The aim of this dissertation was to critically analyse Terry Pratchett’s Johnny Maxwell trilogy in terms of three areas, namely Pratchett’s use of various fantasy techniques; how comedy and satire function as distancing mechanisms; and how fantasy and comedy function in accordance with Erikson’s and Bettelheim’s theories concerning identity formation in adolescent and child readers. The primary aim of this dissertation was therefore to provide a literary reading of Pratchett’s trilogy, Only You Can Save Mankind (1992), Johnny and the Dead (1993) and Johnny and the Bomb (1996). However, it also acknowledges the possible didactic and developmental benefits of the books. The trilogy is entertaining, exciting, witty and child-friendly (Baldry cited in Butler, James and Mendlesohn, 2004:41), but it is also clear that Pratchett endeavours to challenge his child readers by presenting everyday situations from foreign and unusual perspectives. This dissertation argues that, as Baldry states, Pratchett ‘expands the thinking of his young readers with new ideas or unconventional ways of looking at familiar ideas’ which will ultimately help them consider their own lives in alternative and perhaps even more meaningful ways (quoted in Butler, James and Mendlesohn, 2004:41). The idea of ‘distancing techniques’ is vital for this study, because it proposes that readers can be transported from their Primary Realities (in which they live and function on a daily basis) into Secondary Realities or worlds which are unlike the Primary Reality in form and composition, but not unlike them in the way they function. Once this removal has taken place, bibliotherapists argue that readers are able to look back upon their primary world with new insight into their sense of industry and identity and also into the way their primary reality functions and the way they function within it. J.R.R. Tolkien (1985:35) explains that ‘…fact becomes that which is manipulated by the fantasy writer to produce a keener perception of the primary world and a greater ability to survive in it’. Owing to Pratchett’s specific comic brand of fantasy, a discussion of his comic and satiric techniques is also presented. Part of this discussion again concentrates on the ability of comedy to act as a distancing mechanism, while another discusses how Pratchett uses comedy to satirise certain aspects of society. As Bergson (1911:17) states in his book, Laughter: An Essay on the Meaning of the Comic, laughter is a way of ‘correcting men’s manners’. Pratchett thus makes use of various comic techniques to mock and ridicule certain features of society, such as its obsession with television, its materialism, or its obsession with computer games. This research is important as the fantasy genre is often considered to be mere popular fiction, to which parents and school teachers are frequently averse. However, with the increase in sales of fantasy works over the past decade, especially in adolescent and children’s fantasy, study of the genre and its possible influence on readers is becoming increasingly necessary. This dissertation undertakes to show that fantasy works can be both complex and satisfying literary works while they also have a positive influence on child readers. / Dissertation (MA)--University of Pretoria, 2013. / gm2014 / English / unrestricted

Denna studie har som syfte att undersöka hur tystnad gestaltas med hjälp av ljud i filmen A Quiet Place (2018) (John Krasinski, Bryan Woods & Scott Beck med ljuddesign av Erik Aadahl och Ethan Van der Ryn). Studien har även som syfte att undersöka vilka narrativa funktioner ljudet fyller samt bidra till en djupare förståelse för hur det kan används för att skapa en upplevelse av spänning och rädsla.Uppsatsen innehåller en audiovisuell analys av tre scener ur undersökningsmaterialet (A Quiet Place) som består av Michel Chions metod Masking genom vilken en scenbeskrivning och en ljudhändelsebeskrivning upprättats. Dessa två beskrivningar har sedan använts som underlag för en innehållsanalys och Johnny Wingstedt’s narrativa funktionsanalys med författarens tolkning av ljudets berättande funktioner. För att söka svar på hur spänning erhålls med hjälp av ljud har teorier av hjärnforskaren Seth S Horowitz använts i en avslutande och sammanställande analys.Resultatet av analysen visar att tystnad gestaltas genom kontraster, dynamik och att ställa olika ljudnivåer i relation till varandra, en upplevd tystnad är en negation till den ljudnivå som den är ställd i relation till. Ljudet och musikens narrativa funktioner har i stor utsträckning visat sig vara att vägleda åskådarens uppmärksamhet, knyta samman scener och sekvenser i ett linjärt tidsförlopp och understryka känslomässiga uttryck. Studiens resultat tyder även på att upplevelsen av spänning till stor del erhålls på ett liknande sätt som tystnad gestaltas.

