The Eudaimonic turn: Well-being in Literary Studies (2013), a study by Pawelski et al, sheds light on a recent turn in literary studies. The eudaimonic approach entails that texts are examined with the help of a hermeneutic of affirmation rather than the sceptical, suspicious methods of the deconstruction and post-structuralism. Pawelski et al’s text is drawn upon in this study because it corresponds to the way in which Marlene van Niekerk utilises themes such as relationships, friendship and loss in Die sneeuslaper (2009). The eudaimonic turn focusses on the way in which complex interpersonal connections are able to add to an individual’s well-being through positive as well as negative processes. Die sneeuslaper is mainly a reflection on what it means to be an author. However, it also raises important questions about the nature of being. The four short stories provide different perspectives on friendship, on how friendship can sometimes be problematic and even a nuisance, but also how relations with others repeatedly prove to be beneficial to a person’s well-being. In my study, the relational theme of friendship in Die sneeuslaper is studied from a eudaimonic point of view. Kaja Silverman’s text, Flesh of my Flesh (2009), is referred to in order to shed light on the term relationality. The relational themes of finitude (or mortality) and interpersonal connection are clearly present in Van Niekerk’s text. Although the death of a beloved friend causes trauma in Die sneeuslaper, the trauma proves to have positive effects in the form of posttraumatic growth, comfort and acceptance as time goes by. Comfort is also construed through the creation and appreciation of a work of art like Die sneeuslaper. Cognitive narratology is referenced to show how Marlene van Niekerk overthrows and plays with fixed ideas regarding relationality and friendship, causing the reader to converse with the text. Views on friendship held by thinkers such as Aristotle, Montaigne, Lacan, Kierkegaard and Derrida are referenced to give Van Niekerk’s use of the theme in Die sneeuslaper a certain context. This context represents the fixed frames of thinking generally applicable with regard to friendship. When a reader is willing to critically interpret these as well as personal frames of reference, it provides him or her the opportunity to contemplate reality from new perspectives. In Die sneeuslaper the reader is continually challenged to question existing frames of reference by means of never ending methods (resembling a Möbius-strip) and strange notions. This study concludes with the notion that it is necessary for artists (like the writers in Die sneeuslaper) to reflect differently on reality, so that readers may be inspired to also view reality in a different light. This will result in a broader view of reality, which in turn will have a more defining influence on personal well-being. / MA (Afrikaans and Dutch), North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2014

The Eudaimonic turn: Well-being in Literary Studies (2013), a study by Pawelski et al, sheds light on a recent turn in literary studies. The eudaimonic approach entails that texts are examined with the help of a hermeneutic of affirmation rather than the sceptical, suspicious methods of the deconstruction and post-structuralism. Pawelski et al’s text is drawn upon in this study because it corresponds to the way in which Marlene van Niekerk utilises themes such as relationships, friendship and loss in Die sneeuslaper (2009). The eudaimonic turn focusses on the way in which complex interpersonal connections are able to add to an individual’s well-being through positive as well as negative processes. Die sneeuslaper is mainly a reflection on what it means to be an author. However, it also raises important questions about the nature of being. The four short stories provide different perspectives on friendship, on how friendship can sometimes be problematic and even a nuisance, but also how relations with others repeatedly prove to be beneficial to a person’s well-being. In my study, the relational theme of friendship in Die sneeuslaper is studied from a eudaimonic point of view. Kaja Silverman’s text, Flesh of my Flesh (2009), is referred to in order to shed light on the term relationality. The relational themes of finitude (or mortality) and interpersonal connection are clearly present in Van Niekerk’s text. Although the death of a beloved friend causes trauma in Die sneeuslaper, the trauma proves to have positive effects in the form of posttraumatic growth, comfort and acceptance as time goes by. Comfort is also construed through the creation and appreciation of a work of art like Die sneeuslaper. Cognitive narratology is referenced to show how Marlene van Niekerk overthrows and plays with fixed ideas regarding relationality and friendship, causing the reader to converse with the text. Views on friendship held by thinkers such as Aristotle, Montaigne, Lacan, Kierkegaard and Derrida are referenced to give Van Niekerk’s use of the theme in Die sneeuslaper a certain context. This context represents the fixed frames of thinking generally applicable with regard to friendship. When a reader is willing to critically interpret these as well as personal frames of reference, it provides him or her the opportunity to contemplate reality from new perspectives. In Die sneeuslaper the reader is continually challenged to question existing frames of reference by means of never ending methods (resembling a Möbius-strip) and strange notions. This study concludes with the notion that it is necessary for artists (like the writers in Die sneeuslaper) to reflect differently on reality, so that readers may be inspired to also view reality in a different light. This will result in a broader view of reality, which in turn will have a more defining influence on personal well-being. / MA (Afrikaans and Dutch), North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2014

