This thesis provides a critical analysis of the literature concerning the relationship, both artistic and personal, between Paul Cezanne and Paul Gauguin. It proceeds from the popular belief that Cezanne harbored an excessive amount of ill will towards Gauguin. Examination of the sources upon which this belief is based prove them to be controversial and conflicting, yet the myth of Cezanne's animosity towards Gauguin is still widely accepted, effectively obscuring the more positive, creative aspect of their interaction. In the assessment of this relationship, Camille Pissarro emerges as a pivotal figure because of his close ties to both artists. It will be shown that Gauguin found in Cezanne's art concepts which were germane to his own artistic practices and theoretical directions. The later Symbolist interpretation of Cezanne reflects the dissemination of Gauguin's teachings about the artist and reveals that, in some measure, Gauguin was responsible for the critical acclaim Cezanne was to receive in his final years.

For almost 35 years the work carried out by the Brazilian artist Lygia Clark between the 1950s and until her death, in 1988, has attracted the attention of both Brazilian and European scholars and critics. Since special attention has only been given to her post-1969 work, the work carried out until 1969 has been overlooked. In particular, I would argue that through the incorporation of the human body Clark's 1959-1964 Bicho series is the first spatial performative strategy developed by Clark during the 1960s and against which all her subsequent production needs to be read. / The present essay is thus an attempt to read as spatial performative strategies Clark's Bicho series with and against the Brazilian reception of Mondrian, reception which, as I would argue has been overlooked in the context of her work. Furthermore, I would argue that in order for us to better understand how the Bicho series unfold as spatial performative strategies the Brazilian reception of Mondrian must be approached through the Brazilian reception of Merleau-Ponty's phenomenology and political and cultural movements of the time. While the role played by Merleau-Ponty's incorporation of the human body in Clark's work has not been closely examined, Clark's engagement with the political and cultural movements of her time has been underestimated. I would argue that any attempt to give an account of Clark's practice needs to take into consideration the role these three aspects played in her engagement with the problem of representation.

