A part of Charles Dickens's genius with character is his deftness at creating an appropriate idiolect for each character. Through their discourse, characters reveal not only themselves, but also Dickens's comment on social features that shape their communication style. Three specific idiolects are discussed in this study. First, Dickens demonstrates the pressures that an occupation exerts on Alfred Jingle from Pickwick Papers. Second, Mr. Gradgrind from Hard Times is robbed of his ability to communicate as Dickens highlights the errors of Utilitarianism. Finally, four characters from three novels demonstrate together the principle that social institutions can silence their defenseless constituents. Linguistic evaluation of speech habits illuminates Dickens's message that social structures can injure individuals. In addition, this study reveals the consistent and intuitive narrative art of Dickens.

This work argues that the dynamics of the oral and of the literate consciousness play a vital role in the characterization of Bleak House. Through an application of Walter Ong's synthesis of orality/literacy research, Krook's residual orality is seen to play a greater role in his characterization than his more frequently discussed spontaneous combustion. Also, the role orality and literacy plays in understanding Dickens's satire of "philanthropic shams" is analyzed. This study concludes that an awareness of orality and literacy gives the reader of Bleak House a consistent framework for evaluating the moral quality of its characters and for understanding the broader social message underlying Dickens's topical satire.

This study is an examination of the beast motif associated with Stephen Dedalus in Joyce's Ulysses. The motif has its origins in Joyce's earlier novel, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. In Ulysses the beast motif is related to Stephen's feelings of guilt and remorse over his mother's death and includes characterizations of Stephen as a fox, a dog, a rat, and a vampire. The motif consistently carries a negative connotation. Several literary sources for the imagery of the beast motif are apparent in Ulysses, including two plays by John Webster, a poem by Matthew Prior, medieval bestiaries, and a traditional Irish folk riddle. The study of the continuity of the beast motif in Ulysses helps to explain the complex characterization of Stephen Dedalus.

Nathaniel Hawthorne uses Miles Coverdale to depict the process by which an individual reconstructs past experience into an emotionally and intellectually acceptable form. Through Coverdale's narrative, Hawthorne illustrates that truth is at best an approximation, that the transformational effects of time and distance obscure one's memory of remembered events, thus making absolute truth impossible to discover. As Coverdale attempts to understand his past--reordering, reassessing, and assigning it significance--a subjective interpretation of his past experience evolves. It iLs Coverdale's subjective interpretation of experience which Hawthorne presents in The Blithedale Romance; the ambiguity and mystery of Coverdale's narrativeare necessary to the design of the romance, for both elements characterize the area between truth and imagination in which experience is perceived and interpreted.

This study of thirty representative short stories from 1912-1941 demonstrates the stages of growth in Fitzgerald's writing which emerged from his own mental development, focusing upon his changing attitudes toward women as he reflects these attitudes in his depictions of the dominant female figures in the stories. The above chronology is then divided into four major blocks; in each block the dominant female illustrates Fitzgerald's concept of women at that particular stage of his life, The stories prove to be integral to the whole of Fitzgerald's writing and deserve to be judged independently of the novels. Furthermore, through an examination of Fitzgerald's short stories, the growth periods and the natural course of his changing attitudes become all the more clear and incisive.

The purpose of this thesis is to analyze and discuss the relationship between the images and texts concerning Amazons and warrior-women in the collected works of Christine de Pizan. It evaluates Christine's interpretation of the ancient story in light of her career as an author and publisher, and it compares her imagery to other representations of Amazons and warrior-women. This study indicates that Christine reworked the myth in a way that reflects her positive of women and her desire to influence the queen of France, Isabeau de Baviere, who was the original owner of the manuscript.

