I denna uppsats har kontaktytorna mellan det sublima och det absurda undersökts utifrån hur Lyotard och Camus definierar respektive begrepp. Uppsatsen har utgått från en forskningssituation där få jämförelser mellan dessa begrepp – som i sig kan te sig undflyende och vaga – verkar finnas. Syftet med undersökningen har således varit att låta nya perspektiv på de båda begreppen träda fram genom deras relation till varandra. Utifrån jämförelsen mellan det sublima och det absurda kan det konstateras att det tycks finnas klara kontaktytor mellan begreppen. Dessa kontaktytor har yttrat sig genom att begreppen delar likheter i följande avseenden: (1) de är båda negativa begrepp, (2) de innefattar liknande kritik mot rationalism, (3) båda begreppen innefattar moment av en för subjektet inledande känsla av hämmande som övergår i en stärkande känsla, (4) de påvisar distansen mellan subjektet och världen, (5) båda innefattar liknande anspråk på konsten som ett slags materialiserad form av deras egen innebörd. Utöver dessa direkta kopplingar uppmärksammades att det Camus kort beskriver som ”känslan av det absurda” kan ses som analogt med det sublima, vilket skulle kunna innebära att den absurda insikten, såsom Camus beskriver den är direkt kopplad till en sublim känsla. Alla dessa aspekter hänger förvisso samman, men det intressanta är att Lyotard och Camus skriver om dem på liknande vis i sina respektive texter. Relationen mellan begreppen kan således uttydas inte endast i generella, utan i specifika likheter.

Au coeur de la culture et de l’histoire européennes depuis plus de deux mille ans, le Rhin faitl’objet d’une abondante littérature. La fascination qu’il exerce s’accompagne généralementd’une focalisation sur certains secteurs de son cours dont la Suisse semble exclue, alors que lefleuve prend sa source dans ce pays et qu’il le traverse ou le longe sur environ 250 kilomètres.La Suisse étant, surtout depuis le milieu du XVIIIe siècle, une destination de voyage trèsprisée, l’objectif de notre recherche a été de savoir si l’intérêt apparemment limité pour leRhin helvétique valait également dans le domaine de la littérature de voyage. Basé surl’analyse de guides, d’ouvrages descriptifs et iconographiques et de récits de voyage, leprésent travail a pour objet de mettre en lumière les représentations du fleuve depuis sessources jusqu’à Bâle telles qu’elles ont été véhiculées par la littérature viatique européenne duXVe au XIXe siècle. Notre corpus ne se limitant pas à la sphère germanophone, nous abordonsl’image du Rhin suisse sous un angle comparatiste et proposons un panorama européen desreprésentations en question. Par ailleurs, notre enquête s’inscrit dans l’évolution de laperception du paysage, tant dans ses manifestations naturelles que culturelles, et s’efforce defaire ressortir l’influence de notions comme le sublime et le pittoresque sur les écrits que nosauteurs ont consacrés au tronçon helvétique du fleuve. / The Rhine, which has been in the heart of European culture and history for twothousand years, is the subject of a rich literature. The fascination it exerts goes generallytogether with a focus on some parts of its course of which Switzerland seems to be excluded,although the river springs up in this country and runs across it or along it for 250 km. AsSwitzerland has been a prized destination, particularly since the middle of the 18th century, thepurpose of this study was to know if the apparently limited interest for the Swiss Rhine alsoapplies to Travel literature. Based on the analysis of guide books, descriptive andiconographical books and travel accounts, the present work intends to bring out therepresentations of the river from its spring to Basel, and to show the way European Travelliterature from the 15th to the 19th century conveyed them. As our corpus is not limited to theGerman speaking area, we take up the Swiss Rhine with a comparative point of view andpropose a European panorama of the representations in question. Furthermore, ourinvestigations lie in the evolution of the perception of the landscape in its natural as much asin its cultural expressions, and try to show how notions such as the sublime and thepicturesque influenced the writings our authors consecrated to the Swiss part of the river.

The purpose of my thesis is to analyze notions of the sublime in James Joyce’s Ulysses and how the sublime is evoked and presented in Joyce’s work. The present work will examine concepts of the sublime from the Classical and Medieval period, through the Enlightenment, and into the Romantic era to develop my own definition. Placing the sublime in a historical perspective allows me to discover how the sublime is at work through Joyce’s creative use of complex narrative approaches. The beauty of aesthetic perfection was achieved by employing all of Joyce’s artistic faculties. My thesis investigates how Ulysses’ experimental writing technique, unique structuring, and difficult prose created a work of genius which evokes the sublime. By analyzing Joyce’s use of language, unconventional narrative, and ambiguity in Ulysses I will explore how the sublime is aroused.

