This project sets out to develop a model for a study of difficulty in poetry as systematic and nuanced as possible. In doing so, it endeavours to make a significant theoretical and practical contribution to the fields of stylistics, poetics and literary theory. Throughout the twentieth century, the notion of difficulty in poetry has never ceased to interest linguists, literary theorists, psychologists and researchers in education. The popularity of the notion among non-specialist is equally significant, as it is not uncommon for readers to justify their lack of interest in poetry on the grounds of its supposed difficulty. Notwithstanding this, the dynamics of text-reader interaction – the defining trait of difficulty, as argued in Chapter 1 – remains notably underexplored. This thesis addresses this gap in the literature by (a) providing a psychologically plausible and linguistically sound account of difficulty; and by (b) unifying under a coherent framework the insights offered by a large body of materials – from critical readings of literary works to anecdotal evidence, from psychological models of comprehension to controlled psycholinguistic experiments. In terms of methodology, a linguistic, text-based approach is intertwined with an empirical, reader-based one. This combined effort leads to an in-depth analysis of a set of poems from both perspectives (Chapter 3 to 5). Such a qualitative approach allows for the identification of textual and readerly components typical of difficulty. On the textual side, I identify twenty-four features, called linguistic indicators of difficulty and affecting all the linguistic levels – graphology, syntax, lexis, semantics and text structure. Based on scholarly remarks and experimental evidence, these indicators are likely to hamper readers’ comprehension and thus increase the processing effort they require. These two main readerly dimensions of difficulty I qualify as online (i.e. affecting the processing effort in actual reading) and offline (i.e. affecting the post-reading understanding of a poem). In turn, online and offline difficulty are cued by observable readerly behaviours (e.g. interpretive uncertainty, slowed-down reading, statements of rejection) that are explored in Chapters 4 and 5. Overall, difficulty is viewed as a response phenomenon that has a strong linguistic motivation. For reasons of focus and critical consistency, the model is applied to twentieth and twentieth-first century Anglo-American poems only. This temporal restriction acknowledges the critically established connection between difficulty and modernism (e.g. Adams 1991, Adamson 1999, Diepeveen 2003). The case studies from Chapter 3 to 5 focus on Wallace Stevens, Ezra Pound, Susan Howe and Jeremy H. Prynne as representing different aspects of difficulty. Chapter 6 extends this purview to a larger corpus, featuring Gertrude Stein, T. S. Eliot, E. E. Cummings, Hart Crane, Charles Olson, Dylan Thomas, John Ashbery and Charles Bernstein. All these poets have been deemed ‘difficult’ by other critics, so the corpus rests on an intersubjective agreement that was missing in previous accounts. The hope is that the model proposed will be fruitfully extended and applied to non-Anglo-American literary traditions as well as to poetry written in earlier centuries.

A study of the development of the critical thought Paul Elmer More (1864 – 1937), the American journalist, essayist and Christian apologist.

Series: Working Papers / Institut für Sozialpolitik

This thesis examines the subject in Popular American Metal music and culture during the period 1994-2004, concentrating on key artists of the period: Korn, Slipknot, Marilyn Manson, Nine Inch Nails, Tura Satana and My Ruin. Starting from the premise that the subject is consistently portrayed as being at a time of crisis, the thesis draws on textual analysis as an under appreciated approach to popular music, supplemented by theories of stardom in order to examine subjectivity. The study is situated in the context of the growing area of the contemporary gothic, and produces a model of subjectivity specific to this period: the contemporary gothic subject. This model is then used throughout to explore recurrent themes and richly symbolic elements of the music and culture: the body, pain and violence, the grotesque and the monstrous, and the figure of the child, representing a usage of the contemporary gothic that has not previously been attempted. Attention is also paid throughout to the specific late capitalist American cultural context in which the work of these artists is situated, and gives attention to the contradictions inherent in a musical form which is couched in commodity culture but which is highly invested in notions of the ‘Alternative’. In the first chapter I propose the model of the contemporary gothic subject for application to the work of Popular Metal artists of the period, drawing on established theories of the contemporary gothic and Michel Foucault’s theory of confession. The second chapter focuses on instances of violence to the body and the recurrent themes of pain and violence, which are explained through the model of corporeal verification and consensual violence. In the third chapter I explore the contemporary gothic subject in the tradition of the grotesque and the monstrous, drawing on theories of the gothic monster, to suggest that the subject is engaged in a negotiation of the boundaries between self and other. The fourth chapter concentrates on the figure of the child, drawing on theories of horror film and fiction and the tradition of the Evil Innocent and the Gothic child. The final chapter is a case study of Marilyn Manson, exploring his role as a paradigmatic example of contemporary gothic subjectivity.

