This thesis juxtaposes Plato's allegory of the cave with Jacques Derrida's concept of the always already aspect of meaning, a concept derived from Ferdinand de Saussure's work. This theoretical investigation examines the implications of universal Signified forms of word meanings for postmodern composition theory.

This is a study of Chava Shapiro, a woman writer, born in 1876 in the Ukraine, who died in 1943 in Nazi Czechoslovakia. It describes her conventional Hasidic upbringing, her successful rebellion against it and her subsequent studies in Switzerland which led to a career in Hebrew journalism. It follows her return to Russia in 1914, her escape to Czechoslovakia after the pogroms of 1919 and 24 years later her tragic end in Terezin. / Dominating the study is the well-known Hebrew writer, Reuven Brainin, 1862-1939, with whom Chava Shapiro fell in love and who exerted an extraordinary influence on her life. / Using original, never before published materials from the Jewish Public Library Archives in Montreal, the study seeks to define the woman as a feminist and a Hebrew writer.

In House of Leaves, Mark Z. Danielewski has produced a text which epitomises the traits and concerns of postmodernist literature. Through his attention to aspects such as metafiction, intertextuality and parody, Danielewski develops a narrative structure which is best understood as a literary labyrinth. It is a structure intended to reflect the social conditions of the twenty-first century and comment on the experience of people living at this time. Some of the meaning-making strategies within the book’s labyrinthine structure are thus discussed in detail in order to demonstrate the relevance and importance of House of Leaves as social commentary. House of Leaves is an exemplary postmodernist text, but it is also one that seeks to guide the reader beyond the intellectual impasse of the postmodernist paradigm toward a renewed ethical and political engagement with the world. One of the most important goals of both Danielewski’s novel and this thesis is to attempt to redefine the postmodernist perspective in such a way as to insist on the necessity of what I call a new realism. This is founded upon an awareness of the pervasiveness of the self-perpetuating ideology of capitalism, even in the perspective of postmodernism (which purports to subvert all authoritative ideologies). Playing a crucial role in perpetuating the status quo of capitalism is the growth of entertainment culture, which works to sideline crucial political issues by replacing information with infotainment. The result is an intensification of the processes of commodification. Such an intensification, it is argued, may be countered by a radical scepticism which draws upon the methods and insights of contemporary science.

This thesis offers an edition of the English and Latin poems found in MS. Folger bd with STC 22957, attributed to Henry Vaux (c. 1559—1587), a recusant, priest-smuggler, and child prodigy. THE TEXT of the edition is preceded by an introduction comprising three parts: a GENERAL INTRODUCTION describing Vaux‘s socio-historical and biographical context; a CRITICAL INTRODUCTION describing the Medieval and Early Modern literary contexts of Vaux‘s poems and the forms, traditions, topoi, and conventions adhered to in them; and a TEXTUAL INTRODUCTION describing the seventeenth-century manuscript copy of the poems used as the source text and explaining and justifying the editorial decisions made. Textual variants and instances of doubtful authorship are also discussed. THE TEXT itself is presented in the original spelling of the MS. and is a diplomatic edition: the scribe‘s use of characters that are now defunct (such as long ‗s‘ and ‗=‘ for ‗-‘) has not been modernised. A critical apparatus is provided with THE TEXT. THE TEXT is followed by an extensive COMMENTARY, which glosses un-usual or archaic words and phrases, points out allusions and their likely sources, discusses literary forms and conventions which inform the reading of the po-ems, and observes peculiarities in poetic metre. Translations and commentary are offered for Vaux‘s Latin poems. The five appendices following the COMMEN-TARY comprise a MODERNISED TEXT of the poems, a FACSIMILE OF THE FOLGER MS., a SUBSEQUENT HISTORY OF THE VAUX FAMILY after Henry Vaux‘s death, a text JOHN OF PECHAM‘S PHILOMENA PRAEVIA (a text which informs the reading of Vaux‘s ―A complaint to the Nightingale‖) along with a parallel translation by me, and transcriptions of TEXTUAL VARIANTS. A BIBLIOGRAPHY of works cited, re-ferred to or consulted follows the appendices. A comprehensive GENERAL INDEX of subjects, people, places, and literary works and forms follows this, and an IN-DEX OF FIRST LINES AND TITLES of Vaux‘s poems completes the edition.

