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This dissertation explores vampire logic in Hispanic short fiction of the last decade of the 19th century and first three decades of the 20th century, and is thus a comparative study; not simply between Spanish and Latin American literary production, but also between Hispanic and European literary traditions. As such, this study not only draws attention to how Hispanic authors employed traditional Gothic conventions—and by extension, how Hispanic nations produced “modern” literature—but also to how these authors adapted previous models and therefore deviated from and questioned the European Gothic tradition, and accordingly, established trends and traditions of their own. This study does not pretend to be exhaustive. Even though I mention poetry, plays, and novels from the first appearance of the literary vampire in the mid-18th century through the fin de siglo and the first few decades of the 20th century, I focus on short fiction produced within and shortly thereafter the fin de siglo, as this time period saw a resurgence of the vampire figure on a global scale and the first legitimate appearance in Hispanic letters, being as it coincided with a rise in periodicals and short story production and represented developments and anxieties related to the physical and behavioral sciences, technological advances and urban development, waves of immigration and disease, and war. While Chapter 1 establishes a working theory of the vampire from a historical and materialist perspective, each of the following chapters explores a different trend in Hispanic vampire literature: Chapter 2 looks at how vampire narratives represent political and economic anxieties particular to Spain and Latin America; Chapter 3 studies newly married couples and how vampire logic leads to the death of the wife—and thus the death of the “angel of the house” ideal—therefore challenging ideas surrounding marriage, the family, and the home; lastly, Chapter 4 explores courting couples and how disruptions in the makeup of the public/private divide influenced images of female monstrosity—complex, parodic ones in the Hispanic case. One of the main conclusions this study reaches is that Hispanic authors were indeed producing Gothic images, but that these images deviated from the European Gothic vampire literary tradition and prevailing literary tendencies of the time through aesthetic and narrative experimentation and as a result of particular anxieties related to their histories, developments, and current realities. While Latin America and Spain produced few explicit, Dracula-like vampires, the vampire figures, metaphors, and allegories discussed in the chapters speak to Spain and Latin America’s political, economic, and ideological uncertainties, and as a result, their “place” within the modern global landscape. This dissertation ultimately suggests that Hispanic Gothic representations are unique because they were being produced within peripheral spaces, places considered “non-modern” because of their distinct histories of exploitation and development and their distinct cultural, religious, and racial compositions, therefore shifting perceptions of Otherness and turning the Gothic on its head. The vampire in the Hispanic context, I suggest, is a fusion of different literary currents, such as Romanticism, aesthetic movements, such as Decadence, and modes, such as the Gothic and the Fantastic, and is therefore different in many ways from its predecessors. These texts abound with complex representations that challenge the status quo, question dominant narratives, parody literary formulas, and break with tradition. / Spanish

This essay will examine gothic traits in young adult and children's fantasy, specifically the fantasy series Septimus Heap (2005-2013) by Angie Sage. In order to get a better overview of the material i will be looking at the series as a whole and from there examining the parts i find relevant.  The basis of my analysis will be the gothic traits identified by Fred Botting in Gothic (2013) and a close reading of Septimus Heap (2005-2013). My analysis will be divided in to categories based on these gothic traits, and sub-categories based on what parts of the source material I am discussing. I conclude that several gothic traits, as defined by Botting, are present and recurring in Septimus Heap (2005-2013) but that aspects of these may sometimes differ from Bottings description of the classic gothic traits.

This thesis explores the themes of hope, empowerment, and belonging in Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events. Using three different frameworks, I analyze the portrayal of interconnected senses of hope, empowerment, and belonging in the texts through the Baudelaire orphans, and their promotion of the same in the child reader. C.R. Snyder’s psychological hope theory is used to analyze how hope is created in the child protagonists and encouraged in the child reader, through finding pathways to their goals and the will to utilize them. Eliza T. Dresang’s Radical Change theory provides a framework for exploring how child empowerment functions in the texts, which is largely connected to the pursuit of knowledge and autodidacticism. Lastly, I use the role of literary orphanhood, changing concepts of family, and sociological frameworks for belonging to address how the Baudelaire orphans, and the child reader, find home and belonging outside of the idealized nuclear family—namely through shared social locations, social solidarities, and a symbolic reunification of the Baudelaire family. Moreover, I analyze the role of the Gothic and what MariaNikolajeva calls aetonormativity—adult normativity that Others children—in creating the hopeless and disempowering conditions that paradoxically make way for the development of hope, empowerment, and belonging.

