<p>The present BA thesis is an analysis and a close reading of the French author Gabrielle Wittkop's novel Le Nécrophile (1972). The analysis consists of two parts. The first part focuses on the story and can be described as an attempt to interpret the engine of the history. The second part of the analysis focuses on the narrative; how the story is told. Le Nécrophiles main motif is re-encoding the representation of death in art and literature, traditionally conceived as a beautiful female corpse. The narrative embodies death as different of body types – men, women, old people, childen - and hence avoids to produce death as the female Other. By the use of different methods, such as metaphores, focalizing etc., the corpse becomes something more than a passive object, now threatening and interacting. In the novel necrophilia is described as a higher form of love. The historical view of sexuality as divided into high/low is strongly codified from a gender perspective; the higher form of love is associated with masculinity and the lower form with femininity. In Le Nécrophile the classification of high/low is based on life and death instead of masculinity and femininity; a new way of staging the binery pairs high/low.</p>

The video game is, as we know, one of the most popular and quickly growing mediums in the United States and the world in whole. Because of its success, the video game industry has been able to use their resources to advance technology of many kinds. Two very important technologies which have been advanced by the game industry are artificial intelligence and graphic design. With advances in the videogame industry constantly increasing the realism of gaming, those who game are finding themselves rapidly transported into new worlds. The Combination of the elements of narrative transportation, character identification, a videogames ability to enable mediated experience create a situation in which players may be able to rapidly learn very complex concepts. This project begins with a classification of videogame moral systems, both on a theoretical and logistic level. Given this understanding of how videogames themselves define moral involvement, the project then seeks to answer how the players understand their own moral involvement in the game by directly involving player/participants in the conversation. The data produced strongly suggests that videogames have great potential to teach even the most complex concepts of right and wrong to players.

The subject of this study is perspective in police reports. The overall aim is to introduce new tools for analysing perspective in written narratives. The material consists of reports based on different accounts of the same conflict from a number of people (the suspect, the injured part and witnesses), that is, different versions of the same sequence of events. The study begins with a theoretical discussion of perspective in literary texts and of some characteristics of the police reports examined. Two tools are developed to analyse linguistic means for identifying perspective. The first analytical tool can be placed within the framework of cognitive semantics. Analysis here concerns seeing space differently and having different limits in one’s way of experiencing the sequence of events. This conceptualisation of the focaliser (the person whose perspective is reported) is realised in the text through certain spatial expressions associated with the concept of centre. To analyse the centres chosen, the image schema centre–periphery is used in examining instances of the adverbs fram and bort and their derivations. The second analytical tool can be placed within the theoretical framework of dramaturgy. Analysis here concerns perceiving the dramatic development of events differently, that is, dramatic patterns in the different versions of the conflict and which character is given the most active role in it. The differences can be seen in the focaliser’s choice of events and how aggression is consciously or unconsciously described in terms of how different characters cause the conflict to escalate. The hypothesis being tested is whether the suspect’s perspective is discernible in the report of the suspect’s account. The hypothesis is confirmed. The study shows that the tools introduced work successfully in the analysis of perspective. Both analyses yield results, which in both cases can be validated.

Walter Kempowski (1929-2007) is one of the most important authors in post-war German literature. In 1971, he published his first novel, Tadellöser &amp; Wolff. This historical novel takes its point of departure in the everyday life of the bourgeois Kempowski family in Rostock shortly before and during World War II until the surrender of the city to the Red Army. The novel was initially very well received by literary critics and was also a commercial success. After the adaptation of the novel for film in 1975, Kempowski became even more of a public figure and won popular acclaim. In the film, however, important aspects of the novel’s literary mediation were lost, and as a result, the attitude among critics towards Kempowski changed considerably. In some groups he was viewed with suspicion and seen as the uncritical representative of the bourgeoisie. It was not until the beginning of the 1990s that he received extensive praise and recognition, much due to the publication of his multi-volume historical documentary work, Echolot. The present study explores Kempowski’s mode of writing in Tadellöser &amp; Wolff from a narratological perspective. The main theoretical points of departure for the analysis are Franz K. Stanzel, one of the leading scholars of classical narratology, and Monika Fludernik, his successor in postmodern narratology. The mediation in the novel is very intricate and carries its theme in a complex and significant way. Though the novel depicts the milieu and atmosphere of the time in a detailed and realistic manner and, through the narrator, the voices, thoughts and opinions of the period resonate in a rich polyphony, yet the predominant narrative perspective is exploited in such a marked way as to create distance to what is portrayed. The fictional first-person narrator proves to be not altogether reliable.