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19th century America is shaped greatly by territorial expansion into NativeAmerican lands. A famous painting which represents this process is called AmericanProgress by John Gast. This study argues that the display of power between the settlersand the Native Americans in the painting mirrors the dominant discourse on 19th centurywestward expansion. So, the analysis is concerned with how the settlers are constructed,how the Natives are displayed and how this results in a power hierarchy. These findingsare then compared to 19th century discourse on the westward movement. The analysis isguided by the methodological tool of Foucauldian discourse analysis. The analytical stepsare informed by the two American Studies scholars Angela Miller and Martin Christadler.The research is based on pragmatism with a leaning towards constructivism. This studyfinds that American Progress contrasts civilisation and nature in similar ways as thisdichotomy is established in the discourse of the 19th century. Westward expansion in thepainting and in 19th century discourse is justified by constructing the Natives as godlessand the settlers as godly. The difference in brightness in American Progress supports thedichotomies of civilisation and nature as well as godliness and godlessness.

Music, as a performing art, transports us to distant moments and spaces than those we are in the present time. A hundred musicians playing Bruckner's Scherzo on Symphony No. 7 could make us feel emotionally moved; it could make us feel joy, anger, anguish, delight, peace, fear, freedom. Music has the ability to change our mood, to make us go through a series of feelings. This, I believe, has to do with how it involves you in it. Arthur Schopenhauer also says: "The effect of music on the mind, so penetrating, so immediate, so unfailing, and also the after-effect that sometimes follows it, consisting in a specially sublime frame of mind, are explained by the passive nature of hearing just described" This penetrating component of music, so immediate, of which Schopenhauer speaks, is how the Sublime is experienced through it. Music could even elevate the soul of those who are most open to perceive it. What is that "sublime" moment that happens when you are listening to a live orchestra and get moved by the experience? Are we capable of achieving that moment through the use of architectural elements alone? I believe the answer is yes. There is more to the moment than just the music itself, and that a "sublime" moment can be experienced in many contexts. There are elements that are common to this experience, primarily the presence of the Four Classical Elements. With this in mind, I came to the idea that by including Air, Fire, Earth and Water into my project, then I would be a step closer to having the users go through a sublime experience. / Master of Architecture

L’étude de l’œuvre de l’auteur fantastique américain H.P. Lovecraft a souvent été mise de côté dans les études littéraires, où on qualifiait son style d’excessif et maladroit. Celui-ci a alimenté beaucoup de débats sur l’appartenance de Lovecraft au genre fantastique en général, duquel on l’excluait, prétextant qu’il rompait la traditionnelle hésitation typiquement fantastique. Dans ce mémoire, nous souhaitons nous interroger sur le rôle que peut jouer l’écriture particulière de Lovecraft dans la construction d’un univers narratif cohérent, malgré la crise du signe à laquelle font face ses personnages. Nous observerons comment l’écriture de Lovecraft, grâce à son recours à l’ekphrasis, parvient à susciter le sublime, d’abord chez ses narrateurs, mais également transcender le récit pour atteindre le lecteur. Nous montrerons comment le sublime vécu par ses personnages parvient, grâce à une esthétique de la présence du surnaturel, à faire douter le lecteur sur sa propre réalité.

