This paper discusses the themes and styles Marlene Streeruwitz uses to support a feminist perspective. The themes discussed are silence, motherhood, oppression, and the body. Streeruwitz's text brings the historical and contemporary silence of women to light and exposes personal and social oppression. By including aspects of women's lives, such as the role of mother, Streeruwitz provides a new literary perspective of women. This is further enhanced by the text's insight into the physical aspects of womanhood. Finally, Streeruwitz's writing style, which is characterized by minimalistic sentence structures and phrases, as well as unusual punctuation, endorses a form of writing that is more representative of women's experiences in opposition to the vast history of literature formed from the male's perspective in a patriarchal society.

In an attempt to widen interpretations, this study first explores the myths associated with Friedrich von Hardenberg, commonly known as Novalis, which have resulted in the neglect of material interpretations of his works. After an introduction to Hardenberg's theory of the Self and Karl Marx's theory of alienation, an analysis of Hardenberg's most widely read work, Heinrich von Afterdingen, demonstrates how Hardenberg was as concerned with the material and the social relations among human beings and their labor as he was with their spiritual endeavors. The self-development of Heinrich, the main character in Afterdingen, is chronicled in this study with special attention given to his material existence as well as the material existence of the people he encounters. This study demonstrates that Afterdingen can be read as a handbook for the development of the Self according to the theories of Hardenberg and Marx, in which the Self cannot favor the spiritual realm, or inner existence, at the expense of its material and social relations. Rather, these two spheres are both important for full self-development.

The literary works of Heinrich von Kleist (17771811) have long been an important influence on thinkers and writers interested and engaged in the German cultural tradition, particularly due to the enigmatic and highly problematic nature of his narrative approach. In recent years, however, there has been a notable surge of interest in Kleists works, which has led to the production of several articles, papers, and even entire conference panels dedicated to the investigation of his oeuvre from various angles. Why does Kleist still fascinate his readers so much, and what is it about his texts that allow for such a large and varied body of interpretation? In this thesis, I will argue that it is crucial to examine closely the interface of text and reader when analyzing Kleists novellas, specifically "Die Marquise von O" and "Das Erdbeben in Chili." I will then attempt to establish a link between Kleists unique reaction to the philosophical debates concerning epistemology and aesthetics that were taking place during his short lifetime and the experience of the reader when confronting Kleists texts. I will examine these questions first with the aid of narratology and reader-response theory, particularly by examining the issues of closure and focalization in the two narratives. Furthermore, I will illustrate how a narratological/reader-response approach to Kleists work can also inform a feminist critical approach and, likewise, how a feminist analysis can complement the former. In the final chapter, I will conduct a feminist analysis, focusing on both form and content in the two novellas to show how Kleists work both structurally and thematically challenges male Enlightenment values such as order and logic. These analyses ultimately illustrate how Kleist displaced the philosophical questions with which he was grappling into the realm of the text-reader interface, thus emulating and illuminating with this relationship the selfs quest for knowledge and meaning in the world.

The German-Turkish director Fatih Akin and the Armenian-Russian Anna Melikian represent a new wave of successful young European filmmakers. Their works capture intermediate results of the quest for national identity that began in Germany and Russia after the fall of the Berlin wall in 1989 and the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 respectively. This thesis offers a comparative analysis of Akins In July (2000) and Head-On (2004) and Melikians Mars (2004) and Mermaid (2007) and explores how issues of identity and its key categories including gender, sexuality and ethnicity are treated in each of these works. The goal of the thesis is to look into how the historical cataclysms toward the end of the 20th century affected perceptions of national and personal identity, and how these changes were then reflected in the German and Russian outsider cinema of the 2000s.

