This thesis juxtaposes Plato's allegory of the cave with Jacques Derrida's concept of the always already aspect of meaning, a concept derived from Ferdinand de Saussure's work. This theoretical investigation examines the implications of universal Signified forms of word meanings for postmodern composition theory.

John Baldessari’s Blasted Allegories (1977-1978) represent a concerted reconsideration of the most active and critical pursuits of the 1960s and ‘70s, including structuralism, post-structuralism, systems-based art, constraint-based approaches to composition, chance, and allegory. Thirty-five of the sixty-some Blasted Allegories are designated here as “later” works in the series because they share formal and structural characteristics; they present arrangements of colored photographs on neutral matte board. Although the later Blasted Allegories initially appear as colorful sentences, the close readings undertaken in this dissertation reveal that these pieces have been generated by the imposition of individual sets of constraints on a combinatorial system. In addition, many of these works appropriate structural models from cultural anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss, narratologist A. J. Greimas, and grammarian Noam Chomsky; even though they subsume the rules implied by these structural models, they undergo a post-structural critique wherein fixed relationships are destabilized by word play, homophones, rhyme, and the imposition of such additional operations as algorithms. This dissertation demonstrates how Baldessari solicits art as an experience of cognitive construction, pleasure, and protracted play with the possibilities of meaning. His crypto-narratives take readers along the cognitive spiral theorized by psychologist Jean Piaget that begin with sensory perceptions, expand into operational understandings of these works as products of a combinatory system, and can be built into logical and mathematical apprehensions of the resultant texts. Like many of the embedded models, Piaget’s spiral is counterbalanced in this series by the conflation of vying cultural models into a cacophony of signification. Baldessari’s texts play with readers’ proclivities to search for meaning. The artist solicits protracted interactions from viewer/readers, who are able to discern multiple, simultaneous readings and thus relinquish an ensconced approach toward art as a synthesis of embedded cultural models. Baldessari’s series engages conceptions of allegory as a procedure, a condition of the text, and a hedge against reductive, overarching interpretations. Working in a Duchampian vein, Baldessari posits the components of new syntaxes for art that return readers to these pieces, where variable interactions between readers and these heteroglossic texts ressemble open systems that can unsettle artist-imposed significations.

Modernism is a plurality, not a singular concept. This project explores examples of Art Nouveau nudes to describe the particular expressions of the modern through varied and complicated allegorical bodies. The female nude as a nexus for ideals of gender, art, and beauty, is informed by and constructs the understanding of these ideals within society. Art Nouveau thus employed the nude to represent complex manifestations of modernity. Three diverse cases provide the subjects of each chapter. All explore modernism through objects and interiors, in public and private environments, and each connects the decorative arts with accounts of European modernism in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. The modernist movement, in these decades, is still predominantly understood through painting. This project draws its case studies from Paris, Glasgow, and Vienna, each a distinct cultural arena during the 1890s and 1900s: the sculptural furniture of François Rupert Carabin (1862-1932); the metalwork of Margaret Macdonald (1865-1933) and her sister Frances Macdonald (1873-1921); and the graphic motifs of Ver Sacrum, created by the artists of the first Vienna Secession (1897-1905). In conception and expression, these nudes articulated the diverse representational practices of different modernisms. They each embody drastically different histories, aesthetics, and social expressions. Their varied modernisms expose the prominent nationalism of Art Nouveau. Examination of these three very different cases expands and complicates current understandings of the nude, allegory, and the modern.

The theses Maxmilian Pirner - The conception of allegory and symbol in the work of one artist on the end of 19th century discusses the work of Maxmilian Pirner and his attitudes to allegory and symbol. Becouse at the end of 19th century was the allegorical system in crisis, Pirner reflected it by its' modernization. The modernisation of system in his own conception consisted in gradual rejection of traditional allegory and admission of symbol. The these is trying to answer the question how this process came through and why it was unique. The main focus of the theses is to describe Pirners'role in the process of development in art since neoromantism to symbolism at the turn of 19th and 20th century.

