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This dissertation investigates George F. Handel's use of the Figurenlehre or Doctrine of Musical Figures in his Brockes Passion, and also analyses the poetic rhetoric in Barthold Heinrich Brockes' "Der fur der Sunde der Welt gemarterte und sterbende Jesus," normally called the Passion Oratorio. / The poetic Figurenlehre had its roots in ancient Greece, where Aristotle was the first person known to have written on rhetoric and the art of oratory. Centuries later, Roman writers, particularly Cicero and Quintilian began to codify and classify what we now commonly call figures of speech. Much later, Renaissance writers, particularly Italian humanists, began to relate rhetorical style--the style of embellishing a line with ornaments and decorative figures--to poetry. The dissertation traces the Renaissance influence through the German Baroque poets and rhetoricians as well as the influence on B. H. Brockes of the so-called first and second Silesian schools of the first half of the seventeenth century. The Passion Oratorio is analyzed in terms of the classical, Renaissance and Baroque rhetorical theories and definitions of figures used by Brockes in his work. / The musical portions deal with the development of the musical Figurenlehre, particularly in seventeenth-century Germany, and various musical theorists' attempts to imitate the rhetorical patterns of speech through music. These portions suggest the likelihood that Handel learned German theories of the Figurenlehre and used them in his musical setting of Brockes' poem. The Brockes Passion is analyzed for various musical figures, all of which are set to equivalent poetical-rhetorical figures of the text. / The dissertation concludes that Brockes was taught classical rhetoric in school and used Ciceronian rhetoric in his poem. It also concludes that Handel learned both poetic and musical rhetoric, and that he used musical figures (motives and phrases) which German Baroque music theorists equated with poetic figures of speech. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 45-06, Section: A, page: 1764. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--The Florida State University, 1984.

This dissertation applies a new method of criticism to the last four plays of Henrik Ibsen. A method was needed that would result in a very close reading of the plays in order to determine why they have such spell-binding effects when read. The method used was a phenomenologically grounded one based upon the work of phenomenologist Roman Ingarden. / Ingarden applied the phenomenological reduction to the literary work of art and determined what he believed to be its essential structure. This structure begets in all literary works of art, including the drama, spots of indeterminacy, which in turn provide an entryway for the critic into the essential structure of a work. By concentrating on major spots of indeterminacy, the method used in this dissertation, much can be determined about a work, including the way in which its metaphysical value quality, that quality mostly responsible for the emotional impact, is created. The manifestation of such a quality is the highest achievement of a literary work of art according to Ingarden. / Based on the author's readings, the metaphysical qualities of the plays are described in the following way: in The Master Builder it is "the loss and oppression of the passage of time"; in Little Eyolf, "the despair of isolation and the brightness of hope"; John Gabriel Borkman manifests the "succor of deliverance"; while in When We Dead Awaken the metaphysical value quality is "the anguish of a life misspent." The analyses of the four plays determine the artistic means used by Ibsen to create these values, such as his use of temporality, spatiality, mystery, and hypernaturalistic use of language. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 55-03, Section: A, page: 0423. / Major Professor: Stuart E. Baker. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--The Florida State University, 1993.

The essence and modalities of human nature are a pervasive concern of German letters during the second half of the eighteenth century. The anthropological literature of the period (Herder, Forster, Rousseau) is particularly adept at giving expression to this concern. Surveying the five decades between 1760 and 1810, my study argues that eighteenth-century anthropology is surreptitiously driven by a materialist rhetoric whose scope and intensity suggests an imperfect separation, in anthropological thought, between the human and the creaturely. The complex figure of thought that defines creaturely consciousness is not fully revealed instantly; it is revealed over time, in a process of deepening awareness that reaches its climax in the Romantic reception of the anthropological legacy. The study's underlying assumption, then, is that the prehistory of Romantic thought in Germany is, in many respects, a prehistory of the posthuman. / The first chapter shows that a strong current of post-humanist rhetoric distorts the humanist message early on, during a period in which the question of human nature begins to receive an extraordinary amount of attention, slowly occupying intellectual ground held by more traditional disciplines such as theology and metaphysics. In the 1760s and 70s, seminal figures such as Herder and Forster pioneer a movement, referred to by Herder himself as "anthropology," which revolves around a question that would dominate German letters for several decades: Was ist der Mensch? What is man? One of the chief concerns of this emerging field is to establish a rapport between the self and its cultural or historical other. I argue that Herder's and Forster's proto-hermeneutic attempts to reach out to the other are undermined by a materialist rhetoric that in fact presents a serious obstacle to cross-cultural understanding. / The focal point of chapters two and three is the philosophy of German Idealism, represented by two of its most exemplary figures, F.W.J. Schelling and Friedrich Holderlin. While German Idealism is usually conceived as a revisionary yet highly reverential reaction to Kant's critical philosophy, it is often overlooked that this reaction occurs under anthropological premises. Among the many indicators pointing towards an anthropological provenance of Idealist thought, none is more revealing than a growing recognition, among the Idealists, of the material aspects of human life. Schelling for instance, after making an initial, truly herculean effort to assimilate the laws of nature to the laws of the mind, soon acknowledges that human life rests upon an "irreducible remainder which cannot be resolved into reason by the greatest exertion but always remains in the depths." / The final chapter investigates a Romantic paradigm of Offentlichkeit , or publicity, which can be characterized as a dialectic of solitude and sociability, and its involvement with creaturely life. Influenced by Rousseau, who blames his "too affectionate, too loving and too tender heart" for his sullenness and misanthropy, Novalis and Tieck explore the semiotic implications of a discursive pattern that considers solitary speech the most effective form of public discourse. Their response revolves around the "heart of stone," a metaphor frequently found in Romantic texts. The owner of the heart of stone is held in thrall by the natural world, which nurtures in him a longing for precious, inanimate objects so intense that he no longer feels any affection for his fellow human beings. By situating a petrified signifier at the center of the libidinal economy, the image of the calcified heart brings Rousseau's dialectic of solitude and sociability to a jarring halt. / The study closes with an epilogue on Durs Grunbein, a contemporary poet and essayist whose oeuvre helps us to understand the current status of humanity's entanglement with creaturely life.