La purification est une métaphore désignant le moteur de la philosophie de la religion de Hegel. Elle est d’abord à l’œuvre dans la création de la Nature qui se consume pour produire la conscience de soi divine à travers l'esprit humain. En second lieu, elle s’opère dans l’objectivation des productions spirituelles de l’homme qui sont purifiées jusqu'à ce que l’Esprit soit auprès de soi dans le christianisme. La troisième purification est morale et trouve son fondement dans la Genèse, le judaïsme étant le premier à avoir identifié l'unité des natures humaine et divine. Le mythe témoignera également de la culpabilité en tant que l'homme n'exprime pas immédiatement sa divinité, mais sa finitude. La réalisation du divin impliquera donc la purification de la naturalité au profit de la substantialité. Le christianisme explicitera cette tâche par l’héroïsme de Jésus et cet héroïsme se perpétuera jusqu’à ce qu’émergent un individualisme moderne et une religion assurant la cohésion sociale : le protestantisme luthérien. Cet individualisme sera toutefois défectueux puisqu’il produira éventuellement davantage d’égoïsme que de réconciliation, ce qui donnera lieu à certaines critiques de l’analyse hégélienne du christianisme. En effet, Hegel croit toujours que la vitalité religieuse est nécessaire au fonctionnement de l’État, bien qu’elle soit dorénavant incapable de diffuser les sentiments de culpabilité et de responsabilité dans le corps social. Néanmoins, comme les valeurs du christianisme ont été épurées de leur contingence en passant dans les mœurs et dans l’État, il s’avérera que le corps social peut se passer d’une tradition religieuse vivante / Purification is what moves the content of Hegel’s philosophy of religion. It is first active in the creation of Nature, which consumes itself in order to liberate the divine self-consciousness through human spirit. Secondly, it is active in the process of the objectivation of human spiritual productions, which are purified until Spirit comes to know itself in the world. The third form of purification is moral and gets its theoretical foundation in the Genesis. According to Hegel, Judaism was the first belief system to identify the unity between divine and human natures; however, the myth is also about the birth of guilt as man does not immediately express his divinity, but his finiteness. As such, the divine process implies purification from naturality in favour of substantiality. Christianity will explicit this task through Jesus’s heroism and heroism in general will maintain itself until the rise of modern individualism and the rise of a religion capable of producing social cohesion—Lutheran Protestantism. However, individualism will eventually show its defectiveness since it will create more egoism than reconciliation. This problem will be the opportunity to criticize Hegel’s analysis of Christianity. Indeed, it seems that Hegel came to believe that religious vitality was necessary to the State's proper functioning, even though Christianity is no longer capable of creating guilt and responsibility by itself. Nevertheless, as Christian values are now purified forms their contingencies and are now recuperated by customs and the State, it appears that society can now function without such a tradition.

ZBIEJCZUKOVÁ, I. The conception of hero in fantasy literature. Diploma thesis. Prague: ÚČLLV FF UK, 2010-2011. This diploma thesis deals with typology of heroes and heroins in fantasy literature, with special regard to heroic quest from the point of view of literally composition. One part of the thesis applies to the defition and history of fantasy genre in both anglo-saxon and czech environment. The thesis therefore uses and cites both czech and foreign fantasy literally works. The aim of the thesis is to point to archetypical neomythic structure of fantasy texts and to their tendency to recreate heroism using particular examples of fantasy literature.

