F. Scott Fitzgerald is valued for his contribution to literary arts, culture and his discussion of the American Dream. I argue that his discussion of the American Dream was a lens through which he gave readers access to political insights and an education about political philosophy, American politics, virtue, and reasoning. The American Dream, at its greatest, for Fitzgerald is a nation building myth but at its lowest is a dull materialistic construct. Throughout his works Fitzgerald connects philosophic ideas to the American Dream in attempts to educate and ennoble his readers. The ability to judge well is a critical piece of self-government that was a focus of Fitzgerald's throughout his body of work. In The Beautiful and Damned, by giving weight to Platonic ideals of beauty and goodness, and Platonic heuristics like the allegory of the cave he attempted to negate the detrimental effects of nihilism in America at his time and after. In The Great Gatsby, by presenting virtue of the contemplative life that could be cultivated by his readers, in his time, and including esoteric teachings on those virtues and values he attempted to negate the detrimental effects of materialism on the American dream. Finally, in The Last Tycoon, by articulating an American alternative to the philosopher-king he put forward a vision of statesmanship that could mitigate the effects of materialism and keep the American Dream alive against a socialist attack.

Como gesto de resistência ao colonialismo e em relação às assimetrias impostas pelos centros homogênicos, em face do poder político das metrópoles europeias, escritores de margens periféricas assumiram um papel protagonista na luta pela libertação de seus países. Os sistemas literários que floresceram ao longo desse período de luta anticolonialista também estreitaram relações entre esses escritores, cujas ideias circularam pelas metrópoles e pelos territórios colonizados. No caso dos territórios africanos colonizados por Portugal, se em 1975 alcançaram a independência após mais de uma década de conflito armado, o mesmo não ocorreu com as ilhas antilhanas sob a dominação francesa exceto o Haiti, cuja independência se deu no século XIX. Desse modo, considerando essa diferença histórica, convocamos neste trabalho textos de reflexão do escritor martinicano Patrick Chamoiseau e o do moçambicano Mia Couto, cujos desempenhos como intelectuais, na cena global da informação, os colocam em destaque na busca por respostas capazes de discutir as tensões político-culturais próprias da contemporaneidade. Assim, propomos, pelo método comparativo e por critérios metodológicos dialéticos, analisar os ensaios Lintraitable beauté du monde adresse à Barack Obama (2009), uma coautoria de Patrick Chamoiseau e Édouard Glissant, e E se Obama fosse africano? (2009c), de Mia Couto, procurando destacar as estratégias de revisão epistemológica de conceitos eurocêntricos, bem como as de inserção do pensamento de margem na cena política global. Em um segundo movimento analítico, propomos confrontar três linhas de força que se apresentam nos romances Texaco (1993b), de Patrick Chamoiseau, e Jesusalém (2009b), de Mia Couto, quais sejam, as representações da memória, do feminino e do espaço. Entendemos tais representações como importantes elementos do campo de articulação de forças políticas direcionado à construção de projetos identitários na Martinica e em Moçambique, em relação com o sistema planetário. / As a gesture of resistance to colonialism and in relation to the asymmetries imposed by hegemonic power centers, facing the political power of the European metropolis peripheral writers played a significant role in the struggle for the liberation of their countries. Throughout this period of anti-colonialist struggle, booming literary systems also resulted in strengthening the relations between their authors whose ideas circulated in the European metropolis as well as in the colonized territories. Concerning the African territories colonized by Portugal, if they conquered their independence in 1975 after more than a decade of armed struggle, the same did not happen to the Antillean islands under French domination- with the exception of Haiti, which conquered its independence in the nineteenth century. Thus, considering this historical difference, we highlight in this work written reflections of the writer Patrick Chamoiseau from Martinique and Mia Couto from Mozambique whose performances as intellectuals in the global arena information stands out in searching answers that could be able to discuss the political and cultural tensions that are characteristic of our contemporary world . Thereby, through comparative analysis and dialectical approach, our aim in this work is to analyze two essays: Lintraitable beauté du monde adresse à Barack Obama (2009), co-authored by Patrick Chamoiseau and Édouard Glissant; and E se Obama fosse africano (2009a), by Mia Couto. At doing so, we also make an effort to foreground strategies to review Eurocentric epistemology and the marginal thoughts in the political global scene. In a second analytical deployment, this work attempts to identify and confront three guiding principles in the novels of the two writers Texaco (1993) by Patrick Chamoiseau and Jesusalém (2009b) by Mia Couto: the representations of memory, of the feminine and the space. We regard those representations as important elements of the field of the forces of political articulations aiming the construction of identity projects in Martinique and Mozambique in relation to the planetary system.