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Young Ada. / Thesis (M.Phil.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2000. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 134-139). / Abstracts in English and Chinese. / Abstract --- p.i / 摘要 --- p.iii / Acknowledgments --- p.v / Introduction / "Crisis Unveiled: ""All that is Positive Melts Away""" --- p.1 / Chapter Chapter I --- "Crisis in Interpersonal and Intrapsychic Realms: and ""England, My England""" --- p.17 / Chapter Chapter II --- Crisis in Interpersonal and Intrapsychic Realms: Desire and its Perversions in Death in Venice and The Magic Mountain --- p.37 / Chapter Chapter III --- "Crisis at the Societal Level: in Women in Love and ""England, My England""" --- p.64 / Chapter Chapter IV --- Crisis at the Societal Level: From the Corrosions of Meaning in Life to the Dislocations of Societal Order in Death in Venice and The Magic Mountain --- p.94 / Coda / Crisis (Un)ended: The Great War and its Aftermath --- p.122 / Notes --- p.129 / Works Cited --- p.134

Wong Nga-lai. / Thesis (M.Phil.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2001. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 108-112). / Abstracts in English and Chinese. / Acknowledgements --- p.i / Abstract --- p.ii-v / Introduction / Homosexuality: a sin versus a choice --- p.1 -5 / Chapter Chapter One --- Wilde and his sacrifices --- p.6 -38 / Chapter Chapter Two --- Forster and his private novel --- p.39 -70 / Chapter Chapter Three --- Rechy and his new order --- p.71-104 / Conclusion / Still a long way to go --- p.105 -107 / Selected Bibliography --- p.108-112

The medieval planctus is a Latin lament, composed in great numbers on Biblical themes as well as for the death of political figures or the destruction of cities. It appeared in both monophonic and polyphonic form, and had counterparts in a number of vernacular languages. The manuscript Biblioteca Mediceo-Laurenziana Pluteo 29.1, known as the Florence manuscript, contains eight monophonic planctus in the memory of well-known public figures of the late twelfth and early thirteenth centuries. This thesis will examine these compositions as a collection. The monophonic repertoire of the middle ages has been examined in a relatively limited fashion; the florid Latin repertoire, which includes these planctus, has been studied hardly at all. This thesis will provide a musical analysis based upon the text, to prove that the underlying compositional basis for these widely disparate pieces was the same. The planctus span a period of seventy years, and differ greatly in length, textual structure, and musical form. However, as this work will demonstrate, despite their differences, they follow essentially the same inner logic. The analyses contained in the thesis are based upon study of both the syntax and poetry of the text, and seek to discover the relationship of the music to these textual aspects. Various facets of the music (cadence structure, melodic outline, ambitus, and mode) are included in the study. In the process of this study, other facts about the planctus also come to light: the importance of pitches grouped into melodic phrases; mode as an expressive tool rather than a restrictive set of parameters; and the presence of various forms of descriptive composition, or word-painting, often considered not to exist in medieval music. The thesis draws conclusions regarding these aspects of the music, and how they are all used to the greater expression of the texts. The results of this analysis conclude that the eight planctus, while differing in surface characteristics, are the outcome of a single compositional approach, that of the text as a departure point for the music.

This thesis investigates the twelfth-century Latin poem entitled Urbanus magnus or 'The Book of the Civilised Man', attributed to Daniel of Beccles. This is a poem dedicated to the cultivation of a civilised life, aimed primarily at clerics although its use extends to nobility, and specifically the noble householder. This thesis focuses on the text as a primary source for an understanding of social life in medieval England, and uses the content of the text to explore issues such as the medieval household, social hierarchy, the body, and food and diet. Urbanus magnus is commonly referred to as a 'courtesy text'. This thesis seeks to understand Urbanus magnus outside of that attribution, and to situate the text in the context of twelfth and thirteenth-century England. Thus far, scholarship of courtesy literature has focused on later texts such as thirteenth-century vernacular 'courtesy texts' or humanist works as exemplified by Erasmus's De civilitate morum puerilium. This scholarship looks back to the twelfth century and sees texts such as Urbanus magnus as 'early Latin courtesy texts'. This teleological view relegates such earlier texts to positions at the genesis of the genre and blindly assumes that they belong to the corpus of 'courtesy literature'. This neglects both their individual importance and their respective origins. This thesis examines Urbanus magnus as a didactic text which contains elements of 'courtesy literature', but also displays moral and ethical concerns. At the heart of the thesis is the question: should Urbanus magnus be considered as part of the genre of courtesy literature? This question does not have a simple answer, but this thesis shows that some elements and sections of Urbanus magnus do conform to the characteristics of courtesy literature. However, there are further sections that reflect other literary traditions. In addition to morals and ethics, Urbanus magus reflects other genres such as satire, and also reveals social issues in twelfth-century England such as the rise of anti-curiale sentiment and resentment of upward social mobility. This thesis provides an examination of Urbanus magnus through the most prevalent themes in the text. Firstly, it explores the dynamics of the medieval household, along with issues such as social mobility and hierarchy. Secondly, it focuses on the depiction of the body and bodily restraint, covering topics such as speech, bodily emissions, and sexual activity. Thirdly, it discusses food and diet, including table manners, food consumption, and dietary effects of foodstuffs. The penultimate chapter looks at the manuscript dissemination of the text to investigate the different uses which Urbanus magnus found in subsequent centuries. The delineation of Urbanus magnus as part of the genre of courtesy literature ignores the social, cultural, and literary impact on the creation of the text. In response, this thesis has two aims. The first is to minimise the notion of genre, and treat Urbanus magnus as a text in its own right, and as a product of the twelfth century. The second shows that Urbanus magnus reflects both continuity and change in society in England following the Norman Conquest.

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