Mémoire numérisé par la Direction des bibliothèques de l'Université de Montréal.

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The thesis presented consists of three main sections: 1. Section A includes comprehensive and detailed critical analyses of Buber's monographs on the Old Testament, "Konigtum Gottes", "Der Gesalbte", "Der Glaube der Propheten", "Abraham der Seher", "Moses", "Recht und Unrecht. Deutung einiger Psalmen"; furthermore the translation of the Hebrew Bible into German is studied, a work Buber had carried out with the aid of Franz Rosenzweig. Buber's statements and interpretation are elaborated and compared with those of recent and contemporary scholars. This investigation brings to light Buber's peculiar and very often individualistic view. He rejects literary criticism which assumes written sources such as J, E, P in the Pentateuch; correspondingly he tries to trace strands of orally and then literarily transmitted traditions which were ingeniously combined by the Redactor(s). This redactional achievement is regarded by Buber as of great importance and of high quality. Modern research has made evident that Buber frequently perceives the proper relations and facts, more, however, through intuition than through convincing arguments (the details of the ancient traditions being usually far more complicated than Buber thinks them to be). His idea of Yahweh as Melekh of the wandering Israelite tribes e.g. has been proved to be wrong, but the conception of the leading and wayfaring God was expounded by Buber earlier and more clearly than in the studies of other scholars. Peculiar to Buber is the idea of an essential uUity of the Hebrew Bible to which so called "guiding words" ("Leitworte") make reference. In his translation (which shows a masterly command and sympathetic understanding of both Hebrew and German) he makes use of such "guiding words" and of the sensuous basic meaning of the individual verbal roots. The fundamental and predominant principle of Buber's hermeneutics appears in all his books on the Bible. It is the principle of dialogue between God and Man; and it is here that Buber finds the essence both of prophecy and of Israel's faith as a whole. 2. Section B tries to elucidate the theological, philosophical, and biographical background of Buber's hermeneutics. It comes out in his view of myth, saga, and historical reality. There is a clearly rationalistic approach to biblical miracle stories, but besides this an irrational intuition leads him to deeper understanding. Dilthey's influence becomes evident. Buber cannot be understood apart from the role that mysticism and chassidism played in his life; it was, however, the Hebrew Bible which helped him to overcome self-sufficient mysticism and chassidic gnosticism. Knowing about the relation of dialogue between God and Man, Buber can remain neither a pure mystic nor a pure existentialist (in the sense of modern existential philosophy). He is "atypical". His interpretation of the Bible is critical, not orthodox or fundamentalist in its approach, although he cannot deny the Jewish and rabbinical background of his learning. Personal religious experience goes hand in hand with scholarly methods of criticism. The principles of dialogue and existential commitment make him strictly discriminate between prophecy and apocalyptic. God speaks to Man in the present historical situation and claims a personal decision. There is no room for any speculations or taking a peep into an already certain and immutable future. The directness of the eternal revelation at every time and the continuous possibility of dialogue between God and Man are theological conceptions that exclude a particular salvation history ("Heilsgesohichte"). Buber is primarily interested in God's speaking, not in God's acting in oertain historical events. Buber's understanding of divine revelation cannot but regard every religion on earth as a sphere of God's disclosure. In opposition to the religion of the Bible, however, the pagan religions misunderstand God and his disclosure. But even for those living with biblical traditions God Himself may disappear for a time as the sun disappears in eclipse. Yet an eclipse is no extinction, and Buber demonstrates, by reference to Job and Deutero-Isaiah, the relevance of the Old Testament as a source of hope in a dark age. Section C summarizes the conclusions of the thesis and appreciates the work of Buber as an outstanding scholar - a work that is fascinating and stimulating even where we have to reject not a few of its results.

The Ballad of Sam Bass is an original. play based on the life of Sam Bass the outlaw. Cowboys camped on the Chisholm trail are entertained by a stranger who sings a song about Sam Bass. Bass was a good-hearted individual who was seduced by his vices, drinking and gambling, and fell into the life of an outlaw. He was successful in eluding the law until he was betrayed by one of his own men, Jim Murphy. In the course of his song, the stranger reveals himself to be Frank Jackson, the only surviving member of Bass's gang. Jackson had talked Bass out of killing Murphy when Bass became suspicious. Creating the song serves as a catharsis for Jackson's guilt.

La presente tesis tiene como objeto de estudio las tensiones entre la represión sexual, psicológica y afectiva, y la muerte real o simbólica en la narrativa amorosa de Horacio Quiroga (Salto, Uruguay 1878 – Buenos Aires, Argentina 1937). Sostenemos que estas tensiones responden a dos aspectos determinantes: el primero, un contexto histórico, cultural, político y literario que determinó a la sociedad como una suerte de máquina en la que cada persona debía representar de manera integral a un actor social, al cual le correspondía un rol que cumplir, y donde a su vez había conductas vinculadas a actores sobrantes que debían ser eliminados. El segundo aspecto, a factores biográficos. Sostenemos que la narrativa de Quiroga reproduce acciones y eventos vinculados muy estrechamente a su propia experiencia vital y que las corrientes ideológicas y literarias a las que la voz narrativa se circunscribe o proyecta –el modernismo, romanticismo, cientificismo, psicoanálisis, etc…- son vehículos que le permiten expresar e una sensibilidad particular frente l a la muerte, caracterizada por una actitud trágica, reactiva e incluso virulenta ante la vida. / Tesis

