This thesis is an examination of sound and lived space in Janet Cardiff's audio walks, Missing Voice, and Conspiracy Theory. Its aim is to contextualize Cardiff's project in terms of how it reverses the logic of the conventional museum audio guide; taking the user on an unexpected tour of the back spaces, and by providing an audio track of soundscapes which are not about the art exhibition but rather point to the social relations constituted in each audio walk environment. Paradoxically, it is the non-synchronous elements of Cardiff's audio walks that point to the embedded nature of expectations produced by body technique. It is through the disjunction of the experiential moment between sensorial input and our awareness of it (an incongruent relationship between what is expected and what is experienced) that, Gilles Deleuze's concept of the pre-individual is actualized for the lived body. The actualized pre-individual lies at the core of an analysis, of how Cardiff's audio walk transgresses the limits of a single art work and reopens living as an emergence for the interconnectedness of the actual-virtual.

Tintoretto, one of the great Venetian masters of the sixteenth century, is renowned for his compositional innovations. The painter also worked as a stage and costume designer for the Compagnie della Calza. As a result, he selected and combined elements of other disciplines in his pictures. / This thesis focuses on the fusion of the arts in Tintoretto's imagery. A comprehensive analysis of this interdisciplinary aspect reveals the subtlety of Tintoretto's creative mind. The challenge is to discover Tintoretto as a stage designer who conceived pictures as theatrical performances. Instead of the traditional preparatory sketch, he built a miniature stage in order to visualize the scene in tangible forms existing in light and space. The design of the setting, the gestural choreography of his personages and the distribution of lighting were analysed and then translated into painted illusion. With this unusual methodology, Tintoretto invented forceful mise-en-scenes which induce the spectator to perceive the imaginary as real. A substantial knowledge of stagecraft also enabled him to bring to vibrant life the dramatic episodes of the Bible on canvas. Through such artfully constructed theatrical illusion, Tintoretto not only re-creates a vision for his audience, but above all, conveys the depth of his spiritual experience.

Botho Strauss a writer of prose, essays and plays, belongs to the most interesting and controversial authors of the last thirty years. Like a seismograph he picks up numerous discourses, the most important one being Memoria . His peculiar and eccentric way of representing and reflecting on memory, in the early texts, is innovative, critical, self reflective, but in the later texts becomes neo-conservative, elitist and patriarchal. This later discourse sparked off a discussion, involving writers such as Peter Handke, Martin Walser and Peter Sloterdijk, about the role of the intellectual in German society. / I begin by examining how cultural studies approaches the topic of Memoria. I then apply to the texts of Strauss a 'mnemonic reading,' meaning, to explore and discover topographies of memory. Literature and the arts in general are perceived as places of memory, or as archives where cultural memory is kept alive. Quoting, or rewriting selections from texts, as described in theories of intertextuality, changes and keeps alive a tradition of literature within literature. A text becomes a palimpsest in which fragments of foreign texts suddenly become visible and can enter the readers memory. In Strauss, to form a memory from the fragments is not without major problems. The pieces move in all directions to form a paradoxical body of text. / In his early texts the narrator laments the impossibility of creating an identity based on personal memories and so he concentrates on the problem of how to represent memory within the context of increasing amnesia. The seemingly dead subject moves about within the texts where he hopes to build himself a place for his identity to survive. In reaction to loss of memory and identity, a calculated game appears in which the representation and experience of the past plays only a minor role. The author turns towards the models of aesthetic memory, adapting, for example, the romantic mode of writing. The metamorphosis of texts, such as those from the romantic period, occurs as a backdrop against which the writer projects his erotically inspired allegorical "memory theater." Dramatization of the memory process leads him to conclude that memories only exist within the aesthetic world of literature, where they manifest themselves beyond a historical and social reality. At the end of his writing project, Strauss creates an aesthetic refuge of personal memories by turning himself into a "diarist." The male voice regresses to an aggressive and melancholic mode of limited perception, which the author knows cannot be more than an artificial construction.

The poetical works of Paul Morin are not very well known, and are rarely ever read today. And yet, he was the successor of Emile Nelligan and Albert Lozeau. Paul Morin is one of the first French Canadians to publish his works in France and it was said of his collection of poems Le Paon d'email that it was the spark that ignited the famous "Querelle des regionalistes et des exotiques" in French Canada. Unfortunately, the negative reactions of some of his first critics, were to determine for a long time those of future generations. / This thesis focuses on the critical reception of Paul Morin's first two published books: Le Paon d'email (1911) and Poemes de cendre et d'or (1922), and attempts as well to retrace their critical fortunes up until the beginning of the sixties.