La thèse se propose d'explorer les rapports entre utopie et littérature chez deux auteurs majeurs du XXe siècle italien, Elio Vittorini (1908-1966) et Italo Calvino (1923-1985), prenant en considération un large pan de leurs œuvres et de leur travail d'écrivain. À travers ce parcours, c'est une petite parabole de l'utopisme littéraire dans le second XXe siècle italien que l'on cherche à tracer, en partant des années quarante, où le travail littéraire était fonction d'un engagement politique externe, pour arriver, à travers une série de déconvenues politiques et de transformations sociales, à une tentative de redéfinition des fonctions politiques de la littérature qui nous mène jusqu'aux années soixante-dix. La trentaine d'années parcourue dans cette thèse est en effet riche en évolutions, du détachement des écrivains du Parti communiste, au passage à une nouvelle phase « néocapitaliste » dont l'Italie sort considérablement transformée. Nous nous trouvons donc à l'articulation entre deux périodes, moderne et postmoderne, dans une transition qui correspond aussi à une crise et à une remise en question de l'utopie, à travers les notions de progrès, de perfectibilité, de téléologie et de totalité qui lui étaient liées. Notre recherche cherche à cerner ces évolutions et leurs retombées sur le travail littéraire de nos écrivains – travail d'écriture bien sûr, mais aussi travail critique et théorique sur la définition de la littérature et ses fonctions. Cependant, elle évolue également sur un second plan : celui d'une définition des modèles utopiques en littérature, les œuvres dont nous nous occupons mettant en place, dans leurs rapports plus ou moins lointains au genre utopique, un certain type d'utopisme littéraire. Après une partie d'introduction théorique se concentrant sur les définitions possibles de l'utopie, nous partons donc de Vittorini et de l' « utopisme culturel » des années du Politecnico, revue animée par l'auteur entre 1945 et 1947, chapitre auquel répond l'analyse des œuvres Conversazione in Sicilia (Conversation en Sicile, 1941) et Le città del mondo (Les Villes du monde, 1951-1956). Une longue étude est ensuite consacrée au Menabò, revue dirigée par les deux auteurs entre 1959 et 1966, au cœur d'une crise poétique, politique, épistémologique dont la revue se fait l'écho. Sont parcourues en miroir deux « œuvres de la crise », Le donne di Messina (Les Femmes de Messine, 1964) de Vittorini et La giornata d'uno scrutatore (La Journée d'un scrutateur, 1963) de Calvino. Une dernière partie se concentre sur le Calvino « utopiste » des années parisiennes, de sa passion pour Fourier à sa formulation de l' « utopia pulviscolare », une utopie pulvérisée, spatialisée, anti-téléologique, dont les Città invisibili (Les Villes invisibles, 1972) sont la mise en forme littéraire, constituant le point d'arrivée de notre parcours. / This Phd intends to explore the relationship between utopia and literature among two major writers of the Italian Twentieth century, Elio Vittorini (1908 – 1966) and Italo Calvino (1923 – 1985), taking into account a wide range of their novels and other literary output. Through this journey we are seeking to produce a parable of literary utopianism in the second Italian Twentieth Century, starting from the Forties, where literary work was related to an external political commitment to arrive, through a series of political disappointments and societal transformations to an attempt at redefining literature's political functions that leads us to the Seventies. The period of around thirty years covered by this thesis is rich in evolutions, from the estrangement of the Communist Party writers to a new 'neocapitalist' phase from which Italy emerges profoundly transformed. At the end of the Seventies, we were at the juncture of two periods, modern and postmodern, in a transition that also corresponds to a crisis and a questioning of utopia, through the notions of progress, perfectibility, teleology and totality that were connected to it. Our research attempts to outline these evolutions and their consequences on the work of writers – their literary production, but also their critical and theoretical work on the definition of literature and its functions. However, my thesis also functions at another level, and attempts a definition of utopian models in literature, as the selected books are all characterised, in their more or less distant relationship with the utopian genre, by a