Throughout history women have been subject to oppression by patriarchal society. However, there have always been those who have tried to rise against it. This study will shed light upon one example: a female artist who personally defies the patriarchal norms at the same time as her music encourages others to do the same. The musician in question is Christina Aguilera, and the album studied is Stripped. What this study shows is that Stripped can be read as a feminist statement. The lyrics deal with two main themes: patriarchal society’s objectification and oppression of women, and the struggles of love and relationships. What these two themes have in common is that they both encourage women to stand their ground and believe in themselves. However, the lyrics on the album also suggest that Aguilera is aware of the fact that her message will not suit everyone. She knows that she works within an industry whose goal is to make money out of its artists, and therefore she has to keep repeating like a mantra to herself and to others that she, and her music, is not just a product of this industry. The message her music brings actually matters. To come to this conclusion I have examined Aguilera’s lyrics in terms of what messages they bring and who their narratees might be, all in accordance with feminist narratology. Secondary sources from the fields of popular music studies, media studies and gender studies as well as interviews with and about Aguilera and biographies have been consulted.

The present BA thesis is an analysis and a close reading of the French author Gabrielle Wittkop's novel Le Nécrophile (1972). The analysis consists of two parts. The first part focuses on the story and can be described as an attempt to interpret the engine of the history. The second part of the analysis focuses on the narrative; how the story is told. Le Nécrophiles main motif is re-encoding the representation of death in art and literature, traditionally conceived as a beautiful female corpse. The narrative embodies death as different of body types – men, women, old people, childen - and hence avoids to produce death as the female Other. By the use of different methods, such as metaphores, focalizing etc., the corpse becomes something more than a passive object, now threatening and interacting. In the novel necrophilia is described as a higher form of love. The historical view of sexuality as divided into high/low is strongly codified from a gender perspective; the higher form of love is associated with masculinity and the lower form with femininity. In Le Nécrophile the classification of high/low is based on life and death instead of masculinity and femininity; a new way of staging the binery pairs high/low.

Garden of Eden imagery is ubiquitous in contemporary print advertising in North America, especially in advertisements directed at women. Three telling characteristics emerge in characterizations of Eve in these advertising reconstructions. In the first place, Eve is consistently hypersexualized and over-eroticized. Secondly, such Garden of Eden images often conflate the Eve figure with that of the Serpent. Thirdly, the highly eroticized Eve-Serpent figures also commonly suffer further conflation with the Garden of Eden itself. Like Eve, nature becomes eroticized. In the Eve-Serpent-Eden conflation, woman becomes nature, nature becomes woman, and both perform a single narrative plot function, in tandem with the Serpent. The erotic and tempting Eve-Serpent-Eden character is both protagonist and antagonist, seducer and seduced. In this dissertation, I engage in an ecofeminist narratological analysis of the Genesis/Fall myth, as it is retold in contemporary fashion magazine advertisements. My analysis examines how reconstructions of this myth in advertisements construct the reader, the narrator, and the primary characters of the story (Eve, Adam, the Serpent, and Eden). I then further explore the ways in which these characterizations inform our perceptions of woman, nature, and environmentalism. Using a narratological methodology, and through a poststructuralist ecofeminist lens, I examine which plot and character elements have been kept, which have been discarded, and how certain erasures impact the narrative characterizations of the story. In addition to what is being told, I further analyze how and where it is told. How is the basic plot being storied in these reconstructions, and what are the effects of this version on the archetypal characterizations of Eve and the Garden of Eden? What are the cultural and literary contexts of the reconstructed narrative and the characters within it? How do these contexts inform how we read the characters within the story? Finally, I examine the cultural effects of these narrative reconstructions, exploring their influence on our gendered relationships with each other and with the natural world around us.

