This thesis deals with the problems of genre and narrative techniques in two novels by the Swedish author Hjalmar Bergman, 1883-1931. Although regarded as one of the foremost novelists in Swedish literature, with novels such as Markurells i Wadköping, 1919, and Farmor och vår Herre, 1921, Bergman's narrative techniques have not previously been systematically analyzed. Instead critics have focussed either on the biographical and philosophical aspects of his work, or on the meaning of his specific use of symbols and metaphorical language. Hjalmar Bergman wrote more than twenty novels, a large number of plays, short stories, fairy tales and screenplays. His most innovative period was in the 1910s, which is also the period focussed on here. The study begins with the reception of the seven novels written from 1912 to 1918. These novels were considerably different from what the critics at the time were wont to expect. Consequently they had trouble understanding not only the purpose of the narrative techniques in the novels, but also in determining their specific genre and subject matter. The aim of this thesis is to demonstrate that by analyzing Hjalmar Bergman's narrative techniques, we can learn more about the genre of the novel, about its status in the Swedish literary institution of the 1910s, and about Hjalmar Bergman's contribution to its development in Sweden. For this purpose the methods of the Russian theorist of the novel, Mikhail Bakhtin, have proved to be useful. In the succeeding chapters two novels, Loewenhistorier, 1913 (Loewen Stories) and En döds memoarer, 1918 (The Memoirs of a Dead Man), are analyzed for a deeper understanding of Hjalmar Bergman's specific use of novelistic subgenres such as the adventure story, the picaresque, the Bildungsroman, the confession, the memoir etc. Hjalmar Bergmanhas been considered a 'pre-modernist' in Swedish prose fiction. If this is the case, it is not primarily because hetried to invent new ways of writing novels, but rather that he made use of seemingly well-defined genres, combining them in new and often surprising ways. He thereby investigates not only a subject matter or a protagonist, but also the relevance, with regard to the stories hesets out to tell, of the genre-bound plots and perspectives. The result is novels that are simultaneously highly structured and 'law-abiding', in accordance with their genre patterns, and characterized by a certain open-ended 'brokenness'. Nothing ever turns out as the reader might expect, judging from the genres used in the novels. / digitalisering@umu

Value conflicts due to cultural differences are an increasingly pressing issue in many societies. Because Old Testament texts hail from a very different milieu to our own they may provide new perspectives upon contemporary conflicts and, in this context, the present dissertation investigates one particular value clash in 1 Samuel. Studies of Old Testament ethics have attended to narrative only relatively recently. Although social-scientific interpretation has a longer pedigree, there are important debates about how to employ the fruits of anthropology in biblical studies. The first part of this thesis, therefore, attends to methodological issues, advancing four main propositions. First, attention should be paid to the moral goods that feature in the text. Second, the family, a central feature of Old Testament morality, should be understood as a set of practices rather than an institution. Third, 'models' of social action that purport to comprehend the social world of the Bible should be used only cautiously. Finally, a modified version of Bakhtin's theory of heteroglossic voices can help readers appreciate how authors present a moral vision by approving some characters' actions whilst undermining others. The second part of the thesis employs this methodology to examine 1 Samuel 19.10-18a. The discussion of the moral dilemma facing Michal adduces anthropological theories and ethnographic data concerning violence, lying, and the relationship between fathers and daughters. Given that the conflicts of moral goods are 'resolved' by characters choosing to act in a certain way, the dissertation enquires after the author's assessment of each character's moral choices, and hence their theological import. The dissertation argues that Michal's loyalty to David and deception of Saul was counter-cultural, and by approving of her choice the author affirms the importance of loyalty to the Davidic dynasty.

Dentro del contexto de los estudios literarios actuales, las figuras más reconocidas de la eslavística rusa son Mikhail Mijáilovich Bakhtin (1895–1975) e Iuri Mijáilovich Lotman (1922–1993). Por una parte, ambos han sido gestores de críticas profundas a los llamados “grandes metarrelatos modernos”, entre ellos el formalismo ruso, el marxismo, la lingüística tradicional, etc.; y, por otra, han elaborado nuevas concepciones teóricas que han sido capaces de transformar, de manera radical y definitiva, la forma de ver y estudiar tanto la literatura como el arte. En este estudio, por tanto, se redescubre a un brillante pensador como Bakhtin y se conoce a un relevante semiótico como Lotman, teórico prácticamente desconocido en los círculos académicos chilenos. La idea fundamental de esta tesis es dar cuenta del desarrollo histórico y del cambio epistemológico producido en la época posmoderna, desde el punto de vista de las contribuciones realizadas tanto por Bakhtin como por Lotman a los estudios literarios. De esta manera, se muestra, a través de un estudio descriptivo–comparativo, que dicha importancia radica en que ambos pensadores permiten la constitución de una línea de pensamiento que devela, en primer término, las transformaciones producidas en la época posmoderna y, en segundo término, los cambios acontecidos en la teoría literaria durante el siglo XX.