La première conception de la religion que nous livre Bergson dans Les deux sources de la morale et de la religion semble se réduire à un fait anthropologique. Cette religion, qu'il décrit comme une réalité statique, brouille toute idée de révélation qui se veut pourtant transcendante à l'Histoire. La deuxième conception, par contre, sans être une réflexion systématique sur l'idée d'un Dieu révélé, s'en rapproche par le biais des mystiques. Mais, là encore, se présente une difficulté : pour rejoindre la mystique, Bergson la situe dans le processus évolutif d'une réalité naturelle, l'élan vital dont il suit le cours jusqu'à son achèvement. Ainsi se pose la question de la nature transcendante ou non du fait mystique dans le bergsonisme. La réponse à cette question nécessite, non pas seulement une intelligibilité de l'image la plus controversée du vocabulaire bergsonien, l'élan vital, mais surtout une sympathie avec elle, qui seule permet d'aller au-delà de la rigidité des mots pour découvrir la vie qui les innerve. Par l'intuition, démarche de l'esprit, que le philosophe français recommande comme méthode à la philosophie, l'élan vital se solidarise avec la durée créatrice et devient le langage par lequel l'univers créé se comprend : le langage de l'amour divin. Il peut alors s'allier avec la mystique sans lui faire perdre sa double essence de réalité humaine et transcendante. / The first conception of religion that Bergson offers us in Two Sources of Morality and Religion seems reducible to an anthropological fact. This religion, which he describes as a static reality, obscures any idea of revelation claiming to be transcendent to History. The second conception, however, without being a systematic reflection on the idea of a revealed God, approaches that through the mystics. But, there again, a difficulty arises: to link up with the mystical, Bergson situates it within the evolving process of a natural reality, the élan vital, whose course he follows up to its completion. Thus, the question as to whether or not the mystical is transcendent in nature arises in Bergsonian thought. The answer to this question requires not only the intelligibility of the most debated image in the Bergsonian vocabulary, the élan vital, but rather sympathy with it, which alone enables one to move beyond the rigidity of words in order to discover the life invigorating it. Through this mental exercise, the intuition that the French philosopher recommends as method to philosophy, the élan vital is in solidarity with creative duration and becomes the language by means of which the created universe understands itself: the language of divine love. It can then ally itself with the mystical without causing it to lose its dual essence of human and transcendent reality.

Made available in DSpace on 2016-04-25T19:20:19Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Soemis Martinez Guzman.pdf: 565836 bytes, checksum: 38ae2b66e1ca23917b4056a15be17a91 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2011-12-07 / Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior / Ernest Becker targeted to understand the human condition by stating that the fear of death is the terror installation at the psychological base of man, from this realization he produced a work constituted by a synthesis of thoughts based on Kierkegaardian philosophy and psychoanalysis derived from Freud and his collaborators, with emphasis on Otto Rank, and a Darwinian evolution approach thus characterizing his interdisciplinarity. He believed it to be necessary the perception of being and society the true knowledge base in the description of the motivation that takes us to our condition. For this, he suggested that the fear of death and its denial are universal fundamental facts for every human activity and that the heroism product of this fear is the main human problem. As a starting point he uses the problem of heroism in contemporaneous society and shows the denial of finitude in modern culture. So, in its quest for transcendence, humanity creates symbols which further distances, from its perception of reality as species / Ernest Becker dedicou-se à compreensão da condição humana afirmando ser o medo da morte a instalação do terror nas bases psicológicas do homem. A partir dessa constatação, produziu um trabalho constituído por uma síntese de pensamentos com base na filosofia Kierkegaardiana, na psicanálise Freudiana e de seus colaboradores, destacando Otto Rank e a uma visão darwinista evolutiva caracterizando sua interdisciplinaridade. Acreditava ser necessária a percepção do ser e da sociedade para a base geradora de conhecimento verdadeiro na descrição da motivação que nos leva à nossa condição. Para tanto, sugeriu ser o medo da morte e a sua negação fatos fundamentais universais para toda atividade da vida humana, e o heroísmo produzido a partir desse medo, é o principal problema humano. Usa como ponto de partida a problemática do heroísmo na sociedade contemporânea e mostra a negação da finitude na cultura moderna. Assim, na busca pela transcendência, a humanidade cria símbolos que a distancia, cada vez mais, da percepção da sua realidade enquanto espécie. O mal aparece devido ao surgimento da violência e da aniquilação humanas, que nascem dessa dinâmica de negação da mortalidade