This dissertation examines the case of 250-300,000 largely Orthodox Christian refugees who fled Ottoman Bosnia and Hercegovina for the Habsburg Empire during the uprisings of 1875-1878. The violence during this period started out as a peasant uprising, but over the course of three years cascaded into revolts and violence across the Ottoman Balkans and led to a major European diplomatic crisis. The Treaty of Berlin of 1878, which ended the violence, reconfigured the political geography of the Balkans, making the former Ottoman provinces of Montenegro, Romania, and Serbia independent; giving a sweeping autonomy to Bulgaria, and handing over to Austria-Hungary the administration of a nominally Ottoman Bosnia and Hercegovina. Refugees played an under-appreciated role in the international and domestic politics of the period, and this dissertation argues that forced migration was in fact one of the key considerations of Great Power diplomacy. Forced migration offered a means to measure degree of violence, and control over population movement offered a way for empires to lay claims to legitimacy. In a similar manner, philanthropists and international humanitarians used forced migration to build and advocate for their own civic spheres. The dissertation argues that during this period, the modern category of "refugee" was defined as states developed processes to manage refugees domestically and to create international policies for refugee aid and return.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Boston University / The purpose of this dissertation is to determine what takes place on the human side when a man says he has an encounter with God, with special reference to the thought of Martin Buber and of the Hebrew prophet, Jeremiah. The method has been to characterize each man's thought; to pay particular attention to the data lending themselves to psychological description, to the end of analyzing encounter with God in its epistemic, psychological and existential modes. On the basis of these characterizations, each of these men has been compared to the other to determine likenesses and differences; to assay the effect of culture at points of difference; and to summarize the points of likeness which might have abiding value. Findings and conclusions are: 1. Buber and Jeremiah find man's essential nature incomplete apart from relation to God. Fulfilment is possible in what Buber terms an I-Thou relation--a subject-subject relation as opposed to the subject-object relation of knowledge. Subject-subject relation is made possible by a unique category of being, which Buber calls the inborn Thou. This is not to say that man has an original self. A self has to be won. 2. A sense of lack (anxiety), a reaching out, the dual gestalt of man's own being together with objective reference of the Thou, a sense of fulfillment by a Persons over against one, standing in the relation of love--these minimal elements of encounter constitute the fountainhead of religion and ethics, as well as the occasion for man's social being to emerge and to be kept intact. Revelation comes in the form of Presence--presence as power. No verbal message is given. There is a sense of reciprocal relation, of inexpressible confirmation, and of an urge to act out the power of it in the world. 3. Jeremiah conceived man to be created by God and endowed with a drive to fulfillment like the migratory instinct in birds. Man is free to direct this drive toward God and find fulfilment, or to direct it elsewhere with little promise in the face of his precarious existence. 4. For both men, one's religious knowledge and his cultural modes of thought were part of the whole person taken into encounter and could affect the subsequent interpretation of it. Neither believed that encounter was sufficient without the remainder of experience; nor did either conceive the experience of immediacy as resulting from any form of mystical absorption. Jeremiah's tribal consciousness lends itself aptly both to illustrate the limits which culture can impose on revelation and also to reveal how the Presence can transcend the limits. 5. Relation to God is necessary for maintaining the integrity of one's I; otherwise, the world of things assumes the mastery, and persons are cheapened (Buber); or man loses his moral fibre (Jeremiah). 6. Jeremiah negatively illustrates Buber's judgment that verbal messages are not given in revelation. Recently from the Presence, he put his own thoughts into the mouth of God and delivered them as a "Thus saith the Lord." The mistakes he made indicate that alleged verbal messages in revelation do not stand on their own authority. They need further testing. 7. Buber and Jeremiah fonnd that perceptual data of religion gained in concrete life-situations were a reliable foundation upon which to build coherent religious truth. They would agree that this method of gaining religious truth has been a distinctive contribution of the Hebrew-Jewish religion.

Except for literary historians and Germanists, Robert Walser (1878-1956), the Swiss poet, was known until recently only to a small circle of readers. The reason why Robert Walser was “rediscovered” a few years ago and is being read again, is that theme, content and style of his novels – they can be counted on one hand – as well as the several hundred short stories and about four dozen poems , touch upon a constantly more or less urgent problem: man’s ontological inquiry. The unassuming manner of Walser’s fragments and vignettes fascinates and elates the system-weary reader; yet, his lack of assumption is not synonymous with idle chatter. Rather, the absence of presumptuousness is based on the realization that absolutes, whether intellectual, emotional or physical are meaningless. Thus they are incompatible with the “Lebensgefühl” of Walser’s literary protagonist, who suspects essence in the loss of identity of self. It has been said of Robert Walser that he was the first writer to explore the domain of the absurd in a novel. This at the beginning of the 20th century. Walser, quite likely, would be too modest to claim literary avant-garde. The absurdity of uncertainness creates a perspective and attitude which characterize Walser’s literary figures, perspective and attitude similar to the terminal mood at the end of an era, familiar from the writings of Thomas Mann, Franz Kafka and Georg Heym. The mood Walser portrays distinguishes itself insofar that he builds no cosmic or philosophical systems, because he abhorred the finite limits of man’s intellect. Where Kafka’s intellect ad absurdum metamorphoses into the madness of the incapable insect, Walser’s realization transforms into a gay carelessness; a careless superficiality that has healing quality, since it exhausts itself in the service to humanity and revels without point of reference in an existence without system. Nature serves as the poetic spring for the delightful game of the intellect. This paper [written in German] examines the dilemma of identity in two ontological main categories and eight social-philosophical motives. Interpretation of a short story and reference to the entire works of Robert Walser served as the vehicle in this attempt.

Inaug.-diss.--Leipzig. / Lebenslauf. "Literaturverzeichnis": 2d-3d prelim. leaf.