In this thesis I will look at the interlinked issues of power, race and sex in Lewis Nkosi's Mating Birds (1986) and The Black Psychiatrist (1994) using the psychiatrist figure to provide the focus on these intersections of power, race and sex. It becomes clear after even a cursory reading of these texts that it is these very issues that inform both texts, one a novel and the other a play. it is important to note as well that these texts were selected because they have at their center inter-racial sexual relations set against the backdrop of apartheid in South Africa. Mating Birds is the story of Ndi Sibiya, ex-student of the University of Natal, left to a life of aimless wandering after being expelled for participating in student boycotts, now imprisoned and sentenced to death for the rape of a white woman, Veronica Slater. What is interesting about this text is the doubt set in the reader's mind about Ndi's guilt or innocence, by Ndi himself. The Black Psychiatrist deals with a black psychiatrist Dr Kerry, practising in Harley Street, London, who is visited by a white female patient, originally from South Africa. What is interesting about the play is the fact that the doctor seems to take on the role of patient and the patient that of the doctor. What is ironic however is that in her attempts to analyse the doctor, she is faced with the realities of her own life. With both texts dealing clearly with inter-racial relations, it is thus necessary to take into account the historical context in which these texts are set. Mating Birds was published in 1986 but set during the 1950's and 1960's while The Black Psychiatrist was published in 1994. Both texts were written and published before South Africa's first democratic elections and set during the time of apartheid. Selected theorists that will be looked at in relation to the two texts will be Freud (1949), Memmi (1965), Fanon (1967), Said (1978) and Young (1995). Freud is a useful starting point as it is his theory of the Oedipus Complex that forms the basis of psychoanalysis in which the role of the psychiatrist in curing patients of neurosis is very important. Freud's essays on the Oedipus Complex, "A Child is Being Beaten" and "Fetishism" though not written with the black man in mind are useful in analysing the effects of colonisation on the colonised and the way the colonised sees the world. This is something Fanon discusses in detail in his book Black Skin White Masks (1967), where he describes the feelings of inadequacy and dependence experienced by people of colour in a white colonial world. Robert Young's Colonial Desire (1995) will be a key text for this thesis as it allows insight into definitions and theories of race, power and sex in a colonial and oppressive context. Said's Orientalism (1978) will help provide insight into colonial discourse and its effects. Though written specifically with the Orient in mind it is a text that can be used to understand all subjugated people. His opinions on the notion of othering will be of particular importance: the idea that the colonised will always be the Other, object and not subject. Memmi's The Colonizer and the Colonized helps provide useful insight into colonialism, creating portraits of the coloniser and the colonised, allowing one access into the minds of both. The theorists selected provide definitions and theories about power, race and sex, issues which form the basis of Mating Birds and The Black Psychiatrist and which can best be understood by looking at the psychiatrists Dr Dufre and Dr Kerry. Issues of power, race and sex are essential in any discussion of colonialism and colonised people. The basis of colonisation was one of power, in the case of South Africa power of the white man over black people. Of particular importance to the white man in his reign of power were the extreme oppression of black people and an absolute prohibition of any sexual contact between black and white. It is these issues then that underline the work of Lewis Nkosi and that form the basis of his texts Mating Birds and The Black Psychiatrist. Chapter Two provides the historical context of Nkosi's work as well as a short biography. Of particular importance in this chapter will be a discussion of why Nkosi writes the way he does; why the emphasis on power, race and sex in his work. This requires one to look at the political situation under which he lived and worked for a time before leaving the country having signed away his right to return. Nkosi' s work outlines clearly the effects of apartheid and oppression. Discussed in this chapter as well are his comments on African literature, particularly South African 'protest' fiction. This will be linked to his work and the reasons for him writing the way he does. Chapter Three provides an in-depth analysis of Mating Birds looking specifically at power, race and sex using the role of the psychiatrist as a focus. A useful beginning will be an outline of the plot of the play followed by a discussion of Freud's Oedipus Complex and how it can be used to interpret the black man's view of the world according to Fanon. Deleuze and Guattari's theories will be useful as well in understanding the coloniser as the Father figure, the patriarch. This can be linked to the control that the coloniser has over things like language, communication, place, and the prohibition of inter-sexual relations - looked at in relation to the text. Freud's essay on "Fetishism" will help provide insight into the black man's desire for the white woman while at the same time using her as a substitute for the freedom and power that he so covets. The issue of Othering is important as well - what do black and white men represent to each other? Fanon's views on the African rapist will be referred to as will be Said's object-other theory. Chapter Four presents a brief plot outline of the play The Black Psychiatrist followed by a detailed analysis of the psychiatrist figure Dr Kerry, a successful, black South African having flown his home to practise in London's famous Harley Street. Issues of power are evident immediately as Kerry's authority in his office is undermined by the white woman who should be his patient but prefers to do the questioning. Freud's theories on Repression, which are based on the Oedipus Complex are important here but what needs to be discussed is which character is really guilty of this repression? It is in this chapter as well that a contrast between Dr Dufre and Dr Kerry will be made. Dufre, by coming to South Africa becomes a white man operating in a black man's world, representing the coloniser while Dr Kerry living and working in London is a black man in a white man's world, representing the colonised. Linked to Freud's Oedipus Complex is the issue of incest, which becomes evident only at the end of the play and can also be linked to his theories on Repression. Fanon's views on relationships between black and white make for useful discussions pertaining to the text. Chapter Five presents a short conclusion looking briefly at whether the thesis has achieved what it set out to do: that is, provide a discussion of the issues of power, race and sex in Lewis Nkosi's Mating Birds and The Black Psychiatrist. It will include a discussion of whether Nkosi has found a new way of writing about apartheid. Chapter Five includes as well a discussion of Nkosi's use of psychoanalysis in his writing and presents a short account of his article "The Wandering Subject: Exile as Fetish". / Thesis (M.A)-University of Durban-Westville, 2005.