Alors que la post-modernité en avait proclamé la fin, alors que le post-dramatique s’était déployé contre, les grands récits semblent de retour sur les scènes du théâtre public depuis les années 1990, et plus encore les années 2000 et 2010. Cette thèse se propose d’explorer ce mouvement vers l’épique depuis que la création théâtrale n’est plus aussi explicitement tendue par de grands vecteurs politiques et idéologiques, soit, symboliquement, depuis la chute du bloc soviétique avec celle du mur de Berlin. Comment de nouvelles formes épiques s’inventent-elles alors au plateau, dans le souvenir de Brecht mais sans s’adosser comme lui à une téléologie marxiste ? Comment ce nouvel épique théâtral refonde-t-il sa verticalité ou s’invente-t-il sans verticalité ? Quel lien entretient-il avec l’édifice théorique du dramaturge allemand mais aussi quel rapport construit-il aux épopées homériques ? En observant les grandes tendances épiques contemporaines, cette thèse s’attache à dégager un concept d’épique qui soit pertinent dans le contexte démocratique et égalitaire qui est le nôtre. / While post-modernity had proclaimed their end and post-dramatic theatre had unfolded against them, grand narratives seem to have returned to the stages of French public theatre since the 1990s, and even more so in the following decades. This thesis sets out to explore this movement towards the epic genre since dramatic creation is no longer propelled by great political and ideological vectors, given the fall of the Soviet bloc and the fall of the Berlin Wall. How can new epic forms be invented on the set, following the heritage of Brecht but without leaning against a Marxist teleology? How does this new dramatic genre of epic rebuild its verticality or reinvent itself without verticality? What is its relation with the theoretical work of the German dramatist, as well as with the Homeric epic poems? By observing major contemporary epic trends, this thesis seeks to identify a concept of epic that is relevant in the democratic and egalitarian context in which we live.

Dans la France de l’Ancien Régime, si les représentations de la condition féminine légitiment les valeurs d’une traditionnelle phallocratie, on note néanmoins que le dogme chrétien accorde aux femmes une place dans l’économie du salut. Dans un contexte de Contre-Réforme, celle-ci déterminera notamment, sur le plan socio-littéraire, les modalités de l’expérience mystique et de l’héroïsme au féminin : l’éthique chrétienne érige paradoxalement en modèle des figures féminines qui transcendent leur humanité dans le sacrifice et la mort. Mais au XVIIe siècle, l’évolution des notions d’abnégation et d’amour-propre éradique ce triomphe éphémère. En nous intéressant plus particulièrement aux remaniements de l’hypotexte euripidien dans l’Iphygenie de Rotrou (1640) et dans l’Iphigénie de Racine (1674), nous verrons comment les deux pièces traduisent ce déclin. Au premier chapitre de notre mémoire, nous nous intéresserons à l’espace de liberté que le discours chrétien confère aux femmes à travers le culte de la virginité et l’hypothétique transfiguration des corps célestes. Réintégrant ces données théologiques, la mystique marque l’essor d’un charisme féminin que la notion d’amour-propre déconstruira à l’ère classique. Dans un second chapitre, nous explorerons les développements de l’éthique héroïque qui ont servi à l’essor d’un héroïsme au féminin. Le troisième chapitre portera enfin sur l’échec d’une héroïne mythique qui, mettant à profit le dogme chrétien, menace dangereusement l’équilibre d’un ordre patriarcal. La critique littéraire convient généralement de l’irréfutable vertu de l’héroïne de Rotrou et de Racine. Au terme de notre analyse, nous entendons démontrer qu’Iphigénie est, a contrario, tragiquement reconnue coupable d’amour-propre par les deux dramaturges. / In the French Ancien Régime, the representations of the condition of women justify the values of male chauvinism. Nevertheless, in its economy of Salvation, Christianity gives women an important place. In the social context of Counter-Reformation, this situation defines the terms of a mystical experience of God exemplified, in literature, by a model of feminine heroism, as Christian ethics set up a feminine figure transcending her human condition through sacrifice and death. In the seventeenth century, however, the concept of abnegation and pride eradicates the short-lasting triumph of feminine heroism. Through Rotrou and Racine’s theatrical reorganization of Euripides’ Iphigenia in Aulis, we will see how both authors convey its end. In our first chapter, we will consider the space defered to women by Christianity through the cult of virginity and the transfiguration of celestial bodies. Reinstating these theological data, the mystics will mark the rise of a feminine charisma which will be deconstructed by the notion of pride in the late seventeenth century. In the second chapter, we will see how the development of heroism favours the expansion of a feminine heroic figure. In the last chapter we will analyse the failure of a mythical heroine who, by taking advantage of the Christian dogma, dangerously compromises the patriarcal order. While critics often assert the truthfull virtue of Iphigenia in Rotrou and Racine’s plays, we will intend to prove that she is, on the contrary, tragically convicted of pride by both authors.

