This thesis deals with the representation of the body and space in the theatre of Bernard-Marie Koltes and Helene Cixous. From the theoretical point of view, it looks at transition in French theatre from a modern to a postmodern predicament, from a discursive to a corporeal theatre. It then looks at the ways postmodern culture maps, configures, disciplines, and violates the body, particularly through the relationship of the new textuality to its stage manifestations. Textually, it analizes three plays by each playwright. The juxtaposition of the works of Koltes and Cixous allows for an in depth look at the theatre of the 1970's and 80's in France, a period marked by theatrical decentralisation and experimentation. Both favoured a strong tie to theatre practice while developing a close relationship with a theatre director: Patrice Chereau, in the case of Koltes, and Ariane Mnouchkine, in the case of Cixous. Aside from looking at the relationship with theatre practitioners, this thesis examines a number of aesthetic and political affinities which bring Koltes and Cixous together, such as redefining a postmodern mythology and a political role for theatre. Unlike many postmodernist theatre practices that try to evade political commitment, both Cixous and Koltes are preoccupied with the resistance to a nihilistic discourse, and propose an evolving and corporeal stage presence inscribed in a pluralistic space of representation. For Koltes, the body on the stage resists symbolic categorization in Combat de negre et de chiens (1979), it then becomes related to spatial reality outside language in Quai ouest (1985), and finally the corporeal body is culturally and ideologically mapped in Le Retour au desert (1988). This triple dimension is also reflected in the work of Cixous, for whom the theatre is a space of feminist praxis. First, the space of representation, through the subversive performativity of the body, questions the premises of the psychoanalytic gaze in Portrait de Dora (1976), then classical mythology is rewritten to disrupt patriarcal discourse in Le Nom d'Oedipe: chant du corps interdit (1978), and a post-colonial role for theatre is redefined in order to question the historical subject in L'Indiade ou l'lnde de leurs reves (1987). Finally, this thesis looks at the ways both Koltes and Cixous join in with postmodernism in declaring the impossibility of grand-narrative, while trying to show how identity cannot be based on essentialist categories of race, gender, ethnicity, or sexual orientation, but on the performance of all these various categories as they intersect in the performing body.

This dissertation argues that, since at least the 1960s, there has been a distinguished tradition of Canadian poets who have turned to the novel as a result of their dissatisfaction with the limitations of the lyric and instead have built the lyric into a mode of narrative that contrasts sharply with the descriptive conventions of plot-driven novels. Citing the affinity between the lyric sequence and the visual series, the introduction maintains that the treatment of narrative as a series of frames, as well as the self-conscious dismantling of these framing devices, is a topos in Canadian literature. The term "(un)framing" expresses this double movement. The thesis asserts that Michael Ondaatje, George Bowering, Joy Kogawa, Daphne Marlatt, and Anne Carson (un)frame their novels according to formal precedents established in their long poems. Chapter 2 illustrates the relation of the visual series to the song cycle in Ondaatje's long poems the man with seven toes (1969) and The Collected Works of Billy the Kid (1970), as well as his first novel Coming Through Slaughter (1976). Chapter 3 traces the development of the "serial novel" from Bowering's early serial poems to his trilogy, Autobiology (1972), Curious (1973) , and A Short Sad Book (1977). Chapter 4 argues that Joy Kogawa structures her novel Ohasan (1981) on the concentric narrative model established in her long poem "Dear Euclid" (1974) . Chapter 5 shows how Daphne Marlatt performs a series of variations on the quest narrative that she finds in Hans Christian Andersen's The Snow Queen (1844), and thereby develops a lesbian quest narrative in her long poem Frames of a Story (1968), her novella Zocalo (1977), and her novel Ana Historic (1988). Chapter 6 explores the combination of lyric, essay, and interview in Carson's long poem "Mimnermos: The Brainsex Paintings" (1995) and argues that the long poem forms the basis of her novel in verse, Autobiography of Red (1998). The final chapter assesses some of the strengths and limitations of lyrical fiction and concludes that a thorough grasp of the contemporary long poem is essential to an understanding of the development of the novel in Canada.

