Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Wisconsin--Madison, 1973. / Typescript. Vita. eContent provider-neutral record in process. Description based on print version record. Includes bibliography.

Thesis (doctoral)--Hamburg, 1971. / Vita. Includes bibliography (v. 2, p. 239-270).

A internação hospitalar da irmã obriga a narradora de O sistema dos Anjos a realizar uma viagem às pressas do Rio de Janeiro para uma cidade ao sul do Brasil. A partir deste deslocamento, histórias da infância, da adolescência e do início da vida adulta vão surgindo na memória da viajante. A dissertação, em forma de romance, foi estruturada a partir de duas narrativas, ambas escritas em primeira pessoa, que formam um sistema único e colocam em dúvida a identidade daquela que está narrando. Quem o eu, quem o outro é o fio invisível que atravessa essa ficção composta de capítulos que ambientam diferentes fases, desde a gênese da família dos Anjos até a sua dissolução / The hospitalization of her sister compels the narrator of O sistema dos Anjos: memorabilia de uma família brasileira to make a hurried trip from Rio de Janeiro to a city in the south of Brazil. From this displacement, stories of childhood, adolescence and the beginning of adult life surface from the memory of the traveller. The thesis, in novel format, is built around two narratives, both written in first person, presenting a unique system and casting doubt on the identity of the speaker. Who I am, who the other is, form the invisible line that per passes this fiction, composed of chapters that harbor different phases, from the genesis of the dos Anjos family to its dissolution

Beginning with Montaigne’s essayistic dictum Que sais je? — ‘What do I know?’ — this PhD thesis examines the literary history, formal qualities, and theoretical underpinnings of the personal essay to both investigate and to practice its relevance as an approach to writing about art. The thesis proposes the essay as intrinsically linked to research, critical writing, and art making; it is a literary method that embodies the real experience of attempting to answer a question. The essay is a processual and reflexive mode of enquiry: a form that conveys not just the essayist’s thought, but the sense and texture of its movement as it attempts to understand its object. It is often invoked, across disciplines, in reference to the possibility of a more liberal sense of creative practice — one that conceptually and stylistically privileges collage, fragmentation, hybridity, chance, open-endedness, and the meander. Within this question of the essay as form, the thesis contains two distinct and parallel strands of analysis — subject matter and essay writing as research. At the core of the study lie two close-readings: Ana Mendieta’s Labyrinth of Venus (1982) and Le Couvent de la Tourette (1959) by Le Corbusier and Iannis Xenakis. In each case, the writing draws, in its tone and texture, on a range of literary influences, weaving together different voices, discussions, and approaches to enquiry. The practice of essay writing is presented alongside, part and party to, research: a method of interrogation that embraces risk and uncertainty, and simultaneously enacts its own findings as a critical-creative mode of study-via-form, and form-via-study. The thesis is presented as a book-length essay, in which the art in question is equal and intimately connected to the writing used to address it. Method and form are designed to respond to the oft-cited challenge of the essay as fundamentally unmethodical, ranging, and diverse. Research, critical study, writerly description, and storytelling are combined to elucidate and expose each other based not on surface continuity, but on a deep interconnection among ideas that, through language, cohere and become related — imbued with an affinity for one another. The consummate product is the argument, as it works across genres, disciplines, descriptive and critical models, to challenge the narrative structure and language used within contemporary writing about art.

Erika Duncan has commented that ‘because of the intangible sentimental quality of Mary Webb’s special genius, there has been a general reluctance to acknowledge her as a major writer.’ This thesis argues against such dismissive approaches to Webb and makes a case for a re-evaluation of Webb as an unusual writer of pantheist spirituality and nature mysticism and one who can now be appreciated for the ecopoetics of her work. Within this framework the study charts the stylistic qualities of her writing and its mutative shifts through a chronological examination of her work which also includes a biographical account of her life and the major influences which shaped her ideas and writing. Aspects of inter-textuality with other writers will be considered throughout and will underscore the value of Webb’s work whilst emphasising the unique and beautiful quality of her voice. The first chapter, ‘Early Responses’, considers her formative experiences and her earliest essays and poems. ‘Mythological Motifs’ then reviews the mythopoeic nature of Webb’s first two novels and her use of myth in furthering her themes. The ensuing chapter, ‘Preceptive Perception’, evaluates both the didacticism in authorial style and the pertinence of Webb’s vision which are features of her third book. Chapter Four discusses her final two completed volumes as ‘A Dyad’ for they represent, respectively, her weakest and her finest writing. The final chapter, ‘A Medieval Message’, focuses on Webb’s last, incomplete, work, analysing its experimental qualities and its potential to reveal Webb’s last efforts to leave a parting missive for her readers before her death. Central critical concepts are that: in the development of Webb’s religious views from conventional Christianity to pantheism she anticipated modern feminist spirituality; and, in her insistence upon the supreme value of nature and its continual risk from human exploitation in connection with the oppression of women and their need for spiritual freedom, Webb is an unrecognised ecofeminist who was reflecting early twentieth-century issues. In addition, I attempt to discover reasons for Webb’s neglect and positively propose a place for her in literary studies. A Conclusion will summarise the main arguments and indicate possible further avenues of research.

