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This thesis presents a list and analysis of the prophecies in the Commedia of Dante Alighieri. The prophecies are then broadly considered under two headings, ante eventum and post eventum, although these elements are frequently mixed together. They are used by Dante for various purposes, including the reinterpretation of the meaning of his own exile, and different programmes of moral and political critique. The foresight shown by the inhabitants of the three parts of the after-life is also examined, and philosophical and literary explanations found. The prophetic ability of the souls in the Inferno especially is found to have an antecedent in classical literature, and in particular in Lucan’s Pharsalia.  The role of the post eventum and ante eventum prophecies in the truth claims of the Commedia is considered, and the meaning of Dante Poeta’s silence on them is examined.

The main study of the thesis seeks to gain insights into the reading behaviour of 27 adolescent learners of French, who were recorded while completing four reading tasks, 2 individually and 2 in small groups. The transcripts are analysed from four perspectives. Firstly (as a baseline for the other perspectives) a quantitative approach examines factors surrounding relative success in the tasks. Secondly a coding system (Pressley and Afflerbach, 1995) is used to analyse strategy use by a selection of subjects in both individual and group contexts. Thirdly, the nature and quality of the talk of four of the groups is explored using Mercer's (1995) three categories of talk and aspects of Almasi's (1995) work on sociocognitive conflict. Finally the problem-solving discourse of the transcripts is analysed in two ways- using a concordancing program and by investigating the roles in decision-making of key individuals in four different groups through discourse analysis techniques. A discussion chapter seeks to draw together the findings from these four perspectives. The processes used for the study are also discussed through chapters on relevant literature, on methodology and by a report of an earlier preparatory study.

Aragonese is a minority endangered language used in the Alto Aragon area. Ayerbe is a town found in the Plana de Uesca in Alto Aragon, and therefore it is considered to belong to a geographical area where the use of the Aragonese language finds itself in a significant state of decline compared to the use of Castilian Spanish. This study examines the extent to which this is true. The objective was to conduct a questionnaire amongst residents in Ayerbe in order to explore their language use, their perceptions of the language, their linguistic awareness and their affinity to the concept of Aragonese identity. The results suggest that the Aragonese language in Ayerbe is more widely read and understood than was previously thought. This investigation also considers the processes of normalisation and normativisation that will be necessary for the revitalisation of the language.

The investigation into the relationship between Greek and Babylonian systems of learning has overwhelmingly focused on determining the elements that the former borrowed from the latter, while the fundamental questions relating to the process of transmission of these elements are still largely ignored. This thesis, therefore, offers a preliminary theoretical framework within which the movement of ideas should be analysed. The framework is based on the understanding that all ideas from one culture, when they are to enter another thought and belief system, must be ’translated’ into the concepts and terminology prevalent in their new context. An approach is developed which exploits the concept of ’cultural translation’ as put forward within various modern disciplines. The thesis examines how the ’translatability’ of the material from the perspective of the receiving culture influences its inclusion into the new ’home repertoire’ and determines the changes it undergoes as part of this process. A number of case studies in astronomy, astrology and mathematics are presented to help explain what parts of ’Chaldean knowledge’ were utilised by Greek and Hellenistic scholars, how these were interpreted according to the existing Greek intellectual network into which the new material was inserted and how it was influenced by the ’cultural grid’, a construct reflecting patterns of expectation about a foreign culture.