Le point de départ des travaux entrepris est la définition lefortienne de la démocratie par opposition au totalitarisme. Le totalitarisme est l’institution d’une société organique, une et homogène, dans laquelle aucune division sociale, aucun désaccord avec l’idéologie véhiculée par le parti ne sont possibles. La spécificité de la démocratie, a contrario, est de s’enrichir de la désintrication du pouvoir, du droit, et du savoir. Les citoyens, dotés de droits fondamentaux, sont juges de la légitimité du pouvoir établi. Leurs désaccords ainsi que l’antagonisme entre les classes sociales nourrissent l’exercice d’un commun litigieux. De là, une question fondamentale : une telle définition de la démocratie est-elle historiquement datée, ou continue-t-elle d’être pertinente aujourd’hui ? Doit-on encore concevoir la démocratie, pour la rendre authentique, par le conflit civil érigé en principe politique, ou faut-il l’envisager de manière consensualiste au lendemain de son opposition avec le totalitarisme ? Claude Lefort s’inspirait de Machiavel pour dépasser les limites du marxisme et repenser la démocratie par la valorisation du conflit civil, indissociable de la figure de l’imaginaire social. La thèse ici soutenue adopte différemment une perspective néo-machiavélienne. Elle revient à proposer un espace public dissensuel à partir du modèle machiavélien de l’entente dans le conflit, par confrontation avec l’espace public habermassien et d’autres conceptions du tort et du conflit dans les démocraties contemporaines. Comment concevoir aujourd’hui les figures du conflit civil et de l’imaginaire social, en s’inspirant paradoxalement de Machiavel pour interroger la démocratie ? / The starting point of the present work is the Lefortian definition of democracy as opposed to totalitarism. Totalitarism is the institution of an organic society, one and homogeneous, where no social division, no disagreement with the party’s ideology are possible. On the contrary democracy’s specificity consists in enriching itself with the disentanglement of power, law and knowledge. Citizens, endowed with fundamental rights can judge of the legitimacy of the power in place. Their disagreements as well as the antagonism between social classes fuel the dispute about common good.Hence a fundamental question: is such a definition of democracy historically dated or is it still relevant today? To make it authentic should democracy be seen through civil conflict made into a political principle or should it be viewed in a consensualist way just after its opposition to totalitarism? Claude Lefort drew from Machiavelli to go beyond the limits of Marxism and rethink democracy by giving more importance to civil conflict as an integral part of the theme of social imaginary. The present dissertation adopts in a different way a neo-Machiavellian perspective. It amounts to proposing a dissensual public space on the Machiavellian model of understanding within conflict by confronting it with the Habermassian public space and with other conceptions of wrong and conflict in contemporary democracies.Today how can the themes of civil conflict and social imaginary be viewed – paradoxically drawing from Machiavelli- to question democracy?

This dissertation presents an investigation into three works by the South African artist Pauline Gutter (b. 1980) that were originally shown in her exhibition Opslag (2008) [this title is almost impossible to translate; it can refer to the sound of a gun, or it can mean to butcher something; it has an association of suddenness]. The works that were selected for scrutiny in this dissertation are Uit die blou van onse hemel [translated as From our blue skies; or Ringing out of our blue heaven – the first words of the erstwhile South African anthem] (2004), Into the landscape I (2007), and Landskap naby Zastron [Landscape close by Zastron] (2006). The choice of works was based on the particular mode of and imaginative re-presentation of the landscape that can be discerned in each of these works – different, yet conceptually quite similar. I argue that Gutter‟s landscape works in the exhibition Opslag (as representative of the thematic concerns of the show as a whole) are indicative of an imaginative re-presentation of a liminal experience (which is informed to a large degree by the artist‟s acute awareness of the threat posed by cruel and rampant attacks on the farming community). This liminal experience, as embodied in the artworks, is in its turn a reflection of the liminal existence as lived and interpreted by the artist‟s perception of her environment and community – speficially, the Boer farming community of South Africa, and even more specificially, in the Free State Province. Those aspects of a liminal experience that can be gleaned from a reading of the selected works Uit die blou van onse hemel, Into the landscape, and Landskap naby Zastron, are powerlessness, instability, the transitory shift of status, disorientation, isolation, marginalisation, and uncertainty. I argue, furthermore, that the imaginative re-presentation of the liminal experience is achieved by means of certain strategies and approaches towards landscape painting that are associated with the sublime. Where the sublime, in the context of the re-presentation of the landscape is often associated with a sense of being overwhelmed, even with awe, I demonstrate that Gutter achieves what Coetzee (1988:49) refers to as a singularly distinct understanding of the sublime with reference to the unique character of the South African landscape. In this sense, specific themes associated with the sublime (portraying things like problems, the sudden and the unexpected, darkness [that connotes uncertainty], danger, fearsomeness, and emptiness [that relates to isolation]) can be related with elements of the liminal. By identifying the themes of sublime representation, the reading of the works demonstrate firstly Gutter‟s unique and distinct application of sublime landscape painting. Secondly, it emerges that the portrayal of the liminal is achieved by means of these strategies towards landscape painting, and thirdly, that the imaginative re-presentation of the liminal is suggestive of a particular dimension of the existence of the contemporary Boer/farming community. Gutter‟s reflection of and on the landscape demonstrate a particularly poignant projection of a theme onto the landscape, and seems to suggest that while the liminal experience is potentially a place of growth and renewal, it can also induce a sense of paralysis as a result of the overwhelming uncertainty experienced by the particular community. / MA (History of Art), North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2014