Over and above applying Sartrean literary philosophy to Banks and Kelman this thesis therefore also offers a model of literary criticism that can be applied to a number of other contemporary Scottish authors. In conclusion, this thesis suggests that Sartre’s theories of literature can assist in the attempt to better understand the value of the writer in society, and of Kelman and Banks in particular. The comparison and contrast between Banks and Kelman makes clear the importance of contextualising the individual writer not only with the work of their contemporaries, but with the time, place and position in which they are writing. The intention of the thesis is to discover how Sartre’s ideas of existentialism and literature can be applied to writers and their work in a way that allows ‘the critic’ to analyse both the novelist’s fictional technique and to gauge the value of their role in society – in other words, how Sartre’s theories allow us to better understand the individual writer in a social, political and moral context, both nationally and internationally.

What can cinema as an industry and medium teach us about the roles and parameters that define a “body” within a contemporary and globalised climate of interwoven flows of exchanges and practices? How does cinema make visible and tangible otherwise invisible transsensorial and affective modes of interactions that a body actively engages with other bodies, to create meanings beyond the limitations and capacities of a single body’s subjectivity and materiality? I address these areas of inquiry by examining four case studies of film examples produced from Singapore, Taiwan, People’s Republic of China, Hong Kong, Malaysia, and America that feature ethnic “Chinese” bodies on screen. This thesis sets out to illustrate how meaning is easily imposed on bodies—whether tied to the ethnic, visual, or tangible—rendering them passive where they are mere products of social construction with no individual agency or autonomy. However, contemporary practices of filmmaking and new ways of thinking about film experiences reveal that the body is in fact an active-affective producer of meanings. As such, the body can no longer be approached as a passive central locus where its meaning is defined solely by transnational, transcultural, or other grand narratives. This thesis posits a “transsensorial” object-oriented, and new-materialist approach within the field of transnational Chinese cinemas studies that regards bodies on-screen beyond audiovisual signs to consider the materiality and immateriality of their production and productivity. Bodies are reframed as “body-without-organs” to consider the affective processes that produce them within specific ecologies—and their productive affective potentials to interrelate and encounter other bodies not-yet-formed. Through which, this thesis makes a case for cinema’s potential to produce thinking active-bodies and how bodies make sense of the worlds they are part of beyond subjective notions of lived experiences whether construed through different various inflections of social constructed identities based on trans-national, or trans-cultural discourses.

During the creation or invention of literary canon some texts are excluded with respect to the aims of the historians. This thesis analyses the process of exclusion in a historical context and tries to show how those texts are related to literary canon or socalled traditional-classical literature by means of intertextuality. It focuses on the burlesque pieces of literature of the 18th century and how they are composed with regard to the genres and forms they are transforming.

This thesis aims at propounding possible relations between the concepts of time and art in Martin Heidegger&rsquo / s thinking. Time and art which hold a central place in different periods of Heidegger&rsquo / s thinking in line with his fundamental question of Being are considered together mainly through the analysis of artwork&rsquo / s temporal characteristics. The temporality of the artwork in question is investigated specifically in terms of its basic elements of earth and world and with its relation to authenticity. In this respect, this thesis argues that the work of art bears a temporality of its own and attempts to show how this is realized with the experience of art

Irony has for long been on the boundary between philosophy and arts owing to its both verbal/logical character and its aesthetic appeal. Recently, Rorty proposed irony as the main discursive attitude in a liberal society. In this study, I investigate liberal irony from a philosophical perspective. More specifically, I demonstrate that irony is representative of a certain view of subjectivity and an ethical stance, a critical tool that is of special importance in a coherence view of truth and a rhetorical form that appeals both to the rational and irrational.

