No description available.

No description available.

[pt] A tese busca reunir um corpus de reflexão sobre a experiência da escrita pensada por escritoras mulheres. A escolha das autoras se estabeleceu através do nosso interesse em pensar a relação entre as experiências do escrever e a da loucura para mulheres que escrevem. Escritoras como Alfonsina Storni e Marguerite Duras figuram na base reflexiva da questão que aqui buscará se desenvolver a partir dos seguintes eixos: (a) no esforço de uma releitura crítica de Silvia Federici que pense sobre a opressão que o estabelecimento do capitalismo exerceu sobre as mulheres, unindo a opressão socioeconômica à opressão subjetiva e corporal (técnicas de reprodução e direito à sexualidade e ao uso do próprio corpo); e seus efeitos sobre a experiência da escrita, sua impossibilidade, estrangulamento e loucura; (b) uma releitura da psicanálise pelo feminismo contemporâneo, onde se buscará pensar como o constructo loucura feminina está relacionado diretamente à necessidade dessa exclusão; (c) como elaborações teóricas da crítica literária feminista pensam as especificidades da escrita de mulheres, tanto pelo viés das condições materiais da escrita quanto pelo próprio fazer literário, que convoca um corpo que escreve / um corpo-de-mulher que escreve. A partir dessa empreitada, busca-se elaborar a leitura de algumas obras da argentina Alejandra Pizarnik e da brasileira Maura Lopes Cançado, em suas fulgurações de indomabilidade da língua/corpo, na força que faz escapar a normatividade da escrita, seu território da Lei, em direção (ou em devir) a uma performatividade da língua indomável: trata-se não de escrever sobre a loucura mas sim de fazer enlouquecer a Letra. / [en] This thesis seeks to gather a corpus of thoughts about writing experiences from women writers. The choice of authors was established through our interest in the relationship between the experiences of writing and of madness for women who write. Writers such as Alfonsina Storni and Marguerite Duras figure at the basis of these reflexions, sought to be developed from the following axes: (a) in an effort toward a critical reading of Silvia Federici, to think the essential role that oppression of women had on the establishment of capitalism, linking socioeconomic oppression to subjective and corporal oppression (reproduction techniques, the right to sexuality and the use of one s own body); and its effects on the experience of writing, its impossibility, strangulation and madness; (b) a rereading of psychoanalysis by contemporary feminism, through which we will try to think how the construct feminine madness is directly related to the necessity of this exclusion; (c) how certain feminist literary theory thinks the specificities of women s writing, both from the bias of the material conditions of writing and from the literary work itself, which summons a body that writes / a woman s body that writes. From then, we try to elaborate a reading of some of the Argentinean Alejandra Pizarnik s and the Brazilian Maura Lopes Cançado s works, their indomability fulgurating on language / body, the force that helps writing s normativity escape its territory of the Law, towards (or becoming) a tameless language and its performativity: it matters not writing about madness but driving crazy the Letter.

<p>By applying Canadian literary theory, museum theory, and material culture theory to 20th and 21st century Canadian literature, I argue that physical objects reflect Canada's continued engagement in colonial practices and the nation's resistance to acknowledging these practices. The act of selecting and including (which is also necessarily an act of excluding) objects in personal and institutional collections speak to the anxiety of the Euro-Canadian settler that is produced by a conflicting sense of privilege and colonial complicity. Collecting is a means of negotiating self- and shared knowledge, and by re-collecting and repatriating those things that haunt us we come closer to recognizing ourselves. Re-reading ourselves through objects will allow us to confront this anxiety and its implications, to destabilize the Euro-Canadian settler-as-victim, and to move forward as a nation.</p> / Master of Arts (MA)