By comparing the novels of William Faulkner and Patrick White, this thesis reconsiders modernism's elitism and solipsism by revealing within them a critical interest in liberating minority perspective. Theoretical debates which continue to insist on modernism's inherent distance from the identity politics which front the postmodernist movement are overlooking modernism's deeply embedded evaluative mechanisms which work to expose and criticize the activity of psychic and social co-optation. Faulkner and White are both engaged in fictionally tracing the complexities of a failing patriarchy which can no longer substantiate its primary subjects — the white, upper class male. As representatives of modernism we can see that Faulkner and White, perhaps unwittingly, initiate the awareness that the 'failure' of their chosen subjects is in large measure due to processes of marginalization which both created the authoritative power structures within which they are constructed and helped serve to collapse them. The classic isolation of the modernist subject can be looked at not simply as an isolation predicated on endless self-referentiality, but rather on a desperate social outreaching for which he or she is not psychically equipped. By following the trajectory and perspective of specific novels and characters it becomes clear that it is precisely this handicap which clears the textual space for diversity of representation, just as it overturns the notion of modernism's functioning separatism. Chapter one concentrates on the double-edged representation of the female subject constructed as always-already 'guilty' within the psychologically, emotionally and physically repressive terms of the dominant male power structures within the context of Faulkner's Requiem for a Nun and White's A Fringe of Leaves. Chapter two investigates the psychological parameters of the morally disenfranchised modern subject whose disillusionment results from prejudicial social practices promoted by virulent racial anxiety as exemplified in Faulkner's Absalom, Absalom! and White's Voss. The third and final chapter discusses Light in August and Riders in the Chariot with attention to modernism's own investigation of the exclusion of minority voices from collective social imagining. The thesis posits that literary modernism is interested less with reconciling its literary subjects within a self-contained totalizing project than it is with invoking new social and psychological paradigms that stress the necessity of external, not internal, represented multiplicity, and that what has been (mis)recognized as modernism's self-closure is, in fact, the key not only to its own continuing relevance, but to the contemporaneous literary injunction to let all voices be heard.

This thesis is an examination of Henry James and James McNeill Whistler as cultural analysts of modernity. Using the theoretical work of Peter Burger, Jurgen Habermas and Theodor Adorno as a frame, I analyse James's and Whistler's theoretical and artistic responses to modernity and the problematic status of autonomous art and the modernist artist in late nineteenth century industrial capitalism. In so doing, I place both figures in their social and historical context and show how their work not only reflects but itself participates in the complex social and cultural transformations of late nineteenth century society. While Henry James has continued to attract critical attention from many quarters, those who have studied him in the larger context of nineteenth-century avant-garde culture are still relatively few. Of those contextual studies, none has examined James's career and work in the light of parallel developments in avant-garde visual art during this important and complex period. James McNeill Whistler, like Henry James an American expatriate working in late nineteenth century London, has been the subject of many studies describing his formal achievement; however, he has not yet attracted the attention of critics interested in theories of modernist representation, gender and sexuality. Because modernisation was a phenomenon which had an impact on all aspects of late nineteenth century culture, as both James and Whistler themselves acknowledge, my interdisciplinary, contextualist approach to cultural production can illuminate aspects of cultural theory and practice which might remain hidden in analyses contained within disciplinary boundaries. The present thesis is not primarily a work of art-historical scholarship nor is it an in-depth textual analysis of the Jamesian canon; it is an analysis of the ways in which two individuals deal with the conditions of their artistic practice. My thesis is original in its bringing together of two important figures - a writer and a visual artist - whose theory and practice reveals the complexity of early modern art's dialectical relationship with modernity. In so doing, I offer a critical reevaluation of the work of Henry James and James McNeill Whistler in light of its engagement with the discourses of modernity and modernism.

