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The goal of the present project is to provide a preliminary descriptive analysis of the language found in a short manuscript in the Special Collections of the Georgetown University Library. The manuscript is a five-page Catholic catechism written in an Eastern Algonquian language. It is the only extant record of the language which is presumed to be Piscataway (also called Conoy). The identification of the language is based on the attribution of authorship to Father Andrew White, a seventeenth-century English Jesuit missionary. By providing as much of a description as possible through morphological and phonological analysis of the data, I hope to recover some knowledge about this extinct language and add to the sparse data on Eastern Algonquian languages. Because the goal of the project is to uncover the data in the manuscript, no theoretical viewpoint has been adopted regarding morphological entities or processes.

The writings of Rabbinic Judaism have too long been accessible to only those with vary specialized linguistic and theological training. By using the Angel of Death as its model, this work is a call to others in this field to open up this material to the general population. / The study opens with an introduction which carefully discusses the difficulties in both dating and accessing the rabbinic writings. The methodological discussion is critical because of the very nature of this material. Scholarly aids, general indices and anthologies are catalogued in an attempt to aid the reader in the understanding of this period and the literature it has produced. / The Angel of Death ('Malach ha-Mawet') is the specific model for investigation and is traced from its "supposed" beginnings in the Hebrew Bible. The first section of this study shows, after a detailed survey of the biblical record, that this figure is post-biblical in nature. / After isolating this figure from within the rabbinic writings of the first millennium, the indexing tools used by those in the field of folk literature are applied. The motif-indexing created by Antti Aarne and Stith Thompson, later developed by Dov Noy, are the basis of this study. By indexing the Angel of Death in this manner, this figure, and others from the rabbinic writings, may be more easily investigated and compared to its cross-cultural counterparts by greater number of reseachers. / This study closes with four (4) appendices which offer different ways in which to index and cross-index rabbinic texts, figures and the biblical texts and figures contained within them. The study presents the Angel of Death as a model for examination, calling for the other figures in the rabbinic writings to be indexed in the same manner. This motif-indexing of rabbinic texts and figures will hopefully enable this material to find its rightful place alongside the folk literature of the other cultures of the world. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 53-11, Section: A, page: 3943. / Major Professor: John F. Priest. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--The Florida State University, 1992.

A relatively modern genre, the literature of the absurd includes those works of drama, poetry and prose which have in common the theme that the human condition is illogical and without purpose. Having such a world-view, the characters of absurd literature attempt to create programs for investing existence with a modicum of meaning, whether it be simple hedonism, comic detachment or some form of social commitment. The works of Kafka, Camus, Sartre and Hemingway exemplify this struggle. / For various reasons, the concerns of living in a world without satisfying existential foundations find frequent and pervasive expression in the twentieth century; however, it is also clear that these concerns are not unique to modern literature. In fact, the notion of the absurd has had a continuing, albeit erratic, development since at least the Greek Heroic Age. The Heroic Code of Homer's Iliad is an ancient paradigm created to generate order in an otherwise preposterous and untenable world. One also finds similar concerns expressed in On the Nature of the Universe, Hamlet and Candide, all recognized masterpieces of the Western literary tradition. Delineating the theme of the absurd in each of these four works demonstrates a long-established preoccupation with the concerns characterizing the literature of the absurd in our century. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 48-03, Section: A, page: 0645. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--The Florida State University, 1986.