The modern Arabic term for national homeland, waṭan, derives its sense from the related yet semantically different usage of this term in classical Arabic, particularly in classical Arabic poetry. In modern usage, waṭan refers to a politically defined, visually memorialized territory whose expanse is cognized abstractly rather than through personal experience. The modern waṭan is the geopolitical locus of national identity. The classical notion of waṭan, however, is rarely given much geographical content, although it usually designates a relatively localized area on the scale of a neighborhood, town, or village. More important than geographical content is the subjective meaning of the waṭan, in the sense of its essential place in the psyche of an individual. The waṭan (also mawṭin, awṭān), both in poetry and other types of classical writing, is strongly associated with the childhood/youth and primary love attachments of the speaker. This sense of waṭan is thus temporally defined as much as spatially, and as such can be seen as an archetypal instance of the Bakhtinian chronotope, one intrinsically associated with nostalgia and estrangement. The waṭan, as the site of the classical self’s former plenitude, is by definition lost or transfigured and unrecoverable, becoming an attachment that must be relinquished for the sake of virtue and glory. This paper argues that the bivalency of the classical waṭan chronotope, recoverable through analysis of poetic and literary texts, allows us to understand the space and time of the self in classical Arabic literature and how this self differs from that presupposed by modern ideals of patriotism.

This dissertation examines fifteen films produced in seven political eras from 1926 thru 2008 in Soviet / Post-Soviet Russia. Its aim is to determine if the cinematic presence of Bakhtin’s ten signifiers of the carnivalesque (parody, death, grotesque display, satirical humor, billingsgate, metaphor, fearlessness, madness, the mask, and the interior infinite) increase in their significance with the historical progression from a totalitarian State (e.g., USSR under Stalin) to a federal semi-residential constitutional republic (e.g., The Russian Federation under Yeltsin - Putin). In this study, the carnivalesque signifiers act as a gauge of dialogism, the presence of which is indicative of some cinematic freedom of expression. The implication being, that in totalitarian States, a progressive relaxation of censorship in cinema (and conversely, an increase in cinematic freedom of expression) is indicative of a move towards a more representative form of governance, (e.g., the collapse of the totalitarian State). The fifteen films analyzed in this study include: Battleship Potemkin (1925), End of St. Petersburg (1927), Chapaev (1934), Ivan the Terrible, Part II (1946, released in 1958), Spring on Zarechnaya Street (1956), The Cranes are Flying (1957), Stalker (1979), Siberiade (1979), The Legend of Suram Fortress (1984), Repentance (1984, released in 1987), Cold Summer of 1953 (1987), Little Vera (1988), Burnt by the Sun (1994), House of Fools (2002) and Russian Ark (2002). All fifteen films were produced in the Soviet/Post-Soviet space and directed by Russian filmmakers; hence, the films portray a distinctly Russian perspective on reality. These films emphasize various carnivalesque features including the reversal of conventional hierarchies, usually promoting the disprivileged masses to the top, thus turning them into heroes at the expense of traditional power structures.

Inspired by the lack of Congressional compromise during the 2013 federal shutdown, I explore how compromise works in large groups and representative bodies. An on-line survey, personal interviews, and a discourse analysis of the Congressional Record yield a diverse collection of data, including personal and public stories of compromise. I examine the stories and other data through an eclectic mix of contemporary scholarship, borrowing literary theory from the Russian critic Mikhail Bakhtin, socio-linguistic concepts from American linguist James Paul Gee, and moral philosophy from Israeli thinker Avishai Margalit. I also incorporate the work of political scientists Amy Gutmann and Dennis Thompson, as well as the political campaign coverage of writer and essayist Joan Didion. My examination shows that differences in Discourse, Gee’s expansive model of the discourse community, underpin the uncompromising mindset that dominated the 2013 shutdown. I show that public and personal compromise have obvious differences in terms of scope and complexity, but that all successful compromises, of any size, rest on a bedrock of trust. My research uncovered more effective ways of brokering legislative compromise in the future. I also learned that public opinion polls do not influence legislative decisions. Instead, regular, personal contact, whether by phone, fax, or e-mail, is the best way to engage and influence legislators. Finally, I consider the challenges and limitations of my research, including the difficulty of collecting a large, diverse survey sample, and scheduling personal interviews with public officials.