[pt] A presente tese busca uma reflexão acerca da realização do cinema documentário, centrado na análise de filmes. A metodologia adotada para abordar este tema é focada na questão da autoria, a autoridade do diretor. Observa-se que o analista é essencialmente um espectador diante do filme projetado, trabalhando com ferramentas teóricas associadas à sua memória (experiência) e sensibilidade. Busca-se aqui a adequação da análise às referências teóricas que auxiliam a leitura e interpretação do texto fílmico. Parte-se do princípio de que a criação do personagem está no centro do processo de realização do cinema documentário, onde a autoridade do diretor aparece na concepção dada ao personagem, estabelecendo as conexões entre a estrutura da narrativa e o dispositivo de filmagem. Os personagens assim existem nas narrativas não ficcionais. No caso do filme documentário o personagem tem uma configuração específica, uma dupla camada, sendo ao mesmo tempo ator social e personagem criado, de modo adequado à narrativa. / [en] The thesis project seeks a reflection on the process of documentary filmmaking, focusing on the issue of the creation of the character. The methodol-ogy adopted to address this theme is the case study, focusing on the critical reading of the filmic text. I understand that the analyst is essentially a spectator before the projected film. I know that the analyst has other objectives than the spectator and a specialized theoretical repertoire. The analyst works with theo-retical tools associated with his or her memory (experience) and sensibility. As a methodology of this study, I seek an adaptation with my objectives in the incor-poration of theoretical references that help in the reading and interpretation of the filmic text of a given group of cases. As an initial premise, I place the creation of the character at the center of the documentary filmmaking process. It is through this central core, the conception given to the character, that the authority of the director establishes the connections between the structure of the narrative and the filming device. Characters exist in the fictional narratives as well as in non-fictional narratives. In the case of the documentary, the character has a specific configuration, a double layer, social actor and, at the same time, a character creat-ed in a proper manner for the narrative.

A presente dissertação tem por objetivo estudar a obra Ninguém matou Suhura da escritora Lília Momplé, analisando as questões em torno da opressão estabelecida pelo regime colonialista português em Moçambique. Para tanto, três eixos centrais nortearam a análise crítica desenvolvida, a saber, um primeiro eixo que se organiza em torno da força de trabalho; um segundo eixo voltado para uma falsa organização de um projeto educacional para o país; e, um terceiro, que diz respeito às relações dialéticas estabelecidas entre as personagens em seus diferentes segmentos sociais. / This thesis aims to study the work Ninguém matou Suhura of Lília Momplé writer, examining issues around the oppression established by the Portuguese colonial regime in Mozambique. For this, three central axes guided the developed critical analysis, namely a first axis that is organized around the work force; a second axis facing a false organization of an educational project for the country; and a third, which relates to the dialectical relations between the characters in their different social segments.

Recentemente, tornou-se acessível a análise filogenética com base em caracteres contínuos. Isso amplia a quantidade de caracteres que podem ser utilizados em análises filogenéticas baseadas em morfologia, mas não há ainda um consenso sobre como esse tipo de caráter deve ser codificado e analisado. Este trabalho analisa o uso de caracteres contínuos em filogenias com dois diferentes enfoques: simulações em computador e aplicação em uma análise com dados reais. As simulações realizadas indicam que de fato pode-se recuperar filogenias com base em caracteres contínuos, com alguns cuidados. O mais importante deles é o uso de pesagem implícita. Mesmo com esse cuidado, os ramos pouco suportados podem ser incorretos, provavelmente devido a um efeito de atração de ramos longos. Na análise do gênero Anchylorhynchus, utilizei caracteres discretos e contínuos, em separado e combinados. As árvores obtidas com as matrizes separadas são bastante diferentes, e a árvore da matriz combinada é semelhante àquela obtida somente com os caracteres discretos. O suporte dos ramos, contudo, cresce com a adição dos caracteres contínuos. Os caracteres contínuos, portanto, não devem ser vistos como uma alternativa, mas como um acréscimo às análises tradicionais. A revisão taxonômica de Anchylorhynchus resultou na descrição de nove espécies novas e reconhecimento de quatro sinônimos novos. O gênero resultou ser um grupo monofilético com um total de 24 espécies reconhecidas. Além disso, as informações sobre a biologia e a distribuição geográfica desses gorgulhos foi atualizada. Em conjunto com a filogenia obtida, essas informações basearam reconstruções biogeográficas e da associação histórica com as plantas hospedeiras. / Recently, phylogenetic analysis based on continuous characters was made accessible. This increases the pool of characters available for morphology-based phylogenetic analyses, but there is still no consensus on how this kind of characters should be coded and analyzed. In the present study, I assessed the use of continuous characters in phylogenies from two distinct perspectives: computer simulations and an application to real data. The simulations indicate that one can indeed recover phylogenies based on continuous characters, given some precautions. The most important of them is the use of implied weighting. Even when this is done, poorly supported branches may be incorrect, probably due to long-branch attraction. For the phylogenetic analysis of Anchylorhynchus, I used both continuous and discrete characters, separately or combined. Trees obtained with separate matrices were significantly different, and the combined matrix resulted in a tree very similar to the tree obtained with discrete characters alone. Branch supports, however, increased with the addition of continuous characters. Continuous characters, therefore, should not be considered an alternative to traditional analyses. Rather, they should be added to discrete-character matrices. The taxonomic revision of Anchylorhynchus resulted in nine new species described and four new synonyms recognized. The genus resulted to be a monophyletic group containing 24 recognized species. Moreover, the information on weevils\' biology and geographical distribution was updated. Together with the phylogeny this information embased reconstructions of host relationships and biogeography.

