Inaug.-Diss.--Kiel. / Lebenslauf. "Anhang: Kurze Darstellung der Gründe für die häufigsten Übersetzungsfehler. "Bibliographie" : p. [109]-113.

Inaug.-diss.--Rostock.

<p>In the Introduction chapter, the thesis outlines a basic premise concerning the reader of drama. This premise is then applied to three dramatic texts: Therese Raquin, Vor Sonnenaufgang, and The Three Sisters. The Introduction uses some of the writings of Roman Ingarden and Wolfgang Iser as a basis, although it does not rely on them exclusively. Following Ingarden, the thesis posits that the entities of author, text, and reader are necessary (but not exclusive) components in the existence of the literary work of art and states that it will concern itself specifically with the entities of text and reader. Within the text/reader relationship, it focuses on the reader's apprehension of the dramatic literary text as regards space. The thesis does not concern itself with the ontological status of the literary, work as such, but works from the premise, as elaborated by Ingarden and, subsequently, by Iser, that the literary text needs a reader in order to fulfill (at least some of) its potentialities as a text. It also posits that the process of reading is already partially prepared for within the text itself, i.e., that the text presumes future de-coding of itself by a reader and makes room for his collaboration towards the generation of a certain amount of meaning. The reader's most helpful tool in this participation process is the text's essential indeterminacy. During the linear process of reading, the reader is forced by the text's indeterminacy to fill gaps, make connections between the sometimes scattered schematized views, anticipate what is to come, or think back on what has already been read. Each text "intends" by its very "availability"; that is, because it has a certain number of pages upon which are arranged, in a chosen order, a set number of entities which allow for interpretation and manipulation by the imagination of the reader. No teleology or specific generation of meaning is intended by the thesis, however, when it says that the reader co-operates with the text in order to bring to fruition (some of) its "intention". Some of the specific problems which are inherent in treating the topic of the reading of drama are also discussed in the Introduction. The thesis maintains that, despite the traditional dichotomy that exists between text and performance, or drama and theatre, there is as much legitimacy in exploring the relationship between the reader and the dramatic literary text as there is in exploring the relationship between the reader and any other literary work of art. Since the dramatic text always always implies the visual and aural, however, it must always be read with performance in mind, and it thus sets up its own convention(s). The subsequent analysis of the three dramatic texts is done by focusing solely on the topic of [unclear word] of space. The choice of texts is relatively arbitrary in that it is not meant to proclaim what has been called the period of "naturalism" as the only or the best period to explore. The results of the analyses vary with the complexity of the texts chosen. However, the thesis concludes that the application of the theoretical stands outlined in the Introduction is just as legitimate for the dramatic literary text, within its own conventions, as it is for any other literary work.</p> / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

This dissertation examines how literary form adapts to emergent print environments by identifying common strategies for incorporating the act of reading into the situation of the text. In my analysis of original textual forms, I investigate the material specificity of constitutively modern practices of reading and subjectivity, focusing on how innovative publications structure these practices by involving the reader in the process of production. This project assembles six pioneering writers across literary traditions, genres, and periods, from the 1830s to the 1910s, in three chapter pairings: novelistic episodes of Honoré de Balzac’s Comédie humaine and prose poems of Charles Baudelaire’s Spleen de Paris in nineteenth-century Parisian periodicals; the prose poetry books, Une saison en enfer by Arthur Rimbaud and Spring and All by William Carlos Williams; and genre-bending texts from the œuvres of Stéphane Mallarmé and Vladimir Mayakovsky, including the typographically irregular page spreads of Un coup de dés jamais n’abolira le hasard and Vladimir Mayakovsky: A Tragedy (Vladimir Maiakovskii: Tragediia). My discussion locates reflexive conceptions of modern literature in constructions of the reading subject, while extending the performative framework of textual modes of address to new media and digital technologies—social interfaces that mediate subjectivity by structuring practices of reading.