La violencia en Colombia es un problema que lleva más de sesenta años. Siempre se ha hablado de la Época de la violencia como los años de la guerra entre conservadores y liberales que se inició con el asesinato del líder liberal Jorge Eliecer Gaitán en abril de 1948. Sin embargo, esa época no tuvo un final, ella fue simplemente la introducción a una forma de vida a la cual los colombianos se han acostumbrado, la violencia. Esta violencia sin tregua ha sido tema importante en la narrativa contemporánea. Desde los años noventas hemos visto la incursión en ese campo de una escritora colombiana que además de haber sido periodista por muchos años y de haber participado en los procesos de paz que se llevaron a cabo en los años ochentas en Colombia, ha tenido como uno de los temas fundamentales en sus novelas la violencia en Colombia y la actitud del colombiano ante la misma. Laura Restrepo, colombiana nacida en Bogotá en 1950, se ha convertido en una de las escritoras más leídas en Colombia en la actualidad. En sus novelas se aprecia siempre una conexión muy grande con su país y una posición muy crítica en relación con los problemas y la sociedad colombiana. El propósito de la tesis es, usando las novelas El leopardo al sol (1993), La multitud errante (2001) y Delirio (2004) de Laura Restrepo, analizar como la escritora percibe y presenta el problema de la sociedad colombiana a partir de los años cincuentas. Con tres historias muy diferentes y sólidos personajes Restrepo recorre la historia de Colombia en los últimos 60 años y retrata, por una parte, una sociedad golpeada por la violencia en donde impera la corrupción y el desorden y por otra, el papel del colombiano que tiene que sobrevivir en esta sociedad. Para el análisis se utilizará como marco teórico la teoría marxista de Georg Lukács ya que dicha teoría se enfoca en el hecho de que la novela debe llevar al lector hacia una inmersión en la realidad. Esta realidad no debe ser una simple descripción de la misma, el escritor debe mostrarla a partir de una proyección que incluya todos los elementos de la sociedad ya que estos están relacionados. La existencia humana se debe percibir como parte de un ambiente histórico dinámico. La selección de estas tres novelas de Laura Restrepo se hizo basada en la idea de que cada una de ellas contribuye a reflejar una parte de la historia de la violencia en Colombia y que al ser unidas conforman una buena representación de la experiencia colombiana con dicho fenómeno. La multitud errante, a través de la vida del protagonista Siete por Tres, enseña el fenómeno de los desplazamientos por la violencia entre conservadores y liberales de los años cincuentas y los de los desplazamientos por la inseguridad en el campo en los años setentas. El leopardo al sol narra la historia de dos familias emparentadas entre sí que entablan una lucha fratricida en donde prosperan los negocios ilegales y el dinero fácil. Finalmente, Delirio cuenta la historia de una familia de la clase alta y las complejas relaciones con el narcotráfico y la corrupción. La tesis estará compuesta de una introducción histórica y teórica. Seguidamente vendrán tres capítulos destinados cada uno de ellos a los libros mencionados en el siguiente orden: Capítulo uno Un desarraigo que va de arriba para abajo usando el libro La multitud errante. Capítulo dos El rugido de la muerte basado en el libro el leopardo al sol y capítulo tres: Locombia apoyado en Delirio. Finalmente se presentaran las conclusiones de este estudio y la bibliografía.

Summary in English.|Bibliography: leaves 390-404. / Henri Lopes, from Congo Brazzaville, is one of the most fully rounded writers in the field of modern African literature. This research is concerned with an analysis of the way in which the ideology, which he has embraced, has permeated all his work, with the result that he expresses an ongoing, unequivocal opposition to part of his own society, while it is in the midst of mutating from its traditional origins to a form of Western modernity.

Bibliography: leaves 227-237. / This thesis attempts to elucidate Philodemus' approach to one aspect of paideia, that of rhetoric as treated in the first two books of his On Rhetoric, and to account for this approach within the broader tradition of Epicurean thiking on this discipline. As a preliminary to the investigation of this topic a complete English translation is provided of the most recent edition of the text (Longo Auricchio [1977]). The subsequent study takes the form of series of three essays which seek to clarify Philodemus' conception of the problem and through a close reading, to provide an exegetical commentary on the most important features of Philodemus' approach, especially the way he manages citations from the works of the Founders of Epicureanism in support of his own views.

Bibliography: leaves 320-347. / This thesis examines a selection of poems from both books of Horace's Satires against a backdrop of the dialogic theoretical system conceptualised by the Russian thinker Mikhail Mikhailovich Bakhtin (1895-1975). The thesis proposes examining Horatian satire or sermo, as Horace himself termed his genre, as the 'conversation' that this name implies it is. Bakhtin himself observed that Horace's Satires were one of the works that could be considered ancient forebears of modern novelistic dialogic discourse, although he failed to elaborate on this. The thesis takes its cue from here, and seeks to explore the ways in which Bakhtinian theory can elucidate the many dialogic facets of the Satires of Horace.

Includes bibliographical references. / It is not unusual for a student to study French from secondary school to university level and still not be able to cornrnunicate effectively with a native speaker. In addition, for many years, apart from translation diplomas, the traditional Bachelor of Arts degree in French prepared students for little more an teaching the language. In South African universities, the introduction of courses in Business French is relatively recent. An individual might be motivated to learn a foreign language because of its aesthetic value or practical use. However, in South Africa, the decision to allocate state funds and school-learning hours towards the promotion and teaching of a foreign language has deeper implications, particularly when there are eleven official languages competing for recognition. In India in early 1900, Michael West had attempted to establish why Indian people should learn English ("in order to read") and how they should learn English ("through reading"). Abbot (1981: 12) called this random teaching of a foreign language "TENOR (teaching English for no obvious reason)". Similarly, the question as to why South Africans should be taught French or) any other foreign language needs to be answered. If not, we risk falling into he same trap as "TENOR" except in this case we will be teaching French for no apparent reason. While the purpose of this research is not to discredit those students who desire to learn French for personal reasons, the main argument presented in this thesis is based on whether South Africans should learn French in order to trade more effectively with Francophone countries. Combining qualitative and quantitative research, preliminary conclusions indicate that an in-depth cost and benefits analysis might prove the link: French language acquisition with economic expansion. However, within the limitations of this research, there is insufficient justification for the allocation of state funding for foreign language acquisition over and above the need for other mainstrearn school disciplines. A more viable solution would be to train and to empploy South Africa's new language resource, that of the Francophone refugees currently living in the country, assuming that they are willing to remain in this country.

Thesis (Ph.D.) -- Mississippi State University. Department of Curriculum and Instruction. / Title from title screen. Includes bibliographical references.