Fictional narrative can be viewed as a communication between a sender and a receiver. In any narrative related by an overt speaker (or writer), "I," we can identify three sender-receiver pairs: narrator and narratee, implied author and implied reader, real author and real reader. While real author and real reader do communicate in a sense, they do so through their implied counterparts. Both the implied author/implied reader and the narrator/narratee pairs are immanent to the narrative text. The implied author and reader can be thought of as structures made up of the various perspectives of the text as a whole while the narrator and the narratee each provides one of these perspectives. By examining, within the context of narrative as communication, the roles and functions of narrator and narratee and their relationship to each other, the structures of implied author and implied reader become more clearly discernible. / The present study is an examination of the perspectives of the overt "I" narrator who tells his own story to a directly addressed "you" narratee and of how they structure the role of the implied reader. The first chapter is a survey and synthesis of the recent work of narratologists such as Genette, Bal, Chatman, and Prince on the concepts of narrator and narratee. It includes a discussion of Iser's conception of the implied reader as a textual structure made up of various perspective, including those of narrator, fictitious reader (narratee), characters and plot. In the type of self-conscious first person narration chosen for this study we see that the perspectives of narrator and narratee are the most dominant in the structure of the implied reader's role. / The following three chapters examine the narrator/narratee roles and relationships in John Barth's The Floating Opera, Albert Camus' The Fall, and Gunter Grass' Cat and Mouse. Each employs a self-conscious "I" narrator of questionable reliability who tells his story to an explicitly addressed "you." Barth's Todd Andrews, adopting the role of "author," addresses a "reader, " whose response to the fictionalized account of his past Todd carefully tries to direct by frequent interruptive commentary. For Todd, this unnamed "reader" comes to take the place of his long dead father. Camus' Jean-Baptiste Clamence, by confessing the ignominies of his past, attempts to persuade an unheard interlocutor to his vision of the world and to an answering confession of duplicity and guilt. Here there is no pretense of authorship. Clamence speaks with no apparent mediation to, and in response to, a companion who occupies the same fictional space in the here and now of the narrating situation. Grass' Pilenz, who purports to write the story of Joachim Mahlke, appears to address himself to several narratees, including the perhaps-dead Mahlke who is the subject of his story. Mahlke, described as "he" in the story, is addressed as "you" in the discourse. An examination of this unusual narrator/narratee relationship reveals that Pilenz's narration is as much his story as it is Mahlke's. / The narrator/narratee relationships in the Barth, Camus, and Grass narratives break or stretch conventions of narrating established by the traditional realistic novel, thereby forcing the reader, in his role as implied reader, to take special note of the narrating act or discourse. In each of these narratives, the discourse becomes a story in its own right, a story in which the narratee's presence is essential to the narrator's attempt to order his past. Thus, the perspective of the narratee must be recognized as pivotal in the structure of the implied reader's role in these first person narratives. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 42-01, Section: A, page: 0205. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--The Florida State University, 1981.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge's poem "Frost at Midnight" includes an emotional apostrophe to his two-year old son, Hartley, about the complex spiritual and artistic moments of transcendence that a truly visionary poet can find through the medium of Nature, away from the barriers of City walls: / (UNFORMATTED TABLE OR EQUATION FOLLOWS) / Coleridge's poem is itself a symbol of the focus of my study. I will explore the possibilities for, and the barriers against, the interrelated experiences of spiritual and artistic transcendence in the urban and natural landscapes of three writers: the English Romantics William Blake and Coleridge, examined in Chapters II and III, and the latter-day American Romantic, Frank Norris, treated in Chapters IV and V. In Chapter VI, I will extend my study to provide a brief look at urbanism in selected writers of the twentieth century. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 49-12, Section: A, page: 3711. / Major Professor: R. Bruce Bickley, Jr. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--The Florida State University, 1988.