This doctoral dissertation looks at several readings and interpretations of the works of the Marquis de Sade, from the eighteenth century to the present. Ever since he was imprisoned under the Old Regime following highly publicized instances of physical and sexual abuse, Sade has remained a controversial figure who has been both condemned as a dangerous criminal and celebrated as an icon for artistic freedom. The most enduring aspect of his legacy has been a vast collection of obscene publications, characterized by detailed descriptions of sexual torture and murder, along with philosophical diatribes that offer theoretical justifications for the atrocities. Not surprisingly, Sade's works have been subject to censorship almost from the beginning, leading to the author's imprisonment under Napoleon and to the eventual trials of his mid-twentieth-century publishers in France and Japan. The following pages examine the reception of Sade's works in relation to the legal concept of obscenity, which provides a consistent framework for textual interpretation from the 1790s to the present. I begin with a prelude discussing the 1956 trial of Jean-Jacques Pauvert, in order to situate the remainder of the dissertation within the context of how readers approached a body of work as quintessentially obscene as that of Sade. At Pauvert's trial there emerged an opposition between readings that concentrate on the prurient nature of the texts and those that instead attempt to justify their place in society by stressing their intellectual merit. This opposition remains in effect throughout the remaining chapters, each of which focuses on a particular historical moment in the reception of Sade's works and on a certain reader or group of readers. Chapter One establishes Sade himself as the first reader of his texts, and discusses how he situated them with respect to the genre of obscene books that had developed in France throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Chapter Two focuses primarily on Rétif de la Bretonne as the first reader of Sade, one who publicly condemned the author and his works on moral grounds while simultaneously composing his own erotic novel in the Sadean vein. Chapter Three deals with the onset of a tendency among nineteenth-century French authors to admire him as the "Divine Marquis," with a particular focus on Flaubert and his discussion of Sade in his correspondence. The second half of the dissertation focuses on the reception of Sade's works during the twentieth century. Each subsequent chapter examines the interaction of mainstream intellectual readings--such as those of the surrealists, post-war essayists like Blanchot and Bataille, or Pasolini in Salò--and the underground readings that occur in the realms of erotic fiction and film, paying special attention to how Sade was used in various political and artistic debates. Finally, my conclusion discusses the place of Sade in contemporary society, including in recent films such as Benoît Jacquot's Sade and Philip Kaufman's Quills.

The dissertation is divided into two parts, each containing two chapters. Part I describes two nineteenth century movements and fields--the German Wissenschaft des Judentums (Science of Judaism) and the Arab nahda (Renaissance)--moving between what these developments are at their beginnings and what they have come to be through later developments and representations. I argue that both German Jews and Arabs were made to deal with Orientalism and colonialism in the nineteenth century, and that the different forms they encountered shaped how the Wissenschaft des Judentums and the nahda formulated their proposals for reform and their understandings of Europe and of Christianity. Part II turns to examine in greater depth two foundational literary and programmatic texts which initiate discourse of both movements: Leopold Zunz's Etwas ueber die rabbinische Litteratur (1818), which lays out the foundation for the field; and Rifa'a Rafi' al-Tahtawi's travel writing Takhlis al-ibriz ila talkhis bariz (1834). I take science as a departure point for reading these texts, because of the central role sciences play in each. This is not surprising given the post-Enlightenment milieu of which they are a part. From the time of Napoleon's imperialist ventures, which deeply impacted Prussia as well as Egypt, education and science--whether the Wissenschaft of the philosophical disciplines, or the sciences that drive technology--become foundational for intellectual, spiritual, and/or technological progress. I read both texts as interventions, aiming to direct and impact their readers in particular ways. The programs they propose are a part of, and responses to, Western Europe's modernity as it develops from the late eighteenth century into the nineteenth. Their formulations reflect what each writer proposes should be the relation between Europe and Christianity, as he seeks to either participate equally in a wider culture and academy (i.e., Zunz), or learn from Europe's advances, particularly its technological and scientific ones (i.e., al-Tahtawi;). Each posits a critique of Europe as it seeks to learn from and emulate what it takes Europe to be. Their interventions and effects, or lack thereof, contribute to narrating how Europe's story came to constitute a common modernity.

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This thesis, based on Green Snake, The Reincarnation of Golden Lotus and Rouge, three novels written by Hong Kong author Lilian Lee, discusses the respective supernatural heroines in relation to the Chinese folklore and to the Hong Kong status quo before the 1997 Handover, seeking to find the allegorical significance behind the heroines beyond the genre of fantastic.