In this paper, I study the bodies in Mare Kandre’s two novels Bestiarium (1999) and Xavier (2002), with the help of Mikhail Bakhtin’s theories of the grotesque. I examine the worldview that is portrayed in the novels – focusing on the attitude towards death – and seek answers to the following questions: how do the human bodies look and how do they relate to their surroundings? What does the way they are portrayed say about the world the novels portray? And what role does laughter play in the novels? I also examine the similarity between a grotesque body, and a gothic monster. As a result, I find that one body may exist both in life and death at the same time, that the bodies can merge together, and that the boundaries between body and world may be exceeded. I also find the grotesque abilities of the body not to be threatening, but filled with possibilities. Here, even monsters are not harmful. / I den här uppsatsen undersöker jag kropparna i Mare Kandres två romaner Bestiarium (1999) och Xavier (2002), med utgångspunkt i Michail Bachtins teorier om det groteska. Jag söker svar på hur hans begrepp kan öka förståelsen för den värld som målas upp i romanerna, med ett fokus på inställningen till döden. Jag ställer mig frågor om hur de mänskliga kropparna ser ut och hur de förhåller sig till resten av världen, vad sättet de gestaltas på säger om romanvärlden och vilken roll skrattet spelar i romanerna. Jag undersöker också likheten mellan groteska kroppar och gotiska monster. I min analys visar jag att kropparna i Mare Kandres romaner kan befinna sig både i livet och döden samtidigt, att de ständigt är i rörelse och kan uppgå i varandra. Dessutom kan gränsen mellan kropp och värld upplösas. Jag visar också på att den glädje som kännetecknade medeltidens grotesk bara kan förnimmas, men att de groteska kropparna trots det besitter positiva möjligheter. Inte ens monster måste här besegras, då de inte utgör något hot.

Using psychoanalytic theory, one can see that the Gothic genre addresses fears to reveal the ever-tense dynamics between subject and object- the subject as the individual with agency and the object as that which the subject desires and which thus lacks agency. This tension between the subject and object exposes the subject's fears about the object specifically pertaining to female sexuality, desire, familial dynamics, and reproduction, and it is these fears that shape the subject's psyche. These fears are addressed in psychoanalysis on two levels: terror and horror. Terror is the fear of what one does not know, whereas horror coincides with the fear of that which one does know. This distinction itself addresses the two parts of the psyche: the unconscious and the conscious. Through the lens of psychoanalysis, we can see that the switch or overlap between these layers of the psyche, is experienced as the uncanny, where the repressed again becomes familiar. In Gothic texts, the return of the repressed occurs for the subject as it relates to the object of desire, and the trauma surrounding this relationship. Through the analysis of three different Gothic texts from three different time periods- Matthew Lewis's The Monk (1796), Bram Stoker's Dracula (1897), and David Lindelofs contemporary television series Lost (2004 )- I argue that these texts demonstrate the ways in which their cultures understood (and understand) subjectivity as constituted through fear of and desire for the object. From the eighteenth century to the twenty-first century, we can see a transition from a reaction to trauma to a need/or trauma in the texts.

Version abrégée de Th. de doct. : Paris 4 : 1993. / Includes bibliographical references (p. [457]-474) and index.

This dissertation focuses on the constructing and architectonic development of Premonstratensian monastery and the church of St. Giles of Milevsko in the Middle Ages. The work is based on the older art historical literature and it evaluates the archaeological researches' findings in the locality as well as construction and historic researches of particular buildings, which were carried on with connection to the restitution of the site to the Premonstratensian order in the 1990s. The work demonstrates the Milevsko grounds picture and its construction as well as architectonic development from the establishment of the pre- monastery era in the eighth century until the Hussite's wars. The dissertation provides study of court with a church with apsis, stone Romanesque house and the basilica. It characterises the George of Milevsko personality as well as the significance of the abbot Jarloch. It analyses in detail the Roman architecture of St. Giles Church and attempts to interpret the procedure of its construction. Furthermore, it deals with the shape of the monastery's basilica and the description of Romanesque monastic buildings while comparing the premises to other monastic sites in this country. This dissertation also describes the architectonic boom of abbeys in the era of early Gothics as well as...

This dissertation concerns the socio-cultural politics expressed in the performances of Matthew Barney, Steven Cohen, Marina Abramovic, and the ‘Pop’ artist Madonna. The contention is that these artists mirror and dramatize marginalization and seem to reflect a desire to resolve conflicts experienced between social and psychological identities in contemporary society. The premise of this study is that these performers engage in a ‘dialogue’ with viewers as a form of self-preservation and self-healing. The Performance artists’ measure of socio-cultural tensions suggests the merging of mass media entertainment, theatrical devices and other cultural practices such as fetishism and rituals involving altered states of consciousness, props and allusions to shamanism. An ancient modality of healing, such as shamanism, when appropriated by artists, seems to reflect an urgent phenomenological need of the individual within Western society for overcoming feelings of powerlessness as a type of therapeutic practice. The Performance artists’ Othering is acted out as a survival mechanism addressing and questioning the ‘degradation’ imposed on marginalized individuals who challenge the traditional notion of authentic identity and the ‘classic’ body. / Art History, Visual Arts and Musicology / M.A. (Visual Arts)