Akademisk avhandling--Filosofi--Lund, 1983. / Bibliogr. p. 263-275. Index. Résumé en anglais.

From the fruitful literary activity of Gorky here are four dramas, presented as a unit of creation in his last years. Since he was pulled into the political whirl of his country, and consequently proclaimed the creator of social realism, it is indispensable to find out how much the artist in Gorky regimentated himself to the power of the Soviet regime. The last four dramas - virtually his last discernible literary accomplishment - may serve such a purpose. The method used here was that of literary analysis of the individual characters and settings, proved by the direct quotations of the text. Through such a procedure an attempt was made to bring about a general conclusion: although Gorky was a cherished idol of the proletarian bolshevik society he himself deviated from its ideological and social uniformity. Instead of complete acceptance of their cause, he expressed its weaknesses through the fine subtleties of his mind. This thesis intends to reveal them as they emerge from the text itself. / Arts, Faculty of / Central Eastern Northern European Studies, Department of / Graduate

Maxim Gorky was born in 1868. At nine he was thrown out into the world to fend for himself. Even as a boy he protested against the ugliness of life and refused to submit to the forces of circumstance. At sixteen he found himself in an intellectual and emotional quandry. He longed to activate leaden Russia and in desperation went to the University of Kazan. Unable to finance an education, he worked as a stevedore and experienced for the first time the joy of group labour. At Kazan he became involved in the incipient Populist movement and was excited by their determination to build a new life. At twenty-one he was arrested on suspicion of revolutionary activities. His first story was published in 1892. The first edition of his collected short stories appeared in I898. The whole cycle of these early stories, written with a revolutionary purpose, revolved around the central ideal of personal liberty, exuberant strength and fierce rebellion. In this he announced a new attitude of energy and courage which won him universal acclaim. The young Marxists were quick to appreciate the revolutionary significance of Gorky's work and soon involved him actively in their movement. After I898 he was forced to live under police surveillance. His significance both as a symbol and participant in the revolutionary movement increased rapidly. By 1902 he was a close collaborator of the Social Democratic Party and an important financial power behind the movement. After the split of 1905 he showed a decided preference for the Bolsheviks. In the revolution of 1905 he played a conspicuous role as a fund raiser and propagandist for the insurgents. In I906 he went into exile. In 1907 he reached the peak of his efforts to put literature to work for the revolution with the publication of Mother. As the Bolsheviks most fertile source of funds, he rendered an invaluable service to the Social Democratic Party Congress of 1907. During this period his acquaintance with Lenin deepened into a mature friendship, and he became a tireless exponent of democracy and unity within the warring Social Democratic Party. He also wrote essays on political and social consciousness. In 1909 he helped to organize a workers' school on Capri. In 1913 he returned to Russia, where he devoted himself increasingly to educative work. In 1914 he voiced his instinctive opposition to the war and sided with the Zimmerwald Left. Gorky was gloomy about the eventual outcome of the revolution in 1917, and played the role of a spectator rather than an actor. In the spring he founded a daily newspaper in which he campaigned against Bolshevik tactics and opposed Lenin's scheme for a rigorous proletarian dictatorship. He worked for the unity of the whole Social democracy. In August he became the leader of a small political party, the United-Internationalists. Foreseeing the eclipse of culture, he opposed the Bolshevik seizure of power in October and assailed Lenin with bitter invective. In 1919 he became reconciled to the Bolshevik order and concentrated his attention on salvaging and preserving Russian cultural values. In 1922 he went abroad. In I929 he returned to the Soviet Union, where he was already applauded as its greatest moral and cultural authority. By this time he was convinced that the working class was one of the most vital forces in Russia and that the working class together with the socialist intelligentsia could and would create a new society based on justice and equality. He felt that it was his duty to contribute to the building of the U.S.S.R. and gave unflagging public support to the regime. His great prestige, bolstered by his friendship with Stalin, made a powerful force of his capacity to mould public opinion. From 1930 to 1936, he gave his attention to reorganizing Soviet Literature and wittingly or unwittingly helped to turn literature into an instrument of state policy. Gorky died in 1936. The circumstances of his death were later used as a weapon in the inner-Party struggle for power. / Arts, Faculty of / Central Eastern Northern European Studies, Department of / Graduate