Comedy is an inherently pleasurable phenomenon with beneficial psychological functions, but its potential to bring on undesirable and socially destabilizing consequences is less intuitively obvious. In this essay, I argue that one of the hitherto under-recognized features of William Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice is its covert problematization of the phenomenon of comedy itself, and that the play invites its audience to become more aware of in what situations laughter is constructive and appropriate. I apply psychological and cultural-historical theories of humor— specifically, Freudian relief theory and Bakhtinian thought on laughter and festivity—as a framework for interpreting the play, with a particular emphasis on the secondary protagonist called Gratiano. I argue that Gratiano serves as a personification of comedy, whose function is to problematize it and demonstrate its positive as well as negative attributes in relation to seriousness and restraint. Gratiano’s laughter-inducing antics compel audience members to sympathize with him in the dialectic which Shakespeare sets up between him and other characters, but the play also portrays his jovial behavior as concomitant with less desirable traits which his comedy successfully obscures. While the character presents comedy as attractive and instinctively preferable to propriety and decorum, he also shows how the allure of laughter and comedy may be used by disingenuous actors to provide an attractive veneer for immoral or abhorrent behavior.

Student Number : 0111318E - M Ed research report - School of Education - Faculty of Humanities / This research report explores the unique nature of literature and its efficacy as a dialogically mediating tool. In this study, drawing primarily on the theories of Vygotsky and Bakhtin, the dialogical small-group teaching of nine A Level students is considered, (with the teaching aimed to be within this group’s Zone of Proximal Development) it was found axiomatic that there was a supporting framework of schemes, tropes, narrative role taking, schemata theory and genre, among other concepts. Qualitative analysis of the edited transcripts from eight consecutive seminars substantiates these theoretical presumptions and leads to the conclusion that literature, in this case the prescribed poems of Elizabeth Jennings, is an highly efficacious, dialogically mediating, pedagogical tool.

O estudo teórico da obra de Bakhtin e seu Círculo demanda um aprofundamento em vários contextos: um estudo historiográfico da obra em relação ao contexto russo de sua produção; um estudo comparativo das traduções em que a obra, escrita originariamente em russo, circula e é interpretada no Ocidente; e a busca de uma, entre múltiplas entradas na obra, que nos permita avançar nos seus estudos da linguagem. Neste trabalho, recuperamos fragmentos da construção de uma ciência da linguagem - a Metalingüística -, comparando duas obras de 1929 - Marxismo e Filosofia da Linguagem (Volochinov) e Problemas da obra de Dostoiévski (Bakhtin) - com a segunda edição do livro de Bakhtin sobre Dostoiévski - Problemas da poética de Dostoiévski (1963), onde Bakhtin menciona pela primeira vez, publicamente, essa nova ciência. Essa comparação revelou que já nos livros de 1929, o objeto da Metalingüística - as relações dialógicas e a palavra bivocal - estavam propostos; e que há uma transição de uma Filosofia marxista da linguagem e uma Sociologia da palavra, nos primeiros, para a Metalingüística. Na primeira parte da tese, levantamos alguns aspectos gerais da obra tais como: 1) as relações das fontes primárias com o contexto histórico russo; e 2) alguns problemas de tradução de categorias relacionados com o nosso tema. A segunda parte, trata da evolução do problema do diálogo na própria construção da Metalingüística e de sua orientação filosófica, a partir dos seguintes contextos: a Filosofia marxista da linguagem (Volochinov) em relação com o problema do diálogo; as relações entre a Sociologia da palavra e a Metalingüística; e, por último, as relações da Metalingüística com a Lingüística. Os resultados da pesquisa apontam para uma reinserção da Metalingüística nos estudos bakhtinianos atuais, como uma entrada importante para a análise dialógica da linguagem. / The theoretical research of Bakhtin and his circle’s works require an indepth study of various contexts: a historiographical study in relation to the Russian context of its production; a comparative study of translations in which the work, written originally in the Russian language, circulate and is interpreted; and the demand of a context, among the multiple entries in that work, which allowed us to go further in their study of language. In this work, we recover some fragments of Bakhtin’s science of language, that is, Metalinguistics, comparing two works from 1929 - Marxism and Philosophy of Language (Voloshinov) and Problems of Dostoevsky’s Art (Bakhtin) - with the second version of Bakhtin’s book on Dostoevsky - Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics (1963), where for the first time Bakhtin mentions this new science. The comparison reveals that in the 1929’s works the object of Metalinguistics - dialogical relationship and double-voiced word - was already proposed, and that there is a transition from the first two works to the second, from a Marxist philosophy of language and Sociology of words to Metalinguistics. In the first part of the thesis, we show some general aspects of the work such as: 1) the relationships between the primary database and the Russian historical context and 2) some problems of translation of categories related to our theme. The second part, tries to show the evolution of the problem of dialogue in the construction of Metalinguistcs and its philosophical orientation on the following contexts: Marxist philosophy of language related to the problem of dialogue; from the Sociology of words to Metalinguistcs; and, finally, the relationships between Metalinguistics and Linguistics. The results of the research point to a reinsertion of Metalinguistics in Bakhtin’s current studies as an important context for the dialogical analysis of language.

Orientador: Otilia Lizete de Oliveira Martins Heinig. / Dissertação (Mestrado em Educação) - Programa de Pós-Graduação em Educação, Centro de Ciências da Educação, Universidade Regional de Blumenau, Blumenau.