During her early career as a sculptor, the French artist Louise Bourgeois (1911-2010) experimented with various methods of representing the female body in a state of dismemberment or fragmentation. Despite the transgression latent within such sculptures, critics and scholars alike interpreted Bourgeois’s oeuvre from a psycho-biographical angle. In doing so, they suggested that her art was rooted in a personal—as opposed to political—consciousness. This thesis analyzes some of the reasons behind this common method of interpretation, looking specifically at the personal myth that Bourgeois promoted in order to gain acceptance in the art world. In addition, this work questions the ways in which the artist masked the gendered transgression in two sculptural self-portraits through unique adaptations to Modernist traditions.

This thesis examines how images of the Swedish singer Jenny Lind worked to distance her from the typical nineteenth-century view. Because of their position within the public sphere, female performers were thought to be sexually available and often had the reputation of prostitute. Lind achieved a level of success that made her one of the most famous women of the mid-nineteenth-century. She was known not only for her talent as a performer but also for her morality and piety. Examining the Lind images in the context of nineteenth-century social codes and feminist theatre history, it becomes evident that Lind was a different type of female performer. This thesis will also discuss how photographic portraits of Lind adhered to codes for proper bourgeois portraits of women in the nineteenth century, thus distancing her from the stigma that was attached to stage performers.

My thesis aims to explore the conflict between bourgeois and romance ideologies in Charlotte Lennox¡¦s The Female Quixote in terms of women¡¦s reading, power, and marriage in the eighteenth century. In chapter one, I focus on Arabella¡¦s access to romantic fantasies, offering an overview of women¡¦s position and reading in bourgeois society. Through examining the society¡¦s attitude to and concerns with reading, we can see that in the bourgeois ideal women are voiceless and restrained within the domestic domain, the one that offers no opportunities for the significance that romance heroines enjoy. Also, both women¡¦s motives to read and the society¡¦s eagerness to prohibit it reflect the economical and capitalistic sides of the bourgeoisie. Then, Arabella¡¦s exclusive reading of romance makes her totally subject to it; the canonized romances become the female tradition for Arabella. By comparing the quasi-classicism of romance to the contemporaneity of novel, the discrepancy between Arabella and the outside world is clearly shown. She endeavors to yearn for significance in the prosaic reality which offers no opportunity. Consequently, chapter two examines Arabella¡¦s power on two levels. Arabella, trying to mediate the gap, constructs her romantic counter-reality with the help of the power of imagination. Arabella manipulates her surroundings to make them meet the requirements of the romantic world, which appears to be an autonomous domain governed by love, excluding the laws, morality, and secularity of the reality. Furthermore, in the love-ruled realm the power structure of bourgeois society seems to be reversed. Women have power over their submissive and constant suitors. The typical images of both genders are reversed. However, heroines¡¦ possession of power is at the expense of rejecting and denying female sexuality and desire. Therefore the autonomy and the reversal of power structure proposed by romance are actually illusive; the power only exists by sacrificing female subjectivity. In chapter three I will probe into the double-edged role marriage plays. The marriage between Arabella and Glanville can be seen as the compromise between romance and bourgeois ideologies. With the help of her manipulation of the reality, Arabella¡¦s marriage does exemplify the romantic ideal. Glanville is romantically presented as a hero performing countless actions to win his lover. Their marriage is depicted as an amatory union, which is the essential ending in romances wherein love is sanctified. On the other hand, the marriage ending also satisfies the concerns of middle-class society, wherein marriage is considered as a trade and bears an economic mission rather than connecting two lovers. Hence the marriage plot functions as a happy ending that settles the two confronting ideologies.

This study aims to investigate the domestic and work organization at the mansions located in the south of Västmanlands county years 1705-1849. The study takes into account the manors' size, ownership, owners' status and social changes. The study includes both large manors with noble owners and smaller manors with bourgeois owners.  The study examines how the households were formed, how they changed over time and how thet may have links to the Manor's ownership and size. The organization of labour is studied on the basis of how it changed over time and what it may have links to the owners ' status and the manors size. The focus is to answer how the connection was between household size, its composition, organization of labour and the owner’s status in the society.  Also if a difference can be seen between the strategies of the noble owners compared to the bourgeois owners.

