Inaug.-Diss.--Marburg. / Lebenslauf. "Literaturübersicht": p. [vii]-x.

Thèse - Paris. / Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Canterbury, 2009. / Typescript (photocopy). Includes bibliographical references (p. 374-382). Also available via the World Wide Web.

Thèse - Paris. / Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas at Austin, 2001. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 343-369). Available also in a digital version from Dissertation Abstracts.

When the Old French narrative lays were composed in the second half of the twelfth and during the thirteenth century, the authors had access to the theory of classical rhetoric and medieval poetics. This thesis investigates the correspondences between the relevant theoretical concepts and the arrangement of the lays, and reveals in what manner the authors of the lays employed certain techniques and figures in order to achieve the unity of their works. The research is centred on Geoffrey of Vinsauf's Poetria nova and the Documentum de modo et arte dictandi et versificandi, Matthew of Vendôme's Ars versificatoria, and takes into consideration works of the classical origin, namely the Rhetorica ad Herennium and the Ars poetica of Horace. The analysis comprises the lays Aristote, Conseil, Cor, Desiré, Doon, Espervier, Espine, Graelent, Guingamor, Haveloc, Ignaure, Lecheor, Mantel, Melion, Nabaret, Oiselet, Ombre, Trot, Tydorel and Tyolet. The first four chapters discuss the theory on arrangement, assess the unity of the beginning and end with the body of the texts, and examine to what extent the techniques of abbreviation and amplification emphasize or amplify the overall idea. The remaining three chapters demonstrate important structural features typical of the lay narratives which use various rhetorical and poetic methods. Chapter Five analyzes the lay narratives from the perspective of the figures of wordplay, as well as small and large-scale repetition and parallels. Chapter Six examines the recounting of episodes, which coincides with the amplification technique Refining. Chapter Seven exposes the persuasion and reasoning techniques that the characters employ in order to prove or decide something.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Wisconsin, Madison 1975. / Typescript. Vita. eContent provider-neutral record in process. Description based on print version record. Includes bibliographical references.

No description available.

The Old French narrative lais offer an image of the individual in terms of both social and personal relationships. This study considers the extent to which it is possible to derive definitions of forms of social and personal fulfilment and non-fulfilment from these texts. As well as being presented in isolation, they are shown in interaction; there can never be a total divorce of the personal desires of the individual from his/her rights and obligations in society. These two aspects of human existence - love and society - appear in the lais in a state of balance or imbalance. Even in those lais in which the characters themselves do not achieve a balance of social and personal fulfilment, the image of the ideal emerges. Consummate fulfilment in a relationship - be it feudal, familial, sexual - necessarily involves a fusion of social suitability and personal commitment. In his/her aspirations to and/or success in fulfilment, the individual appears variously in these texts both as a pawn of the forces of society or destiny and as endowed with the power to earn his/her own happiness. The degree of importance that the interaction between love and society has in the lais is, in particular, indicated through the extent to which these patterns of interaction define the patterns of narrative structure. From this study, conclusions can be drawn as to the historical reality of the individual in twelfth-century noble society in France; the lais offering a reflection of that society, of which they are a product, and also an expression of its ideals, which allow for the very real obstacles to a fusion of social and personal fulfilment to be overcome.

<p>This dissertation examines the fiction of three contemporary American writers – Joan Didion, Don DeLillo and Paul Auster – who interrogate the legacy of the American sublime in its contemporary configurations and reconfigurations. The texts that I have selected by each writer dramatize and question how and why the American sublime remains a fundamental way for American culture to conceptualize power as an expression of American identity and progress. In turn, what each text conveys is the destructive consequences that often follow with investing natural phenomena, technology, cultural sites and practices with power that elicits the particular qualities of awe and terror unique to the American sublime. Above all, these texts illuminate why American culture continues to produce, reproduce and popularize experiences and images of sublimity within cultural sites, practices, art and literature.</p> <p>Moreover, by emphasizing that these texts locate the American sublime as a culturally produced experience, my analysis develops from – but also departs from – the most recent book-length studies of the sublime and American fiction. The work of scholars such as Barbara Claire Freeman, Joseph Tabbi and Christope Den Tandt who have considered the sublime in relation to gender, technology and urban landscapes complement my approach to the cultural impact of the American sublime in the fiction of Didion, DeLillo and Auster. At the same time, my examination of the ways in which their fiction accounts for the dissemination of the American sublime through art and literature as well as popular culture, brings to the forefront an important feature each text shares – the possibility that art might contest – rather than reinscribe – traditional configurations or reconfigurations of American sublimity.</p> / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)