Urn Stifters groβen Geschichtsroman, Witiko, und die Werke davor in das richtige Verhӓltnis zueinander zu bringen, wird in der vorliegenden Arbeit illustriert, daβ der Dichter seine Ansichten vom Kleinen und Groβen im qualitativen Sinne, d.h. vom Wirken des Sanften Gesetzes, zuerst im einzelnen Menschen, im physisch Kleinen veranschaulichte. Nachdem er das Gesetzmӓβige am Einzelnen, im Kleinen, formuliert und erprobt hatte, zeigte er in Witiko dieselben Gesetze an ganzen Völkern, im Groβen. Diese Arbeit beweist, daβ die Werte und Gesetze in Witiko die gleichen sind wie in den Werken davor, daβ das Handeln und die Entwicklung von Individuen und ganzen Völkern in Beziehung auf das Sanfte Gesetz erstaunliche Parallelen aufweist, nur daβ das Medium der Darstellung vom Mikro- auf den Makrokosmos verlegt wurde, also vom physiscen Kleinen auf das pbysisch Groβe. Stifters Gebrauch des Makrokosmos', der Sphӓre des Voikes als Mittel, um seine Ideen und Gesetze zu illustrieren, wo er doch vorher den Mikrokosmos, das: Individuum als Medium dafür benützt hatte, war ein Schritt, der eine lange Entwicklung hinter sich hatte. Zum tieferen Verstӓndnis für den Zusammenhang von Witiko und den Werken davor wird der Weg des Dichters vom Individuum zum Volke, vom Kleinen zum Groβen, verfolgt. Zunӓchst steht Stifters Entwicklung vom Subjektiv-Kleinen zum Objektiv-Groβen in Selbstzeugnissen und in der Sekundӓrliteratur zur Diskussion. Der Einfluβ, den zeitgenössische Rezensenten auf Stifters Werke in Beziehung auf die Form im Kleinen und Groβen gemacht haben, wird auch in Betracht gezogen. Die Eindrücke von 1848 auf seine Weltanschauung und der durch sie ausgelöste Beginn seines groβen Erziehungswerkes brachte Stifter einen Schritt weiter in der Entwicklung zum groβen Geschichtsroman, da die Form oder der Stoff im Gegensatz zu dem ethischen Gehalt für den Pӓdagogen von wenig Bedeutung war. Stifter konnte deshalb seinem pӓdagogischen Bestreben gemӓβ die Allgemeingültigkeit seiner Gesetze veranschaulichen, indem er sie lediglich in eine andere Form, in die groβe Sphӓre des Volkes in Witiko versetzte. Hebbels mangelndes Verstӓndnis für Stifters Kunst- und Erziehungsbestrebungen und seine Angriffe auf Stifters Werk gaben dem Dichter in der Zurückweisung dieser Attacken zugleich Gelegenheit, seine Kunstbestrebungen in der Vorrede zu den Bunten Steinen zu formulieren und die Begriffe groβ und klein im qualitativen Sinne zu definieren und zu illustrieren. Die Entwicklung Stifters von subjektiver zu objektiver Lebensanschauung war verbunden mit einem zunehmenden Blick für das Ideale, das Allgemeine, das schon in der Formulierung des Sanften Gesetzes mitgewirkt hatte. Die Tendenz, das Typische in seinen Werken zu zeigen, führt geradewegs auf den historischen Roman zu, in dem der Dichter seine Erkenntnisse auf breiter Basis und in groβen Völkermassen zeigte und sonit die Universalitӓt dieser Erkenntnisse veranschaulichte. Auf den Konflikt in der kleinen Sphӓre des Individuums und in der groβen Sphӓre des Volkes zwischen den Iebenserhaltenden Krӓften des Sanften Gesetzes und den zerstörenden Krӓften der Einseitigkeit wird an Doktor Augustinus in der Novelle Die Mappe meines Urgroβ-vaters und an dem böhmischen Volke in dem Roman Witiko in Einzelbeiten eingegangen. Die Erkenntnisse, die der Ver-gleich zwischen Dr. Augustinus und dem böhmischen Volke erbrachte, werden in Beziehung auf die verschiedenen Formen der Einseitigkeit auf andere Werke Stifters erweitert. Das Problem der immer gröβer werdenden Aktionsradien, der Lebenskreise, in dem geschichtlichen Roman—wie der Kreis der Volksgruppe der Waldbauern, der Kreis des böhmischen Volkes und der Kreis des ganzen Reiches—, das Wirken des Sanften Gesetzes in jedem einzelnen der Kreise und der Vergleich dieser mit dem Kreise des Individuums in Beziehung auf das Walten des Sanften Gesetzes wird in einigem Detail untersucht. Da es nun Stifter als Pӓdagogen auch darum ging, die Erziehung des Menschen nicht nur durch die strafenden Mittel des Sittengesetzes zu veranschaulichen, sondern auch durch ein harmonisches Einleben des Menschen in seine Umgebung, durch Erziehung ohne den Schmerz des Irrenden, so wird die Erziebung Heinrich Drendorfs im Kleinen in dem Roman Der Nachsommer der Erziehung des Waldbauernvolkes im Groβen in Witiko gegenübergestellt. Witiko wurde also in Beziehung auf alle Aspekte des Sanften Gesetzes mit den anderen Werken davor verglichen. / Arts, Faculty of / Central Eastern Northern European Studies, Department of / Graduate

No description available.

by Francois Rene Henri Valraud. / Based on the revised and edited thesis (M.S.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, 1989. / Includes bibliographical references. / Support provided by the Basic Research Group of the Joint Directors of Laboratories through the Office of Naval Research. N00014-85-K-0782

Studies of the Early Meiji Period have until now been mainly articulated around the issue of continuity and discontinuity between the Edo and Meiji eras. Thus Tokyo has become the central locus of production of multiple discourses on Japanese modernity, urbanity and culture. / This work adopts a discontinuist approach by considering each era as two entirely distinct, although related, historical assemblages. For this, I focus my study on the conditions of production of Tokyo as a modern urban space. The entry into modernity is the crossing of a threshold. As Edo is marked by the order of the general equivalent and the law of the sumptury, Tokyo is produced in abstract space. We shift from an essentially heterogeneous space to a homogeneous, fragmented and hierarchized space. Following Henri Lefebvre, I try to analyze the production of modern abstract space as it is associated with a new mode of control of social space through administrative policies, cartography and urbanism.

In this thesis, I analyze the Germanophone reception of Gustav Meyrink's The Golem (Der Golem) between 1916 and 1996 with respect to its treatment as light fiction (Trivialliteratur). I examine a representative selection of literary criticism concerning the dominant themes and narrative structures of the novel. Since The Golem could not be ascribed to a distinct genre or period within the canon, its reception has been characterized by profound dichotomies. Meyrink's novel can be seen as a blank screen upon which critics have projected their respective ideological agendas. By applying new historicist and genre studies, I contextualize the trends across eighty years of critical response to The Golem and the dialectical conflict between 'high' literature and popular fiction. I thus demonstrate that the novel's reception is symptomatic of the debate about art and popular fiction concerning works of early modern surrealism.

Stuart E. Madnick. / Bibliography: p. 18-20.

No description available.