<p dir="ltr">When one thinks of the medieval past, one might think of knights with their shining armor and swords; these are warriors. My dissertation seeks to examine and expose how “warriors” are gendered as masculine; a person or character categorized as a warrior might be assumed to be a man unless otherwise specified to be a “woman warrior.” The need for the qualifying adjective (“woman” or “female”) illustrates that the maleness of warriorhood and violence is understood as implicit. This governing assumption affects how women’s actions, particularly women’s violent actions, are interpreted. This dissertation takes women’s violence as a starting point, examining characters from Judith to Chaucer’s Dido. I show how and why the violence these women enact cannot be relegated to, say, maternal instinct or spirituality. The spiritual warrior is herself impressive, of course; she is a tool, a weapon of God, through whom God fights. The idea of the spiritual warrior then allows for discussions of women without painting them as inherently violent or aggressive. Instead, the spiritual warrior is the martyr, an extension of maternal instincts and the idea that women are caretakers and, when necessary, protectors. But these self-sacrificial ideals, often associated with maternity, are not, nor should they be, a requirement for womanhood.</p><p dir="ltr">I argue that in order to create a capacious enough definition of “woman” and even femininity, we must prize definitions of femininity from the grip of the patriarchy. What if we took these women on their own terms, instead? I seek to do exactly this: to examine, throughout this dissertation, both the ways that violent women act and what they say, without considering how their behavior might, nonetheless, be understood to conform to limiting ideas of femininity (such as the virgin or the whore). I thereby invite us to think about what it means when violent women enact their will on the world; and I also attend to the physical, in addition to the spiritual, effects of this violence (like killing someone). My work suggests that, in order to take gender seriously, we must pay attention to these moments when women hurt or kill either someone else or themselves.</p>

The primary research strategy of this study was to elicit meaningful answers from viewers by means of a focus-group procedure; this is a method associated with qualitative research (see Creswell, 1998; Berg & Lune, 2011) The group consisted of ten adults, whose visual literacy in terms of narrative films, was described as high (they frequently watch films at home, or in the theatre). The researcher acted as the moderator; and a set of semi-structured questions, based on meanings attached to camera-angle codes as defined by Mascelli, were answered by the participants. The codification scheme of Mascelli was applied to the unconventional camera angles in Avatar and The English Patient. These were compared with the viewers’ responses. Finally, the results were interpreted, in order to establish whether a meaningful relationship exists between the viewers’ responses and the interpretation of unconventional camera angles by such a seminal figure as Joseph V. Mascelli. The literature study focused on a media aesthetic explanation of cinematography, which included media aesthetics theory, framing, and composition, as well as the general codes and conventions relevant to cinematography. The literature overview includes a study of books, academic articles, internet sources, legislation, and training videos. A Nexus and EbscoHost search (Academic Search Premier and Jstor) was conducted on cinematography in general, and on camera angles in particular. Chapter 5 indicates the viewers’ overall interpretations of the unconventional camera angles used in Avatar and The English Patient. The graphs in Chapter 5 indicate that the viewers found the unconventional camera angles used in the films to represent the meaning of the shots appropriately, and that they understood why each unconventional camera angle had been used. The viewers’ responses correspond with the meanings of the unconventional camera angles, as stated by Mascelli. To ensure the effectiveness of a film and the accurate representation of the meanings of camera angles and camera sizes, the way it is described by Mascelli should ideally be taken into consideration by all future producers. Mascelli’s descriptions of camera angles and camera sizes, combined with the media aesthetics, as described by Zettl – when successfully applied – could lead to the production of a good quality film and images within the film. / MA (Communication Studies), North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2014

The primary research strategy of this study was to elicit meaningful answers from viewers by means of a focus-group procedure; this is a method associated with qualitative research (see Creswell, 1998; Berg & Lune, 2011) The group consisted of ten adults, whose visual literacy in terms of narrative films, was described as high (they frequently watch films at home, or in the theatre). The researcher acted as the moderator; and a set of semi-structured questions, based on meanings attached to camera-angle codes as defined by Mascelli, were answered by the participants. The codification scheme of Mascelli was applied to the unconventional camera angles in Avatar and The English Patient. These were compared with the viewers’ responses. Finally, the results were interpreted, in order to establish whether a meaningful relationship exists between the viewers’ responses and the interpretation of unconventional camera angles by such a seminal figure as Joseph V. Mascelli. The literature study focused on a media aesthetic explanation of cinematography, which included media aesthetics theory, framing, and composition, as well as the general codes and conventions relevant to cinematography. The literature overview includes a study of books, academic articles, internet sources, legislation, and training videos. A Nexus and EbscoHost search (Academic Search Premier and Jstor) was conducted on cinematography in general, and on camera angles in particular. Chapter 5 indicates the viewers’ overall interpretations of the unconventional camera angles used in Avatar and The English Patient. The graphs in Chapter 5 indicate that the viewers found the unconventional camera angles used in the films to represent the meaning of the shots appropriately, and that they understood why each unconventional camera angle had been used. The viewers’ responses correspond with the meanings of the unconventional camera angles, as stated by Mascelli. To ensure the effectiveness of a film and the accurate representation of the meanings of camera angles and camera sizes, the way it is described by Mascelli should ideally be taken into consideration by all future producers. Mascelli’s descriptions of camera angles and camera sizes, combined with the media aesthetics, as described by Zettl – when successfully applied – could lead to the production of a good quality film and images within the film. / MA (Communication Studies), North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2014

