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In the twenty-first century, as in the sixteenth, a blindfolded woman holding a sword and scales personifies justice; her blindfold conveys impartiality, her scales evenhandedness, and her sword the authority to compel obedience. In pre-democratic early modern England, Justice’s iconography was often used to legitimate the pain that the state imposed on those who broke the common peace. Simultaneously, the creative and cultural narratives within which the penal code was embedded often complicated and contradicted the state’s legally violent precepts. The relationship between legal violence and justice is at the center of this project: Must the law be violent to control violence? Does the law’s violence promote justice or disrupt it? How do the formal mechanisms of law and social control operate within the complex world of art, sermons, and literature? This project maps the late Elizabethan and early Stuart engagement with those questions. I examine a continuum of responses to legal violence embedded in the judicial institutions of Parliament, the Star Chamber, and the Queen’s Bench as well as in poetry, plays, sermons, broadsides, iconography, utopian narratives, paintings, and engravings. Often drawing on the metaphoric force of Justice’s symbols, the early modern response to legal violence was not purely semantic but strongly aesthetic, defending, mediating, reflecting, and refracting the state’s formal mechanisms of law. Reading case law along with works by Thomas More, Elizabeth I, Edmund Spenser, William Shakespeare, Edward Coke, John Donne, George Herbert, Thomas Hobbes, John Milton, and Margaret Cavendish, I trace law as a cultural practice, expressed and understood aesthetically through both codified and creative means.

In the twenty-first century, as in the sixteenth, a blindfolded woman holding a sword and scales personifies justice; her blindfold conveys impartiality, her scales evenhandedness, and her sword the authority to compel obedience. In pre-democratic early modern England, Justice’s iconography was often used to legitimate the pain that the state imposed on those who broke the common peace. Simultaneously, the creative and cultural narratives within which the penal code was embedded often complicated and contradicted the state’s legally violent precepts. The relationship between legal violence and justice is at the center of this project: Must the law be violent to control violence? Does the law’s violence promote justice or disrupt it? How do the formal mechanisms of law and social control operate within the complex world of art, sermons, and literature? This project maps the late Elizabethan and early Stuart engagement with those questions. I examine a continuum of responses to legal violence embedded in the judicial institutions of Parliament, the Star Chamber, and the Queen’s Bench as well as in poetry, plays, sermons, broadsides, iconography, utopian narratives, paintings, and engravings. Often drawing on the metaphoric force of Justice’s symbols, the early modern response to legal violence was not purely semantic but strongly aesthetic, defending, mediating, reflecting, and refracting the state’s formal mechanisms of law. Reading case law along with works by Thomas More, Elizabeth I, Edmund Spenser, William Shakespeare, Edward Coke, John Donne, George Herbert, Thomas Hobbes, John Milton, and Margaret Cavendish, I trace law as a cultural practice, expressed and understood aesthetically through both codified and creative means.

This study analyzes figurations of masculine pregnancy in early modern texts. Because no systematic methodology for conducting such an analysis yet exists, I have synthesized scholarship from anthropology, medicine, and psychoanalysis to construct an appropriate paradigm. Specifically, I bring together the anthropologist's "couvade," the physician's "couvade syndrome," and the psychoanalyst's gender-inflected model of the unconscious. Informed by this interdisciplinary scholarship, I offer a composite theory of couvade desire. I then apply that theoretical model to early modern figurations of masculine pregnancy. I find that the pervasive use of such figurations during the period results from ahistorical bodily disparities and historically-specific epistemological circumstances. The so-called "literary couvade" thus modulates: it directly challenges essentialist claims on the one hand, while simultaneously acknowledging the inexorable link between masculinity and a bodily incapability to give birth. Masculinity, in this model, appears disabled.Mitigating the disability, however, is a cultural imaginary unfettered by modern anatomical knowledge. Key aspects of human reproduction were still seductively obscure in the early modern period. Women birthed babies, that much was plain; but, perhaps men had a compensatory system of reproduction. Perhaps, some speculated, that system was superior to the messy, merely material capability exclusive to women. Masculinity could, in this regard, rival maternity for social significance without disclosing any act of appropriation from maternity. Such a dynamic resembles closely Rene Girard's paradigm of "mimetic desire." Crucial to mimetic desire is an indifference to the ostensible object on the part of both rival subjects. Relating this to the early modern "literary couvade," I conclude that figurations of masculine pregnancy emerge from a compensatory desire: the desire to mollify an apparent lack with the reduction in significance of the rival's manifest capability.

