In this dissertation I have made an attempt to follow up on Peter Baker's idea of Generative Criticism. Generative Criticism, as Baker proposes in Modern Poetic Practice (1986), aims at a deeper understanding of poetry by incorporating the poet's point of view in literary analysis. I have chosen Janos Pilinszky's work for my investigations into the issue. Pilinszky is one of the most distinguished Hungarian poets of the twentieth century, and certainly one of the most original ones even worldwide. He seemed an ideal subject for my study, because he builds a poetic world out of the lowest number of elements possible, while maintaining an atmospheric presence that poets using a lot more tools have not achieved. Studying such limited material one can reach consistency, accuracy, and access the whole of his poetry more easily than by trying to make sense of more complex texts. At first, I had to clarify my point of view, which I did by introducing a heuristic environment with an appropriate hermeneutics and epistemology. I coordinated my initial tenets in relation to contemporary phenomenology (Husserl), dialectics (Hegel, Aristotle), semiotics (Kristeva), and Rhetorical Criticism (Baker) in Chapter One and Sections 1-3 and in Chapter Two. I probed the workings of the system set up by applying it deductively to the poet's creative act as well as to the resulting poems. I used inductive argument when trying to coordinate the poet's point of view from material written on, or by the poet himself. Ideally, the resulting conclusions materialized as the synthesis of the combination of induction and deduction (Sections 3-7 of Chapter Two, the whole Chapter Three, and Sections 1-4 of Chapter Four). The synthesis I made by proving that imitation of the poet is possible by employing the modules of his experience and his poetry (Section 5 and 6 in Chapter Five). Finally, after placing Generative Criticism, as I understand it, in the context of rhetoric (Aristotle, Lanham), former attempts (Baker), and as a possible part of eclectic approaches (Rosenthal), I endeavored to identify some modern poetic tools from a Generative point of view (Chapter Six). In conclusion I found that the analysis of my limited material may have led to the formulation of rules and categories that can apply to modern poets at a much larger scale.

Elsa Triolet, born Ella Jurievna Kagana in Moscow in 1896, brought into her French works ideas absorbed during her contact with Russian Futurist poets and theoreticians. This study traces these influences in her prose. Chapter I presents the biographical details of Triolet's Futurist acquaintanceship, and her shift from Russian to French as her literary language. Certain basic characteristics that underly all of Triolet's work, such as mobility and daily gesture, are presented to give background to the discussion. Chapter II starts the analysis at the level of the word. Triolet's acceptance of the Futurist principle of the word as something to create gives way to a creative use of cliche. Jakobsonian concepts are brought into play to demonstrate the significance of the repetition of words in Triolean narrative. Lastly, the word as sound and the use of colloquialisms are explained. Chapter III enlarges the sphere of study to specific literary devices. Sklovskij's concept of ostranenie ("making strange"), the representation of something without its cultural landmarks, is illustrated, and Jakobson's analysis of the incongruous stranger in Russian realist fiction is applied to Triolet's works. The importance of svoe mesto ("one's place") and the practice of collage, the appearance of real people or documents in the fictional narrative, are examined. Chapter IV takes on Triolet's narrative structure as a whole. Parallels are drawn between Futurist concepts and modern paradigms in general so as to situate Triolet's prose in contemporary models. The participatory nature of Triolean narrative is discussed, as are her different structural models, including those influenced by the Russian oral epic, similar in many ways to modern structure and a basis for Triolet's Le Cheval blanc. Chapter V is dominated by studies of multiplicity and perspective. Different aspects of character development are discussed, as is the expanding of the incongruous stranger into a structural element. Time, place, and perspective as foregrounded elements are examined. Chapter VI brings Triolet back to Russian. It analyses her thoughts on translation and self-translation, and offers examples of her work in that field.