Poets and critics have long agreed that any perceived differences between poetry and prose are not essential to those modes: both are comprised of words, both may be arranged typographically in various ways—in lines, in paragraphs of sentences, or otherwise—and both draw freely from the complete range of literary styles and tools, like rhythm, sound patterning, focalization, figures, imagery, narration, or address. Yet still, in modern American literature, poetry and prose remain entrenched as a binary, one just as likely to be invoked as fact by writers and scholars as by casual readers. I argue that this binary is not only prevalent but also productive for modern notions of poetry, the root of many formal innovations of the past two centuries, like the prose poem and free verse. Further, for the poets considered in this study, the poetry/prose binary is generative precisely because it is flawed, offering an opportunity for an aesthetic critique. “Antagonistic Cooperation: Prose in American Poetry” uncovers a history of innovative writing that traverses the divide between poetry and prose, writing that critiques the poetry/prose binary by combining conventions of each. These texts reveal how poetry and prose are similar, but they also explore why they seem different and even have different effects. When these writers’ texts examine this binary, they do so not only for aesthetic reasons but also to question the social and political binaries of modern American life—like rich/poor, white/black, male/female, gay/straight, natural/artificial, even living/dead—and these convergences of prose and poetry are a textual “space” each writer creates for representing those explorations. Ultimately, these texts neither choose between poetry and prose nor do they homogenize the two, affirming instead the complex effects that even faulty distinctions may have had historically, and still have, on literature—as on life. By confronting differences without reducing or erasing them, these texts imagine ways to negotiate and overcome modes of ignorance, invisibility, and oppression that may result from these flawed yet powerful dichotomies.

In the face of climate change, what can art do? The question is both practical and ethical: a question of art's efficacy, its ways of working, and its uses to audiences. These intertwined questions are articulated in writing and film-making, both of which draw on an empirical method, alongside research into ethics, ecology, film history, the politics of climate change, and critiques of capitalism. I seek to represent the consequences of climate change as they are experienced by the inhabitants of the north of Scotland and Arctic Russia. Through writing and film I document and interpret changing relationships with the sea and the land, thus bringing to light the interplay of climate change with history and memory, and with the social, economic, environmental and political forces that are shaping places and lives. One of the research methods of this PhD is a form of fieldwork, consisting of recorded interviews and informal encounters, filming and note taking, which form the source material for a multi-vocal approach to writing and filmmaking. The written thesis consists of narrations of journeys, both actual and theoretical. I tell stories of journeys to the White Sea in northeastern Russia, and to the north Highlands and islands of Scotland, where the political, economic and environmental upheavals are emblematic of a geopolitical shift north. I examine how ideas of North and of the sea, of nature and landscape, contained in films, oral histories, myths and writings, contribute to contemporary perceptions of place. These ideas are analyzed further through Alexander Dovzhenko’s film Aerograd, and Michael Powell’s The Edge of the World. I shot the two films, Call of North and From Time to Time at Sea, alongside supplementary film works, in Northern Russia and the far north of Scotland, in Caithness, Orkney and during a sailing expedition to the Northern Isles with Cape Farewell. Concomitantly with the first person written narrative, they investigate the camera as a participant-observer, and the implied presence of a future audience. The familiar trope of anthropology whereby the observer influences what is observed is explored here within the context of film. Both the written and film works document disappearance: of individuals and their memories, of species, of ecosystems, of ways of life, of imagined worlds, and of entire societies as well as the vertiginous fear of the future annihilation of human civilization. At the same time a plurality of perspectives and voices are combined to produce polyphonic compositions that resist being reduced to pessimism. The documentation of disappearance is examined and articulated as a distinct response to an ethical and ecological imperative. Meanwhile, the works propose to speak to a future audience –– to speak not to the world as it is but as it could become.