This thesis has two interlinked objectives. One is to explore some of the meanings projected onto ideas of Italy in the UK in relation to Italian mobility patterns. The second is to argue for the development of the study of material culture and ethnographic approaches in contemporary Modern Languages research and teaching. Taking into account a range of ‘Italian stuff’; public spaces such as cafés and bars, narrative texts and recipe books, a celebrity figure, and drawing on personal narratives as recounted in interview, the thesis critically engages with the contemporary value of images of traditional Italy from a Modern Languages perspective. The aim is to practically demonstrate how ethnography and the study of material culture can be used to complement the conventional disciplinary emphasis of Modern Languages on critical analysis of written and visual texts and on linguistic competence. Drawing on the work of a variety of ethnographic theorists of the significance of the everyday and the unexpected, of the interplay between power and selfhood, and of class and the inscription of value, the thesis explores the ideals read into notions of Italy’s authenticity across different sites in terms of the tensions between the desirability of a grounded, local identity and the simultaneous need to be able to distance oneself from it, generational class difference and its enduring memory, the diversity of rural and urban experience, and self-understanding and expression. Via case-studies of different sites and an investigation into the pertinence of an ethnographic reflexivity in the context of language learning, it places relevant contemporary anthropological, linguistic and sociological theory in dialogue with existing calls for renewal from within Modern Languages to practice an ethnographic approach to the study of language and culture.

This thesis aims to study the ways in which literary canonisation occurs and how the academic institution is an integral part of the canonisation process. It takes as its focus the work of the Spanish writer Juan Goytisolo, who has been publishing since the 1950s and is universally considered an important figure in contemporary Hispanic literature. After contextualising recent debate concerning the literary canon, I discuss the influences and paradigm shifts that have conditioned reception of Goytisolo’s work, bringing him to prominence both inside and outside Spain. The study then addresses the strategies that the author himself uses in his novels to encourage debate and criticism by the institution. Whilst the second and third chapters analyse the distance between reader and novel, focusing on the difficulty of understanding both form and content in Makbara, the following two chapters study Goytisolo’s desire to situate his work in the canon through autobiographical and intertextual references. Analysis is both metacritical, in its examination of critics’ assumptions, and also textual, through its focus on Goytisolo’s novels. To conclude, the thesis demonstrates the symbiotic relationship of the academic institution and the writer, with the literary canon as the key that unlocks their common history.

Questa tesi mette a fuoco la ricezione del modello linguistico e stilistico di mimesis dantesca in Pasolini. Costituisce parte di un più ampio discorso sulla rappresentazione culturale che a partire da alcune sue opere teoretiche e creative particolarmente significative intende problematizzare il ruolo di critici letterari come Contini ed Auerbach nella formazione dell’idea pasoliniana di 'realismo' considerando l’intricata relazione tra i due concetti (‘mimesis’ e ‘realismo’). Questa ricerca è incentrata su due principali periodi della vita dell’autore: una fase di ‘realismo dantesco’ che ha inizio nei primi anni ’40 e culmina nel 1965 con La Divina Mimesis, ed una fase di ‘postrealismo dantesco’, che descrive la crisi del realismo dantesco negli ultimi dieci anni della carriera pasoliniana. In primo luogo, analizzo l’influenza che ebbe Contini nell’avvicinamento dell’autore ad una poetica di oggettività e sperimentalismo linguistico negli anni ’40. In secondo luogo, esploro la risposta dell’autore al plurilinguismo di Dante nel contesto del dibattito ideologico sulla nuova ‘questione della lingua’, sul Neorealismo e sul Neosperimentalismo negli anni ’50. Infine, esamino quella fase pasoliniana di ‘postrealismo dantesco’, nella quale l’autore mette in discussione la poetica della mimesis ritrovando piuttosto nell’allegoria e nella visione gli strumenti retorici per rappresentare la realtà. This thesis focuses on the reception of the linguistic and stylistic model of Dante’s ‘mimesis’ in Pasolini. It forms part of a growing discourse concerning cultural representations which seeks to problematise the role of literary critics such as Contini and Auerbach in the formation of Pasolini’s idea of ‘realism’ and assist the exposition of the intricate relationship between the two concepts (‘mimesis’ and ‘realism’) in some of his significant theoretical and creative works. The research is centred on two principal, relevant periods of the author’s career. a phase of ‘Dantesque realism’, starting in early 40s and culminating in 1965 with La Divina Mimesis, and a phase of ‘Dantesque postrealism’, describing the crisis of realism in the last ten years of Pasolini’s work. I firstly analyse Contini’s influence in the author’s approach to a poetics of objectivity and linguistic experimentalism in the 40s. I secondly explore Pasolini’s theoretical response to Dante’s plurilingualism in the context of the ideological debate on the new questione della lingua, Neorealism and ‘Neosperimentalismo’ in the 50s. Finally, I examine Pasolini’s stage of “Dantesque postrealism”, in which the author debates the poetics of mimesis and rather employs allegory and vision as best rhetorical tools to represent reality.

