The last one hundred years of American literature have witnessed the development of three elemental movements: naturalism, in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, represented by such authors as Stephen Crane and Theodore Dreiser; nihilism, predominant in the 1920's and 1930's, represented best by Ernest Hemmingway; and the post-World War II literature which will be called literature of the quest, represented by such authors as Saul Bellow, William Styron, Philip Roth, John Updike, and others. The first chapter will show briefly the historical development of these three movements in American literature, their distinctive features, and their relationship to American moral and social values. Chapters Two through Four will analyze in detail the three distinctive aspects of this emerging literary form--the literature of the quest. The last chapter will focus on one novel, Letting Go, by Philip Roth, as an example of this literature.

The objective of this bachelor thesis was to examine and analyse the psychological factors that were important in mediation processes on local, regional, national and international levels in Ethiopia. The research questions were what these psychological factors were and how they affected the mediation process. A qualitative, semi-structured method was used and six informants with experience as mediators have been interviewed in Ethiopia. The psychological factors identified were self-esteem, losing face, ability of letting go, and mirroring. The conclusion was that this research confirmed the findings of much of the previous research, in regards to the psychological factors active in the process. The research also revealed that the psychological factors needed to be considered in the light of the Ethiopian culture and it´s collective nature.

Actuellement, la musicologie de l’improvisation s’appuie pour l’essentiel sur une lecture intentionnelle du projet artistique ; notre thèse propose une approche différente, en regardant l’improvisation comme un processus complexe, comportant une dimension auto-organisée, à l’image des comportements collectifs observés dans les sociétés animales. Ceux-ci résultent de composantes aléatoires, de nombreuses interactions, de logiques d’amplification et de processus non linéaires. Les outils et les concepts mis au point à l’interface physique-biologie pour comprendre ces dynamiques naturelles nous permettent de construire une démarche de modélisation propre à la musicologie, qui décrit les actes de l’improvisateur à partir d’intuitions musicales pour analyser l’interaction entre ce qui participe de savoir pré-construits et de l’intention, d’une part, et ce qui peut être compris comme un réglage de l’aléatoire, d’autre part. Cette démarche de modélisation est mise en oeuvre sur deux transcriptions du pianiste américain Brad Mehldau. Pour la première (Am Zauberberg), la démarche itérative de modélisation est exposée en détail, partant du modèle le plus pauvre jusqu’à la nécessité d’incorporer le geste de la main. Pour la seconde (Bard), cette démarche est étendue à la conception harmonique, chaque voix d’accompagnement étant conçue comme mue d’un mouvement propre au sein de contraintes d’espace donnée par les autres voix. Nous concluons en ouvrant des perspectives de possibles expérimentations inspirées par ces modèles, du côté de l’enseignement de l’improvisation ou de celui du musicien cherchant à incorporer à son jeu une dimension de lâcher-prise qui est au cœur du processus d’improvisation. / Currently, the musicology of improvisation essentially highlights the intentional part of an artistic project ; our thesis starts with a quite distinct approach, looking at improvisation as a complex process, with a self-organization dimension inspired of the way biologists analyse collective behaviors in animal societies. These behaviors are todays perceived as the result of combined statistical processes at the individual scale, with numerous inter-individual interactions, amplifications, and non linear loops. Such an analysis of observed natural phenomena led biologists and physicists to introduce and set-up concepts and tools that we use here to propose a modeling approach adapted to Musicology. We start with musical intuitions to propose a description of the perceptions and actions of the improviser that puts forward the deep interaction between what is made of pre-builded knowledge and intention, on one side, and of « tuning random behaviors », on the other. This modeling approach is carried out on two transcriptions of the american pianist Brad Mehldau. With the first piece (Am Zauberberg), we fully describe the iterative process leading from the poorest model to the need of incorporating hand-gestures. With the second piece (Bard), we dress the question of improvising harmony, each voice being conceived as animated of its own displacement rules, but spatially constrained by the others. We conclude by opening up prospects of experiments inspired by these models, some concerning the teaching of improvisation, others aiming at better understanding the process by which a musician seeks to incorporate to his play more « letting go », at the heart of what improvisation is about.