Cette thèse essaie d’établir dans un premier temps que Mallarmé, Valéry et Reverdy accomplissent exemplairement la critique théorique des fondations romantiques (à la fois ontologiques et rhétoriques) de la littérature ; que cette critique conduit à une crise de légitimité, qui, sans donner lieu à une rupture violente avec la tradition (à la différence de ce qu’implique par exemple l'ethos dominant des avant-gardes), témoigne cependant d’une lucidité sans concession. On montre alors que cette lucidité s'inscrit dans l'écriture même des poèmes selon une poétique a-théologique et par le réinvestissement de formes (l’allégorie, l’écriture moraliste) susceptibles d'indiquer, contre la considération idolâtre d’une autonomie sans autre de l’œuvre, une transitivité rhétorique et non résolutoire de celle-ci. On explique ainsi que l'écroulement de la métaphysique romantique ouvre la voie, chez ces auteurs, à une reconnaissance de la discursivité de l'œuvre, à sa considération tout à la fois poétique et rhétorique. De cela on conclut à l’éviction d’un paradigme esthétique de la poésie et de ses implications indissociablement politiques et communicationnelles, au profit d’une reconnaissance des contingences rhétorique et factuelle du discours littéraire, celles-ci définissant, sans dogmatisme, une inquiétude humaniste. / This thesis first aims at establishing that Mallarmé, Valéry and Reverdy build up a strong theoretical criticism of Literature’s romantic foundations (which are both ontological and rhetorical); it also points out that this criticism leads to a legitimacy crisis. This crisis, though it does not express itself through a violent break from tradition (unlike the main ethos of the avant-garde), bears witness to an uncompromising sense of lucidity. We then demonstrate that this lucidity shapes the very writing of the poems through a-theological poetics and by reinvesting traditional forms (such as allegory or moralist writing) which can convey, though in a problematic way, a certain rhetorical transitivity. We thus throw light on the fact that the wrecking of romantic metaphysics makes these authors acknowledge the discursive nature of the poem, its poetical and rhetorical aspects. We finally conclude on the overcoming of both the aesthetic paradigm of literature and its political and communicational implications to the benefit of an acknowledgement of factual and rhetorical contingencies of the literary discourse. This defines, without any dogmatism, a humanistic disquiet.

La presente investigación consiste en conocer cómo el uso de la alegoría en discursos publicitarios de autoconstrucción de espacios públicos y privados incide en la identificación del público objetivo con una marca. Para ello, se empleará una revisión bibliográfica de los conceptos de autoconstrucción, discurso publicitario, alegoría e identificación de marca. Luego se utilizará un caso de estudio de la marca Cemento Sol y se llevará a cabo una investigación en base a entrevistas de profundidad, mediante un cuestionario que explora la percepción e identificación acerca del comercial, de manera que permita hallar una respuesta a la pregunta de investigación. / The present investigation consists of knowing how the use of the allegory in advertising discourses of self-construction of public and private spaces affects the identification of the target audience with a brand. For this, a bibliographic review of the concepts of self-construction, advertising discourse, allegory and brand identification will be used. Then a case study of the Cemento Sol brand will be used and an investigation will be carried out based on in-depth interviews, through a questionnaire that explores the perception and identification of the commercial, in order to find an answer to the question of investigation. / Tesis

[pt] A experiência do trabalho pretende comprovar a atualidade de Jorge Mautner através da relação entre sua vivencialidade e sua obra, na dinâmica e movimento de sua criação e ação intempestivas visando a cultura nacional, desde seu surgimento (1958) com a canção-emblema Vampiro, até os dias de hoje: a força e a originalidade de sua música, sua literatura, em imanência com seu pensamento, na experimentação e afirmação do real a partir de sua invenção e discursividade. / [en] This work intends to show the Jorge Mautners present relevance by examining the relation between his living experience and his oeuvre, in the dynamics and movement of his untimely creation and action vis-à-vis Brazilian culture, from his debut with the emblematic song Vampiro (1958) to the present: the strength and originality of his music and literature, according to his thought, his experimentation and assertion of reality through inventiveness.