Literature, films, and even the daily news often address war, an event that unfortunately has been a constant in modern society. Large scale, modern warfare with global involvement began with the First World War, and following the war, a global war literature boom occurred. Two bestselling novels whose anti-war themes still resound today, Im Westen nichts Neues (All Quiet on the Western Front) by Erich Maria Remarque and Johnny Got His Gun by Dalton Trumbo, emerged from this sea of literature. Both of these novels focus on the pain that is inherent in warfare and its detrimental effects on society as well as on individual soldiers. The graphic imagery and anti-war sentiment that is present in these novels has generated controversy throughout their histories; however, the popularity of both works has prevailed, and Remarque and Trumbo’s novels remain two of the most referenced in academic disciplines as well as in popular culture. This thesis explores the long-lasting success of these two works as anti-war novels, as measured by initial sales and popularity as well as by a plethora of mass cultural adaptations.

Orientador: Marcos Siqueira Cavalcante / Dissertação (mestrado) - Universidade Estadual de Campinas, Instituto de Artes / Made available in DSpace on 2018-08-07T17:47:31Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Bittencourt_AlexisdaSilveira_M.pdf: 1695226 bytes, checksum: 92231c6957e04d697fa545b4571049d8 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2006 / Resumo: Este trabalho parte da tese de que o estilo interpretativo ao piano, em contexto instrumental Trio (piano, contra-baixo e seção rítmica), de Johnny Alf e João Donato, constitui uma espécie de elo norteador à interpretação da música popular brasileira a partir da segunda metade do século passado, com raízes no samba e forte influência jazzista. Tem, portanto, o objetivo de definir esse elo e demonstrar como esse pode ser uma valiosa referência ao guitarrista, servindo de fonte para este reavaliar sua prática interpretativa da música popular brasileira / Abstract: This research is based on the thesis, that the piano playing style, of Johnny Alf and João Donato, in the piano instrumental trio performance (with double-bass and drums and/or percussion), can be defined as a link, that could be perceived as a guide of how to play the Brazilian Popular Music from the second half of the last century to our days. This kind of music finds its roots in samba, however is strongly affected by the jazz influences. Our goal is to define the link among Alf and Donato, and demonstrate how it can provide valuable references to the guitarist, within the guitar trio situation, as a source for a reevaluation of his directions on playing the Brazilian Popular Music / Mestrado / Mestre em Música

Though Sylvia Plath’s poems and novel undergo frequent scholarly research, her short fiction is often overlooked. Plath’s journals influenced her short fiction writing, and her stories reflected Plath’s lived experiences. Plath’s short fiction, like her other works, explore themes of identity and detachment. Each of her protagonists exist in a personal limbo, and they strive to find their identities and to fit the roles in which they occupy. This thesis focuses on “Mary Ventura and the Ninth Kingdom,” stories from Johnny Panic and the Bible of Dreams, and additional research from scholarly journals and biographies, with comparisons to identity struggles shown in The Bell Jar and The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath. I found the catalysts for their identity crises stem from observations surrounding femininity, societal roles, and psychological wellness. Furthermore, this research shows Plath’s subjective writing habits and highlights her protagonists’ commonalities throughout her writing career.

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In this dissertation, disability theories frame readings of madness in select works by Shirley Jackson, Sylvia Plath, and Toni Cade Bambara. The dissertation explores the relationship between madness and fiction, with the author demonstrating the productive and generative aspects of madness. Close readings of the literary works emphasize the impact of madness on structural and formal elements including narrative perspective, sustained metaphors, and narrative time. In chapter one, I use the disability theory concepts of narrative prosthesis and aesthetic nervousness to read Jackson's The Haunting of Hill House. In chapter 2, I analyze Jackson's We Have Always Lived in the Castle to explore the concept of unreliable narration, observing similarities between the social model of disability and reader-centric theories of unreliable narration. In chapter 3, I explore unhealthy disability and medical treatment in the sustained metaphors of light and darkness in Plath's hospital stories, "Tongues of Stone," "Johnny Panic and the Bible of Dreams," and "The Daughters of Blossom Street." In chapter 4, I use disability history to read narratives of medical institutionalization in Plath's novel The Bell Jar. In chapter 5, I use Bambara's concept of "other kinds of intelligences" to develop a Black feminist methodology for reading mad intelligences in Bambara's novel The Salt Eaters. In the dissertation's conclusion, I note prejudice against madpersons in recent legal policies promoting involuntary psychiatric institutionalization, using Bambara's short story "The Hammer Man" to demonstrate the violence of such policies.