The aim of my project was to find different ways to make playing easier and freer. What does it actually mean to let go and what could help to achieve more secure and relaxed feeling in your body when playing your instrument? I collected and experimented with exercises from a book The Inner Game of Music and Alexander Technique. I found out that knowing more precisely what to focus on and being more aware of the body can have a great effect. I discovered more gentle ways to teach myself and learned about the importance of how we are treating and using our bodies during practicing and in everyday situations. / <p>The sounding part consists of the following recording; Esa-Pekka Salonen: Pentatonic Étude.The recording has been archived. </p>

A text about the difficulties of letting go of worries and forgiving oneself. This is discussed through the practice of mindfulness and the ritual as an artistic process. Dedicating time and acknowledging the present generates presence, visible in the artistic objects. The method of Collage reflects this through piece by piece building stronger artwork and a stronger self.

Je n’ai pas de rapport serein à la peinture. Si elle constitue un espace d’expression et d’appartenance à soi-même sans limites, j’appréhende l’immensité de cet espace. Où aller ? De quelle manière ? Comment surmonter les hésitations ? Comment être sûre de prendre les bonnes décisions ? Quelle piste ou quelle exploration privilégier ? La pratique de la peinture relève d’une immersion. Au sein de l'atelier, au cœur du travail du peintre, se jouent de multiples opérations plastiques et mentales spécifiques. Une dynamique est en jeu, celle d’une marche vers de nouveaux possibles au sein de laquelle s’intercalent des choix et des prises de risque. C'est ici, dans cette tension entre ce qui n'est pas anticipé et ce qui tente de se déterminer que mon travail pictural existe. Comme il est fait d’errances, d’expériences, d’avancées mais aussi de pannes, j’ai souhaité m’attacher à l’étude des difficultés inhérentes au travail de peintre. Quelles en sont les causes ? Comment les processus créatifs sont-ils impactés et quelles remédiations peuvent-elles être envisagées de la part des artistes ? L’hypothèse de cette thèse est que l’informatique constitue une réponse possible à la recherche de lâcher-prise de l’artiste dans sa pratique picturale. Si la photographie, le cinéma, ou la vidéo ont chacun, à un moment donné de leur histoire, interrogé leurs relations à la peinture, qu’en est-il aujourd’hui pour l'informatique ? Comment informatique et peinture partagent-elles leur contemporanéité au sein de la création artistique ? Comment y dialoguent-elles ? Sous quels angles l’informatique soulage-t-elle le peintre et peut-elle conduire à une forme de lâcher-prise ? Dans la perspective où « la » peinture échappe aujourd’hui à toute tentative de définition exhaustive, nous verrons comment l'informatique appréhendée comme outil mais aussi comme médium du peintre poussera à reconnaître la présence renouvelée, écartelée mais flagrante de la peinture sur de nouveaux supports et à la définir comme immatérielle et dynamique. Les expériences menées au sein de mon travail artistique ainsi que les enquêtes de terrain menées auprès d’artistes peintres exploitant l’informatique nous amèneront à élargir notre compréhension du lâcher-prise mais aussi à éprouver les limites de l’alliance technique. / I do not have a serene relationship with painting. While it creates a space for self-expression and a sense of belonging to oneself without limits, I fear the immensity of that space. Where to go? By which means? How to overcome hesitations? How to be sure to make the right decisions? Which paths to follow, which leads to explore? The practice of painting is an immersion. Within the studio and at the heart of a painter's work lie a number of unique plastic and mental processes. A dynamic is at stake, allowing a step towards new possibilities where making choices and taking risks are intertwined. There, in the tension between the unanticipated and what is tentatively determined, is where my pictorial work exists. Because of the wandering, the experiments, the breakthroughs but also the failures, I wanted to focus on the difficulties inherent to the painter’s work. What are their causes? How is the creative process impacted and what remedies can artists turn to? The hypothesis of this thesis is that computer and digital processing is a possible answer to the artist’s quest of letting go in his or her pictorial practice. If photography, film or video each have, at some point in their history, questioned their relationship to painting, what about today’s computer-assisted art? How do digital technologies and painting concurrently exist and share the artistic scene? How do they interact? In which particular ways does digital processing relieve the painter and enables a form of letting go? Admittedly, no definition of "painting" as we know it today can be exhaustive. However, we will take a look at how computers – apprehended as tools, but also as a medium for the painter – make it possible to identify the renewed, distorted, yet flagrant presence of painting within new artistic mediums and to redefine it as immaterial and dynamic. The experiments carried out in my artistic work as well as the surveys conducted with painters using computer-assisted techniques, will lead to a broader understanding of the process of letting go but also to experience the limits of the technical alliance.