This study investigated the production of literary themes as cultural products in two historical periods: The French Romantic Movement and the Beat Generation in America during the 1950's. The study defined the fundamental literary themes of the French Romantic Movement and examined the sociological factors which led to the development of this system of ideas. In turn, the French themes were used as an analytical device to determine if these themes existed in the Beat Generation and if the Beat Generation could be viewed as a social and literary movement in the tradition of French literary history. Following a comparison of essential ideas of each movement, the study investigated the sociological factors which led not only to French Romanticism, but to the Beat Generation as well. The project provided a thorough, systematic content analysis of the literary themes of the Beat Generation, and concluded that the Beat Generation may be considered a system of ideas in the tradition of French Romanticism. In addition, several similar abiding sociological factors were present in both historical periods. The study projected the possibility of vanishing alternative Bohemian sub-cultures in modern society and the advent of the twilight of romanticism. / Doctor of Philosophy

This project explores the use if illegitimacy within Western discourse over the last three centuries. Illegitimacy was used in Victorian literature as a literary device to drive plot but evolved into a touchstone for Western discourse to explore the bounds of what is considered respectable society. Over time, as illegitimacy has become more mainstream, I contend illegitimate identities have been utilized to serve as a mirror for Western hegemony. In the first chapter, I explore the origins of illegitimacy being used as a literary device in novels by Victorian authors Charles Dickens and Wilkie Collins. In the second chapter, I examine the role illegitimacy plays in the origin stories of canonical comic book superheroes Batman and Superman. Lastly, in the third chapter, I scrutinize the role illegitimacy plays in defining the human condition within science fiction as human culture continues to advance technologically towards a post human world. / by Ryan Dessler. / Thesis (M.A.)--Florida Atlantic University, 2012. / Includes bibliography. / Mode of access: World Wide Web. / System requirements: Adobe Reader.

Este trabalho estuda a obra do poeta Murilo Mendes, em especial, o livro Poesia Liberdade. A partir da sua relação com as conquistas de 1922, sua obra é vista como ramificação e continuação do primeiro modernismo, além de ter sofrido as influências da vanguarda surrealista e do cristianismo, ambas criando imagens desconcertantes e, algumas vezes, desconcertadas. Se, como já se afirmou, a imagem conta tanto em Murilo, a leitura de Poesia Liberdade possibilita um estudo de como se desenvolve a arte combinatória na poética muriliana. Estudamos também a experiência artística do poeta de criar um novo mundo dentro do caos, fazendo aquilo que parece fora da ordem revelar justamente uma nova ordenação para as coisas, procurando, no entanto, responder até que ponto isso é possível formalmente no poema e historicamente na práxis vital, abrindo uma reflexão no interior da própria obra. / This study analyzes Murilo Mendes work, particularly the book Poesia Liberdade. Since its relationship to the conquers of 1922, his work has been seen as a ramification and continuation of the first modernism, and has suffered influences from the surrealist vanguard and the christianism, both having created disconcerting and, sometimes, disconcerted images. If, as it has already been affirmed, image is so important in Murilos work, reading Poesia Liberdade enables a study of how the combinatory art in Murilos poetry is developed. We have also studied the artistic experience of the poet in creating a new world among the chaos, making what seems to be disordered reveal just a new order, aiming, however, to answer how far that is possible in the poem and historically in the vital praxis, opening a new reflection in the work itself.

Este estudo pretende discutir a constituição do ponto de vista narrativo em Lavoura arcaica, de Raduan Nassar. A partir do reconhecimento da dramatização ritual que rege o romance, descrita em parte pela crítica, busca-se investigar os modos de irrupção de uma fala exasperada. A situação narrativa em possessão, por meio da qual o registro lírico da prosa confina com a disposição encantatória à violência, domina a forma. Isso reitera de modo envolvente os paroxismos implicados na ideia da incitação absoluta à ordem. Essa demanda mitificante aparece articulada a contradições históricosociais. A obra apreende, em sua própria estrutura, a afirmação paradoxal da subjetividade sob o familismo árabe imigrado e certa dinâmica social própria ao Brasil pós-1964. Considerando o embate entre a construção estética e o processo histórico, o trabalho examina impasses que definem a linguagem ambivalente de Lavoura. Como se tentará mostrar, as oscilações extremas e as passagens agônicas caracterizam a fundo a matéria do autor, atravessada por uma lógica infensa à síntese. / This study intends to discuss the formation of the narrative point of view in Lavoura arcaica, of Raduan Nassar. From the recognition of the ritual dramatization that governs the novel, described in part by critics, one searchs to investigate the irruption of an exasperated speech. The narrative situation in possession, by means of which the lyrical prose confines with a fascinating disposition to violence, that dominates the form. This reiterates in involving way the paroxysms implied in the idea of the absolute incitation to the order. This mythical demand will appear articulated the historical social contradictions. The piece seizes, into its own structure, the paradoxical assertion of subjectivity under the Arabic immigrated familism, and a social dynamic typical to the post-1964 Brazil. Considering the clash between aesthetic construction and the historical process, the work examines dilemmas that define the ambivalent language of Lavoura. As it will be tried to show, the extreme oscillations and the agonizing passages describe the author\'s background, traversed by a hostile logic to the synthesis.

Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness is, admittedly, a text with many racist, imperialist and sexist subtexts. A feminist literary analysis, however, can extract women's empowerment and agency. This thesis takes a closer look at the Mistress (also known as the African woman) and the Intended, two women with vastly different racial and class backgrounds who, in their own ways, demonstrate resistance. This thesis analyzes Mr. Kurtz's often ignored sketch in oils, arguing that the sketch itself demonstrates the colonial mentality of difference and the disruption of that difference. It then explores both the Mistress and the Intended in detail, positing that while the Mistress uses the colonizers' fear of the wilderness and its silence to her advantage, the Intended takes control over her own domestic circumstance. Overall, this author asserts that the Mistress and the Intended, while often dismissed, are noteworthy, important, and influential characters in Heart of Darkness. / by Kathryn Marie Smith. / Thesis (M.A.)--Florida Atlantic University, 2009. / Includes bibliography. / Electronic reproduction. Boca Raton, Fla., 2009. Mode of access: World Wide Web.

Protosciences, or new sciences trying to establish their legitimacy, are ubiquitous in literature. In the old stories we hear of alchemists who can only dream of the discoveries that modern chemists take for granted, and in the new stories we hear of travelers moving faster than light as our greatest physicists attempt to make that fantasy a reality. Limiting our viewpoint to the modern scientific reductionist view of the universe not only makes little sense if we consider Michael Polanyi's theories of emergence and 'personal knowledge', but it robs medieval scholars for the conceptual credit they are due for theories they could not satisfactorily explain by the future's standards, and stifles the sorts of fantastic possibilities that are opened by the great science-fiction authors. Medieval authors' expositions of protoscientific thought laid the ground work for our own modern disciplines, and by reexamining how this happened we can develop a new appreciation for the power of the imagination. / by Robert James Leivers. / Thesis (M.A.)--Florida Atlantic University, 2013. / Includes bibliography. / Mode of access: World Wide Web. / System requirements: Adobe Reader.

Este estudo pretende discutir a constituição do ponto de vista narrativo em Lavoura arcaica, de Raduan Nassar. A partir do reconhecimento da dramatização ritual que rege o romance, descrita em parte pela crítica, busca-se investigar os modos de irrupção de uma fala exasperada. A situação narrativa em possessão, por meio da qual o registro lírico da prosa confina com a disposição encantatória à violência, domina a forma. Isso reitera de modo envolvente os paroxismos implicados na ideia da incitação absoluta à ordem. Essa demanda mitificante aparece articulada a contradições históricosociais. A obra apreende, em sua própria estrutura, a afirmação paradoxal da subjetividade sob o familismo árabe imigrado e certa dinâmica social própria ao Brasil pós-1964. Considerando o embate entre a construção estética e o processo histórico, o trabalho examina impasses que definem a linguagem ambivalente de Lavoura. Como se tentará mostrar, as oscilações extremas e as passagens agônicas caracterizam a fundo a matéria do autor, atravessada por uma lógica infensa à síntese. / This study intends to discuss the formation of the narrative point of view in Lavoura arcaica, of Raduan Nassar. From the recognition of the ritual dramatization that governs the novel, described in part by critics, one searchs to investigate the irruption of an exasperated speech. The narrative situation in possession, by means of which the lyrical prose confines with a fascinating disposition to violence, that dominates the form. This reiterates in involving way the paroxysms implied in the idea of the absolute incitation to the order. This mythical demand will appear articulated the historical social contradictions. The piece seizes, into its own structure, the paradoxical assertion of subjectivity under the Arabic immigrated familism, and a social dynamic typical to the post-1964 Brazil. Considering the clash between aesthetic construction and the historical process, the work examines dilemmas that define the ambivalent language of Lavoura. As it will be tried to show, the extreme oscillations and the agonizing passages describe the author\'s background, traversed by a hostile logic to the synthesis.