The thesis examines the novels of Anglo-American author Russell Hoban (1923-) and Japanese author Murakami Haruki [Chinese characters] (1949-) as Menippean satires. The Introduction defines the Menippean satire and considers possible sources for this genre as found in the works of Hoban and Murakami. Parts I and II examine several novels by Hoban and by Murakami respectively, demonstrating how their works conform to the conventions of the Menippean satire. In examining Murakami's fiction, Part II also considers possible antecedents in Japanese literature for tropes and topoi that appear Menippean in the light of Western genre theory; there is a special emphasis on Murakami's most recent work, [Chinese characters] Nejimakidori kuronikuru (1994-6, The Wind-up Bird Chronicles). The Conclusion examines why these two authors write Menippean satires. No claim is made that either author has chosen this genre in deliberate imitation of classical or Renaissance models. Rather, from the standpoint of cultural history, the thesis argues that the Menippean satire—or at least a form of postmodernist novel with notable affinities to the Menippean satire—has re-emerged as a genre for our times. Drawing on examples from the fiction of Murakami and Hoban, the conclusion demonstrates that central features of this genre—fantasy, crudity, philosophical dialogues, inserted genres, invented languages, and the descent into hell—are particularly appropriate for the fictional treatment of life in a postmodern world. Moreover, these features are serviceable not only in a Western context. Murakami Haruki, despite his Japanese cultural background and his avowed intention to write about Japan, relies on many of the same generic strategies as does Russell Hoban.

The idea of corruption travels down and supports this thesis. It stands as one of the principal stakes of the Homeric Quarrel. By analysing it, we may deepen our understanding of the value the famous hellenist Anne Dacier placed on the heritage of the Anciens and its reception by the Moderns; we may also better understand in which ways her engagement in polemics belonged to her times. Anne Dacier was less an apologist of Homer than a polemist who attacked the corrupted taste of her contemporaries. She feared for them, but above all, she feared for the Homeric text. She had done her best in her translation to preserve the poem while Houdar de la Motte, her adversary thought that an adaptation would suit the public better. Mme Dacier presented herself as the guardian of tradition and its purity; nonetheless, to achieve her goal, she had to compromise with her opponents and speak their corrupted language.

This MA thesis is a comparative study of the novels of Luigi Pirandello (Agrigento 1867--Rome 1936) and Max Frisch (Zurich 1911--1991). Six texts are discussed: Pirandello's Il fu Mattia Pascal (1904), Quaderni di Serafino Gubbio operatore (1915), and Uno, nessuno e centomila (1925--6); and Frisch's Stiller (1954), Homo faber (1957), and Mein Name sei Gantenbein (1964). The comparison highlights the great similarities between Pirandello's and Frisch's treatment of the theme of identity as well as some important (and mainly structural) differences in their novelistic works. The analysis of the three pairs of novels shows the developments in narrative structure and the characteristic change of attitude towards the question of identity construction that took place from early-modernism to postmodernism.

This master's thesis seeks to establish a comparison between the lyrical work of the Austrian Ingeborg Bachmann (1926-1973) and the Argentinean Alejandra Pizarnik (1936-1972). First, we draw from the similarities in the lives of both authors. Then, the survey of secondary literature shows that the two writers were the «black sheep» of their literary generation. Finally, our analysis focuses on the last phase of their lyrical production (1963-1966 for Bachmann; 1970-1972 for Pizarnik), most especially on two poems which are considered by the critics to be their «farewell» to poetry : «Keine Delikatessen» [No delicacies] by Bachmann (1963) and «En esta noche, en este mundo» [In this night, in this world] by Pizarnik (1971). We demonstrate that both poets show the same distrust of their medium, language, accompanied by a particular concern for silence, which appears in their respective poems both thematically and formally.

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This Master's thesis analyses the connection between the Illuminati ideology and the sociopolitical ideals contained in pre-classical works---contemporary to the existence of the order---of Johann Wolfgang Goethe and Friedrich Schiller. The first chapter examines the creation, the development and the eventual collapse of the Illuminati Secret Society (Geheimbund der Illuminaten) founded in 1776 by Adam Weishaupt in the context of the Enlightenment. The second chapter explores the ideological similarities between the young Goethe and this secret society through the analysis of his works Gotz von Berlichingen (1771--1773), Egmont (1775--1784) and Der Gross Cophta (1791). The third chapter expounds Schiller's ideological opinion of the Illuminati through Don Carlos (1787), and discusses their republican visions of freedom and human rights. The conclusion integrates the findings made in each chapter and demonstrates, through both authors' discussed works, the similar ideals of both authors and Illuminism.