Aristotle's Poetics is the dominant aesthetic of western civilization, uniting diachronic history in the synchronic ideology of Aristotle's Athenian polis. Because Engels regards the polis as "the origin of the family, private property, and the state," and regards Aeschylus' Oresteia as the origin of family sociology, a marxian interpretation of those writers' texts reveals the fundamentals of reproducing political-capitalist ideology. / Using Jameson's marxian hermeneutic (The Political Unconscious), I historicize Aristotle's philosophy and Aeschylus' family tragedy, juxtaposing them with a radically different mode of social organization featuring a gens family system and agrarianism under a gentile constitution. The Geometric Era signals the advent of political agrarianism and nascent capitalism; geometry is politicized to lend ideological significance to the practice of maintaining and transgressing boundaries. An integrated network of politicized boundaries fundamentally structures and defines political-capitalist ideology and society. / Foucault and Derrida perpetuate that political-geometric consciousness today. Both theorists privilege geometric, dramatic, discursive and Athenian themes, all of which acquire a conservative ideological significance in this dissertation's marxian context. / In their use of geometric schemata, all four writers unconsciously accent gender as the fundamental line of division and transgression. These schemata offer insights into the dialectic drama of social interaction, but are inherently politicized. These geometric schemata reproduce political-capitalist ideology and consciousness, particularly because they fail to challenge Aristotle's gendered aesthetic. A new sense of geometric space and time may accompany a new mode of social organization, revealing the political-geometric epoch as essentially synchronic. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 54-10, Section: A, page: 3741. / Major Professor: Karen Laughlin. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--The Florida State University, 1993.

This dissertation compares Maggie, A Girl of The Streets, by Stephen Crane, and Marthe, Une Fille, by Joris-Karl Huysmans, in terms of setting, characterization, and style in order to give a new perspective on the careers of these two talented authors, and on the popular genre of the naturalist prostitute novel. / In the Introduction, the purpose and structure of the dissertation are explained. Then, in chapter one, the development of the literary schools of realism and naturalism is traced from Diderot's "drame bourgeois" to such nineteenth-century writers as Balzac, Flaubert, and Zola in France, and to such American authors as Melville, Twain, Howells, and Garland. Further, the lives of Crane and Huysmans up to the time of the publication of the two novels are examined to show important formative influences. In addition, a breif discussion is given about the theoretical tenets of literary impressionism, a technique central to the composition of Maggie and important to an understanding of much serious fiction produced from around 1880 to 1920, both in Europe and in the United States. / Chapter two deals with the destructive urban setting of each novel, examining the New York and the Paris of the Nineteenth Century to demonstrate the extent to which each author has been faithful to reality in his portrayal of the evils of city life, among them disease, poverty, alcoholism, and immorality. In chapter three, possible sources and influences for each novel are presented, and the main characters are discussed in terms of their symbolic significance and their interaction in each novel. Chapter four exposes the heavy impressionism of Crane, the latent impressionism of Huysmans, and other stylistic elements like the use of argot, color and sound imagery, and animality in both works. / In the conclusion, the implications of the triumph of science in the latter part of the Nineteenth Century are examined, and the two novels' portrayals of the sinning woman are contrasted. Further, critical attacks on Crane's naturalism are discussed and a new source for Crane's slum stories is proposed in the deterministic tenement novels of Edgar Fawcett. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 48-03, Section: A, page: 0644. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--The Florida State University, 1987.

Roman Ingarden utilizes the phenomenological method in his description of the essential features or strata of "the" literary work of art. The two books, The Literary Work of Art and The Cognition of the Literary Work of Art, taken together, constitute a full description of the acts of consciousness in the apprehension of literary works. / However, certain confusions arise concerning the notions of polyphonic harmony, aesthetic value qualities and metaphysical qualities in his description of literary works. It is not clear how they work together with the essential strata to found a literary work of art. And as related concerns, the number of essential strata and Ingarden's basis for a concretization are never fully clarified. It is argued that those confusions are the superficial symptoms of an internal methodological problem. Ingarden begins his analysis with the literary work considered as an abstract entity and not as a particular object of a reading consciousness. Following Husserl's phenomenology of perception, it appears that Ingarden makes an apparent error when he begins his analysis in the phenomenological mode of eidetic reduction. Because he has no object as such before him to reduce, it is claimed that his application of the phenomenological method is inverted. / An alternative to Ingarden's methodological procedure is presented when a "reading" or concretization of Joseph Conrad's Lord Jim is offered as an object for phenomenological reduction. The essential characteristics and their relations derived from the phenomenological reduction of this object are then compared with Ingarden's results. / The new structural relations which emerge in the reduction of a particular reading help to clarify the confusions found in Ingarden's analysis and demonstrate how the various newly described polyphonies found the presence of metaphysical qualities in literary works. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 46-01, Section: A, page: 0177. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--The Florida State University, 1984.

