Syftet med denna uppsats är att försöka finna de kristna motivens plats i berättandet i de tre Sagan om ringen-filmerna (The Lord of the Rings) av Peter Jackson. Arbete har lagts ned på att studera litteratur inom både religion och filosofi kring filmernas Midgård-berättelser, där dessa behandlar kristna motiv. Den etablerade forskningen kring detta ämne har hittills till stor del handlat om Tolkiens böcker och inte i särskilt stor utsträckning om filmerna. Därför kan uppsatsen anses relevant i en tid där filmen mer och mer ses som lika betydelsefullt medium som boken.Det resultat som har nåtts är att det förefaller vara en stor del av filmernas handling som har sitt ursprung inom kristendomens berättelser och motiv. Detta inte bara i filmernas stora och övergripande berättelse (i synnerhet berättelsen om Frodo och Sam) utan även i sidoberättelserna (särskilt de som berättar om Aragorn och Gandalf). Filmerna innehåller således en ansenlig mängd kristna motiv.

When Peter Jackson sought to adapt J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings to film, many fans worried about the changes that could be made to such a beloved story. Though the response to the films was generally positive, all three movies did have their detractors. Many of the complaints centered on his badly adapting the source material, specifically the characters. When Jackson released The Two Towers, fans were outraged further by how Jackson had handled Faramir. However, these interpretations of The Lord of the Rings and Faramir are a narrow evaluation of the larger problem facing fan and scholarly communities, that being, the devaluation of Escapism and what Tolkien calls, “escapist texts,” in today’s society. Tolkien claims that the main purpose of escapist texts is that they allow audiences to recover previous experiences that gave them feelings of happiness or joy. Despite criticism of Escapism, escapists texts don’t urge people to abandon their lives and seek something else. Rather, escapist texts encourage audiences to identify with and empathize with the characters represented in these texts, in order to return to their lives and accept responsibility for and connection with other people. When audiences see The Lord of the Rings and Faramir (whether in book form or in film form), they identify and connect with these stories and characters and seek responsibility in their own lives, which brings them, and those around them, hope.

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Djupgående analyser av filmerna Konspiration 58 och Forgotten Silver, tillhörande genrehybriden mockumentärfilm.

This study investigates the representation of narrative space in the novel and the film of The Return of the King. As the two representations belong to two different mediums, the theories on narrative space in the novel and in the film are examined in order to distinguish between their modes of representation of space. In essence, the theory utilised for the spatial analysis focuses on the content, function and symbolic meaning within spaces, as created by the description of objects, the repetition and accumulation of spatial information, as well as the movement of characters within spaces and the interaction between characters and different spaces. This spatial interaction relates to the events, representations of time and the role of the narrator within the different dimensions of narrated space, that is, concrete and abstract space. The three most significant spaces within the novel and the film, namely Minas Tirith, Mount Doom and Hobbiton form the basis of the analysis, which focuses on the narrative spaces as they are represented. From this study, it becomes clear that there are different levels of meaning embodied within a space: the physical and geographical space, the social space of interaction and the abstract, symbolic space. The significant spaces and their meanings in the novel have been subjected to filmic transformation. Essentially, the spaces in both the novel and the film display the fact that space ultimately influences those events and people who interact with it and vice versa. These spaces thus embody specific meanings, which contribute towards the undertaken journey represented in Tolkien's fantastical, imaginative world. / MA (English), North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2014

This study investigates the representation of narrative space in the novel and the film of The Return of the King. As the two representations belong to two different mediums, the theories on narrative space in the novel and in the film are examined in order to distinguish between their modes of representation of space. In essence, the theory utilised for the spatial analysis focuses on the content, function and symbolic meaning within spaces, as created by the description of objects, the repetition and accumulation of spatial information, as well as the movement of characters within spaces and the interaction between characters and different spaces. This spatial interaction relates to the events, representations of time and the role of the narrator within the different dimensions of narrated space, that is, concrete and abstract space. The three most significant spaces within the novel and the film, namely Minas Tirith, Mount Doom and Hobbiton form the basis of the analysis, which focuses on the narrative spaces as they are represented. From this study, it becomes clear that there are different levels of meaning embodied within a space: the physical and geographical space, the social space of interaction and the abstract, symbolic space. The significant spaces and their meanings in the novel have been subjected to filmic transformation. Essentially, the spaces in both the novel and the film display the fact that space ultimately influences those events and people who interact with it and vice versa. These spaces thus embody specific meanings, which contribute towards the undertaken journey represented in Tolkien's fantastical, imaginative world. / MA (English), North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2014

In my earlier work, ‘First steps towards a rhetorical hermeneutics of literary interpretation’ (2006), I argued that academic reading takes the form of an argument between readers. Four serious weaknesses in that account are its elision of the distinction between reading and discourse on reading, its inattention to non-academic reading, its exclusive focus on ‘interpretation’ as if this constituted the whole of reading or of discourse on reading, and its failure to theorise the object of literary reading, ie. the work of literature. The current work aims to address all of these problems, together with those created by certain other approaches to literary reading, with the overall objective of clearing the ground for more empirical studies. It exemplifies its points with examples drawn primarily from non-academic public discourse on literature (newspapers, magazines, and the internet), though also from other sources (such as reading groups and undergraduate literature seminars). It takes a particular (though not an exclusive) interest in two specific instances of non-academic reception: the widespread reception of Salman Rushdie’s novel The Satanic Verses as an attack on Islam, and the minority reception of Peter Jackson’s film trilogy The Lord of the Rings as a narrative of homosexual desire. The first chapter of this dissertation critically surveys the fields of reception study and discourse analysis, and in particular the crossover between them. It finds more productive engagement with the textuality of response in media reception study than in literary reception study. It argues that the application of discourse analysis to reception data serves to problematise, rather than to facilitate, reception study, but it also emphasises the problematic nature of discourse analysis itself. Each of the three subsequent chapters considers a different complex of problems. The first is the literary work, and its relation to its producers and its consumers: Chapter 2 takes the form of a discourse upon the notions of ‘speech act’ and ‘authorial intention’ in relation to literature, carries out an analysis of early public responses to The Satanic Verses, and puts in a word for non-readers by way of a conclusion. The second is the private experience of reading, and its paradoxical status as an object of public representation: Chapter 3 analyses representations of private responses to The Lord of The Rings film trilogy, and concludes with the argument that, though these representations cannot be identical with private responses, they are cannot be extricated from them, either. The third is the impossibility of distinguishing rhetoric from cognition in the telling of stories about reading: Chapter 4 argues that, though anecdotal or autobiographical accounts of reading cannot be taken at face value, they can be taken both as attempts to persuade and as attempts to understand; it concludes with an analysis of a magazine article that tells a number of stories about reading The Satanic Verses – amongst other things. Each of these chapters focuses on non-academic reading as represented in written text, but broadens this focus through consideration of examples drawn from spoken discourse on reading (including in the liminal academic space of the undergraduate classroom). The last chapter mulls over the relationship between reading and discourse of reading, and hesitates over whether to wrap or tear this dissertation’s arguments up.