Dados toponímicos, corográficos e geodésicos colhidos em \"Corpo de baile\" permitem visualizar a unidade das partes (\"poemas\") do livro no mapa de Minas Gerais. Ao seguir pelo avesso a \"loxía\" proferida por Gorgulho, o primeiro recadeiro de \"O recado do morro\", percebe-se que as coordenadas geográficas dos cenários dos sete poemas desenham uma imagem constelar do teatro de palcos múltiplos rosiano. Na cartografia do Sertão, as posições dos membros do baile ficcional, quando carregadas com os atributos dos planetas enxergados no livro por Heloísa Vilhena de Araújo, determinam uma reveladora transposição anamórfica dos polos alegóricos que controlam os movimentos de motivos, temas e personagens entre os poemas. O mapa é a partitura em que se unificam as distintas temporalidades dos enredos, reproduzindo as correspondências entre micro- e macrocosmo efetuadas nos panos de fundo naturais. Procura-se demonstrar como a cenografia de Rosa transcende o realismo de suas fontes científico-naturalistas - em que se destacam cartas geográficas, literatura de navegação e relatos de exploradores e viajantes - ao engendrar uma minuciosa reprodução da forma interna da Natureza na visualidade inteligível das paisagens ficcionais. / The connection between geodesic data from \"O Recado do Morro\" and the projection of planets on the seven stories of \"Corpo de Baile\", proposed by Heloísa Vilhena de Araújo, yields a determinant of the book\'s unity. The search for Rosa\'s landscapes and its geographic locations on maps of Minas Gerais leads to the very core of planetary allegory by making the book\'s unity of parts visible on the cartographic representation. Cartography is thus converted into scenery for a fictional system in which the multiple stages of the Sertão compose a geodesic constellation. This anamorphic procedure reveals the internal bonds of \"Corpo de Baile\" by visualizing the manner by which Neoplatonic thought suggested by Plotinus\' epigraphs controls the book\'s kosmos. Landscape is the pictorial commonplace where story temporalities mitologically merge, providing a solid land for the micro-macrocosmic dance. This thesis tries to show the manner by which Rosa transcends the regionalist sources of his scientific and technological knowledge in order to stage an industrious reconstruction of Natures internal form. Special attention is focused on the influence exerted by travelers, explorers and naturalists on the intelligible visuality of \"Corpo de Baile\" sceneries.

Thesis advisor: Susan Michalczyk / After the fall of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War, the United States became the one remaining superpower at the head of a unipolar international system. This new position and the repercussions of its power led to the rocky international stability of the 1990s. The Poison Umbrella Effect is a political allegory which explores this historic transition period through the relationships of college students. Anna Bennet is a freshman at Warren College who, after being elected Hall President by default, must find a balance between her friendships and her sense of power and responsibility. Her first year of college is marked by drama, disillusionment, and progress as she develops into the person she will be for the rest of her college career. With her friends representing other countries, and all of their actions representing political events of the 1990s, Anna's experiences demonstrate America's progression from a leading power in a bipoloar world, to the domineering superpower it is today. / Thesis (BA) — Boston College, 2007. / Submitted to: Boston College. College of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: College Honors Program.

Esta dissertação propõe uma leitura crítica do romance Libro de navíos y borrascas, do escritor argentino Daniel Moyano, publicado em 1983. Tal leitura se constrói a partir do desenvolvimento de perspectivas de análise que levam em conta, por um lado, o caráter alegórico da narrativa e, por outro, a singularidade da enunciação de seu narrador, sendo a experiência do exílio o eixo articulador de nossa abordagem crítica. A teoria de Walter Benjamin sobre alegoria e narração e as relações entre enunciação e subjetividade, pensadas a partir das reflexões de Benveniste, Ricardo Piglia e Giorgio Agamben, nos fornecem alguns dos embasamentos teóricos mais fundamentais no traçado de uma reflexão acerca de como a relação entre linguagem e experiência configura a narrativa de Libro de navíos y borrascas como uma ficção do exílio. Na tentativa de contribuir para a consolidação de uma fortuna crítica da obra de Daniel Moyano, um autor pouco estudado tanto na Argentina como no Brasil, nosso estudo parte de fatores estéticos e históricos que dizem respeito ao contexto de produção do romance, bem como a determinadas concepções de seu autor acerca da escrita literária e às perspectivas críticas que se dedicaram à ficção argentina dos anos 1980, produzida sob o último regime militar vivido por aquele país. / This dissertation proposes a critical reading of the Argentinean writer Daniel Moyanos novel Libro de navíos y borrascas, published in 1983. Such reading is built on the development of perspectives of analysis that consider, on the one hand, the narratives allegorical characteristics, and on the other hand, its narrator enunciation uniqueness, where the exile experience is the articulating axis of our critical approach. Walter Benjamins theory on allegory and narration, as well as the relations between enunciation and subjectivity, considered from Benvenistes, Ricardo Piglias and Giorgio Agambens reflections, provide us some of the most fundamental theoretical foundation on the outline of a reflection on how language and experience define Libro de navíos y borrascass narrative as an exile fiction. In an attempt to contribute towards consolidating the critical fortune of Daniel Moyanos work, a scarcely studied author both in Argentina and Brazil, our study considers aesthetical and historical factors regarding the novels context of production, as well as certain conceptions of its author about literary writing and critical perspectives that dedicated themselves to the 1980s Argentinean fiction, produced under the latest military regime lived by that country.