The thesis examines John Thompson's Ideology and Modern Culture as an important contribution to the ongoing dialogue over models of the relationship between mediated communications and social order. The thesis argues that Thompson's contribution to communication theory lies in his development of one of the first successful attempts to integrate the strong orientation to meaning provided by interpretative theories into a comprehensive framework linking the situated interpretations of mediated communications to the idiosyncrasies of social ordering. Building on an evaluation of Ideology and Modern Culture's conceptual design, including its re-working of antecedents within communication, social and political theories, the thesis situates Thompson's project within the context of a post-interpretative turn concerned with the relevance and consequences of interpretation. In commenting on some initial limitations and weaknesses in this developing perspective, the thesis critically examines the dangers of over-emphasizing the significance of the interpretation of mediated meanings for the development of forms of action and for the construction of consequences.

No description available.

Данная работа посвящена анализу современных японо-американских отношений в сфере культуры. Подробно рассмотрено взаимное влияние Японии и США на культуру и особенности друг друга. Выделены самые яркие элементы современной культуры Японии и США и их роль в укреплении японо-американского партнерства. В работе использованы и проанализированы мнения жителей обеих стран относительно друг друга, что позволяет сформировать более четкое представление об их заинтересованности в налаживании контактов. / This thesis is dedicated to the analysis of the modern Japanese-American relations in culture field. Mutual influence of Japan and United States on the culture and features of each other is considered in detail. The most significant elements of Japan’s and America’s modern culture and its role in strengthening of the Japan-US partnership were analyzed in this thesis. Opinions of citizens of both countries about each other, that used and explored in this research, allow forming the right conception of their interest in building contacts.

A passagem do século XIX para o século XX acarretou muitas dúvidas e incertezas no pensamento e na cultura ocidentais. A crise do positivismo, que impulsionou os literatos e os intelectuais a se questionarem sobre o conceito de real, gerou um nítido conflito entre tudo aquilo que remetia ao racional e à ciência em contraposição a um renovado tipo de subjetivismo e de relativismo, definindo, assim, uma nova abordagem da literatura e das artes na primeira metade do século XX. Neste trabalho é feita uma análise do papel da imprensa e do intelectual no final do século XIX, para depois retomá-la no período no qual se insere a obra de Pirandello. Estuda-se, ainda, a presença estrangeira nos periódicos italianos e o conceito de literatura popular e cultura de massa que estão intrinsecamente ligados à função do intelectual e sua relação com o povo/nação. Pirandello é um escritor que tem a maior parte de sua produção literária publicada no início do século XX, a qual vai desde obras em dialeto siciliano, nas quais são trabalhados os aspectos mais regionais - como tradições e costumes rurais e folclóricos, crenças populares e místicas e, por isso, de certa forma mais populares, até obras que atingem uma complexidade narrativa comparadas a grandes clássicos literários nacionais e europeus. Nesta pesquisa será apresentada de que forma se dá o comprometimento do intelectual e do artista Pirandello com a sociedade daquele período e de que modo algumas questões subjetivas do autor também influem em sua obra. Como base e modelo que guiará toda a discussão deste trabalho, apresentamos, ainda, uma análise de Il fu Mattia Pascal (1904), uma das obras mais representativas da modernidade europeia e na qual se encontram os elementos principais da poética e da filosofia do autor que, além de resgatar algumas técnicas do romance-folhetim francês, as emprega na publicação seriada desta obra, traduzindo toda a crise da modernidade e resgatando, mesmo que de maneira atenuada, alguns aspectos do romance popular. / The passage between the XIX and the XX centuries brought a lot of doubts and uncertainties in the occidental thought and culture. The positivism crisis, which forced the men of letter and the intellectuals to debate the concept of real, generated a sharp conflict between everything which concerned the logical and the science and a renewed kind of subjectivism and relativism, defining in this manner a new approach to arts and literature at the first half of XX century. This work presents an analysis about the press and the literate man at the end of the XX century, to be introduced again during the period in which Pirandello is set in. Moreover is studied the foreign presence in the italian magazines and the concepts of popular literature and mass culture which are strictly connected to the intellectuals function and his relationship with the population/nation. Pirandello is a writer whose literary productions was published at the beginning of the XX century and it goes from sicilian dialect works, in which more characteristic and regional aspects can be found such as popular and folkloristic customs and traditions, popular and mystic lores and therefore more popular, to works where a complex narrative is involved until reaching a national and european level. The aim of this research is to show the compromise between the artist Pirandello and the society of that period and in what way a few personal issues of the author influence his opus. To enlighten the whole discussion is introduced an analysis of Il fu Mattia Pascal (1904) - one of the most representative works of european modernity - in which can be found characteristic elements of Pirandellos poetry and philosophy. Pirandello revives some tecniques from the french roman-feuilleton and employs them in a serial publication of this play that, beyond traslating the whole crisis of modernity, partially rescues some aspects of the popular novel.