In this work, linguistic script analysis is applied to Milton's Paradise Lost in relation to "Sonnet 19," Scott's Waverley isolated from other Waverley novels, Cooper's Satanstoe and Littlepage Manuscripts as a unit, Whitman's "Song of Myself" as a whole separate from Leaves of Grass, and Johnson's Autobiography of an Ex-Coloured Man in relation to Simmel's conflict sociology. These works posit three scripted world-views. / Identity argues for divine sovereignty over all things which derive from a divine source. Separateness argues for co-dominion--the divine sovereign over the created world and a created sovereign with divine right--with power flowing linearly and hierarchically downward. In Individuated Sovereignty, individuals strive to perfect a fragmented world into a model world of things in and not in concert with the divine so that controversy occurs as individual and social limits to sovereign power are tested. Literature records commitment to a particular solution to the ongoing controversy. Script analysis shows that historical development, controversy over change, and traditional Western world-views are multiform. / Schutz identifies four worlds of typicality whose scripts are more-or-less formalized structures of the lived-world. To these is added the Alswelt. Each "world" has its histories pertaining to individual needs (economics) and to individual desires (domestics). Literature preserves the Alswelt record of their dynamic inter-relatedness. / Chapter I addresses the theory and method of analysis drawn from script theory based on Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle, Hegel's insights into history, and Schutz's worlds of typicality. The latter five essays outline the particular ideological commitment in the context of change and the resolution to controversy that is offered by Milton, Scott, Cooper, Whitman, and Johnson. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 50-08, Section: A, page: 2487. / Major Professor: Bruce Bickley. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--The Florida State University, 1989.

This thesis utilizes the theories of Carl Jung and Joseph Campbell to demonstrate that the participant in a myth undergoes vicariously a transformation of consciousness. I discuss and clarify the role of archetypes and symbols; the meaning and function of myth; and the three stages to the hero's journey; namely, departure, initiation, and return. I demonstrate how these stages, as well as the shadow, anima, animus, and self archetypes are active in four myths. These myths are The Epic of Gilgamesh, Bhagavad Gita, Owein, and Star Wars. I hope to have made contributions in three particular ways. The first is by clarifying Jung's concept of the collective unconscious and the archetype. I hope to have described them and demonstrated their usefulness to a step beyond what has been hitherto written. The second is the demonstration of the three-stage journey repeating itself at three different levels. Campbell does not refer to these multi-stage journeys in his analysis of the hero myth. The protagonist in mythic tales participates in a physical, then an intellectual, and finally a spiritual stage of transformation. Lastly, I explain how participation in myth can clear the mind of the participant and lead to greater awareness. Myths promote inner growth through the use of symbols. They clarify reality and guide one to become aware of reality. Specifically, the psychological method is demonstrated to be the most useful for clarifying the archetypal images found in myth. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 51-09, Section: A, page: 3066. / Major Professor: David A. Darst. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--The Florida State University, 1990.

Michel Butor belongs to the group of writers who originated the New Novel in France in the early nineteen fifties. A decade later, Gerard Bessette, among others, inaugurated the Quebec New Novel. / An initial reading of the novels of Butor and Bessette enables one to discern arresting similarities between their surface structures. There is a strong tendency among their characters to bring order into the disorderly world in which they live. Their endeavor is thwarted by the authoritarian figures they confront. The failure of the heroes reveals to them that their speech is inadequate and their voices lack authority. This study attempts to investigate the functioning of authoritarian discourses and to establish the correspondences between the latent/unconscious structures in the novels of the two writers. / Applying contemporary critical theories of discourse, especially those of Mikhail Bakhtin and Michel Foucault, the study examines various types of authoritarian discourses. These discourses are defined and classified under each of the three principal orders identified in the novels. Maternal and paternal discourses are grouped in the familial order, religious, professorial and judicial discourses in the social order, and mythological, legendary and ancestral discourses in the historical order. / The introduction establishes the fundamental relationships between the works of Butor and Bessette, and lays out the theoretical aspects of the study. Each of the three chapters analyzes the interaction between discourses, and the negotiation of authority through discourse in a particular order. The first chapter focuses on the subversion of authoritarian voices in the familial order. The second chapter examines the characters' search for parental substitutes in the social order, and demonstrates the insufficiency of authority in the latter. The failure of the first two orders leads the characters to pursue their quest in the historical order. The assimilation of historical discourses enables the characters to regain their right to speak. The conclusion argues that the narrative authority exercised through writing/speaking is disseminated in the intertextual space. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 56-04, Section: A, page: 1346. / Major Professor: Elaine D. Cancalon. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--The Florida State University, 1995.