certain type of literary utopianism. After a theoretical introduction focusing on the possible definitions of utopia, we start with Vittorini and the 'cultural utopianism' of the Politecnico years, a journal animated by the author between 1945 and 1947, in a chapter where we also study Conversazione in Sicilia (Conversations in Sicily, 1941) and Le città del mondo (“The cities of the world”, 1951 – 1956). A long study is subsequently dedicated to Menabò, a journal directed by the two authors between 1959 and 1966, that reflected a poetical, political and epistemologistical crisis. We compare two 'works of crisis', Le donne di Messina (Women of Messina, 1964) by Vittorini and La giornata di uno scrutatore (The Watcher, 1963) by Calvino. A last part concentrates on the 'utopian' Calvino of the Parisian years, from his passion for Fourier to his formulation of the 'utopia pulviscolare', a shattered, spatialised, anti-teological utopia of which Le Città invisibili (Invisible Cities, 1972) is the literary embodiment and the point of arrival of our journey.

Como gesto de resistência ao colonialismo e em relação às assimetrias impostas pelos centros homogênicos, em face do poder político das metrópoles europeias, escritores de margens periféricas assumiram um papel protagonista na luta pela libertação de seus países. Os sistemas literários que floresceram ao longo desse período de luta anticolonialista também estreitaram relações entre esses escritores, cujas ideias circularam pelas metrópoles e pelos territórios colonizados. No caso dos territórios africanos colonizados por Portugal, se em 1975 alcançaram a independência após mais de uma década de conflito armado, o mesmo não ocorreu com as ilhas antilhanas sob a dominação francesa exceto o Haiti, cuja independência se deu no século XIX. Desse modo, considerando essa diferença histórica, convocamos neste trabalho textos de reflexão do escritor martinicano Patrick Chamoiseau e o do moçambicano Mia Couto, cujos desempenhos como intelectuais, na cena global da informação, os colocam em destaque na busca por respostas capazes de discutir as tensões político-culturais próprias da contemporaneidade. Assim, propomos, pelo método comparativo e por critérios metodológicos dialéticos, analisar os ensaios Lintraitable beauté du monde adresse à Barack Obama (2009), uma coautoria de Patrick Chamoiseau e Édouard Glissant, e E se Obama fosse africano? (2009c), de Mia Couto, procurando destacar as estratégias de revisão epistemológica de conceitos eurocêntricos, bem como as de inserção do pensamento de margem na cena política global. Em um segundo movimento analítico, propomos confrontar três linhas de força que se apresentam nos romances Texaco (1993b), de Patrick Chamoiseau, e Jesusalém (2009b), de Mia Couto, quais sejam, as representações da memória, do feminino e do espaço. Entendemos tais representações como importantes elementos do campo de articulação de forças políticas direcionado à construção de projetos identitários na Martinica e em Moçambique, em relação com o sistema planetário. / As a gesture of resistance to colonialism and in relation to the asymmetries imposed by hegemonic power centers, facing the political power of the European metropolis peripheral writers played a significant role in the struggle for the liberation of their countries. Throughout this period of anti-colonialist struggle, booming literary systems also resulted in strengthening the relations between their authors whose ideas circulated in the European metropolis as well as in the colonized territories. Concerning the African territories colonized by Portugal, if they conquered their independence in 1975 after more than a decade of armed struggle, the same did not happen to the Antillean islands under French domination- with the exception of Haiti, which conquered its independence in the nineteenth century. Thus, considering this historical difference, we highlight in this work written reflections of the writer Patrick Chamoiseau from Martinique and Mia Couto from Mozambique whose performances as intellectuals in the global arena information stands out in searching answers that could be able to discuss the political and cultural tensions that are characteristic of our contemporary world . Thereby, through comparative analysis and dialectical approach, our aim in this work is to analyze two essays: Lintraitable beauté du monde adresse à Barack Obama (2009), co-authored by Patrick