Jane Austen's novels abound with readers "reading" not only texts but also speech, gestures, looks, scenery, events, each other, themselves. Readers in the novels illuminate her assumptions about readers of the novels; unlike eighteenth-century novelists who judged fiction by readers' responses and who tried to manipulate those responses, she accepted that not all readers read alike. / Northanger Abbey, Sense and Sensibility, and Pride and Prejudice explore different styles of reading and suggest some ways are more successful than others. A good reader observes accurately, reflects carefully, and judges candidly, disciplining subjective feelings with "objective" truths of religion and morality; above all, good readers trust their own educated judgments rather than rely upon external monitors. / Readers of the novels share the reading experiences of heroines. In Mansfield Park, Emma, and Persuasion, readers are invited to judge without monitor or narrator to direct them. Readers, like heroines, discover and reveal themselves in the act of reading.

Jane Austen revises the sentimental epistolary tradition by introducing a structural epistolarity that replaces the anatomical vocabulary of female corporeality with the domiciliar terminology of female domesticity. In Austen's novels, the epistolary metaphor of the passport links letter reading, the heroine's education process, and views of domestic space. Epistolary issues aligned with domestic spaces indicate the metaphorical relationship between the structural dialectic of closed and open and the epistolary paradox of writing to dissemble character and reading to reveal character. Letter writing and reading represent the spatial order within prescribed views and tours of houses and grounds. The heroine's critical letter reading allows her to distinguish between character types presented through different domestic contents, and the letter's interpretive authority finalizes her social education by serving as a passport figuratively transferring her between natal and martial households.

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Akademisk avhandling--Konstvetenskapliga institutionen--Göteborg, 1991. / Résumé en anglais.

The thesis is an attempt to refute the indictment of Storm's work as being sentimental and melancholy, arguing that such a judgment fails to take account of the writer's portrayal of tragedy in the final seventeen years of his life. Chapter One analyses a number of aspects of Storm's thought and experience which disposed him towards a tragic view of the world: this includes an examination of the possible impact of the popular philosophies of Feuerbach, the Materialists, Darwin and Schopenhauer, as well as the significance of his educational background, his career as a judge, and his attitude to family life, religion, politics and society. Chapter Two considers the aesthetic convictions underlying Storm's conception and portrayal of tragedy, looking also at the idea of the Novelle as a suitable medium for tragedy and at the relationship between the author's later work and the tragedies of Naturalism. Chapters Three to Five present a detailed study of six individual Novellen which treat themes representative of Storm's work. Chapter Three focuses on Storm's attitude to the destructive potential of prejudice and superstition in society, taking Renate (1878) and Ein Doppelganger (1886) as examples of "The Tragedy of Social Compulsion". Chapter Four investigates his pessimistic preoccupation with the subject of heredity, discussing John Riew' (1885) and Der Herr Etatsrat (1881) as cases of "The Tragedy of Genetic Compulsion". Chapter Five is entitled "The Tragedy of Personal Responsibility": it examines Ein Bekenntnis (1887) and Zur Chronik von Grieshuus (1883) as Novellen in which the leading characters incur specific moral guilt, and considers the nature and results of their attempts to atone for their crime.

The thesis, "The Syntax of the Gerund and Participle in the Language of Aieksej N. Tolstoj," consists of 169 pages. It is divided into six main sections (marked with Roman numerals), each section dealing separately with one type of gerund or participle found in three of Aieksej N. Tolstoj's prose works. In addition to that, two short stories were chosen in order to search for past imperfective gerunds, present passive and past passive imperfective participles. The commentary, which follows the list of examples of present and past gerunds, present active and past active participles, present passive and past passive participles, treats primarily questions of syntax, and any outstanding or interesting examples are commented on in detail. At the conclusion of the first part, dealing with the gerund, is a syntactic summary on the gerund; and at the end of the second part, dealing with the participle, is a syntactic summary on the participle. There then follows a statistical analysis of the frequency of the various types of gerunds and participles illustrated by percentages of the estimated total word count of each of three works. Finally, there is a "bibliographical list of works. All of them have been cited in full, including works of Aieksej, N. Tolstoj, from which all examples were gathered. The selected compositions of Aleksej K. Tolstoj's works from which all examples were taken are: the short story, Detstvo Nlkity (A); the short essay, Moskve ugrožaet vrag (B); and the comedy, Fabrika molodosti (C). The additional two short stories are: Miloserdija ! (D), and Rukopis’, najdennaja pod krovat’ju (E). / Arts, Faculty of / Central Eastern Northern European Studies, Department of / Graduate

In interpreting Der Schinmelreiter by Theodor Storm, the deconstructive method always leaves room for more interpretation; a deconstructive interpretation may simply acknowledge a variety of critical opinions, not necessarily considering one more valid than another, but arguing that all of than together are necessary to form a collective interpretation. I have examined traditionally important views of Storm's work, those of Stuckert and Silz, who argue for a positive heroic example in the main character Hauke Haien, and who consider the supernatural in a less structurally important light, but attribute it to Storm's personal views and geographic background. Ellis, Findlay and Jennings offer an examination of narrative structures and a study of mythic elements in the structure. They break some of the longer-held opinions, redefine realism and draw attention to conflicting character traits of Hauke, suggesting psychological explanations for his mythification. Jost Hermard represents the new directions in social commentary. His interpretation emphasizes possible political criticisms and examines the work in the light of German society in the late nineteenth century.

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