Orientador: Antonio Celso Ferreira / Banca: Zélia Lopes da Silva / Banca: Célia Regina Silveira / Banca: Edinaldo Bezerra de Freitas / Banca: Marcelo Lapuente Mahl / Resumo: Esta pesquisa analisa a construção da memória por meio das representações contidas nos textos da narrativa histórica e da literatura poética do Estado de Rondônia. Para tal empreitada foram selecionadas as obras mais expressivas dos autores situados entre o período de vigência do antigo Território Federal do Guaporé (1943-56), depois Território Federal de Rondônia (1956-81) até a consolidação do atual Estado de Rondônia. A análise está focada no discurso destes autores e revela suas filiações e os seus pareceres. Tal memória fica aqui compreendida enquanto uma construção produzida por uma elite letrada, constituindo assim aspectos de representação enquanto projetos, de diferentes matizes, e que disputam entre si a hegemonia do discurso. Nesse sentido, as imagens das populações tradicionais aparecem delineadas a partir de conceitos estereotipados e marcados por um viés ideológico: a noção de vazio demográfico, as populações indígenas igualadas à natureza e o bandeirante como herói civilizador. Assim, as reflexões apresentadas neste trabalho, tiveram como base a eleição de um conjunto de narrativas em prosa e poesia, como também as imagens representativas dos símbolos de poder. Finalmente esta trajetória procura atravessar o interior dos enunciados, dialogando internamente com suas contradições e apontando para suas continuidades e recorrências. / Abstract: This research analyses the construction of the State of Rondônia memory by means of the representations portrayed in the some texts of historical narrative and poetry of local writers. To reach that aim, the most representative works were selected from authors who wrote between the periods: 1943-56 (Guaporé Federal Territory), 1956-81 (Rondônia Federal Territory) up to the consolidation of the Rondônia State, after 1981. The analysis focuses these authors' speeches and reveals their political affiliation and places from where they spoke their feelings - such memory is understood as product of highly educated elite which builds up projects of representation aspects, of different kinds, which fight each other the speech control. In this sense, the local images of the traditional populations appear designed from stereotyped misconceptions and ideologically biased: the notion of demographic emptiness, the rainforest populations leveled to nature and the "bandeirante" as a civilizing hero. Thus, the reflections presented in this work, had had as base the election of a set of narratives in prose and poetry, as well as the representative images of the symbols of being able. Finally, this trajectory seeks to go through the inside of enunciation, dialoguing internally with its contradictions and pointing with respect to its continuities and recurrences. / Doutor

A internação hospitalar da irmã obriga a narradora de O sistema dos Anjos a realizar uma viagem às pressas do Rio de Janeiro para uma cidade ao sul do Brasil. A partir deste deslocamento, histórias da infância, da adolescência e do início da vida adulta vão surgindo na memória da viajante. A dissertação, em forma de romance, foi estruturada a partir de duas narrativas, ambas escritas em primeira pessoa, que formam um sistema único e colocam em dúvida a identidade daquela que está narrando. Quem o eu, quem o outro é o fio invisível que atravessa essa ficção composta de capítulos que ambientam diferentes fases, desde a gênese da família dos Anjos até a sua dissolução / The hospitalization of her sister compels the narrator of O sistema dos Anjos: memorabilia de uma família brasileira to make a hurried trip from Rio de Janeiro to a city in the south of Brazil. From this displacement, stories of childhood, adolescence and the beginning of adult life surface from the memory of the traveller. The thesis, in novel format, is built around two narratives, both written in first person, presenting a unique system and casting doubt on the identity of the speaker. Who I am, who the other is, form the invisible line that per passes this fiction, composed of chapters that harbor different phases, from the genesis of the dos Anjos family to its dissolution

Este trabalho tem como objetivo investigar a configuração de uma visão trágica do mundo na obra do escritor Rubem Fonseca. Para isso, em cada um de seus quatro capítulos é analisado um conto considerado exemplar no que diz respeito a essa configuração. São eles Madona (de A coleira do cão, 1965), O pedido (de Feliz ano novo, 1975), Mandrake (de O cobrador, 1979) e Meu avô (de Pequenas criaturas, 2002). O título da dissertação foi escolhido com base nos três principais fatores dessa configuração que são encontrados nos contos e que, combinados, dão a esses textos sua dimensão trágica. / This study aims to investigate the configuration of a \"tragic perception of the world\" in the work of the writer Rubem Fonseca. To do so, in each of its four chapters a short story considered exemplar regarding this configuration is examined. They are Madona (from A coleira do cão, 1965), O pedido (from Feliz ano novo, 1975), Mandrake (from O cobrador, 1979) e Meu avô (from Pequenas criaturas, 2002). The title of this dissertation was chosen based on the three main aspects of this setting that are found in the short stories and that, combined, give these texts its tragic dimension.