Chamoiseau and Édouard Glissant; and E se Obama fosse africano (2009a), by Mia Couto. At doing so, we also make an effort to foreground strategies to review Eurocentric epistemology and the marginal thoughts in the political global scene. In a second analytical deployment, this work attempts to identify and confront three guiding principles in the novels of the two writers Texaco (1993) by Patrick Chamoiseau and Jesusalém (2009b) by Mia Couto: the representations of memory, of the feminine and the space. We regard those representations as important elements of the field of the forces of political articulations aiming the construction of identity projects in Martinique and Mozambique in relation to the planetary system.

This thesis aims to provide a thematic analysis of the leading Hebrew dystopian texts in contemporary Israel and to present a broader context of utopian thought within which these texts are best understood. The research attempts to explore and examine how the various anxieties and fears of Israeli society are reflected upon in contemporary Hebrew dystopian novels and how the Israeli reality is transformed and re-imagined, by means of authors' thought experiments, in the selected narratives. Dystopian fiction is an extremely useful tool for cultural studies inasmuch as it constitutes a direct interaction with the contemporary culture in that it describes an entire society suffering from oppressive and disastrous conditions which grow out of certain real-world social, political, and economic trends. Zionist utopian fiction which sought to imagine a Jewish homeland waned soon after the creation of the State of Israel and the local realities set the narrative on a much darker and more pessimistic course. Today many Israeli authors project a dystopian and (post-) apocalyptic future from the present Israeli reality by examining the current cultural and political situation. The thesis is, then, also an exploration of how these dystopian narratives come to terms with the current Israeli reality and what...

This contribution explores notions of "popular narratology" in reports, memos and strategic research papers of the US military and affiliated institutions. It investigates the military´s analysis of emerging social media practices and corresponding efforts to adapt military organization, strategy, and culture to these new technological and cultural phenomena. Employing notions and techniques of constructing and disseminating a narrative that they borrow from literary theory, media studies, and advertising, these texts negotiate best practices to set political agendas and instigate institutional reforms within the military. Providing a cultural history perspective on these recent developments in military policy, this article emphasizes the military papers´reflections on the textuality of military information in order to reveal their agenda of furthering the military´s interests. It is thus invested in exploring how textual (i.e., "poetic") qualities serve as tools to pursue political goals.

When Alexis de Tocqueville observed the spread of modern democracy across France, England, and the United States, he saw that democracy would give rise to a new state of letters, and that this new state of letters would influence how democratic citizens and statesmen would understand the new political world. As he reflected on this new intellectual sphere, Tocqueville became concerned that democracy would foster changes in language and thought that would stifle concepts and ideas essential to the preservation of intellectual and political liberty. In an effort to direct, refine, and reshape political thought in democracy, Tocqueville undertook a critique of the democratic state of letters, assessing intellectual life and contributing his own ideas and concepts to help citizens and statesmen think more coherently about democratic politics. Here, I analyze Tocqueville's critique and offer an account of his effort to reshape democratic political thought. I show that through his analyses of the role of intellectuals in democratic regimes, the influence of modern science on democratic public life, the intellectual habits that democracy fosters, and the power of literary works for shaping democratic self-understanding, Tocqueville succeeds in reshaping democratic language and thought in a manner that contributes to the preservation of intellectual and political liberty within the modern democratic world.