My dissertation explores postcolonial implications of performances in Brian Friel's plays. While showing Friel's theatre is performative with its alienation effect and artistic activities of music, songs, dances, and recitations, I demonstrate that Irish self, culture, and history in Friel's plays are performative as well, because they are shown to be socially constructed rather than inherently possessed, constantly contested rather than comfortably settled, in dynamic process of remaking rather than fixed as finished products. Examining performances in Friel's theatre, characters' daily lives, historical narratives, and cultural ceremonies, I argue that those performances also shed light on the (post)colonial situation in Ireland¡ªa split island with mongrel arts, interstitial characters, disparate histories, and mythologized or relegated cultures. Showing that Irish self, history, and culture are not homogenous, linear, or monolithic entities but hybrid, contested constructs, Friel's plays subvert the binaries embedded in British colonialism, Irish nationalism, and developmental historicism. However, as Friel's characters fail to negotiate the symbiotic yet opposing forces such as the north and the south, English and Irish, official history and personal story, national myth and folk culture, tradition and modernity, my dissertation concludes that in Friel's plays to be Irish is to suffer a hybrid yet split and liminal existence, to be framed by official discourses and cultural myths, and to contend for alternative expressions of history and culture. Friel's concern with performance thus culminates in his performative conception of Irish identity¡ªas a heterogeneous composite with ongoing contestation between different selves, historical narratives, and cultural practices, it cannot but remain open to different expressions and constant (re)definitions.

A passagem do século XIX para o século XX acarretou muitas dúvidas e incertezas no pensamento e na cultura ocidentais. A crise do positivismo, que impulsionou os literatos e os intelectuais a se questionarem sobre o conceito de real, gerou um nítido conflito entre tudo aquilo que remetia ao racional e à ciência em contraposição a um renovado tipo de subjetivismo e de relativismo, definindo, assim, uma nova abordagem da literatura e das artes na primeira metade do século XX. Neste trabalho é feita uma análise do papel da imprensa e do intelectual no final do século XIX, para depois retomá-la no período no qual se insere a obra de Pirandello. Estuda-se, ainda, a presença estrangeira nos periódicos italianos e o conceito de literatura popular e cultura de massa que estão intrinsecamente ligados à função do intelectual e sua relação com o povo/nação. Pirandello é um escritor que tem a maior parte de sua produção literária publicada no início do século XX, a qual vai desde obras em dialeto siciliano, nas quais são trabalhados os aspectos mais regionais - como tradições e costumes rurais e folclóricos, crenças populares e místicas e, por isso, de certa forma mais populares, até obras que atingem uma complexidade narrativa comparadas a grandes clássicos literários nacionais e europeus. Nesta pesquisa será apresentada de que forma se dá o comprometimento do intelectual e do artista Pirandello com a sociedade daquele período e de que modo algumas questões subjetivas do autor também influem em sua obra. Como base e modelo que guiará toda a discussão deste trabalho, apresentamos, ainda, uma análise de Il fu Mattia Pascal (1904), uma das obras mais representativas da modernidade europeia e na qual se encontram os elementos principais da poética e da filosofia do autor que, além de resgatar algumas técnicas do romance-folhetim francês, as emprega na publicação seriada desta obra, traduzindo toda a crise da modernidade e resgatando, mesmo que de maneira atenuada, alguns aspectos do romance popular. / The passage between the XIX and the XX centuries brought a lot of doubts and uncertainties in the occidental thought and culture. The positivism crisis, which forced the men of letter and the intellectuals to debate the concept of real, generated a sharp conflict between everything which concerned the logical and the science and a renewed kind of subjectivism and relativism, defining in this manner a new approach to arts and literature at the first half of XX century. This work presents an analysis about the press and the literate man at the end of the XX century, to be introduced again during the period in which Pirandello is set in. Moreover is studied the foreign presence in the italian magazines and the concepts of popular literature and mass culture which are strictly connected to the intellectuals function and his relationship with the population/nation. Pirandello is a writer whose literary productions was published at the beginning of the XX century and it goes from sicilian dialect works, in which more characteristic and regional aspects can be found such as popular and folkloristic customs and traditions, popular and mystic lores and therefore more popular, to works where a complex narrative is involved until reaching a national and european level. The aim of this research is to show the compromise between the artist Pirandello and the society of that period and in what way a few personal issues of the author influence his opus. To enlighten the whole discussion is introduced an analysis of Il fu Mattia Pascal (1904) - one of the most representative works of european modernity - in which can be found characteristic elements of Pirandellos poetry and philosophy. Pirandello revives some tecniques from the french roman-feuilleton and employs them in a serial publication of this play that, beyond traslating the whole crisis of modernity, partially rescues some aspects of the popular novel.