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abstract: In contemporary Indian literature, the question over which sets of Indian identities are granted access to power is highly contested. Critics such as Kathleen Waller and Sara Schotland align power with the identity of the autonomous individual, whose rights and freedoms are supposedly protected by the state, while others like David Ludden and Sandria Freitag place power with those who become a part of group identities, either on the national or communal level. The work of contemporary Indian author Aravind Adiga attempts to address this question. While Adiga's first novel The White Tiger applies the themes and ideology of the worth of the individual from African American novelists Ralph Ellison, Richard Wright, and James Baldwin, Adiga's latest novel, Last Man in Tower, shifts towards a study of the consequences of colonialism, national identity, and the place of the individual within India in order to reveal a changing landscape of power and identity. Through a discussion of Adiga's collective writings, postcolonial theory, American literature, South Asian crime novels, contemporary Indian popular fiction, and some of the challenges facing Mumbai, I track Adiga's shifts and moments of growth between his two novels and evaluate Adiga's ultimate message about who holds power in Indian society: the individual or the community. / Dissertation/Thesis / M.A. English 2013

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In this essay, I examined the significance of graphic novels as polyvalent texts that hold the potential for creating an aesthetic sense of flow for readers and consumers. In building a justification for the rhetorical examination of comic book culture, I looked at Kenneth Burke's critique of art under capitalism in order to explore the dimensions between comic book creation, distribution, consumption, and reaction from fandom. I also examined Victor Turner's theoretical scope of flow, as an aesthetic related to ritual, communitas, and the liminoid. I analyzed the graphic novels Green Lantern: Rebirth and Y: The Last Man as case studies toward the rhetorical significance of retroactive continuity and the somatic potential of comic books to serve as equipment for living. These conclusions lay groundwork for multiple directions of future research.

The aim of this thesis is to interpret Jan Zahradnicek's spacious poem The Sign of Power. The interpretation crystallizes around the motifs of dehumanisation (connected with Nietzsche's motif of nihilism and of the last man) of a man, the loss of a word, discontinuity, the loss of time, the human face, nothingness (specific Nothingness) and the possibility of salvation, connected with an awakening of the sight. There are two semantic lines essential for enlightening these motifs: Dante's Divine Comedy and Picard's works of the late 40s. Zahradnicek wrote The Sign of Power during 1950-1951, at the time of his intense work on the translation of Dante's Divine Comedy. The purpose of the first part of this thesis is to illustrate how strongly the Divine Comedy influenced the key motifs of The Sign of Power. The purpose of the second part of the thesis is to uncover a new semantic context for the interpretation of Zahradnicek's poem; the works of Swiss essayist, philosopher and poet Max Picard, which were of great importance for Zahradnicek's poem. I see the exposition of Picard's specific grasp of the key modern phenomena, which penetrated to Zahradnicek's poem, as the further objective of the work. The thesis is guided by the fundamental question of The Sign of Power - "what happened with a man" -,...

Present thesis aims at revealing both touching points and different points of departure in Nietzsche's and Dostoevsky's concept of superman by using so called philosophical- anthropological approach to the questions matter. It takes into account not only complete context of oeuvre of both authors but also wider cultural and historical context of their time. Basic point of departure of this thesis is expectation of crucial position of man in the oeuvre of Nietzsche and Dostoevsky as well, both understanding man as essentially defined as free to choice. Analysis of characteristics defining essence of man leads after to elaboration of idea of superman - conclusion of final judgement of human beings' essential characteristics and visions of future principle of man. Having closely analysed particular landmarks on the way from man to superman in the form of particular types of relations to each person's being and freedom - last man, upper man and superman (or common and exceptional man) - we are arriving to systematic comparison of motif of superman in the thinking of both authors, to associated concepts (negative and positive freedom, suppression of nihilism and so on) and finally to its general meaning. KEY WORDS F. Nietzsche, F. M. Dostoevsky, superman, freedom, nihilism, upper man, last man, will to...