[pt] Diferente do modo como costuma ser reduzida por parte da crítica especializada, o estudo pretende mostrar que a obra de António Alves Redol tem a marca da mudança, da variedade e da diversidade. Observar-se-á que a homogeneidade que se costuma impor nas análises sobre a obra do autor não se justifica nem da perspectiva da profundidade do conteúdo narrativo, nem da perspectiva da superfície das formas de expressão. Em relação a esta última, parece haver um cuidado estético especial no que tange à concisão, à precisão e ao impacto dimensionados na simplicidade narrativa dos documentários humanos explorados por Alves Redol. Nesse sentido, a obra de Redol representa a heterogeneidade de formas, conteúdos, narrativas e conceitos do neo-realismo, simbolizando, no seu microcosmo, a história e os processos de todo o movimento. Ao eleger a palavra-pele para conceituar o modo de escrever de António Alves Redol, mostrando em que medida a sua narrativa incide ao mesmo tempo nas dimensões política e estética, a tese também procura refletir sobre como tal ideia de palavra-ação poderia auxiliar numa melhor compreensão da escrita neo-realista em Portugal. / [en] This study aims to highlight variety, diversity and change as important qualities that can be noticed in the books of the Portuguese writer António Alves Redol. Whereas the critics tend to analyze his work under the characteristic of homogeneity, this thesis discusses the contradictions of this point of view by focusing on the deep of the narrative content and the surface of the narrative form. In what concerns the surface of the narrative, one of the objectives of this research is to analyze the aesthetic specificities of the writing expression of Alves Redol and the impact of his narrative simplicity. Hence, this thesis aims to discuss the concept of the word-skin, which will be used to define his writing. The idea of the word-skin contains the politic and aesthetic aspects of literary narrative as well as it discusses how word can be associated to action. Therefore the work of Alves Redol represents the heterogeneity of the Neorealism, an essential characteristic of this artistic expression in Portugal, and also symbolizes, in its micro cosmos, the entire history of the movement. Finally, this study develops the relations between a different approach to the analysis of the work of Alves Redol and the enlargement in the comprehension of the Portuguese Neorealism.

Cette thèse s’attache à étudier la représentation du thème de l’entreprise dans la littérature contemporaine française, à travers un corpus panoramique de romans parus à partir des années 1980. Les œuvres de François Bon, Thierry Beinstingel, Nicole Caligaris et Élisabeth Filhol, représentatives de cette inflexion romanesque en passe de devenir un sous-genre, y trouvent une place privilégiée. Figurant les récentes mutations linguistiques, managériales, structurelles et idéologiques des grandes entreprises, le roman en soulève les divers enjeux connexes (socio-économiques, éthiques, anthropologiques) et se dote, ce faisant, d’un potentiel critique. Pour réfléchir (c’est-à-dire « refléter », tout autant qu’ « exercer leur réflexion sur ») ces transformations, les romanciers les plus entreprenants puisent à la capacité heuristique de la forme romanesque : la représentation des mutations se répercute alors dans des métamorphoses formelles prenant leur distance avec les esthétiques réaliste et naturaliste. Attachée à réinscrire ce roman dans une histoire littéraire remontant à Chrétien de Troyes, cette étude entend montrer comment le roman d’entreprise, refondé par François Bon et Leslie Kaplan, participe d’un mouvement de repolitisation du littéraire. Piochant dans les sciences humaines de quoi penser le monde, il offre ainsi de nouvelles lignes de lisibilité dans le réel, tout en posant, à nouveaux frais, la question de l’engagement littéraire. / The point of this thesis is to study the representation of the corporation’s theme in the French contemporary literature, through a panoramic corpus of novels published since the 80’s. It gives a very specific place to works from François Bon, Thierry Beinstingel, Nicole Caligaris and Élisabeth Filhol, significant works representative of this quixotic redirection, which is about to become a sub category on its own. Featuring recent ongoing changes in linguistics, management, organization and ideology in big corporations, those novels highlight various related issues (socio-economic, ethic, anthropological) and through the process, gain a critical potential. To think about those transformations (meaning « thinking » as much as « reflecting ») the most innovative novelists inspire themselves from the heuristic capacity of a novel : the representation of those mutations will turn into formal metamorphosis distancing themselves from naturalist and realistic aesthetics. Committed to put this novel movement back into the literature history which goes back to Chrétien de Troyes, this thesis intends to show how Corporate novels, rebuilt by François Bon and Leslie Kaplan, are part of a larger movement which means to inject political engagement in literature. Using human sciences to think about the world, it offers new readings settled in real life, while questioning literature commitment.