Com foco na comédia O Juiz de Paz da roça, de Martins Pena, escrita durante o período romântico da Literatura, objetivamos mostrar a relação entre a representação da linguagem falada e a caracterização das personagens-tipo da peça. Personagens-tipo são aquelas que representam uma sociedade ou um grupo social normalmente presentes na literatura de ficção em geral. A fundamentação teórica constitui-se da Análise da Conversação, da Pragmática e da Sociolinguística Interacional. Partimos da hipótese de que, assim como a ação de modo geral das personagens na peça teatral, a linguagem falada exerce fundamental importância para a caracterização dessas personagens, tão comuns nas comédias de costumes e que teve em Martins Pena o seu precursor no Brasil. A construção de tipos sociais de personagens é possível graças à atenção que o autor atribui à representação da modalidade falada da época somada ao ambiente, em que vários tipos sociais interagem. Assim como as escolhas lexicais, as formas de tratamento entre outros elementos linguísticos caracterizam personagens-tipo, levando em consideração a significação das palavras e as várias relações entre locutores e interlocutores, tais como gênero, idade, grau de formalidade, respeito e intimidade no contexto da obra. Dessa forma, nesta dissertação, está presente uma análise dos papéis das personagens da peça por meio de um estudo de elementos não verbais e verbais, como o léxico, as formas de tratamento e aspectos fonológicos para revelar uma tipificação e hierarquização das personagens na peça escolhida para esse trabalho. / By focusing on the comedy O Juiz de Paz da roça, by Martins Pena, from the Romantic period of the Literature, we aim to present the relation between representation of the spoken language and the characterization of stock characters. Stock characters represent a society or a social group, which are presented in literary fiction in general. Based on the theoretical framework of Conversation Analysis, Pragmatics and Interactional Sociolinguistics, we start from the hypothesis that, just like actions in a play, spoken language plays a crucial role for the characterization of these characters, which are very common in the comedy of manners, which had Martins Pena as its precursor in Brazil. The construction of social types is possible because of the authors work of representing the spoken language at that specific time along with an environment where several stock characters interact. As well as lexical choices, forms of address and other linguistics elements feature the stock characters, taking into consideration the significance of the words and various relationships between the locutors and interlocutors, such as gender, age, degree of formality, politeness and intimacy in the context of the authors work. Thus, this dissertation presents an analysis of each characters role in the play, by analyzing non-verbal and verbal elements such as lexical forms, forms of address and phonological aspects in order to reveal how the typification and the hierarchy of the characters is constructed in the given play.