This study aims at providing a reading of the first chapter of Karl Marx&lsquo / s Capital Volume One titled

This research uses literary resources as evidence against the argument that names are potentially semantically meaningless entities. A secondary goal is to highlight and discuss the value of onomastics from both a literary and linguistic perspective. The thesis proposes a methodology for the assessment of literary sources based on genre, arguing that names, and genre in turn, may be defined through their respective engagement with thematic considerations, providing a relevant critical structure by which to assess the application or construction of names within fiction. The proposed methodology is first used to assess the placenames within dystopian literature, taking Orwell’s 1984 (1949), Huxley’s Brave New World (1931), and Zamyatin’s We (1924) as exemplar texts for the genre. The emblematic themes identified within the onymic patterns (propaganda, classification and regulation) all share a common thematic root: power and control. In order to assess the validity of this approach, the fictional worlds depicted in a selection of other dystopic texts are also examined. A special study is made of terrapsychology and fictional ontology, as well as of three distinct subgenres of the gothic. Case studies of the latter are each focused around a different ontological mode (fictional, part-fictional, and non-fictional placenames), covering the fantastic world of Peake’s Gormenghast setting (two texts published in 1946 and 1950), Lovecraft’s variant New England county (six texts, 1922 to 1936), and the representative contemporary setting of Brook’s World War Z (2006), respectively.

The aim of this study is to demonstrate the idea of Exoticism and its effect on nineteenth century architectural tendencies and especially on the philosophy and the works of Louis Sullivan (1856-1924). The study begins with an elucidation of the concept &ldquo / exoticism.&rdquo / After the thoughts of a group of nineteenth century European intellectuals are discussed, the philosophy of Sullivan is analyzed. Following chapters are dedicated to the works of Sullivan. Exotic world was the source of a stimulating discourse for the nineteenth century intellectuals. American architect Sullivan also found inspiration in it. In the development of his philosophy, Sullivan concentrated on the idea of &ldquo / integrity of man and nature,&rdquo / and he realized that integrity was present in the art of primitive and especially Oriental cultures. His universal formula, &ldquo / form follows function,&rdquo / was based on the idea that the primitive man did not put a barrier between himself and nature / hence every artwork created by him was a process of transformation of natural forms. Sullivan modeled his designs upon nature and in this way attempted to reproduce this creative process. This study interprets Sullivan&rsquo / s philosophy and works and also discusses their likely contribution to the work of the contemporary architect.

