For Milan Kundera, the question of identity is one of the essential questions around which a novel is constructed. The novelist attempts to define the issue by exploring the existential themes that are tied to it. These themes are examined from different angles with the aid of what the author calls "motifs". Our study is centered on one of those motifs, that of the mirror, through which the author explores the "enigma of the ego". The typological analysis of this motif in Kundera's ten novels brings out in the characters two fundamental attitudes with regard to their identity. The first consists in clinging to it, which results in the character's disquiet, while the second consists in freeing oneself from it, which leads to a better understanding of reality as well as to a certain form of wisdom.

As astronomers continue to examine fainter objects and farther back in time, they require increasingly large telescopes due to the fundamental diffraction of optical elements. Therefore several of the next generation optical telescopes will employ extremely large primary mirrors. However to realistically construct mirrors of these magnitudes they will need to be assembled as a collection of many smaller mirrors. This mirror segmentation leads to the additional challenge of aligning the smaller mirror elements with respect to one another, and maintain that alignment in the presence of disturbances on the optical surface and its supporting structure. To achieve this alignment and disturbance rejection, a complex active control system will be required. There are several possible solutions to the control problem ranging from fully decentralized control to a global control scheme. However since many of these segmented mirrors will be comprised of hundreds of mirror elements a global control scheme quickly becomes an intractable solution. On the other extreme, a highly scalable decentralized scheme is realizable, however, would lack any global sense of the system. Therefore an appealing solution is a scalable distributed network of controllers, where individual controllers 'act locally' yet 'think globally'. This is achieved by coupling adjacent controller to one another, forming a lattice across the spatial extents of the system.

Anne de France, or Anne de Beaujeu by marriage, was present in history books long before she was the subject of literary studies. Regent of France's kingdom during her brother's, Charles the VIII's, minority (1484--1491), we know her mostly for successfully having measured herself up to her political opponents by calling the Etats Generaux and ruling the kingdom with calculating tactfulness. However, she also leaves a literary legacy, her Enseignements, which she writes for her only daughter Susanne in 1504 or 1505, and which are published in 1521 in Lyon by the editor and bookseller Le Prince. / Having not enjoyed great literary fortune, this text contains many interesting attributes. To this effect, a rhetoric reading of the Enseignements can and must be done. Even though the text recycles many of the period's conventions, a study of the argumentative devices, most notably through the interaction of the exempla and the counter-exempla , generates a certain virtue ethic that is especially noticeable through the analysis of the identity defining instance, "je".

Thesis (M.App.Sc.) - Carleton University, 2002. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 109-113). Also available in electronic format on the Internet.

Thesis--Université de Toulouse-Le Mirail, 1972. / Includes indexes. Includes bibliographical references (p. 700-733).

Thesis (M.S.)--Auburn University, 2007. / Abstract. Vita. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (M.S.)--Western Washington University, 2006. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 63-69).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas at Austin, 2006. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references.

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This thesis explores the transformation of the mirror's symbolic role in the poetry and visual art of late nineteenth-century Paris. For centuries the mirror has been associated with both truth and artifice, whether in religion, popular culture, art, or theories of aesthetics. In the context of nineteenth-century literature, M.H. Abrams uses the mirror to represent the age-old idea of the artist as an objective reflector of the world, juxtaposing this with the nineteenth-century notion of the artist as a subjective lamp. However, this thesis shows that, far from being abandoned as a symbol of artistic expression, the mirror motif was reclaimed and reinterpreted by Baudelaire and his artistic and poetic successors. The thesis argues that their works highlight the distortions and ambiguities that the mirror can produce, using it as a motif to challenge and alter our mode of vision. This thesis focuses on the visual and poetic culture of Paris between 1850 and 1900, when mirrors were increasingly visible in a range of public and private settings. Building on Walter Benjamin's descriptions of Paris as a city of mirrors and a locus of multiple, shifting gazes, the thesis examines how the perceptual experiences of modernity feed into the development of the mirror's symbolic role. Through a series of close readings, the thesis analyses the dynamics of mirror-vision and explores the shared preoccupations of art and poetry in their treatment of subjectivity, vision, and self-reflexive artistic practices. The thesis is arranged into three sections, examining texts by Charles Baudelaire, Henri de Régnier, Jules Laforgue, Stéphane Mallarmé, and Marie Krysinska, and artworks by Edgar Degas, Edouard Manet, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Berthe Morisot, and Mary Cassatt. The first section assesses Baudelaire's works as a turning point for the mirror's symbolic significance, particularly examining how Baudelaire reinterprets the association between mirrors and femininity. The second section explores this latter connection in the art and poetry of Baudelaire's late nineteenthcentury successors. The third section examines the mirror's appearance in various ambiguous or ill-defined spaces, assessing how this affects the reader's or viewer's perceptions. I conclude that in the art and poetry of this period, the mirror becomes an emblem of self-reflexivity. Through works that prioritise mobility, multiplicity, and fragmentation, these artists and poets subvert the mirror's associations with mimesis in order to expose the dynamic uncertainty of vision and artistic representation.