El proposito de este estudio es de senalar el tono epicista de La querra del fin del mundo de Mario Vargas Llosa. Dentro de las caracteristicas de la epica se senalan unidad de accion, in medias res, y episodio. Estas tres caracteristicas son estudiadas desde el punto de vista de Aristoteles por ser uno de los primeros en sentar las reglas del genero epico en su obra Poetica. / Algunas estrategias y tecnicas narrativas empleadas por Vargas Llosa en esta novela, como los vasos comunicantes, las cajas chinas, y la muda o salto cualitativo se demuestra que tienen sus origenes en las obras clasicas de la epica. / Otros aspectos de la epica, como el honor, los heroes, y un tema poco tratado por la critica literaria, los anti-heroes, se revisan en este estudio. Tambien se incluyen algunos topicos paganos y cristianos que comprenden las supersticiones y la religion catolica practicada por el Consejero y los campesinos que lo siguen por los sertones, asi como las descripciones de algunos ritos y ceremonias que recuerdan las practicas antiguas del cristianismo y de la Edad Media. / Para apoyar el tono epicista existente en La guerra del fin del mundo, se comparan, a lo largo de este estudio, con La Iliada y La Odisea de Homero, y La Eneida de Virgilio presentando diversos ejemplos de estas obras. / Finalmente se delinea un tema resaltante en esta novela de Vargas Llosa: el fanatismo en las figuras de tres de los personajes, quienes representan la religiosidad, el jacobismo, y el anarquismo. Estos tres aspectos del fanatismo estan simbolizados en algunas corrientes historicas, filosoficas, y politicas europeas, del cual se hacen algunos paralelos al respecto. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 51-09, Section: A, page: 3091. / Major Professor: Ardis L. Nelson. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--The Florida State University, 1990.

Mary Shelley's Frankenstein is often read as a part of its historical milieu. The terms "Gothic fiction" and "Romantic novel" abound in the critical literature. From this point of view, the novel explores the limits of ambition and rebelliousness and their moral implications. These readings are inextricably linked to the traditions of Prometheus, as evidenced by the novel's subtitle, and Milton's Paradise Lost, stories which were important to nineteenth-century Gothic and Romantic writers. In the past few decades, however, feminist critics have read the novel as a criticism of Romantic Prometheanism and the 'masculine' consciousness which literature projects. The feminist literary critics Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar argue that Frankenstein is Shelley's criticism of the cultural and literary traditions which value 'maleness' over 'femaleness.' For them, Paradise Lost is the literary model of Frankenstein. Subversion of Milton and the gendered ideology Paradise Lost projects, they argue, is Shelley's intent. But Milton was certainly not the originator of what Gilbert and Gubar term "patriarchal poetry." Rather, Milton inherited a poetic tradition that can be traced through Dante and Vergil to Homer, the originator of our western literary tradition. This dissertation brings to light the many thematic and structural parallels between Frankenstein and Homer's Odyssey, reading Frankenstein as a subversion of the Hero vs. Monster paradigm that Odysseus and Polyphemos (and the Suitors) represent. Joseph Fontenrose defines this struggle as a "combat myth" and observes that it articulates the archetypal struggle between the force of Cosmos over Chaos. The combat myth, however, narrates the story of a 'masculine' hero vanquishing a 'feminine' monster and becomes the archetype of a gendered literary tradition. Whereas Odysseus defeats the monster Polyphemos and firmly reestablishes domestic harmony with his wife, Penelope, by vanquishing the monstrous suitors, Victor is defeated by his monster, who in turn murders Victor's betrothed, Elizabeth. The paradigm of heroic myth, canonized in the West from Homer onwards, is subverted. It is my belief that Shelley took the very essence of "patriarchal poetry," the epic form, and used that structure and tradition to expose and reevaluate the 'masculine' heroic ideal. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 51-07, Section: A, page: 2373. / Major Professor: Karen L. Laughlin. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--The Florida State University, 1990.