This thesis examines three aspects of the commentary edition of the Chinese vernacular novel Shuihu Zhuan written by Ming Dynasty literatus Jin Shengtan (ca. 1610-1661), analyzing three of the most innovative features that the commentary brings to our understanding of the novel, and what Jin Shengtan desired for the reader of his commentary to understand. The first chapter looks at a series of techniques that Jin outlines in the preliminary "How to Read" section of the commentary (dufa), where the techniques are shown to be very similar in focus and style to the literary theory of narratology as written about by Gerard Genette through a sample comparison of five of the techniques with varying characteristics of narratology. The second chapter looks at how Jin Shengtan constructs the image of the author, Shi Nai'an, through both his interlineal commentary (jiapi) and his preliminary chapter commentary (zongpi). We see through this analysis that Jin Shengtan has gone against the tradition of shu er bu zuo -- a Confucian tradition that relegates the position of the author to the background of his work -- and has brought the author into a position of prominence through his construction of the image of an unparalleled genius. The third and final chapter looks at the idea of "heroism" (xia) and how Jin's commentary reworks the way many of the primary characters of the novel and their heroic actions are seen and interpreted, focusing especially on the characters of Wu Song, Lu Zhishen, Song Jiang and Li Kui, where we see that Jin's commentary focuses on parallels between the heroes such as Wu Song and Lu Zhishen in the first portion of the novel, while switching to a more juxtapositional perspective in the latter half of the novel through Song Jiang and Li Kui. / Graduate / 0305 / 0332 / mblsm00@gmail.com

This thesis deals with the nationalistic imaginary in the novels of Sven Lidman, published 1910–1913. The novels hold forth a conservative point-of-view that embraces the bourgeois ideal of masculinity and the idea of the healthy, Swedish rural way of life as opposed to the destructive metropolis. This dualism is part of a dichotomy that structures the novels. It also entails continuity/fragmentation, the Swedish/the foreign, men/women, activity/ passivity as well as masculinity/femininity and unmanliness. In the Silfverstååhl-cycle the protagonists are young men of a noble, Swedish family. They progress from lost and introspective youths to grown men who are deeply concerned with and engaged in society. They are different representatives of the Swedish man – the farmer, the business man, the explorer and the clergy man. What unites them is how their “coming of age” develops, how through trial and struggle they become stronger and prove worthy of the manly role they finally take on. This is a major principle of the bourgeois masculinity that is also closely connected to the national identity of the men. There is also an ambiguity concerning modernity. Throughout the novels a critique of modern society is formulated, that acknowledges the modern age but simultaneously takes on a prudent attitude towards modern society. There is no going back for the Swedish nation; the modern times have to be confronted. The present is very important since it is the time for scrutiny. The handling of the modern era takes place in the developing processes of the young men, who have to be careful not to get trapped in the modern whirlpool that threatens to shatter the human being. The past, the familiar and the rural anchorage that the family relation entitles, is a defense against the destructive forces of modernity. But the past is not completely beneficial. Even though the past is of major importance to the national identity of the protagonists, they have to be very careful not to delve too much into the past because of the risk of paralysis and effeminization. In the nationalistic narrative the present encapsulates the past and the future. The Swedish man has to navigate in the borderland of modernity. / De svenska författarna och kriget