This thesis examines William Blake's American legacy by identifying a precise American interest in Blake that can be dated from Ralph Waldo Emerson's early reading of Songs of Innocence and Experience in 1842. Chapter one will show that the New England Transcendentalists - primarily Emerson, but also Elizabeth Peabody and readers of the transcendentalis publication The Harbinger - were reading Blake's Poetical Sketchse in the 1840's. This American interest in Blake's poetry will be presented against a background of British neglect of the English poet until after 1863 and the publication of Alexander Gilchrist's Life of William Blake. Chapter one provides details of Emerson's reading of Blake. According to Walter Harding, Emerson owned a copy of Blake's Songs of Innocence and Experience. This was given to him by Elizabeth Peabody in 1842, is inscribed 'R.W. Emerson from his friend E.P.P.', and has notes throughout in Emerson's hand. Indeed, a diary entry of Henry Crabb Robinson (1848) refers to discussions between himself, Emerson and James John Garth Wilkinson about Blake. Drawing on the Transcendentalists' reading of Blake's poetry, chapter two will read Emerson's essay in light of his interest in the English poet. Some critical attention has been given elsewhere to Blakean passages in Emerson's essays, but it has been fleeting. Richard Gravil is the critic who makes the most effort to record Emerson's interest in Blake, but does so sporadically and mainly as a footnote to a larger point about transatlantic Romanticism more generally. Richard O'Keefe's 1995 study, Mythic Archetypes in Ralph Waldo Emerson claims that Emerson was not reading Blake until after 1863; this thesis will challenge that assumption. Chapter two also examines Emerson's later essays and offers a new reading of Society and Solitude (1870) and Letters and Social Aims (1875) by placing these collections alongside a consideration of Blake's prophetic poems, Poetical sketches (1783) and Songs of Innocence and Experience (1794). Chapter three will then show that, in 1868, a transatlantic discussion about the affinities between Whitman's and Blake's poetry emerged simultaneously. Algernon Charles Swinburne opened the discussion in Britain with the publication of his study William Blake, which ended with a long proclamation on the merits of the American poet, Walt Whitman, whose Blakean affinities Swinburne identified as being worthy of critical attention. That same year, in the United States, John Swinton, editor of the New York Times, was reading Blake's poetry aloud at social gatherings and passing off Blake's poems as Whitman's work to audiences familiar with Leaves of Grass. These discussion concerning the similarities between Blake's and Whitman's poetry dwindled into a critical silence in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, but are reopened here in the form of a transatlantic discussion of Whitman's Leaves of Grass. This thesis queries why a readership of Blake's poetry should have featured so ealry in New England when the British appetite for it was not whetted until after the Gilchrist revival in 1863. My argument suggests that by reading Blake, Emerson and Whitman together, new readings of each of them can profitably be made. By exploring the Blakean affinities in Emerson and Whitman, their visionary qualities - like those found in Blake's prophetic works - become freshly apparent. It will also be argued that something distinctly American can be discerned in Blake's poetry. This original approach to Emerson and Whitman challenges their critically ingrained reputation as writers of America individualism by reinstating them as the heirs to Blake's American legacy.

CJEU judgments usually have automatic retroactive effect. However, the CJEU seems to be aware that this approach may have far-reaching consequences in some situations and may sometimes lead to negative effects. As early as 1976, the CJEU decided for the first time to limit the temporal effects of one of its judgments. As there is no explicit legal basis at all in the EC Treaty for the CJEU to limit the temporal effects of one of its judgments under the rule which is today Art. 267 TFEU, the Court itself had to develop the criteria under which it is willing do so. The Court made it clear right from the beginning of this case law in 1976 that it was only willing to limit the effects of a judgment in exceptional cases. The general approach of the CJEU in respect of the temporal effects of its judgments is understandable from a policy point of view: The Court wants to make sure that its judgments have retroactive effect as a matter of principle. However, at the same time it is understandable that the CJEU wants to leave the door open in order to limit these effects, if necessary. The CJEU sees a need for an "emergency brake". But, it is questionable whether the criteria developed by the Court in order to maintain this possibility really fit. The case Meilicke has further complicated the rules of the game for the Member States. Governments have to request this limitation in the appropriate case. Appropriateness depends on the level of abstraction and it is impossible for the governments to foresee which case the CJEU will retrospectively consider to be the relevant one. A government will only be successful with its request for a limitation of the temporal effects in a case stemming from another Member State if it can convince the Court that its own tax system infringes Union law and that a judgment will lead to serious economic repercussions for its country. If the CJEU in Meilicke has really developed its case law further in the direction that temporal effects of judgment can be limited only for all or for no Member State, requesting a limitation of these effects becomes even more challenging for governments and the consequences arbitrary. For all these reasons the Court would be well advised, on the one hand, to maintain its case law according to which only in exceptional cases judgments do not have retroactive effect and, on the other hand, to develop more transparent and operational criteria under which it is willing to distinguish between the rule and the exception. (author's abstract) / Series: WU International Taxation Research Paper Series