The dissertation pushes the boundaries of biblical interpretation by formulating relationships between passages of the Hebrew Bible and unrelated works of Modern art. While a growing field of criticism addresses the representation of scriptural stories in painting, sculpture and film, the artwork in this study does not look to the Bible for its subject matter. The intertextual/intermedia comparisons instead address five different genres of biblical literature and read them according to various dynamics found in Modern images. In forming these relationships I challenge traditional perceptions of characters and literary style by allowing an artistic representation or pictorial method to highlight issues of selfhood, gender and power and by revaluing narrative and poetry in nuanced aesthetic terms. The comparative analysis derives its two-subject structure for each section from the undergraduate art history seminar, in which two slides are projected and the group encouraged to identify similarities between disparate works. My use of this heuristic method then appropriates secondary sources to forge a relationship in which art criticism ultimately speaks for the biblical text. Chapter I juxtaposes the figure of Michal in 2 Samuel 6 against that of Queen Guenevere (1858) by William Morris in an essay that questions the portrait popular opinion has painted of the barren daughter of Saul. The Pre-Raphaelite painting and Morris’s related poetry help to build a defence for Michal against those who inflict her barrenness upon her as if it were a punishment from God. Morris’s sympathy for his adulterous heroine allows us to see the Deuteronomistic History’s maligned queen as one whose character and action in fact seem very in tune with the prophetic agenda of the greater work. In Chapter II, a woodcut portrait of Friedrich Nietzsche (1905) by Erich Heckel provides a counterpart to Abraham’s representation in Genesis 23. The German Expressionist reduced his palette to a bold black on white to memorialise the Modern father of great men. The comparison frames Abraham as the embodiment of the Übermensch, as one who laid waste to his father’s heritage and followed his own God. His role as one who lives ‘over’ others casts the haste with which he gets up and buys Sarah’s plot as a sign of his will to possess. Luce Irigaray’s Marine Lover of Friedrich Nietzsche (1991) is then incorporated to create a dialogue between the dark space of the portrait (symbolic of Abraham’s masculine ego) and the white space caused by Sarah’s death. Sarah thus speaks to ‘Abraham the Overman’ as the ‘Marine Lover’, beckoning him down from his high place and resisting the force in him that wants to bury her out of his sight. Chapter III turns to prophecy and reconsiders Isaiah 44 first as a collage made in exile and then as a performance piece conducted in diaspora. The Merzbild by Kurt Schwitters entitled Green Over Yellow (1947) takes a critical Modern step away from representation and forward to abstraction. Schwitters assembled his cut-up forms to give them new visual value and made conspicuous their arbitrary edges and artful overlapping—a compositional and structural ethos not unlike the collage of forms in the exilic prophecy. Schwitters’ relative ease as an exile and expatriate in Britain also fuels questions scholars have asked about the nature and scale of the biblical exile. Finding that the text does not fully orient itself towards Jerusalem, a second part to this comparison introduces an alternative analogue for Is. 44 by treating it as a record of performance and drawing upon the work of Ana Mendieta (1948-1985) to discuss the passage’s broad approach to land and identity. The fourth chapter hangs an individual lament alongside Jackson Pollock’s Cathedral (1947), likening its parallelisms to streams of paint poured across the canvas and foregrounding the site of Psalm 13 as a field of/for abstract expression. Short though this hymn may be, its generalised language makes it accessible to a universal audience and lets emotion be splattered about in a personal protest against pain. Finally, Chapter V envisions wisdom literature and the character of Qoheleth with an understanding for the genre’s ‘conceptual’ outlook and the speaker’s sense of irony. A readymade gambler’s bond by Marcel Duchamp is projected opposite the opening chapter of Qoheleth’s reflections to introduce the wise man as a dandy who entertains his admirers through pleasing words. The comparison thus establishes a context in which a book that scholars have attempted to classify as either the work of an optimist or a pessimist can be appreciated for the attitude of witty indifference its author appears to affect. The project actively conceives of the biblical text as a ‘Modern’ phenomenon by emphasising areas in which it seems to invite abstract or metaphorical modes of understanding over literal interpretation. It utilizes an understanding of Modernism based not on the rejection of tradition but on the desire to rectify it. And it draws out the ways in which the Bible scandalizes the pious pictures critics have painted of it. Thinking not only of reading and visualising the Bible as an artistic process, the analysis aims to illustrate the legitimacy of viewing the text itself as a work of art.

Kurt Schwitters decisively established that Dada was indeed more a state of mind than a collection of creeds. Spurned by Berlin Dada, he was compelled to construct for himself an alternative Dada existence, and this he accomplished in the one-man movement he christened "Merz". Hundreds of Merz artworks were produced by the tireless Schwitters, but the summa summarum of his oeuvre was the Hanover Merzbau (circa 1923-1943). As it transcends architecture, sculpture, and assemblage, I have taken the distinctive approach of analyzing it first and foremost in terms of a theory of self-reflexivity. The first and second chapters of this thesis are dedicated to the writings of Georg Simmel and Henri Bergson. The former contributes an understanding of the psyche of the modernist metropolitan and how it is that the subjective spirit that resides in this enlightened individual substantiates its existence by producing forms and objects with which it continuously comes into conflict. As witnessed in Schwitters' Merzbau, the self-conscious "I" constitutes a centripetal force that organizes and directs the objects it encounters and thus exerts a unifying influence over its environment. In the Bergson chapter, I pursue an in-depth investigation into how self-reflexivity is predicated upon the search for true duration and the manifestation of the elan vital. I also include an in-depth analysis of Bergson's treatise on laughter, for the theories contained within go a long way towards explicating Schwitters' brand of humour and how the comic artist is a self-reflexive figure non-pareil. The third chapter, devoted to Schwitters and his place in Dada, takes into account the vitalist philosophical underpinnings of the Merzbau and asserts that self-reflexive art operates under an enantiodromic law; the presence of the artist must be effaced as thoroughly as possible before the creative self achieves materialization in the artwork it has engendered.