This thesis examines Ezra Pound's linguistic theory in relation to literary, philosophical and academic treatments of language in the modernist period. Pound is a central figure in the history of twentieth century literature, and his poetic career marks a sustained engagement with questions of how language can register thought, how it can transmit and communicate images, and, ultimately, how language is able to mediate between artists (or, indeed, language speakers as a whole) and the world. I read Pound's statements on language against the disciplinary history of linguistics, assessing the extent to which his positions are representative of his period, or, conversely, the ways in which they form part of an idiosyncratic worldview. My approach is broadly historical. I begin with Pound's educational background, and move chronologically through his career to the concluding passages of his Cantos. I investigate the extent to which Pound's critical writing engages with new departures taking place in linguistics in the late nineteenth century and the early part of the twentieth century. The scope of my investigation ranges from the legacy of nineteenth century philology to the approaches taken by William Dwight Whitney, Michel Bréal, and Ferdinand de Saussure, to name but a few, in focusing linguistic scholarship on synchronic study of language as function in the early twentieth century, to Franz Boas's and Edward Sapir's studies in the relationship between language and culture between 1910 and 1939. In situating Pound in relation to the history of linguistics as a discipline, I argue that his work asks some of the period's most apposite questions about language and culture, even if his conclusions differ from the dominant academic positions of the time.

The founding hypothesis of the study is that creative writers translate jazz music and performance into discourse by recourse to a number of figurative domains. These translations map existential, anthropological and political spaces and situate jazz within these. The first chapter concerns the representation of jazz in the construction of alterity, focussing on the evocation of the Dionysian spirit of jazz, the parallels between jazz and Bahktin's carnival and the strategic deployment of 'blackness' in configurations. The second chapter applies the notion of 'existential integration' in tracing some of the fluid boundaries between the music, the body of the instrument and the body of the performer in representations. The final chapter looks at the contrary tendency: the representation of mystical transcendence in the course of listening to or performing jazz. Underlying each of the three chapters is a concern with the emergence and propagation of oppositional identities in jazz writing. / English Studies / M.A. (English)

Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI)

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Although Derrida, Deleuze, and others have shown the centrality of Friedrich Nietzsche's work for contemporary philosophy, the breadth of his influence is only just beginning to be understood in literature. Nietzsche saw himself as a philosopher and as a poet, and wrote in all his major works of the importance of understanding the vital interaction of conceptual thinking and its "practical" application by the litterateur. The place of the philosopher/poet, modelled on Nietzsche himself, was to be considered the highest attainable by man. Yet Nietzsche's elevation of poetic thought contains a dynamic paradox, which he himself not only saw but which was for him a--perhaps the --pivotal aspect of his philosophy: since both thinking and writing occur in the same place, language, man must acknowledge that to engage in either is to accept the destruction of his "unity," and to place his attention "out" into language. To articulate, then, is to establish a double focus, an outer one first (in language), and then an inner one posited in that outer medium. The paradox is that this distancing is both necessary to man and disruptive to his sense of himself. Once one perceives this condition as, after Nietzsche, endemic to man, one can begin to see how pervasively the dilemma can be used as a strength, a source of power, by the writer. This study explores applications of Nietzsche's etrangete. Part One considers Nietzsche's writings themselves, selectively, and some precursors on whom he depended for his insights. Part Two applies these ideas to criticism of a number of contemporary writers, showing how the Nietzschean triangulation of articulation, etrangete, and power (Nietzsche's "eternal recurrence," "Overman," and "will to power") informs such diverse writers as Joyce, Faulkner, John Fowles, and Samuel Beckett. Each of the chapters of Part Two explores an aspect of Part One's conclusions relative to a particular writer, showing how he works within the Nietzschean paradigm whether he would repudiate that paradigm (as in the cases of Faulkner and Fowles), or acknowledge it (as with Joyce and Beckett). The dissertation's effort is to demonstrate that Nietzsche's pervasive influence on contemporary literature is systematic, indigenous, and inescapable.

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My thesis analyses the oeuvre of the American writer Mary McCarthy (1912-1989), with the focus on the figure of the outsider looking in. McCarthy uses outsider figures in her texts as prisms through which distinctive historical moments as well as problems of gender, race and religion are studied against the backdrop of the changing climate of the American 'red' 1930s, the anxious '50s, and the late '60s torn by the Vietnam war. Examples of McCarthy's recurring protagonists are the New York Bohemian girl of the '30s in the predominantly male world marred by the Great Depression, the Jewish character stereotyped as the Other by the poorly hidden anti-Semitism of the American society of the early 1940s, and the orphan child exposed to adult cruelty, who finds her only solace in the Catholic religion. Their position of being outsiders who live in a society not their own by birthright, is shown to be crucial for their acquisition and knowledge of truth, and links insight to marginality, which is reinforced by McCarthy's technique of ironically detached observation, the 'cold eye' of her prose. McCarthy herself appears as an outsider character throughout her writing, both as the historical figure and as the protagonist of her autobiographies. Her self-image, shaped by her orphaned childhood and her youth as a Bohemian girl among leftist intellectuals, is subject to conflicting impulses of confession and concealment. McCarthy's wide use of autobiographical details in her fiction and elements of fiction in her autobiographies led most critics to study her work from a chiefly biographical point of view. My own approach to Mary McCarthy's writing takes their findings into consideration, and includes the analysis of the historical, political, and social contexts of McCarthy's texts, as well as the intertextual dialogue with a few select writings by McCarthy's contemporaries such as Philip Roth and Sylvia Plath.

The period of 1919 to 1939 was a significant one for the development of the literature of Oregon and the Pacific Northwest. The literary work produced in the region prior to the first world war was greatly influenced by the "Genteel tradition" of the late nineteenth century. By 1939, however, the literature of Oregon and the region had emerged from the outdated literary standards of the pre-war period and had found a new, realistic, natural voice, strongly regional in nature and rooted in the modern American tradition.

This thesis analyzes the complexities of Argentinean politics during Juan Domingo Perâon's last presidency, (1973-1974), as presented in Osvaldo Soriano's novel No habrâa mâas penas ni olvido. Soriano's work, set in the fictitious town of Colonia Vela, in the state of Buenos Aires, illustrates in a small scale the different social and political components that make up the national body. Historical and fictitious elements dramatize the conflict among the left and right wings of the Peronist Party. These two factions divide the villagers, who hold diverse images of Perâon and what the party entails, while putting their political beliefs and physical well-being at stake. Quickly the two splinter parties trigger an open arm conflict while fighting under the same slogan: "Perâon o muerte". Supported by diverse theoretical perspectives, this thesis reveals that Soriano's novel sheds light into one of the most confusing periods of Argentinean history while rescuing the sacrifices of the people. / by Delia Pamela Fuentes. / Abstract in English. / Thesis (M.A.)--Florida Atlantic University, 2011. / Includes bibliography. / Electronic reproduction. Boca Raton, Fla., 2011. Mode of access: World Wide Web.

Chan, Tsz Shan. / Thesis (M.Phil.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2011. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 100-102). / Abstracts in English and Chinese. / Introduction --- p.1 / Chapter 1. --- Jack Kerouac and the Concept of Emptiness --- p.20 / Chapter 2. --- Gary Snyder and Autonomous Nature --- p.43 / Chapter 3. --- Ginsberg and the Sunyata Consciousness --- p.70 / Conclusion --- p.95 / Bibliography --- p.100