Nabokov once said that "reality" is "one of the few words which mean nothing without quotes." He has often expressed his scepticism as to whether it is ever possible to know a thing: all one can do is to collect as many facts and data about a thing as possible, accumulate information about it and thus try to get nearer its reality. But even though one may know a lot about an object, one can never know everything about it: "It's hopeless", Nabokov says and concludes, "... we live surrounded by more or less ghostly objects." What applies to things applies in an even higher degree to persons. More often than not the complexities of their souls and characters escape us and we see not real persons, but "phantoms": images of people that are the products of our own minds and that are shaped by our own interests and expectations. Nabokov's questioning enters the provinces of metaphysics when he inquires into the nature of space and time, when he asks whether life may not be an illusion, a dream; whether life is just a succession of meaningless coincidences, or whether it has some sensible and meaningful pattern. Finally he inquires into the nature of death and poses the question whether death is indeed the end of everything. According to Nabokov, it is only the artist who, through his art, can penetrate to the true reality of things and who can answer these philosophical questions, since it is he who approaches the world free from all preconceived ideas which are imposed upon ordinary minds by custom or science or even philosophy. By using comic devices, most notably parody, Nabokov frees the reader's mind from all conventional ideas and stock responses, making it possible for him to follow his depicted artists in their exploration of true reality.

Three related elements of Nabokov's art are introduced at the beginning of the study: Nabokov's monist philosophy and the self-contained structures of his art, the necessity of the co-operation of the reader to bring the 'objective existence' of the novel into being and lastly the development of the consciousness as the measure of his characters in relation to the master consciousness Nabokov. All three of these elements are shown to depend on a law of unfulfilment operating in his work, which always seeks to match one mode with its provisional opposite. The abstract basis of this idea is then explained in terms of Nabokov's use of mirror images which (it is shown) educates the reader by teaching him what not to do before he can fully experience Nabokov's deeper structures. The three-fold mirror basis of his work (the artist - the work - the reader) is next related to the tripartite Hegelian method of philosophy. Hegel's ideas are shown to be explainable in mirror terms and the accordance between both writers is demonstrated. The unfulfilling theme is identified with the antithetic phase of the syllogism. These Hegelian and mirror insights are then applied to two novels: The Gift and The Real Life of Sebastian Knight. The conclusion seeks to define the experience of the reader's apprehension of Nabokov's art using the Hegelian vocabulary that has been developed. This study demonstrates that Nabokov evolved an informal yet developed metaphysic which must be understood as an avenue to the meaning of his art. The three-fold Hegelian formula, arrived at through the discovery of the role of unfulfilment in his work, provides the Nabokov reader with an indispensable key to the solution of Nabokov' s "riddles with elegant solutions".

This thesis explores the work of two contemporary women poets, one American, the other Canadian, looking particularly at questions of subjectivity and embodiment in relation to place and to history. Their work is considered in the contexts of American modernist poetry, for instance that of Wallace Stevens, William Carlos Williams and Charles Olson, and in the light of critical theorists such as Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, Michel Foucault, Luce Irigaray and Helene Cixous. Modernist concerns with the materiality of the text, both as product of a capitalist economy and as visual object, are considered alongside postmodern aspects of language as processional and reflexive. The early work of each writer is discussed separately in Chapters One and Two, with selected later work in more direct comparison in Chapters Three and Four.

This thesis analyses the cultural work performed by confessional discourses. It contributes to feminist cultural theory by refining and extending the Foucauldian theory of confession through a comparison of the cultural instrumentality of the mainstream, male-authored confession and women's versions of the mode. The thesis begins by arguing that though the mainstream, male-authored confession constructs and addresses a mutable subject suited to the requirements of modern power techniques, the polyvalence of confessional discourse also registers a resistance to subjection to contemporary forms of power/knowledge. The second section of the thesis extends and refines this argument by contending that the gynocentric deployment of confession by the woman's confessional novel produces a double-voiced discourse, which mutedly resists patriarchal forms of femininity. The application of psycho-analytic literary theory to a close reading of Marilyn French's The Women's Room leads to the conclusion that this novel's deployment of confessional discourse allows for a muted venting of repressed active female desire. The third section of the thesis extends the preceding examination of the cultural work performed by gynocentric confessional discourse through an analysis of the madefor- TV-movie version of French's The Women's Room. This section argues that that though the application of a film studies and a TV studies approach to the movie appears to produce two contradictory readings of it s cultural instrumentality, this divergence results from the different emphases of film and TV theory: while film theory emphasises text at the expense of context, TV theory tends to reverse this trend. In conclusion, the thesis argues that discourse theory points the way towards a perspective which can address the relationship between textual and social subjects. This thesis examines the textual negotiation of confessional discourse by gynocentric forms; it also points towards the need for a perspective which can more adequately address the question of reception as negotiation.