Text in English / This study offers a fine-grained analysis of James Cameron’s film, Avatar (2009), on several theoretical fronts to provide a view of the film from a cognitive cultural studies perspective. The insights gained from cognitive theory are used to situate the debate by indicating the value cognitive theories have in cultural criticism. The critical discourse analysis of Avatar that results is a vehicle for the central concern of this study, which is to understand the diverse, often contradictory, meaning-making exhibited by Avatar audiences. A focus on the construction of empathic responses to the film’s messages investigates the success of this polysemy. Ihe central propositions of the study are that meanings and interpretations of the experience of viewing Avatar are made discursively; they are situated in definable traditions, mores and values; and this meaning-making takes place in a cognitive framework which allows for the technical reproduction and reception of the experience while providing powerful, emerging and cognitively plausible narratives. In an attempt to situate the film’s commercial success and its plethora of awards, including an Oscar for best art direction, the analysis takes a critical view of Cameron’s use of cultural stereotypes and the framing of the exotic other, and considers the continuing development of these elements over the whole series and product line or, as Henry Jenkins (2007) defines it, “transmedia”. In drawing the theoretical boundaries of the methodologies used in this study and in arguing for their complementarities, the study contributes to a renewal of Raymond Williams’ (1961) mostly forgotten claim of the cross-disciplinary cognitive dimension of cultural studies and demonstrates an affirmation of this formulation as cognitive cultural studies. / Art History, Visual Arts and Musicology / M.A. (Art History)

Presenting and applying an ideal developmental model for the classical existential hero, or main character, provides a functional paradigm for discrimination between essentialist and existential texts. In particular it allows for degrees of fine existential differentiation amongst the hero's acts of any literary work. The paradigm does so by making it possible clearly to discern and describe the "recuperation" that a reader must do to render an "impaired" text intelligible. The paradigm covers four phases of transformational activity by the hero, more or less successfully negotiated, depending on the given work under analysis; vacillation/bad faith; crisis/arrest; abrogation/nothingness; and nihilation/project choice. Only one of the three novels so analyzed, Camus' The Stranger, contains a hero, Meursault, who is able to engage this paradigm successfully. The other two novels, not generally associated with existentialism, Heller's Something Happened and Chopin's The Awakening, reveal important and explicable variations of the model, but neither finally gives an exemplary authentic hero. The value of this paradigm is the way it functions as a dynamic heuristics, as a template, to isolate and render meaningful the dimensions of the career of each main character of these works as an "existential murderer." After an introduction of the paradigm, the thesis analyzes the tragic suicide of Mrs. Edna Pontellier, the comic infanticide of Bob Slocum, and the tragicomic homicide of Meursault.

This thesis is divided into two main parts. The first, comprising the three initial chapters, looks, in chapter one, at the specifically German origins of the Bildungsroman, its distinctive features, and the difficulties surrounding its transplantation into the literary contexts of other countries. Particular attention is paid to the ethical dimension of the genre, i.e. to the relation between the individual self and the exterior world, and how it affects individual formation. The focus then shifts to American literature, and the term 'narrative of initiation' is recommended as a credible alternative to 'Bildungsroman'. Allowing for similarities between them, it is none the less strongly suggested that the Bildungsroman of German origin and the American narrative of initiation should be seen as being intrinsically different, principally because of the different cultural backgrounds that shaped them. Several features of the theme of initiation are postulated as decisive factors in the discrepancies between the initiatory narrative and the Bildungsroman. Analysis of six texts - three of each literary tradition - follows, to provide support for the theoretical discussion of the terms introduced in chapter one. Three Bildungsromane are considered in the second chapter, namely Goethe's Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre, Stifter's Der Nachsommer and Keller's Der grune Heinrich, and three narratives of initiation in chapter three: Twain's The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Crane's The Red Badge of Courage and Anderson's Winesburg, Ohio. Their relevance to the tradition of German and American fiction as a whole and as precursors of Mann's Der Zauberberg and Hemingway's The Nick Adams Stories is considered. A direct comparison between Mann's and Hemingway's texts constitutes the second part of this thesis, wholly contained in chapter four. In addition to a comprehensive critical reading of both narratives, the contemporaneity of Der Zauberberg and The Nick Adams Stories is taken into account, and consequently special consideration is given to the texts' close relation with the cultural and historical realities of the early twentieth century, particularly the impact of the First World War. With the assistance of Jung's theories, an increased awareness of death and of the dark side of the psyche - though dealt with differently in both texts - is put forward as a significant factor in the deviation of Der Zauberberg and The Nick Adams Stories from the traditions of the Bildungsroman and of the narrative of initiation. This departure leads to a re-appraisal of the relation between the protagonists and their society, and to a new ethical attitude that presupposes different, more modem conceptions of what Bildung and initiation represent in the context of the early twentieth century. How and why they changed and if they survived as literary notions are questions this thesis attempts to answer.