Les westerns de l’âge d’or étasunien (1948-1962) mettent en scène un "gender trouble" en créant des personnages de femmes et d’hommes qui empruntent les uns et les autres aux caractéristiques genrées associées par la société nord-américaine et occidentale en général aux genres binaires du féminin et du masculin. Ce trouble genré se développe entre autres par la volonté de trois hommes de recréer la cellule familiale nucléaire conventionnelle dans "Red River" (1948) de Howard Hawks, par le rapport de peur et d’oppression du groupe social sur les individus dans "High Noon" (1952) de Fred Zinnemann et "Johnny Guitar" (1954) de Nicholas Ray, ainsi que par la rencontre opposant l’homme de l’Est et l’homme de l’Ouest dont les idéologies et les valeurs divergent dans "The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance" (1962) de John Ford. / Golden Age American westerns movies (1948-1962) display "gender trouble" by creating male and female characters who borrow gendered characteristics from one another. In North American and Western societies en general, these characteristics are associated with binary feminine and masculine gender constructions. For instance, "gender trouble" develops in three men's attempt to recreate a conventional nuclear family cell in Howard Hawk's "Red River" (1948), in a social group's fearful and oppressive dynamic in Fred Zinnemann's "High Noon" (1952) and Nicholas Ray's "Johnny Guitar" (1954) and in the meeting between Eastern and Western men whose ideologies and values clash in John Ford's "The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance" (1962).

This dissertation examines the historical contexts, major themes, and archival practices of queercore, an anti-normative queer and punk subculture comprised of music, zines, film, art, literature and new media that was instigated in 1985 by Bruce LaBruce and G.B. Jones in Toronto, Ontario. Via their fanzine J.D.s., LaBruce and Jones declared “civil war” on the punk and gay and lesbian mainstreams and conjured queercore as a multimedia subculture situated in pointed opposition to the homophobia of mainline punk and the lifeless sexual politics and assimilationist tendencies of dominant gay and lesbian society. In the pages that follow, I engage wider histories of radical queer politics and punk aesthetics and values to reveal the generative and long-standing symbiosis between these two energies – a symbiosis that informs queercore, but that also extends beyond its temporal and material boundaries. Through close analysis of queercore films (e.g. No Skin Off My Ass, The Lollipop Generation, The Living End, By Hook or By Crook), music (e.g., Pansy Division, Tribe 8, Beth Ditto/The Gossip, Nomy Lamm) and zines (e.g., J.D.s, SCAB, Bimbox, Bamboo Girl, i’m so fucking beautiful), I establish queercore’s primary themes: explicit sexuality (the use of risky, erotic queer punk images and performances to undermine heteronormativity and confront accepted notions of gay and punk identity); imagined violence (the deployment of a threatened, as opposed to actualized, violence in the hopes of frightening and, thus, destabilizing powerful white, bourgeois, heterosexual masculinity); and bodily difference (the circulation of affirmative representations of marginalized queer bodies, and specifically those that are fat, disabled and/or gender non-normative). Finally, I conclude with an exploration of the institutions and individuals currently involved in queercore archival efforts, thus placing my project within a crucial lineage of subcultural preservation. Taken as a whole, this study asserts that queercore articulates and disseminates a set of alternative identities, aesthetics, politics and representations for queer folks to occupy and engage within social space, providing a dynamic anti-normative, anti-corporate, D.I.Y. (do-it-yourself) alternative to a consumer-capitalist hetero- and homo-normative mainstream. / text