Research Doctorate - Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) / The genre of travel writing is widely recognised as providing useful insights into the ways that discourse is used to frame the interplay between self, place and Other. Recently, it has been suggested that these writings inform the development of global citizenry literacy because, as cultural texts, they recount an engagement in, and with, cosmopolitanism while informing readerships about the foreign. However, it is important to remember that these writings appear in context and the authors of such texts craft discourse to construct sociocultural imaginings of the self and Other – of a journey told from a particular viewpoint, in a particular time, to a particular audience. Through an analysis of the travel writings of four Western women who travelled to Iran in a particular historical moment – after the Islamic Revolution of 1979 and until Iran was positioned as part of the ‘Axis of Evil’ in 2002 – this thesis examines the ways in which these authors script their gaze through discourse. The author/narrator is an aesthetic cosmopolitan figure, who casts her gaze from a particular ‘viewing platform’ informed by Western discourse and accumulated cultural capital. Attention is paid in this thesis to the ways in which these writers discursively frame their narratives according to the ‘I’ of the gendered experiencing self who focuses the ‘eye’ (or gaze) through a lens oriented by their cosmopolitical imagination or worldview. Notions of authenticity, fear, danger and threat appeared as recurring themes in each of the selected texts and operate to construct place as political, self as heroic and the journey as quest. The authors engaged aesthetic dimensions of time and space to position the liminal in their narratives and, in so doing mobilised discourses of gender and power. Notions of the liminal were employed to describe Iran����s physical and social scapes to position discursive spaces in the texts that were used to affirm traveller identity, build cultural capital and, in the process, make political comments. The texts revealed that while the authors commonly used metaphor and trope drawn from inherited Western discourses such as Orientalism, postcolonialism and imperialism to provide authority, they also drew from the currently circulating discourses of gender equity, human rights and liberal democracy; all of which foreground notions of freedom. However, these currently circulating discourses, when combined with dimensions of heroism, were found to work in the tradition of inherited Western discourse – to authorise the narrator voice and legitimise the ways that self and Other are constructed. The central argument this thesis makes is that Western travel writing is restricted in its contribution to global literacy because these texts reveal more about Western ways of seeing the world and about the author as cosmopolitan than they do about the foreign.

Research Doctorate - Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) / The genre of travel writing is widely recognised as providing useful insights into the ways that discourse is used to frame the interplay between self, place and Other. Recently, it has been suggested that these writings inform the development of global citizenry literacy because, as cultural texts, they recount an engagement in, and with, cosmopolitanism while informing readerships about the foreign. However, it is important to remember that these writings appear in context and the authors of such texts craft discourse to construct sociocultural imaginings of the self and Other – of a journey told from a particular viewpoint, in a particular time, to a particular audience. Through an analysis of the travel writings of four Western women who travelled to Iran in a particular historical moment – after the Islamic Revolution of 1979 and until Iran was positioned as part of the ‘Axis of Evil’ in 2002 – this thesis examines the ways in which these authors script their gaze through discourse. The author/narrator is an aesthetic cosmopolitan figure, who casts her gaze from a particular ‘viewing platform’ informed by Western discourse and accumulated cultural capital. Attention is paid in this thesis to the ways in which these writers discursively frame their narratives according to the ‘I’ of the gendered experiencing self who focuses the ‘eye’ (or gaze) through a lens oriented by their cosmopolitical imagination or worldview. Notions of authenticity, fear, danger and threat appeared as recurring themes in each of the selected texts and operate to construct place as political, self as heroic and the journey as quest. The authors engaged aesthetic dimensions of time and space to position the liminal in their narratives and, in so doing mobilised discourses of gender and power. Notions of the liminal were employed to describe Iran����s physical and social scapes to position discursive spaces in the texts that were used to affirm traveller identity, build cultural capital and, in the process, make political comments. The texts revealed that while the authors commonly used metaphor and trope drawn from inherited Western discourses such as Orientalism, postcolonialism and imperialism to provide authority, they also drew from the currently circulating discourses of gender equity, human rights and liberal democracy; all of which foreground notions of freedom. However, these currently circulating discourses, when combined with dimensions of heroism, were found to work in the tradition of inherited Western discourse – to authorise the narrator voice and legitimise the ways that self and Other are constructed. The central argument this thesis makes is that Western travel writing is restricted in its contribution to global literacy because these texts reveal more about Western ways of seeing the world and about the author as cosmopolitan than they do about the foreign.