Texte remanié de: Tesis doct.--Universidad de Valladolid, 1985.

Thesis (doctoral)--Université de Zurich. / "Appendice" (music): p. [123]-134. "Bibliographie": p. [117]-122.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Brown University, 2005. / Vita. Thesis advisor: Hervé Vanel. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 302-318). Also available online.

Orientador: Antônio Carlos Mazzeo / Banca: Marcos Tadeu Del Roio / Banca: Paulo Douglas Barsotti / Resumo: Diversas reflexões foram feitas sobre a sociologia como disciplina particular, mas a maioria delas partindo do próprio prisma sociológico. Entendemos que isso acarretaria num ciclo vicioso que não permitiria uma análise radical da sociologia como proposta científica. Já os estudos marxistas, em sua maioria, foram aplicados por uma perspectiva gnosiológica - que é caracterizada pelo deslocamento da prioridade do conhecimento para o sujeito em vez de reconhecer a prioridade ontológica do objeto. Por esses motivos, propomos nessa exposição uma explanação da crítica do marxista György Lukács à sociologia. Esta se caracteriza pelo resgate da perspectiva ontológica em Marx, ou seja, no reconhecimento de que o arcabouço marxiano está edificado sobre uma ontologia do ser social fundada no trabalho. Com isso, permite resgatar a crítica radical e revolucionária instaurada por Marx e, portanto, demonstrar que mais que interpretar, precisamos transformar o mundo / Abstract: Several considerations were made on Sociology as a private discipline, but most of them starting from the sociological perspective itself. We believe that this will lead to a vicious cycle that would not allow a radical analysis of sociology as a scientific proposal. The studies Marxists, most of them were applied by an epistemological perspective - which is characterized by shifting the priority of knowledge for the subject instead of recognizing the ontological priority of the object. For these reasons, we propose an explanation at the exhibition of György Lukács critique of sociology. This is characterized by the rescue of the ontological perspective in Marx, namely the recognition that the Marxian framework is built upon an ontology of social being founded in the work. Thus, the radical critique has rescued and brought revolutionary Marx and, therefore, show that more than interpret, we must transform the world / Mestre

The focus of this thesis is on the liminal space, limen being Latin for threshold. The liminal space is used as a means of figuring and reading artworks that appear to be in a process of becoming and disappearing. A dialectical and reciprocal reading is made of Bourgeois’ “neo-Baroque” artwork Spider (1997) and Michelle Key’s Betwixt-in-Between (2004). Liminality here is discussed within the theoretical framework of several key conceptual concerns, including abjection (as examined principally by Julia Kristeva), Baroque thought (as discussed by Mieke Bal, Gilles Deleuze, Jacques Lacan and Slavoj Žižek) and allegory (as figured primarily by Walter Benjamin and commentators on Benjamin’s writings). What links these concerns are their focus on indeterminacy, instability, and process as opposed to certitude and finitude. The exploration of the inscription of time in space; that is the temporal process, which gives rise to, which produces, the spatial dimension, is attempted in order to make meaning, however provisionally, of what may be argued to destabilise meaning and to consider possibilities for both art-making and interpretation that would engage critically with this instability.

Depuis le Moyen Age, le personnage du bourgeois est souvent objet de comédies. Victime de farces qui se plaisent à souligner la balourdise de l’individu placé de par sa situation sociale dans l’inconfort de l’entre-deux, il est puissant par le jeu commercial et financier qu’il régit mais écarté du pouvoir, apanage de la noblesse (Rolland 79). Bien sûr, dans sa peinture du bourgeois, Molière cherche plus à distraire qu’à informer son public comme le ferait un véritable historien. Il ne faudrait donc pas considérer ce personnage de farce comme révélateur approprié des idéaux ou des vices d’une classe sociale définie. Il n’en demeure pas moins, comme le reconnaît Molière lui-même, que le but de la comédie est de présenter les défauts et les ridicules des hommes et en particulier ceux de son temps. Les œuvres de Molière, et en particulier Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme, apparaissent donc comme un outil non négligeable pour l’historien.