No description available.

No description available.

Marietta Shaginian’s Soviet production novel, Hydrocentral (Gidrotsentral’), represents a case of canonical limbo. Without exception, the novel is listed as a Soviet literary classic in reference works and compendia of Russian literature since the time of its publication in 1931 up to the present day, and yet its fame as an exemplary work of socialist realism (the officially mandated artistic and literary method established by the Soviet government in 1934) was extremely short-lived. This dissertation attempts to explain the reasons for the novel’s “in-between” status as a Soviet “classic” work of literature, but not an exemplar of socialist realism. Although Hydrocentral was published three years prior to the adoption of socialist realism, this dissertation argues that there is little doubt that Hydrocentral was one of a handful of Soviet literary works contributing to the formulation of its central tenets. Per the official definition, socialist realism “demands from the artist the truthful, historically concrete depiction of reality in its revolutionary development. At the same time, truthfulness and historical concreteness of the artistic depiction of reality must be combined with the task of ideologically remolding and educating [the working people] in the spirit of socialism.” Shaginian’s novel did, in fact, fulfill all the official requirements of socialist realism: it is a concrete, historically-grounded portrayal of life in rural Armenia at the inception of the first Five-Year Plan (1928-1932) in which objective reality (bytie) is characterized as unceasing dialectical movement. As a paean to inspired, creative socialist labor, Hydrocentral was also written with the express purpose of inculcating a socialist work ethic in Soviet citizens. Part I of this dissertation offers a structural explanation of the novel’s limbo status by demonstrating how the principle of multiplicity undergirds the novel’s structure at every level. Shaginian uses two types of multiplicity, conventional, as in artistic, not true-to-life (uslovnaia) and real, everyday (bytovaia) multiplicity, combining them in a way that achieves Shaginian’s to achieve unique vision of objective reality (bytie) as unceasing dialectical development. Part II of the dissertation demonstrates how the nature of this objective reality (bytie) has its philosophical underpinnings in German Idealism as espoused by Hegel and Goethe, as well as in the dialectical materialism of Karl Marx. At the phenomenological level, Hydrocentral is, a Marxist, materialist philosophical overlay that conceals deeper Idealist – and even Modernist – epistemological undercurrents.

[Typewritten] Includes bibliography.

The aim of this dissertation is to trace the function of parody in the context of Salman Rushdie&rsquo / s magical realistic fiction. The magical realism of Rushdie&rsquo / s fiction presents a complex Third World experience which constitutes an alternative to, and challenges the Eurocentrism of western culture. The form and content of Rushdie&rsquo / s novels are so intense and rich that the whole body of his work comes to the fore, not as an outcome of the two clashing civilisations, that is East and West, but rather as an immense medley of the two cultures. While &ldquo / writing back to the empire&rdquo / , Rushdie draws on innumerable sources ranging from such grand narratives as Genesis, Iliad, Ramayana, A Thousand and One Nights, Hindu, Persian, Greek, and Norse mythologies, and local cultural traditions, to modern politics mingling fiction and reality in a broad historical perspective, so that his work becomes a synthesis of East and West, an international aesthetic plane where diversities express themselves freely. The dissertation focuses particularly on Rushdie&rsquo / s Midnight&rsquo / s Children, The Moor&rsquo / s Last Sigh,and Shalimar The Clown. / it contains an introductory chapter, a theory chapter, including two subchapters, a development chapter with three subchapters which analyse the above mentioned three novels, and a conclusion chapter. The introductory chapter presents an overview of the issues to be investigated in the subsequent chapters. The theory chapter deals with the concepts of colonialism, nationalism, and the past and the present of postcolonial literary theory with reference to its leading theorists, such as M. Foucault, E. Said, H. Bhabha, and other recent critics / this chapter also introduces magical realism by reference to a number of current definitions and approaches. The following three subchapters, which focus on the analyses of the three novels, explore how parody functions both thematically and structurally in relation to Rushdie&rsquo / s magical realism. The concluding chapter demonstrates that Rushdie&rsquo / s work creates an unrestrained plane of an international culture where multiple visions and diversities can find a room to assert themselves.

Thesis (M.A.)--University of Hong Kong, 2001. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 33-35).

Entre 1860 et 1869, Edmond et Jules de Goncourt publient six romans : Charles Demailly (1860), Soeur Philomène (1861), Renée Mauperin (1864), Germinie Lacerteux (1865), Manette Salomon (1867), Madame Gervaisais (1869). C'est la totalité de la production romanesque des deux frères.Ces volumes forment un ensemble bien groupé dans le temps, où se retrouve une évidente unité d'intention, de ton, d'écriture. Les historiens de la littérature sont aujourd'hui d'accord pour classer ces oeuvres sous la rubrique "Romans réalistes". Mais ils diffèrent dans leur analyse et leur appréciation du "réalisme" de ces ouvrages. A quoi tient réellement ce "réalisme" ? Telle est, présentée de la façon la plus sommaire, la question à quoi le présent mémoire se propose de répondre. [...]

No description available.

Generally labelled as fantastic in nature, Maupassant's short stories pose a serious problem. The very term "fantastic" is itself highly ambiguous; there have been many attemps to define what makes a work of literature "fantastic" in nature, but none of these attempts have managed to capture the essence of the genre in its entirety. / What is most striking in Maupassant's narratives is precisely his rejection of the fantastic almost as soon as it occurs. Contrary to the more traditional literature of the fantastic, his narratives remain anchored in a realistic world, rendering the reader's experience even more unsettling. In a sense, Maupassant manages to tame the fantastic by normalizing it. / We intend, therefore, to position our work at the meeting point of these two concepts---realism and fantasy---in order to determine if the definition of "fantastic realism" we will be striving for can be verified through our analysis of the following stories: "Apparition", "La chevelure", "Le Horla" (first version), "La main", "La peur", "Magnetisme" and "Sur 1'eau". (Abstract shortened by UMI.)

No description available.