No abstract available. / Thesis (M.A)-University of Durban-Westville, 2004.

By examining the process of production and reception of the works of Walter Pater and Oscar Wilde, this thesis explores the ways in which both conceptions of audience and actual audiences shaped these works. As proponents of "aestheticism," a philosophy which required the development of a highly specialised mode of perception and critical awareness, Pater and Wilde wrote with a fairly select audience in mind. Confronted, however, with actual readers who did not always meet the "aesthetic" criteria (even if they were supporters), they were forced to rethink their conceptions of audience. Pater's and Wilde's developing understandings of audience can be traced in their works, as they experiment with style and genre in an attempt to communicate effectively with their readers. Although at base Pater and Wilde advocated a similar "aesthetic" philosophy, their distinct conceptions of audience played a significant role in determining the nature of their particular versions of aestheticism.

This dissertation investigates a "universal" question--what the exact nature of the relationship between music and theology is--by examining two particulars: (1) the music and thought of the French Roman Catholic composer Olivier Messiaen, and (2) the theology of music of Protestant theologian/musicologist Oskar Sohngen. / It should be emphasized, however, that the main focus of the paper is upon the "particulars," since the primary objective of this study is to demonstrate the remarkable similarity of thought which exists between the theory of Sohngen and the musical practice of Messiaen. After an exposition of Sohngen's three categories of relationship between music and theology (music as science, as worship, and as creatura) there is an extensive examination of Messiaen's compositional techniques which reveals the latter's implicit use of these same three categories. / In the final chapter of this work, after a discussion of several problems which are inherent in each of the particular approaches to music and theology, there is a return to the universal question, in response to which a precise, working definition is finally established.

No description available.

This thesis is a comparative analysis of Jean-Jacques Rousseau's Reveries du promeneur solitaire and Gabrielle Roy's autobiography (La Detresse et l'Enchantement and Le temps qui m'a manque) and establishes that these two works are testamentary autobiographies, that is, autobiographies written with the awareness of approaching death. We first show that both Rousseau and Roy link their ultimate autobiographical desire to the imminence of their own death. We then show that their autobiographical activity is not only motivated by death, but, moreover, that it allows them in a certain sense to live it already, since what this activity allows them to do is, for them, similar to what they long to do in the afterlife. We suggest, finally, that this activity, which allows them to bequeath an ideal picture of themselves that will survive them, gives them a hold on their immortality.

The Zen (Ch'an) poets Han-shan (circa 6th-9 thC.) and Ryokan (1758-1831) participate in literary activity, reclusion, and ordinary emotions in a manner that questions their typical image as models of transcendence. They participate in literary activity without attachment to either linguistic adequacy or a dualistic notion of "beyond words," and poetry serves as their mode of communication from reclusion. Reclusion is a context to realize the nature of the conventional world rather than a means of transcendence to an ultimate realm and is significant as a social and political act. Interpreted through the functional model of language, the poets' expressions of sorrow experienced in their reclusive lives embody the Zen ideal of selflessness. Ultimately, the poetry of both Hanshan and Ryokan supports a non-transcendent, or trans-descendent, ideal consistent with the nondual logic of Zen Buddhism and contrary to scholarship that assumes a dualistic view of Zen enlightenment.

The critique part of this thesis explores two rewritings of the fairytale Tom Thumb by Charles Perrault, written by Pierrette Fleutiaux and Michel Tournier. Firstly, modifications to the original fairytale will be shown, followed by the presence of the newly introduced themes of sexuality and religion. It will be established that binary combinations are an integral part of the structure of a traditional fairytale, before examining the manner in which these writers use the new themes in order to blur the separating lines of the binary combinations. Bearing in mind the dismantling of the structure of the original fairytale, we will try to see if these two texts can still be considered as fairytales. / The creative section of the thesis is composed of five fairytales: original works and rewritings which play with structure, characters and themes of the fairytale.