Notre recherche a examiné un phénomène communicationnel susceptible d’éclairer le processus de la modernisation de la société roumaine au tournant des XIXe et XXe siècles :il s’agit de la transformation de l’édition d’une société manufacturière dans « une proto-industrie culturelle » et de la création d’une sphère publique dans ce monde en constante redéfinition. Le rapport entre la croissance des biens culturels produits par les éditeurs et celle de l’intérêt des individus pour la lecture est le centre de notre recherche. Autrement dit, nous avons évalué la fonction sociale de la littérature roumaine et le rôle des livres sur le marché des produits culturels et informationnels. L’intervalle relativement long, de 1880 à 1914, nous a permis de confronter les données spécifiques à la production de littérature d’une manière diachronique, en analysant les stratégies économiques et politiques des acteurs et aussi les conflits résultant des rapports de pouvoir entre ceux-ci. L’analyse des conditions de ces mutations a déterminé les rôles sociaux des instances, les dialogues, les confrontations entre les acteurs et les publics. Nous avons identifié une crise de la littérature roumaine originelle qui a mobilisé une sorte d’internationalisation de la production littéraire. La concurrence des biens, des marchandises culturelles « importées » de l’Occident sous la forme des traductions ou des reformulations est l’un des « potentiateurs » de la création littéraire autochtone. <p>Les lectures croisées de documents (plans éditoriaux, correspondance, presse, journaux intimes et professionnels, etc.) et de sources secondaires (histoires littéraires, travaux de critique, manuels, etc.) nous ont permis de suivre l’évolution des intentions, des objectifs, des réalités et des conséquences sur ce qu’on considère l’histoire officielle de la littérature. Les différences entre les étapes démontrent, d’une manière assez exacte, les degrés de pouvoir des forces impliquées dans la production du canon littéraire ;elles illustrent aussi l’emprise croissante de l’idéologie sur le champ culturel à partir de la fin du XIXe siècle. L’analyse diachronique des parutions éditoriales à travers les 34 années étudiées reflète les changements des politiques culturelles de l’Etat. L’analyse appliquée à la politique éducationnelle de la discipline littérature roumaine nous a permis d’envisager une modification de la stratégie de l’Etat dans ce domaine et de questionner ses effets sur la création du patrimoine national. <p>Le littéraire, acteur central de notre recherche, nous a donné la possibilité d’instrumentaliser plusieurs notions appartenant à l’histoire du livre et de l’édition. De cette manière, les tensions présentes à l’intérieur de l’analyse historique de la littérature ont été transformées en sujet de réflexion, voire de rétablissement de certaines positions de domination. Le concept d’identité bibliographique est convoqué pour réaliser une lecture diachronique d’une époque. Nous avons identifié et analysé toute une série de problématiques passionnantes, telles les relations entre les instances impliquées dans la production, la circulation et la réception des livres littéraires durant la période 1880-1914.<p><p>The PhD thesis entitled The Romanian Literary Identity. Writers, Publishers and Readers in the Late Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries examines a communication phenomenon, constituting a scientific enterprise that aims to clarify some aspects relating to the modernization of Romanian society during the Belle Époque: we have in mind the transformation of the “publishing house” from a business dealing with handmade items into a “proto-industrial culture” and the creation of a public sphere in a world constantly seeking to define itself. The relationship between the increasing number of cultural goods produced by publishers and the growing interest in reading among the people represents a main focus of this research. In other words, we tried to assess the social function of Romanian literature and the role of books on the market for cultural and informational products. By choosing a fairly long period of time (1880-1914), we were able to confront the data pertaining to literary production in a diachronic manner, analyzing the economic and political strategies of the “actors”, as well as the conflicts arising from the power relations between those actors. The analysis of the circumstances surrounding the transformations undergone by the Romanian cultural area enabled us to determine more clearly the social roles of the participants, the interactions and confrontations between actors and audiences. We could identify a crisis of the original Romanian literature, a crisis that fostered the “internationalization” of the literary production. The competition between cultural goods “imported” from the West in the form of translations or adaptations was one of the factors enhancing local literary production. <p>The cross-reading of documents (editorial plans, correspondence, press, personal and professional diaries etc.) allowed us to evaluate the evolution of the intentions, goals, realities and consequences of the official history of Romanian literature (which has its origins in this period). The differences between these stages revealed the power statuses of the forces involved in producing the literary canon; they also showed the growing influence of ideology on the cultural field since the end of the nineteenth century. The diachronic analysis of the titles published in the 34 years under scrutiny reflects the changes ocurring in the cultural policies of the state. The educational strategies concerning Romanian literature as a field of study revealed the state’s attitude change towards this area, which enabled us to assess the effects on the development of the “national literary heritage”.<p>The literary field, the central actor of our research, opened the possibility to operationalize several concepts pertaining to the history of book publishing. Thus, the tensions existing within the historical analysis of literature were transformed into a subject of reflection, even re-establishing some positions of dominance. The notion of bibliographical identity was employed in order to do a diachronic reading of the era.<p>The research conducted for this dissertation gave us the opportunity to identify and analyze a range of exciting issues, such as the relationship between the participants involved in the production, dissemination and reception of literary works between 1880 and 1914.<p> / Doctorat en Langues et lettres / info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished

Disempowered Women? A Feminist Response to female Characters in Malory, Tennyson and Bradley takes an in-depth look at Elayne, Gwenyvere and Morgan of the Arthurian legend. The characters are examined within their contemporary context and from our modem perspective as portrayed in Malory, Tennyson, and Marion Zimmer Bradley. Patriarchy, closely connected with the Christian doctrines, is singled out as the main means of propagating women's disempowerment. The inquiry considers different ways in which fictional texts have contributed to creating false perceptions amongst our contemporary audience, about the reality of women's lives in the Middle Ages. It further examines the validity of the assumption that literary women are not real, but mere representations of male ideals about women's role and place in society. Issues of gender equality are raised and the author concludes that the literature studied assigns definite, gender-specific roles to men and women. The work also debates the perceived misogyny of the male authors: is it a conscious act or a reflection of their contemporary society's concerns? / English Studies / M. A. (English)

NOTE FROM THE LIBRARY: PLEASE CONTACT THE AUTHOR AT indisunflower@yahoo.com OR CONSULT THE LIBRARY FOR THE FULL TEXT OF THIS THESIS.... This thesis investigates the trajectory traced from Sarah Baartman, a Khoisan woman exploited in Europe during the nineteenth century, to a contemporary writing workshop with circumcised, immigrant West African women in Harlem New York by way of a selection of African women's memoirs. The selected African women's texts used in this work create a new testimony of speech, fragmenting a historically dominant Euro-American gaze on African women's bodies. The excerpts form a discursive space for reclaiming self and as well as a defiant challenge to Western porno-erotic voyeurism. The central premise of this thesis is that while investigating Eurocentric (a)historical narratives of Baartman, one finds an implicitly racist and sexist development of European language employed not solely with Baartman, but contemporaneously upon the bodies of Black women of Africa and its Diaspora, focusing predominantly on the "anomaly of their hypersexual" genitals. This particular language applied to the bodies of Black women extends into the discourse of Western feminist movements against African female circumcision in the 21st century. Nawal el Saadawi, Egyptian writer and activist and Aman, a Somali exile, write autobiographical texts which implode a western "silent/uninformed circumcised African woman" stereotype. It is through their documented life stories that these African women claim their bodies and articulate nationalist and cultural solidarity. This work shows that Western perceptions of Female Circumcision and African women will be juxtaposed with African women's perceptions of themselves. Ultimately, with the Nitiandika Writers Workshop in Harlem New York, the politicized outcome of the women who not only write their memoirs but claim a vibrant sexual (not mutilated or deficient) identity in partnership with their husbands, ask why Westerners are more interested in their genitals than how they are able to provide food, shelter and education for the their families, as immigrants to New York. The works of Saadawi, Aman and the Nitandika writers disrupt and ultimately destroy this trajectory of dehumanization through a direct movement from an assumed silence (about their bodies, their circumcisions and their status as women in Africa) to a directed, historically and culturally grounded "alter" speech of celebration and liberation. / English Studies / D. Litt. et Phil.(English)