This dissertation interrogates the intertextual and intercultural exchanges that, since the 19th century, have consistently led to the uniform, exoticized, and limiting literary and cinematic construction of the Roma as freedom-loving misunderstood outcasts with outstanding musical skills. The formation and reiteration of these images is presented as the result of four key political and cultural moments: the emergence of nationalism as an ideology in the 19th century; the genesis of the motion picture as a dominant medium in the early 20th century; the cultural and ideological East-West dichotomy created during the Cold War; and, finally, the rapid development of new media and technologies (DVD, Internet, etc.), as well as new modes of production and distribution related to the opening of inter-European borders in a post-Cold-War world context. A number of literary and cinematic texts that illustrate these representational shifts are examined in roughly chronological order. In the 19th century, Hugo's Notre-Dame de Paris, Mérimée's Carmen, and Pushkin's "The Gypsies" were critical to the establishment of the image of the "Gypsy" as a traveling dancer, and as part of an interethnic romantic triangle. This image was then visualized in early cinematic adaptations of these texts, particularly through interpretations of the "Gypsy" embodied by the Hollywood star system in the 1930s and 1940s, including performances by Rita Hayworth, Marlene Dietrich, and Orson Welles that set the tone for later portrayals. Although such performances and ideological constructs were denounced by Cold-War-era Communist ideology, they were nonetheless reproduced in Eastern European cinematic variants, and became particularly prominent in the late 1960s and early 1970s, as revealed in the work of Yugoslav (Petrović, Paskaljević) and Soviet (Loteanu, Blank) directors popular with East bloc audiences. In contemporary international cinema, French-Algerian-Romani director Tony Gatlif's and Bosnian-Serb Emir Kusturica's "Gypsy films" attempt a layered, multicultural approach to Romani representation, but fail to avoid earlier romanticized depictions of the ethnic group as carefree non-national musicians. The dissertation concludes by outlining the ways in which American, European, and even Asian cinematic and televisual texts continue to recycle 19 th century literary representations in current media narratives within a globalized culture.

<p> The author argues that ecocriticism has overlooked important works of mid-20th-century American literature because of their unorthodox approaches to writing about nature. These unorthodox approaches revolve around the use of humor and play to formulate arguments about nature. The author argues that because ecocriticism as a political critique emphasizes ecological catastrophe, humor and ludic writing tend to get ignored in the critical discussion. The author expresses the desire to expand the conversation on ludic texts. The author argues that two texts with relatively little ecocritical attention, Thomas Pynchon&rsquo;s <i>Gravity&rsquo;s Rainbow</i> and Vladimir Nabokov&rsquo;s <i>Pale Fire,</i> use the aesthetic theories of Friedrich Nietzsche to explain the role of the non-human in human civilization. </p><p> In the first chapter, Vladimir Nabokov&rsquo;s <i>Pale Fire</i> is argued to be a novel that is about the natural source of human aesthetic production. The author synthesizes studies of the novel and argues that Nabokov&rsquo;s novel, both in its language and form, valorizes mimesis as the source of all aesthetic production. Nabokov&rsquo;s belief in some form of design is examined through mimicry, and is found to permeate the novel through structural and descriptive references to games and nature. Nabokov is found to be influenced by the theories of Friedrich Nietzsche, Johan Huizinga, and Walter Benjamin. Nabokov ultimately finds that the justification for the world is aesthetic, that nature is important to humans as the origin of all artistic impulses. </p><p> The second chapter reads Thomas Pynchon&rsquo;s <i>Gravity&rsquo;s Rainbow</i> through the many references to Nietzsche&rsquo;s <i> Birth of Tragedy,</i> finding that the novel sets nature against civilization according to Nietzsche&rsquo;s distinction between the Dionysian and the Apollonian. The author finds that the novel holds up the natural world as a counter-force to the capitalist impulse to control and exploit the natural and human worlds. The author examines how Pynchon uses Dionysian tropes like drunkenness, absurdity, music, and feelings of oneness in the novel in moments of resistance to the dominant order. </p><p> The conclusion suggests that the work of Friedrich Nietzsche ought to be examined as an influential source for modern views on the value of nature. </p>