The works of Ernesto Sabato resemble an extensive allegory related to various aspects of humanity. Sabato is considered one of the most outstanding writers of Argentina, who has dedicated himself to commentary on contemporary issues, not only of his homeland but also of the world in general. He also invites us to share in the turmoil of his own inner self. His essays are a reflection and analysis of the sorrows and sufferings of mankind which characterize the universal catastrophe of our time. / In this thesis we study the ideas contained in several of Sabato's essays, reinforced by the personal preoccupations that characterize the author's perspective. In the various stages of our pilgrimage through the universe of his essays, we observe his quest as witness to artistic Argentinian creativity, as well as spokesman of human reactions in the midst of the present-day cataclysm. We not only emphasize Sabato's trajectory throughout perversity and corruption, but also the solidarity and hope, as total expression of the human being that lives and struggles in a chaotic universe.

Jennifer Johnston, a contemporary Irish novelist, has written nine novels thus far encompassing a wide thematic range. While her protagonists include both male and female, in the three novels, The Old Jest, The Christmas Tree, and The Invisible Worm we witness the emergence of a new kind of heroine: the female Bildungsroman protagonist. I begin my study with a discussion of the traditional Bildungsroman as a male project, which traces the growth and self-development of an adolescent as he approaches maturity. A reformulation is then established allowing for a female version of the genre while differentiating between stories of the failure of development, such as Jane Eyre, and Johnston's stories where development is realized. I propose to demonstrate how Johnston's works exemplify the Bildungsroman form and also explore questions relevant to female development such as the protagonist's relationship to work, to love, to family, to tradition, and to writing.

During the 1970s, Gianni Celati uses his novels as a workshop for his investigation into language, literature and communication. Le avventure di Guizzardi, La banda dei sospiri and Lunario del paradiso are crucial works in which Celati develops a style based on oral language as a way of bringing life closer to art and escaping the self-referentiality of the literary vanguard. Celati also experiments with a poetics of "ordinariness," both in style and content, as a means of broadening his audience and the reach of his social commentary. / An examination of Celati's novels of this period reveal an intellectual that is critical of the ways that society uses literature and language to further disenfranchise its weakest members. He invites intellectuals to re-examine of the value of language and literature, but also ordinary people to become writers themselves so that new voices may be heard.

This study examines problems of escape in the fictional writings of E. L. Doctorow. It makes clear that the characters in the stories as well as their creator frequently try to break free from restrictions or control--the protagonists physically, the author more theoretically. A description of the nature of the confinements as well as the difficulties associated with getting away reveals much about Doctorow's perception of 20th century American reality and the writer's place in it. Thus, the study moves from a relatively straightforward assessment of the kinds of escape featured in Doctorow's narratives and the way in which these are justified to a more complicated evaluation of Doctorow's situation as a writer in relation to his characters' predicaments and recent critical analyses of his prose.

Joseph Breitbach began publishing literature in the late twenties. He came to occupy a specific place in the literary period generally called New Objectivity. The goal of this thesis is to define that place more closely. The first chapter analyzes Breitbach's early stories, whose themes are based on the new social reality of his time. The focus is on the organized workers of the far left (the proletarians), as well as the growing class of small clerks known as the petite bourgeoisie. Breitbach, a department store manager, crafted his fictional characters from this milieu and portrayed both their social problems and everyday life from his observations. / The second chapter illustrates a decisive change in Breitbach's emphasis. In the novel Die Wandlung der Susanne Dasseldorf, which unfolds during the Allied occupation following the First World War, he juxtaposes the two fundamental classes, proletariat and bourgeoisie. Breitbach maintains a place among the writers of the New Objectivity for his retrospective of the postwar period as well as his contemporary portrayal of the lower classes. / The thesis also discusses Breitbach's progressive thinking in his treatment of the female character in his novel and the now almost forgotten German-American relations in the occupied region of Coblenz.

In this thesis, I propose an analysis of Julien Gracq's fictional works, based upon a dual methodological approach inspired by Genettian naratology and the phenomenological theories of reading. I argue that "derealization" is an important element of Julien Gracq's writing, which is often perceived in binary terms (classical and/or modern, alternately real and unreal, realistic and magical). This hypothesis leads me to develop a conceptual framework for a notion that, while it has on occasion been invoked by critics, has never been properly defined. In this framework, derealization is defined both as a textual product and a reading effect. As a textual product, it is primarily an interstitial phenomenon insofar as it operates between the different levels of the text (enonciative levels, temporal levels, referential levels), creating confusion, competition, and what I have called "subordinating inversion". As a reading effect, it tends at once to disturb the reader's horizon of expectations, to prevent referential stability (defined as a textual construct and in relation to the reading experience), and to introduce a tension in the reading process without completely hindering the reader's progress. This tension manifests itself in the form of uncertainty, a blurring or subverting of diegetical content, persistent instability or a powerful determinism whose limits are unclear. In the final analysis, derealization can be described as a syncretic concept that reconciles, on the one hand, the immanent structures of the text and the phenomenological experience of reading, and, on the other hand, the stable, "ureassuring" dimension of the traditional novel and its modernistic undermining. Seen in this light, the concept of derealization could prove to be a useful tool for the study of certain contemporary works that seek to rejuvenate traditional literary forms without rejecting them entirely. Julien Gracq's works are a perfect example of just su