My Eyes Due See is a multidimensional examination of the “black experience” in America. The installation is composed of a single-channel video, a music composition that utilizes music samples and live instrumentation, and sculptures made up of car parts and broomsedge grass. Each of these elements arranged in space share a nuanced and complicated view of blackness through the lens of a black man decoding personal history and American history simultaneously. Autonomy is the overarching theme throughout the work as it pertains to race, identity, urban and rural environments, and the relationship between generational trauma and nostalgia.

本研究為個案研究，以政大EMBA永續農業促進小組所創「政大一畝田」品牌專案為例，以深度訪談為研究方法，主要探討社會公民社團，如何透過策略聯盟方式，與策略夥伴為利害關係人以及社會共創新價值，並輔以相關文獻的深度分析，對農民團體策略聯盟以推廣有機農業提供具體建議。 根據農糧署2010/05發佈台灣有機認證農地共有4217公頃,僅佔所有農地的0.4％，在政府目前積極的倡導下，消費者認同與消費者支持已大幅增加，台灣的農民團體多自行組織，自產自銷，或者透過地方產銷班等，共同銷售予通路商、中盤商，但現行的銷售管道之銷量不大，又易被中盤商壓價，因此造成台灣有機小農的銷售困境。 研究者發起「政大EMBA永續農業促進小組」，透過資源分析以及環境分析，以組織內部成員之人脈資源、資金、商管知識以及服務熱忱作為基礎，再加上政大之社群資源，與農民團體合作，選定宜蘭三星行健有機合作社作為策略夥伴，推行「政大一畝田」契作稻田認養專案，建立以國內相關企業為目標客群之企業認養的銷售管道。 此公益項目增進台灣有機稻農的生計，也為認養企業與家庭提供樂活體驗、二次公益等社會企業責任的價值，更透過媒體公關行銷，使策略夥伴以及有機議題得到大眾關注，以提昇國民對有機農產的認同與支持。 / Based on the Case of NCCU's My-Farmland Project by National ChengChi University EMBA Sustainable Agriculture Promoting Organization, this paper will discuss how Non-Profit Organizations create new value of sustainability with other stakeholders by strategic alliance and offer some advice to the agricultural organization in Taiwan to promote sustainable agriculture. This paper will also provide literature review on civil society, sustainable agriculture, social enterprise and strategic alliance. According to the Council of Agriculture, the organic farmland officially recorded is 4217 hectares which only accounts for 0.4 percent of the total farmland in Taiwan. Now through the active promotion of the government, both the consumer identification and their support have increased dramatically. The agricultural organizations in Taiwan are made up almost entirely of farmers only. They produce and sell their products on their own. Their main sales channels are to wholesalers, distributors and some end consumers in low volumes. With low bargaining power, organic farmers in Taiwan have a difficult sales condition. This researcher initiated the "National Chengchi University EMBA sustainable agriculture promotion teams" to promote the Case of NCCU's My-Farmland Project through resources and environmental analysis together with the networking, capital, business management knowledge and dedicated services of the members of the NCCU or ganization, plus the community resources of the National Chengchi University. It is the goal of this project to assist the agricultural organizations in Taiwan in prospering and expanding their business. We have selected Ilan Samsung organic cooperatives as a strategic partner to promote and execute the above project and create a sales pipeline for relevant domestic enterprises as target customers. This charity project will provide Taiwan organic farmers with better lives, and also offer country life experiences for the corporations and families who join the project. Additionally, this project will allow the corporations to fulfill their corporate social responsibilities. Furthermore, with the promotion and attention through medias, this project will really increase the consumer identification and their support for the organic farmers in Taiwan.