The poems of the Old French Cycle des Narbonnais are highly concerned with touch, paying close attention to who touches whom first in greetings, who is authorised to perform certain symbolic touches and, reading violence as a radical version of touch, whose touch is victorious in battle. Modern sociologists suggest that touching follows lines of social prestige; however, by employing a performative approach to identity, overlaid with a psychoanalytic interpretation of the subject’s relationship with the Other, I argue that regulated patterns of touch in the poems iterate and maintain heroic identity. Of course, an identity forged in this way is problematic, for touch both creates and erases the difference upon which performative identity depends, and I argue that violence erupts as a result of this paradox. By thus linking touch, violence and identity, I ask questions about the nature of violence itself, making this a relevant study in a world that is getting out of touch, yet is riven by violent conflict. I demonstrate that within the community of knights with which the poems concern themselves, there is a shared language of touch that creates bonds between those men, excluding those who are ineligible: women, peasants, children and Saracens. The ritualised public touch of the dubbing ceremony marks the knight’s entry into this community, and announces his willingness to kill its enemies. Now his prowess, honour and self-worth – his heroic identity – will be figured through his ability to destroy outsiders whilst remaining inviolate. His violent touching of the Other is a means to safeguard his own body against the Other’s traumatic touch, yet it also necessitates proximity with an enemy that troublingly mirrors his own values and achievements. As anxiety provoked by disintegrating subjective boundaries worsens, violence escalates and knights battle mercilessly, until as one poem describes, ‘de lor sanc cort li ruz contre val’ (‘the river of their blood ran down the valley’, Les Narbonnais, l. 3952).

This thesis examines how Brittany and Corsica are represented in the medium of bande dessinée. Both are peripheral French regions with cultural identities markedly different from that of the overarching French norm, and both have been historically subject to ridicule from the political and cultural centre. By comparing a fair selection of bandes dessinées which are either set in Brittany or Corsica or feature characters from the relevant regions, this thesis sets out to discover whether representations of Brittany and Corsica differ according to the origin of the creators of the bandes dessinées and, if so, how. To facilitate this analysis, the bandes dessinées included for study have been classified as either external representations (published by mainstream bande dessinée publishers and/or the work of creators originating from outside the two regions) or internal representations (published by local Breton or Corsican companies and/or the work of local creators). It transpires that there are clear differences between mainstream and local bande dessinée authors and illustrators with regard to their portrayal of the local culture of both ‘outlying’ regions. External representations rely on broad stereotypes and received ideas, while internal representations draw on local folklore, regional history and regional identity to create works with more local relevance. In some cases internal representations are or were clearly aimed at a local market, while others aim both at local readers and at the wider bande dessinée market. Those aimed at a wider readership have an additional function, namely that of promoting their regional cultures in French culture generally and offering an alternative to the stereotypical representations presented by larger publishers of bandes dessinées. Brittany and Corsica are examined separately, each taking up roughly half of the thesis. Each half has the same general structure, beginning with discussion of how historical events have shaped perceptions of Brittany and Corsica in French popular consciousness, followed by analysis of the respective external representations and lastly internal representations. There are also two case studies of representations of Corsica in wider visual culture. Owing to its widespread appeal, its adaptability and its capacity to reflect popular opinion in different sectors of society, the medium of bande dessinée offers a potentially rich field for the investigation of social and cultural attitudes and prejudices. It is hoped that this thesis points the way to further research on the topic.