Proceeding from the premise that the meaning of performances flows from contextual, textual, and nonverbal elements, this dissertation explores layers of meaning arising from performances of selected South African struggle songs, poems and plays. In particular, it focuses on performances of the Mayibuye Cultural Group which functioned as an adaptive mechanism in the changing sociopolitical landscape of the 1980s and early 1990s, and on contemporary performances. The analysis of the songs, poems and play underscores the importance of nonverbal elements for the interpretation of performances, and proposes that performances functioned as debate and as a discursive presence in the public sphere. In particular, the performances glorified a masculine conception of the struggle and of South African society which highlighted the fragile gender politics in South Africa, and functioned as a vibrant mechanism for the expression of sanctioned criticism especially for the marginalised and for those at the fringes of power. / Anthropology / M.A. (Anthropology)

The reading of selected literary texts in this thesis traces the changes from a divinely ordered world of stability (Thomas Mann's Bud<lenbrooks) to surroundings characterized by insecurity (William Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury) to an unstable environment giving rise to largely futile attempts at finding answers to seemingly illogical questions (Thomas Pynchon's The Crying of Lot 49). As a product of the accelerated speed of technological progression and the information revolution in the twentieth century, man is more often than not incapable of adjusting to changed circumstances in a seemingly hostile environment. Indeed, instability and unpredictability are external factors determining the sense of insecurity and uncertainty characterising the 'world' depicted in the literary texts under consideration. For this reason judicious use will be made of philosophical and psychoanalytical concepts, based, amongst others, on Nietzschean and Freudian theories, to explain the disintegration of families, the anguish experienced by individuals or, indeed, the shifting identities informing the portrayal of character in selected literary texts. / Afrikaans and Theory of Literature / D.Litt. et Phil. (Theory of Literature)

In this studyi apply a feminist-narratological grid to the works under discussion. I show how narration is used as strategy to highlight issues of concern to women, hereby attempting to make a contribution in the relatively new field of feminist narratology. Chapter One provides an analysis of Pride and Prejudice as an example of a feminist statement by Jane Austen. The use of omniscient narration and its ironic possibilities are offset against the central characters' perceptions, presented by means of free indirect style. Chapter Two examines The Tenant of Wildfell Hall as a critique of Wuthering Heights, both in its use of narrative frames and in its at times moralistic comment. The third and fourth chapters focus on Charlotte Bronte. Her ambivalences about the situation of women, be they writers, narrators or characters, are explored. These are seen to be revealed in her narrative strategies, particularly in her attainment of closure, or its lack. Chapter Five explores the increasing sophistication of the narrative techniques of Elizabeth Gaskell, whose early work Mary Barton is shown to have narrative inconsistencies as opposed to her more complex last novel Wives and Daughters. Finally, I conclude that while the authors under discussion use divergent methods, certain commonalities prevail. Among these are the presentation of alternatives women have within their constraining circumstances and the recognition of their moral accountability for the choices they make. / English Studies / D. Litt. et Phil. (English)

xiv, 234 p. : ill. / The twentieth-century project of American rhetorician Kenneth Burke, grounded in a magic-based theory of language, reveals a path to the origins of what I am going to call occult invention. The occult, which I define as a symbol set of natural terms derived from supernatural terms, employs a method of heuresis based on a metaphor-like process I call analogic extension. Traditional invention fell from use shortly after the Liberal Arts reforms of Peter Ramus, around 1550. Occult invention emerged nearly simultaneously, when Early Modern British authors began using occult symbols as tropes in what I refer to as the Occult Mode. I use six of these authors--George Chapman, William Shakespeare, John Donne, Abraham Cowley, John Dryden, and Jonathan Swift--as examples of how occult invention arises. In appropriating occult symbolism, authors in the Occult Mode began using the invention methods of the occult arts of magic, alchemy, astrology, and cabala to derive new meanings, transform language, develop characters and plots, and reorient social perspectives. As we learn in tracking Burke's project, occult invention combines the principles of Aristotle's rhetoric and metaphysics with the techniques and principles of the occult arts. Occult invention fell from use around the end of the eighteenth century, but its rhetorical influence reemerged through the work of Burke. In this study I seek to contextualize and explicate some of the literary sources and rhetorical implications of occult invention as an emergent field for further research. / Committee in charge: Dianne Dugaw， Co-Chairperson； John T. Gage， Co-Chairperson； Kenneth Calhoon， Member； Steven Shankman， Member； Jeffrey Librett，Outside Member