I am fascinated by the inner thoughts, the memories, and the cumulative experience that make us each a complex physiological puzzle. From birth, sociological building blocks are constructed forming emotional walls and unexpected doorways, boundaries and comfortable passageways through the architecture of our personalities. My thesis work, which is comprised of ceramic figures and interactive toys, offers playful memory triggers and evocative spaces in which viewers can deconstruct the building blocks of their social persona.

This dissertation utilizes theories of deviance in conjunction with literary methods of reading and analyzing to study a range of deviant or transgressive characters in American literature of the 1840s and 50s. I justify this methodology on the basis of the intersecting and related histories of Emersonian self-reliance and deviance in American thought. I contend that each of the texts of self-reliance discussed by the dissertation – The National Police Gazette (1845-present), Frederick Douglass’ Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass (1845) and My Bondage and My Freedom (1855), Margaret Fuller’s Woman in the Nineteenth Century (1845), Henry David Thoreau’s “Civil Disobedience” (1849) and Walden (1854), and Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter (1850) and The Blithedale Romance (1852) – actually sanctions deviance. Since deviance is endorsed by these texts in some shape or form, it is a critical component of American culture; consequently American culture is one that promotes deviance. My work on Douglass and Thoreau employs the sociological theories of Robert K. Merton (1949) to investigate the tensions between the culturally lauded goal of self-reliance and the legitimate means for securing this. I explore the importance of Transcendentalist self-reliance to the American Dream ethos and the ways in which it is valorized by each protagonist. The work on the National Police Gazette puts popular and elite forms of literary discourse into conversation with one another. My primary concern here is with explaining why and how specific self-reliant behaviours are deemed “deviant” in the literary context, but “criminal” by popular works. The chapters on female deviance elucidate the confines of women’s writing and writing about women as well as the acceptable female modes of conduct during the nineteenth century. They also focus on the ways female characters engaged in deviance from within these rigid frameworks. A functionalist interrogation of female deviance underscores the ways society is united against those women who are classed as unwomanly or unfeminine. My conclusion seeks to reinvigorate the conversation regarding the intersection between literature and the social sciences and suggests that literature in many ways often anticipates sociological theory. Ultimately, I conclude by broadening the category of the self-reliant individual to include, for instance, females and African-American slaves who were otherwise not imagined to possess such tendencies. Thus, this dissertation revises notions of Emerson’s concept of self-reliance by positioning it instead as a call to arms for all Americans to engage in deviant or socially transgressive behaviour.

My goal is to study the nature of the Marvelous in René Depestre's Hadriana dans tous mes rêves. I want to demonstrate that René Depestre, in his novel, combines a number of surrealist or neo-surrealist premises that have influenced him as a Haitian writer. This goes beyond differences that can be discerned between the "Surrealist marvelous" endorsed by André Breton and the surrealists, and Alejo Capentier's "marvelous real"later proposed by Jacques Stephen Alexis as "marvelous realism" Depestre adapts Haitian natives' perceptions deep-rooted in their historical and social, cultural and religious past and ever-existing political and economical struggle. Taking into account both the surrealist perspective and the Haitian context, I shall address the complexity of the concept of the Marvelous and discuss Depestre's use of "zombification"as a form of metamorphosis, which preserves the mystical nature of Vodou as a religion that syncretizes the Roman Catholic ritual of exorcism of the Christian West and the animist and magical practices inherited from Africa. Scholars have explored the Marvelous and marvelous realism in Depestre's works as a whole, but not in Hadriana dans tous mes rêves specifically. The exclusive nature of this study will show that Depestre draws from Haiti's complex cultural ethos as well as from surrealism'es key principles, to create a hybrid Marvelous typical of Haiti and Depestre'es aesthetic as a writer. / text