A study of the female orphan in the Hispanic novel features orphan heroines who have sources beginning with the Greek pastoral romance. Her character develops in stages through early folktales, Medieval fairy tales and the Golden Age novel. Sources influencing the development of the female orphan are Cervantes' Novelas ejemplares and Romantic, Dickensian and Galdosian novels. The orphan heroines examined are inspired by Spanish Romantic, Regional, Naturalistic and Spanish-American Regional prototypes. All of the works feature orphans or characters of uncertain parentage. / The four novels examined represent literary schools of Spanish-American Romanticism (Maria, Jorge Isaacs, 1867); Spanish Regionalism (Sotileza, Jose Maria de Pereda, 1885); Spanish Naturalism (La Regenta, Leopoldo Alas "Clarin," 1885); and Spanish-American "Criollismo" (Dona Barbara, Romulo Gallegos, 1929). / Though the orphan female in folk and fairy tales is often a victimized character, Cervantine antecedents for her character are idealized heroines of humble appearance. Picaresque antecedents anticipate orphan heroines with a troubled past. / This study is an effort to characterize the female orphan in the Hispanic novel. When considering her most salient traits, her character can be identified among the orphans and waifs of widely read prose works. The authors of these works communicate, in a distinct way, the female orphan's sense of alienation. The orphans Maria, Sotileza, Ana and Barbara view themselves as morally deficient within their isolated environments. / The female orphan communicates her disillusionment by becoming, at times, cruel and vengeful. However, when she surmounts a final obstacle, the acceptance of change, she becomes the antithesis of the picaresque heroine, who may reconcile with her past. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 56-10, Section: A, page: 3990. / Adviser: Ernest Rehder. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--The Florida State University, 1995.

The Faerie Queene is not a dream-poem (Introduction, Section 1). Yet dream-theory (oneirocriticism) can be applied to all texts (oneiropoetic), provided that the subordination of literature to psychology (or vice-versa) is avoided (Section 2). The purpose of this essay (Section 3) is to correlate Freudian dream-structures with literary structures, exemplify the correlations with Spenserian passages, and to build a total model for the interpretation of rhetoric in terms of dream-theory. The result, christened 'oneiropoetic,' employs classical rhetoric and poetics, as known in the Renaissance and earlier, and also uses later formulations by Tynianov, Bakhtin, Todorov, Genette, Derrida and others. Section 4 summarizes Freud's dream-theory in relation to his later ego-psychology. The essay is divided into fifty-two dream:literature isomorphs, disposed in four parts of three chapters each. Freudian theory is updated with the help of the language-centered formulations of Roman Jakobson and Jacques Lacan, among others Part I, 'The Censor: Viewpoint,' discusses 'aesthetic distance' versus dream-depersonalization; nightmares and punishment dreams; day-residues; and the 'Aristotelian' fancy in Spenser (Chapter 1). Chapter 2 discusses parody and paramnesia; irony; and absurdity. Chapter 3 examines genre theory as exclusions of The Censor, and equates literary fragmentation of time with dream-time. Part II, 'Condensation: Symbol,' discusses visual images or 'filming' in terms of literary pictorialism (Chapter 4). 'Escape' literature, including romance narrative in some of its aspects, is isomorphized to Freud's 'family romance,' and certain blazons to hysterical symptoms (Chapter 5). Chapter 6 analyzes such Condensations as algebraic names, the dragon-hermaphrodite, and Faeryland itself. Part III, 'Displacement: Allegory,' relates Freudian associationism to Renaissance hidden meaning (Chapter 7). Spenserian entrelaced allegory is compared to the homologous series of dreams of a single night (Chapter 8). Chapter 9 finds in Spenserian characterization a Galenesque imagery of humours isomorphic to Freudian libidinal 'zones.' The last Part, 'Secondary Revision: The Audience,' discusses the 'finish' of the text-surface, and also persona layers (Chapter 10). Chapters 11 and 12 correlate Transference in Freud with mediation in Spenser / acase@tulane.edu