Victorian society had strict written and unwritten laws about what was permissible in terms of personal relationships. Anglican patriarchal church values governed behaviour between the classes and enforced codes of conduct on gender related boundaries of private individuals. Society subscribed to the traditional family of man, woman and children in the context of marriage. Homosexuality amongst men was punishable by prison. Government and religion preached Christian morality, yet the number of prostitutes had never been greater. This dissertation explores the problems of a pro-homosexual and anti-establishment Victorian author writing about human relationships forbidden by society. It exposes the consequences suffered by Oscar Wilde due to his investigative insights into the `Other' in the context of individual rights of preference in regard to sexual orientation, as expressed in selected texts, and his resolution of conflict, in De Profundis. / English Studies / MA (English)

This thesis will explore how writers of nineteenth-century Irish horror fiction, namely short stories and novels, used their works to express the social, cultural, and political events of the period. My thesis will employ a New Historicist approach to discuss the effects of colonialism on the writings, as well as archetypal criticism to analyse the mythic origins of the relevant metaphors. The structuralism of Tzvetan Todorov will be used to discuss the notion of the works' appeal as supernatural or possibly realistic works. The theory of Mikhail Bakhtin is used to discuss the writers' linguistic choices because such theory focuses on how language can lead to conflicts amongst social groups. The introduction is followed by Chapter One, "Ireland as England's Fantasy." This chapter discusses Ireland's literary stereotype as a fantasyland. The chapter also gives an overview of Ireland's history of occupation and then contrasts the bucolic, magical Ireland of fiction and the bleak social conditions of much of nineteenth-century Ireland. Chapter Two, "Mythic Origins", analyses the use of myth in nineteenth-century horror stories. The chapter discusses the merging of Christianity and Celtic myth; I then discuss the early Irish belief in evil spirits in myths that eventually inspired horror literature. Chapter Three, "Church versus Big House, Unionist versus Nationalist," analyses how the conflicts of Church/Irish Catholicism vs. Big House/Anglo-Irish landlordism, proBritish Unionist vs. pro-Irish Nationalist are manifested in the tales. In this chapter, I argue that many Anglo-Irish writers present stern anti-Catholic attitudes, while both Anglo-Irish and Catholic writers use the genre as political propaganda. Yet the authors tend to display Home Rule or anti-Home Rule attitudes rather than religious loyalties in their stories. The final chapter of the thesis, "A Heteroglossia of British and Irish Linguistic and Literary Forms," deals with the use of language and national literary styles in Irish literature of this period. I discuss Bakhtin's notion of heteroglossia and its applications to the Irish novel; such a discussion because nineteenth-century Ireland was linguistically Balkanised, with Irish Gaelic, Hibemo-English, and British English all in use. This chapter is followed by a conclusion. / English / M. Lit. et Phil. (English)

Alan Sokal has questioned the postmodern assertion that 'science is ... a "myth'', a "narration" ... a "social construction'" (1998: x). This dissertation examines his reasons for rejecting this allegedly postmodern declaration. Firstly, it suggests that the basis for Sol'1ll's contention that a 'true' world exists beyond one's awareness of it extends to an attack on modem philosophy, and is not limited to its postmodern component. Then, it describes defences of the 'linguistic construction' of science as thinly veiled attempts at emulating scientific discourses. In a more speculative vein, the dissertation goes on to evaluate claims made against science in terms of its connection to warfare; its insensitivity to mythology, and its generally misdirected values. It is in terms of value that the dissertation detects an analogous relationship between the discourses of mythology and science. Finally, a playful 'postmodern' reading is attempted of Sol'1ll's use of fiction in establishing the truth of his assertions. / English Studies / M.A.(English)