This dissertation utilizes theories of deviance in conjunction with literary methods of reading and analyzing to study a range of deviant or transgressive characters in American literature of the 1840s and 50s. I justify this methodology on the basis of the intersecting and related histories of Emersonian self-reliance and deviance in American thought. I contend that each of the texts of self-reliance discussed by the dissertation – The National Police Gazette (1845-present), Frederick Douglass’ Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass (1845) and My Bondage and My Freedom (1855), Margaret Fuller’s Woman in the Nineteenth Century (1845), Henry David Thoreau’s “Civil Disobedience” (1849) and Walden (1854), and Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter (1850) and The Blithedale Romance (1852) – actually sanctions deviance. Since deviance is endorsed by these texts in some shape or form, it is a critical component of American culture; consequently American culture is one that promotes deviance. My work on Douglass and Thoreau employs the sociological theories of Robert K. Merton (1949) to investigate the tensions between the culturally lauded goal of self-reliance and the legitimate means for securing this. I explore the importance of Transcendentalist self-reliance to the American Dream ethos and the ways in which it is valorized by each protagonist. The work on the National Police Gazette puts popular and elite forms of literary discourse into conversation with one another. My primary concern here is with explaining why and how specific self-reliant behaviours are deemed “deviant” in the literary context, but “criminal” by popular works. The chapters on female deviance elucidate the confines of women’s writing and writing about women as well as the acceptable female modes of conduct during the nineteenth century. They also focus on the ways female characters engaged in deviance from within these rigid frameworks. A functionalist interrogation of female deviance underscores the ways society is united against those women who are classed as unwomanly or unfeminine. My conclusion seeks to reinvigorate the conversation regarding the intersection between literature and the social sciences and suggests that literature in many ways often anticipates sociological theory. Ultimately, I conclude by broadening the category of the self-reliant individual to include, for instance, females and African-American slaves who were otherwise not imagined to possess such tendencies. Thus, this dissertation revises notions of Emerson’s concept of self-reliance by positioning it instead as a call to arms for all Americans to engage in deviant or socially transgressive behaviour.

