifier des œuvres qui constituent des jalons dans l'histoire de la science-fiction et qui illustrent cette perspective problématologique.

The present study is a reading of the folkloric fairy-tale poem The Swain (Mólodets) (1924) by the Russian Modernist poet Marina Tsvetaeva (1892-1941). The poem represents a high point in Tsvetaeva’s experiments with Russian folk art, and it is thoroughly folkloric in its theme, forms of writing and poetic language. At the same time, the poem can be linked to the attraction to folk art as a locus of the Sublime in literary tradition, which originates in German Romanticism, and finds its echoes in Russian Modernism. This study seeks to show that Tsvetaeva’s exploration of folk art in the poem was inspired by a quandary linked to the Sublime; namely the paradoxical question how to present in art what is too great to be represented. The poem is read as an image and an illustration of the poet’s understanding of the means of presenting the unrepresentable. Tsvetaeva renders the tale as an uncanny story about a horrifying elemental force. She seeks to avoid representation by bringing out the story in a poetic performance, which has the character of a lyrical drama, where the voices of the characters speak and sing in a direct manner. Within the canvas of the folkloric performance, the poet explores poetic language to render the Sublime. She experiments with secondary meanings in order to bring out a language, which at the same time is “secret” and “literal”, and where the element can be made present in its sublimity.

In this dissertation the author argued for a postcolonial reading of the sublime that takes into account the racial and gendered underpinnings of Immanuel Kant's and Edmund Burke's classic theories. The thesis used the understanding of the sublime as a lens for an analysis of the cultural politics of landscape in a range of late imperial and early modern texts about Africa. A re-reading of Henry Morton Stanley's central African exploration narratives, John Buchan's African fiction and political writing, and later texts such as Alan Paton's fiction, autobiographies and travel writing, together with an analysis of colonial mountaineering discourse, suggest that non-metropolitan discourses of the sublime, far from being an outmoded rhetoric, could manage and contain the contradictions inherent in the aesthetic appreciation and appropriation of contested colonial landscapes.

In this dissertation the author argued for a postcolonial reading of the sublime that takes into account the racial and gendered underpinnings of Immanuel Kant's and Edmund Burke's classic theories. The thesis used the understanding of the sublime as a lens for an analysis of the cultural politics of landscape in a range of late imperial and early modern texts about Africa. A re-reading of Henry Morton Stanley's central African exploration narratives, John Buchan's African fiction and political writing, and later texts such as Alan Paton's fiction, autobiographies and travel writing, together with an analysis of colonial mountaineering discourse, suggest that non-metropolitan discourses of the sublime, far from being an outmoded rhetoric, could manage and contain the contradictions inherent in the aesthetic appreciation and appropriation of contested colonial landscapes.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Ohio State University, 2008.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Florida State University, 2004. / Advisor: Dr. Linda Saladin-Adams, Florida State University, College of Arts and Sciences, Dept. of Humanities. Title and description from dissertation home page (viewed Sept. 30, 2004). Includes bibliographical references.

Doctor Literarum - DLit / In this dissertation the author argued for a postcolonial reading of the sublime that takes into account the racial and gendered underpinnings of Immanuel Kant's and Edmund Burke's classic theories. The thesis used the understanding of the sublime as a lens for an analysis of the cultural politics of landscape in a range of late imperial and early modern texts about Africa. A re-reading of Henry Morton Stanley's central African exploration narratives, John Buchan's African fiction and political writing, and later texts such as Alan Paton's fiction, autobiographies and travel writing, together with an analysis of colonial mountaineering discourse, suggest that non-metropolitan discourses of the sublime, far from being an outmoded rhetoric, could manage and contain the contradictions inherent in the aesthetic appreciation and appropriation of contested colonial landscapes. / South Africa

In the latter half of the 19th century, Robert Louis Stevenson set off on two journeys through Belgium and France, two travels that were to become the subject of his early travelogues An Inland Voyage and Travels with a Donkey in the Cévennes. In these two travelogues Stevenson elaborates extensively on depictions of nature, and through these depictions, Stevenson suggests that there exists a special relationship between natural beauty and human emotion. In fact, this portrayal of human emotion as bound with nature can be considered as significantly Romantic. Consequently, this study investigates Stevenson’s depictions of natural beauty from the Romantic conceptualizations, the beautiful, the sublime, and the picturesque. However, these Romantic theories are subject to various definitions and perceptions by different aesthetes and intellectuals. Therefore, in this study a few important Romantic philosophers have been given special consideration, those are, Edmund Burke, William Gilpin, William Wordsworth, and John Ruskin. The analysis of Stevenson’s depictions is conducted by way of discussing excerpts and quotations from Stevenson’s writing in relation to these Romantic perspectives. Although these travelogues are misplaced as Romantic in terms of period of time, I argue that Robert Louis Stevenson’s depictions of natural beauty and human emotion in An Inland Voyage and Travels with a Donkey in the Cévennes reveal an interesting Romantic sensibility, which is founded on a combination of the aesthetic and philosophical ideas of the picturesque, the beautiful and the sublime.

The hypothesis of this dissertation is that contemporary Norwegian painter, Odd Nerdrum (b 1944), uses tenebrism as a mode of beauty and a device to emphasise psychological states of being. Tenebrism is an effective kitsch device to create an impression of realism and so-called truthfulness while pointing to the deepest human sentiments and emotions. I argue that Nerdrum’s tenebrist art questions dark truths about modernity and its effect on the self. The darkness of his tenebrist style amplifies the emotional states of his human characters, and becomes a negative form of transcendence into absence and the power of its nothingness. Nerdrum’s paintings are a visual record of the human capacity to withstand selfdestruction and strive for restoration from the inane. His physical act of painting opens and refines consciousness by slowing down time, for insight and contemplation. / Dissertation (MA (Fine Arts))--University of Pretoria, 2008. / Visual Arts / MA / unrestricted