This dissertation examines the theme of travel in the work of Karel Čapek (1890-1938), both in his travelogues and fiction. Instead of assuming travel as a conventional departure to another destination, journey and return home, Čapek experimented with the topic, popular in interwar literatures and arts, as an example of the avant-garde interconnectedness between different genres and arts. Čapek used three approaches to express his experiences of traveling. First, he founded his own aesthetics of the so called “marginal forms” or “low-brow genres” which he simultaneously interpolated in his prose. Their use, which greatly changes the perspective on travel writing, is visible in comparison between Čapek’s and previous travelogues (chapter 1). Secondly, he introduced skaz as stylized spoken language to Czech literature, and changed the traditional roles of the narrator and his addressees in travelogues (chapter 2). Thirdly, he used visual elements of language, combined verbal and visual arts (illustrations and drawings) in the narrative (chapter 3). Finally, all these elements he interpolated to his prose (chapter 4) through the intertextual links with travelogues. On the example of the theme of travel in Karel Čapek’s work, my dissertation revisits some current definitions of the historical avant-garde. It shows that the recent theories, predominantly developed on the examples from Western European and Russian arts, cannot be fully applied to local artistic movements. First, it shows that the notion of the avant-garde cannot be just confined to the writers who called themselves “avant-garde” (such as Karel Teige or Vladislav Vančura). Instead, it should be also expanded to other writers, such as Karel Čapek, marginal to the avant-garde mainstream. Second, the analysis of the theme of travel in Karel Čapek’s opus shows that the Czech avant-garde was not destructive towards its literary heritage. Instead, it offered an alternative reading of tradition through artistic experiments. In extension, it also provided a new understanding of the cultural and literary identity.

This dissertation examines the theme of travel in the work of Karel Čapek (1890-1938), both in his travelogues and fiction. Instead of assuming travel as a conventional departure to another destination, journey and return home, Čapek experimented with the topic, popular in interwar literatures and arts, as an example of the avant-garde interconnectedness between different genres and arts. Čapek used three approaches to express his experiences of traveling. First, he founded his own aesthetics of the so called “marginal forms” or “low-brow genres” which he simultaneously interpolated in his prose. Their use, which greatly changes the perspective on travel writing, is visible in comparison between Čapek’s and previous travelogues (chapter 1). Secondly, he introduced skaz as stylized spoken language to Czech literature, and changed the traditional roles of the narrator and his addressees in travelogues (chapter 2). Thirdly, he used visual elements of language, combined verbal and visual arts (illustrations and drawings) in the narrative (chapter 3). Finally, all these elements he interpolated to his prose (chapter 4) through the intertextual links with travelogues. On the example of the theme of travel in Karel Čapek’s work, my dissertation revisits some current definitions of the historical avant-garde. It shows that the recent theories, predominantly developed on the examples from Western European and Russian arts, cannot be fully applied to local artistic movements. First, it shows that the notion of the avant-garde cannot be just confined to the writers who called themselves “avant-garde” (such as Karel Teige or Vladislav Vančura). Instead, it should be also expanded to other writers, such as Karel Čapek, marginal to the avant-garde mainstream. Second, the analysis of the theme of travel in Karel Čapek’s opus shows that the Czech avant-garde was not destructive towards its literary heritage. Instead, it offered an alternative reading of tradition through artistic experiments. In extension, it also provided a new understanding of the cultural and literary identity.

This essay is reading the Swedish author Stig Larssons debut Autisterna [The Autists] (1979) in the light of Gérard Genettes narratology and the time philosophy of Gilles Deleuze. The focus of the essay is time and how it is seemingly dissolved. The essay maps out a chronology of the non-chronological novel and from there discusses the breaking up of the empirical time. The essay uses Deleuze to explore the time-image of the novel to see how it is built up in the text for example by literary anyspace-whatevers. Hence the title, Anytime-whatever. We see in the novel an anachronistic relationship between story and narrative which cuts through the episodes of the novel like a modernist film creating disconnected space and temporal sequences.