Jose Angel Valente is unique among Spain's contemporary poets because of his singular dedication to the process of poetic creation. His work emphasizes the importance of regenerating the essential, original and vital capacity of language For Valente, the poetic, creative act, is a process of discovery, a way to acquire knowledge of man's existence and of universal principles. He assigns the reader an active role that is as creative as the poet's. Valente usually writes enigmatic, perplexing poems that acquire wider meaning through indirect reference to sources outside the text. These poems function like a code or system which permits the reader to view them not just as autonomous entities, organic wholes, but as intertextual constructs. The reader frequently has to perform rapid, unanticipated aesthetic 'adjustments' when confronting Valente's texts Valente's own preoccupation with the creative process especially that undertaken by the mystics, compels him to venture into linguistic spaces where he finds the greatest tension between unspoken and spoken content. Valente's concept of poetic creation brings to mind the kabbalist's perception of Scripture as an inexhaustible well. Just as the texts of the Kabbalah, Valente's work seek the cooperation of the reader who is already disposed to create a hermeneutics in order to discover meanings by himself/herself The object of this dissertation is to bring into the foreground Valente's theory of the creative process, his idea of writing as a constant movement of inquiry and experimentation. This study emphasizes the interconnections that exist between Valente's work and mysticism. This dissertation explores how poetic, erotic, and mystic elements appear in his poetry like three manifestations of a single, identical experience. This study also examines the influence on Valente's work of surrealism and of the aesthetics of other arts, particularly painting and music and their connection to Valente's idea of the poetic process / acase@tulane.edu

France, although an enemy in the recent war, had always provided a reliable model in times of crisis, and since the seventeenth century, it had remained a static presence in the German consciousness. In the wake of the First World War, France, as an established nation with respected cultural traditions and enduring national myths, functioned as an important 'other' nation against which the Germans could compare their own national development This dissertation examines the Germans' understanding of France as a cultural counter identity in the years 1919 through 1945, calling attention to their repeated recourse to French cultural symbols in their cultural production of these years. The dissertation begins with an analysis of the broader German conceptions of France and its enduring cultural traditions. Chapters 2 and 3 investigate the myth of France in general terms, exploring its persistence as a geographical and cultural presence in the German consciousness. As this dissertation will show, many of the traditional French symbols and ideals (the French Revolution, the French Resistance, French patriotism, the notions of the artiste engage, those of liberte, egalite, and fraternite) converged for the Germans in the symbol of Paris and the cultural heritage of France, both of which united for them the broad concept of the 'nation' with particular political, philosophical, and literary traditions. The two following chapters take a much narrower approach to the question of identity/counter-identity, examining the French symbols and heroes which populated German writing of the interwar years and their roles in helping the Germans negotiate their own road to nationhood. The concluding chapter, 'Ewiges Frankreich (Eternal France),' synthesizes the evidence presented in the five preceding chapters and attempts to elicit from these views a better understanding of the German expression 'Ewiges Frankreich,' a phrase which appears repeatedly in the writings of German exiles and soldiers in the 1930s and 1940s / acase@tulane.edu

The works studied in this dissertation have a formal concern which exhibits a textual hierarchy dominating the poetic expression: they are objective expressions in which form prevails and obscures any subjective statement. This fact separates both works from the preceding literary movements, Symbolism and Modernism, and relates them to Russian Formalism at the beginning of the XXth century. The relationship to Formalism is based on the idea that the reality of the poetic work is formed principally by language, and it is governed by internal and external functions which give it autonomy The first chapter analyses the concept of 'logos' in both books. Juan Ramon Jimenez and Alberto Caeiro abandon the notion of 'Absolute Truth' and consider the poetic work like a self-contained dynamic form which develops through rhythmic structures. This allows us to equate poetry with logos, since the former is an object with its own identity, and different from the idea of writing as copy, play, and death, which define the logocentric text The second chapter analyses the independence of the poetic work through the image of 'Nature,' as a space defined by language In the third chapter, the doubling of the poetic voice shows the rational character of both books, as it depersonalizes the text and exposes the duality that characterizes the speaking subject. The subsequent dichotomy created in both works is not metaphysical, philosophical or psychological, but is the result of the language formation process The metaliterary aspect that constitutes both texts is studied in the last chapter through their connections with Formalism, and through the analysis of the contradictions within both works, produced in the course of poetic image formation. These points reveal that Juan Ramon Jimenez's concept of 'naked poetry,' and Alberto Caeiro's 'natural expression' are related to the idea that creativity is a formal change within a literary tradition and not a subjective expression in search of a transcendental reality / acase@tulane.edu