Articulée en trois chapitres, cette thèse qui vise à endiguer la toute-puissance de la traductologie porte, d’abord, sur l’analyse d’un extrait de Simenon inséré dans La belle Hortense, puis sur l’examen des erreurs relevées dans 40 versions d’étudiants de l’université de Venise confrontés avec un passage d’Agnès Desarthe et, enfin, sur la traduction du « Maladroit » de Raymond Queneau par Umberto Eco. Comme le titre l’indique, cette thèse revendique l’importance de la pratique. Ce n’est pas à force d’étudier des grammaires qu’un jour on se réveille écrivain, une plume ou un clavier à la main. De même, c’est une évidence, on ne devient pas traducteur sans traduire, bien que l’exercice ne puisse garantir l’excellence du résultat. C’est un truisme, une lapalissade dont il n’est pas inutile de rappeler la vérité, à un moment où la traductologie devient de plus en plus envahissante. Comme toute théorie, elle tend à l’abstraction et à la généralisation, tandis que la pratique, elle, se confronte au hic et nunc. C’est pour cela même qu’elle risque de se révéler non seulement inadéquate, mais aussi dangereuse. Car la littérature, loin d’être l’application de la norme, est le lieu de l’écart. Or, il est difficile de résister à l’autorité d’un dictionnaire, d’un traductologue ou d’un critique, plus difficile encore s’ils sont auréolés de prestige. Toute traduction comporte deux phases. La première est axée sur une analyse stylistique du texte-source et implique une excellente maîtrise de la langue et de la culture de son monde d’origine. C’est le moment de l’esclavage où le traducteur est complètement au service de l’auteur, où il cherche à comprendre sans juger, où – tel un amoureux – il écoute sa voix pour pouvoir l’interpréter. Mais le moment de l’esclavage qui enchaîne au texte originel est aussi le moment de l’apprentissage, le moment où le traducteur peut pénétrer les secrets d’une écriture d’auteur. Sans cette phase préalable, on ne devrait même pas parler de traduction. Si on ne lit pas attentivement – à la loupe – l’œuvre qu’on doit transplanter ou si on ne connaît pas assez la matière dont elle est faite, on finit par se fier aux dictionnaires, par appliquer des recettes toutes faites. C’est une autre voix que celle de l’auteur que l’on entendra, alors, au-delà des frontières. C’est dans cette phase que des préjugés ou des brouillages théoriques assez enracinés ou assez puissants sont intervenus, d’après mon analyse, dans les extraits examinés. Ils ont entraîné la banalisation de Simenon (mais non de Roubaud qui emprunte ses mots) aussi bien que la plupart des incorrections des étudiants (souvent induites paradoxalement par l’usage du dictionnaire). Ils ont poussé également Umberto Eco à remanier radicalement un texte de Raymond Queneau qu’il avait considéré comme l’un des moins réussis, alors qu’il est sans aucun doute l’un des plus importants – et peut-être le plus important - des Exercices de style. Dans la deuxième phase, le traducteur qui accepte d’écrire sous contrainte – sous les contraintes que lui impose le texte-source – connaît aussi la joie de la liberté. Car la contrainte le libérera et le poussera à exploiter toutes les potentialités insoupçonnées, toutes les ressources de la langue et de la culture d’arrivée pour rendre le plus fidèlement la voix de l’auteur, auquel l’analyse et la compréhension l’ont enchaîné. C’est un effort de Sisyphe, mais qui peut rendre heureux. Car c’est aussi en traduisant qu’on devient écriveron. / Set out in three chapters, this thesis which has the aim of investigating the omniscience of translation, starts out by analyzing an extract from Simenon in La Belle Hortense then moves to a study of the mistakes made in 40 translations by students at the University of Venice from a text by Agnès Desarthe and, finally, looks at the translation by Umberto Eco of Raymond Queneau's "Maladroit".As its title suggests, this thesis underlines the importance of practice. One does not suddenly wake up a writer one morning, a pen at the ready simply because one has studied grammar.At the same time one obviously does not become a translator without translating, although practice in itself does not guarantee the excellence of the outcome. This is a truism worth remembering at a moment when translation studies are becoming more and more invasive. Like every theory it tends towards abstraction and generalization while practice concerns itself with the here and now. But it is exactly for this that it risks revealing itself not only as inadequate but also dangerous. For literature, far from being the application of the norm, is where the gap exists. However it is difficult to resist the authority of a dictionary, of a translation expert or of a critic, even more so if they are surrounded by a halo of prestige.Every translation consists of two phases. The first is based on a stylistic analysis of the source text and implies an excellent mastery of the language and of the culture from where it originates. This is the moment of enslavement when the translator is at the complete service of the author, where he tries to understand without judging, like a lover, he listens to his voice so that he can interpret it. But the stage of enslavement which chains one to the original text is also the moment of apprenticeship, the moment when the translator can enter into the secrets of an author's writing. Without this initial phase, one should not even speak of translation. If one does not read carefully, as under a magnifying glass, the work that one must transplant and where one does not know sufficiently what makes it up, one ends up by relying too much on dictionaries, to apply ready-made solutions. There is another voice apart from the author's that one must hear, beyond the normal boundaries.It is in this phase that well-rooted and strong prejudices or theoretical garble, according to my analysis, have intervened in the extracts examined. They have caused a banalisation of Simenon (but not of Roubaud who borrowed his words) as well as most of the errors of the students (and often brought about, paradoxically, the use of dictionaries). In the same way they pushed Umberto Eco to meddle radically with a text of Raymond Queneau that he considered one of the latter's less successful ones, even though it is one of the most important, and perhaps the most important, in Exercices de style.In the second phase, the translator who accepts to write under constraint, under the constraints imposed by the source text, also knows the joy of liberty. Because the constraint will free him and push him to take full advantage of unexpected potentiality, of all the resources of the language and culture and to render the voice of the author in the most faithful way, and to whom the analysis and comprehension chained him. It is the work of Sisyphus but which can create contentment. Because it is also by translating that one becomes a writer.

Svou diplomovou práci jsem zpracovala na dvě části. V první části jsem se zabývala základními pojmy jako motivace, ovlivňováním, adaptace, vedení, řízení lidských zdrojů, hodnocení. V druhé části diplové práce je popsána situace společnosti BRVZ s.r.o. Jako prostředek jsem zvolila zaměstnanecký dotazník.