Na presente Dissertação investigamos como a configuração do narrador em Abdias formaliza, literariamente, a figura do intelectual brasileiro mediano dos anos 1930. Desse modo, propomos a leitura analítica do romance de Cyro dos Anjos numa chave que leve em conta a relação entre a matéria ficcional e os elementos sociais e culturais que ali estão representados. / This dissertation investigates how the configuration of the narrator of Abdias formalaises, literarily, the figure of the brazilian middle-class intelectual of the 1930\'s. In this sense, it proposes an analytical analyses of Cyro dos Anjos\' novel in a perspective that takes into consideration the relation between the fiction and the social and cultural elements that are there represented.

O romance Budapeste de Chico Buarque é uma narrativa em primeira pessoa que relata de forma não linear a trajetória do ghost-writer José Costa, desde os tempos de faculdade, quando vendia sob encomenda monografias e trabalhos acadêmicos, no Rio de Janeiro, até o seu estabelecimento definitivo na cidade de Budapeste, na Hungria, depois de ser-lhe atribuída a autoria de Budapest, livro que afirma não ter escrito e que relata grande parte de sua vida. Abordando o motivo do duplo, uma vez que o protagonista não se divide somente entre duas cidades, mas também entre duas línguas e duas mulheres, o relato se constrói a partir de um foco não confiável, o que reforça a problemática do logro e do embuste que a narrativa engendra. A associação desses elementos a saber, o foco não confiável, a profissão exercida pelo protagonista e seu deslocamento entre dois países possibilita algumas das questões que se colocam no romance e que selecionamos para análise, tais como a simulação e a abstração, as relações de dependência entre o Brasil e os países economicamente dominantes e a indústria cultural. Assim, partindo-se do pressuposto de que a obra literária recria em seu interior uma realidade ficcional autônoma, o propósito deste trabalho é examinar os temas apontados, verificando em que medida e de que maneira essas questões são captadas e formuladas pela estrutura da obra e assim revelam aspectos próprios da realidade concreta. / The novel Budapeste, by Chico Buarque, is a first-person narrative which relates in a non-linear way the trajectory of the ghost-writer José Costa since he used to sell monographs and academic papers in Rio de Janeiro until his settling in Budapest, the Hungarian capital, when he is pointed as the author of Budapest, a book which he does not recognizes as his and which tells a great part of his life. Dealing with the motif of the double, as the protagonist does not only divide himself between two cities, but also between two languages and two women, the story is told by an unreliable narrator, which reinforces the issue of deceit which the narrative constructs. The association of these elements unreliable narrator, profession of the protagonist and his circulation between two countries creates some of the questions that are present in the novel and herein analyzed, for instance, simulation and abstraction, relations of dependency between Brazil and economically dominant countries and the cultural industry. Therefore, starting from the idea that the literary work recreates an autonomous fictional reality, the aim of this dissertation is to examine the mentioned themes, observing in which ways these questions are grasped and formulated by the structure of the novel and hence can reveal specific aspects of concrete reality.

In Beyond the Negro Problem, I explore the engagement between black literature, black expressive culture, and sociology from the 1890s to the 1930s in order to consider the possibilities for imagining black social life that emerge through discoursive innovation during a time period of violent constraint. During this period, which followed Emancipation and the failure of Reconstruction, the struggle for black life or assimilation into American society was consolidated, examined, and contemplated as the so-called Negro problem. The Negro problem was a pervasive reality and metaphor that both black authors and social scientists grappled with. I argue that black leaders and intellectuals use different forms of sociology in their writing to respond directly to narratives of black social pathology and to imagine black life beyond the status of being a problem. In each chapter I explore a different engagement of sociology and literary production and each time find that the formations of black possibility that emerge are predicated on issues of gender and sexuality because the predominating foreclosing narratives about black social life tend to gravitate toward these same issues. Moreover, the racial knowledge about African American culture produced by sociology at the onset of modernity is acutely gendered. As my project details, a major consequence of these authors dismantling that racial knowledge is that they envision gendered possibilities that exceed the Negro problem itself.