Made available in DSpace on 2016-04-28T19:58:54Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Lucas Haddad Grosso Silva.pdf: 878466 bytes, checksum: 4fe3c082e0c298ec446d7fb7232012f7 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2014-11-26 / The aim of this dissertation is to study the effects of the Ethical and Aesthetical opposition to totalitarians communist and capitalist regimes represented in the novels The Celebration (1995) by Ivan Angelo, and The Joke (1999) by Milan Kundera, through the analysis of the fictional inventive modes adopted by the authors. We deepen the critical concepts about the discursive categories of author, narrator and character, through an examination of the point of view, grounded in the theories of Mikhail Bakhtin (2010), Walter Benjamin (2011) and Wayne C. Booth (1983). Analyses of the literary aesthetics were based on the notations of the Modernity highlighted by Leyla Perrone-Moises (2009) and to comprehend the construction of a potential semantic on the narrative of resistance, we consider the studies of Marc Augé (1992) about the nonplaces and the studies of Benjamin (2011) about the reminiscence. At last, we seek to explain the fictional writing and the double work of production and invention of the real, based on the studies of Luiz Costa Lima (2003) about the mimesis, thus clarifying the intersections between Literature and History, according to the essays of Hyden White (2011) and Walter Benjamin (2011). We established that through their singular novels, the authors develop a political and axiological criticism with similar inventive modes to each other, indicating the aesthetics values of the literature of resistance / O objetivo desta dissertação é estudar os efeitos da oposição Ética e Estética dos regimes totalitários comunista e capitalista em representação nos romances A Festa de Ivan Angelo (1995) e A Brincadeira de Milan Kundera (1999), por meio da análise dos modos inventivos ficcionais adotados por ambos os autores. Aprofundamos os conceitos críticos acerca das categorias discursivas autor, narrador e personagem, por meio de um exame do foco narrativo, fundamentados pelas teorias de Mikhail Bakhtin (2010), Walter Benjamin (2011) e Wayne C. Booth (1983). Foram feitas análises sobre a estética literária por meio das notações sobre a Modernidade apontadas por Leyla Perrone-Moisés (2009), para compreender a construção de uma possível semântica da narrativa de resistência, nos valendo, principalmente, dos estudos de Marc Augé (1992) acerca dos não-lugares e de Benjamin (2011) sobre a reminiscência. Por fim, procuramos explicar a Metaficção e o duplo trabalho de produção e invenção do real dos romances, a partir dos estudos de Luiz Costa Lima (2003) sobre a mímese, desse modo explicitando as intersecções entre Literatura e História, segundo os ensaios de Hyden White (2011) e Walter Benjamin (2011). Constatamos que, por meio de seus romances singulares, os autores desenvolvem uma crítica política e axiológica com modos inventivos semelhantes entre si, indiciando os valores estéticos da literatura de resistência