This study calls for a re-evaluation of contemporary regionalist literary theory. It argues that traditional models of the discourse have been too heavily influenced by nineteenth century realist aesthetics and political ideologies. Because most scholars continue to interpret regionalist texts according to a resolutely empirical reading of geography, literary regionalism has fallen out of touch with the new kinds of "unrealistic," generic landscapes that now dominate North American culture in the postindustrial era. Drawing heavily on recent work by postmodern geographers such as Edward Soja, David Harvey, Michael Dear and Derek Gregory, this project updates regionalist theory by "re-placing" the artificially stabilized reading of geography that dominated the nineteenth century with a more self-consciously spatialized reading of what Soja calls our contemporary "real-and-imagined" places. By grafting together traditional regionalism and postmodern spatial theory we improve on both contributing discourses. In a "postmodern-regionalist" literary criticism, traditional regionalism sheds its reputation for theoretical naivete, while the elusive abstractions of postmodern theory gain a real-world referent, and a specific geographical index. When we "read postmodernism regionally" - - when we aggressively interrogate where this kind of fiction comes from and the places it represents - - we realize that the canons of postmodern fiction in Canada and the United States have been influenced by two very different spatial epistemologies. Rather than being "determined" by their real geographies, Canadian and American postmodernism have been more directly influenced by two different readings of geography. Works by Thomas Pynchon, Toni Morrison, and Don DeLillo demonstrate that American postmodernism often interprets social space according to what Henri Lefebvre calls the idealistic "the illusion of transparency," while texts by Canadian postmodernists such as Robert Kroetsch, Wayne Johnston and Guy Vanderhaeghe tend to fall under Lefebvre's more materialistic "illusion of opacity." The ambiguous figure of Douglas Coupland - - a Canadian writer most critics treat as an American - - puts the spatial conventions of postmodernism in both countries in sharp relief. In an American postmodernism, dominated by generic suburban settings, regions will almost always be seen as imaginary projections, while in a Canadian postmodernism, dominated by the Prairies, regions will almost always retain some sense of their material reality.

The embryonic ideas for this thesis began to form in two seminars I attended in 2000 while studying for a Masters at the University of Chicago. The first of these, W. J. T. Mitchell's 'Verbal and Visual Landscapes', must be given credit for introducing me to a short essay by Martin Heidegger entitled 'Die Kunst und der Raum' ('Art and Space'), which got me thinking about the 'special character' of space (Heidegger 1973: 4). In addition, Professor Mitchell's specific approach to landscape, that it should be considered as a verb rather than a noun, made me consider the ontological implications of the relationship between space and power that is witnessed both in and through landscape when approached as 'a process by which social and subjective identities are formed' (Mitchell 1994: 1).

Quebec knew a long tradition of regionalistic literature since the novel of the soil, tradition with which the writers of Quebec broke for a long time. However, certain writers still practice a regionalistic form of literature, which does not have anything to see with the novel of the soil. Within the literary institution, the regionalistic writers of today seem to belong to a sphere of distinct production. In order to delimit the space occupied by the contemporary regionalistic writers, we based ourselves on the theory of the literary field of Pierre Bourdieu and the theory of the institution of the literature of Jacques Dubois. So as to apply the model of Bourdieu and Dubois to a typical example of contemporary regionalistic writer, we chose to concentrate us on the career of Sylvain Riviere, Gaspesian writer born in 1955. Sylvain Riviere seems to be the regionalistic writer par excellence, who devoted the most part of his work to his region, Gaspesia and the Magdalen Islands. The example of Sylvain Riviere shows us that in spite of his marginality, the regionalistic writer is able to find his place inside the contemporary literary field.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Missouri-Columbia, 2007. / The entire dissertation/thesis text is included in the research.pdf file; the official abstract appears in the short.pdf file (which also appears in the research.pdf); a non-technical general description, or public abstract, appears in the public.pdf file. Title from title screen of research.pdf file (viewed on January 29, 2007) Vita. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (M.A.)--Villanova University, 2009. / English Dept. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Chicago, Dept. of English Language and Literature, August 2000. / Includes bibliographical references. Also available on the Internet.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of California, Santa Cruz, 1991. / Typescript. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 205-216).

O tema da presente dissertação consiste na investigação acerca da contribuição do Grupo Matrícula para a consolidação de um sistema literário regional na Serra Gaúcha. Ao compreender a literatura como um sistema particular, serão analisados elementos de produção, publicação e circulação em relação ao Grupo. Sob esse viés, fazem parte do sistema escritores, leitores e obras, e também editoras, universidades, livrarias, bibliotecas, análises críticas e outros. Será ainda observado o ambiente literário em que surge a antologia, assim como o ambiente que emerge após a sua publicação. À luz da sociologia da literatura, parte-se da totalidade de um sistema literário e, gradativamente, reduz-se ao sistema literário regional da Serra Gaúcha, para, finalmente, verificar o papel do Grupo Matrícula na consolidação desse sistema. Para tanto, servirão como aporte teórico os estudos sobre região cultural, regionalidades, literatura regional e sistemas literários. Os fatores sociais e culturais específicos de uma região, que agem sobre a produção e recepção da literatura, as instituições que constituem uma paisagem literária regional, assim como as condições de leitura e público literário são elementos investigativos da pesquisa em questão que contribuem para que se compreenda a vida literária na Serra Gaúcha, entre os anos de 1950 e 1980. / Submitted by Ana Guimarães Pereira (agpereir@ucs.br) on 2014-12-04T18:02:22Z No. of bitstreams: 1 Dissertacao Aline Brustulin Cecchin.pdf: 3666954 bytes, checksum: ee39bd1860c65405bb91911eca676040 (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2014-12-04T18:02:22Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Dissertacao Aline Brustulin Cecchin.pdf: 3666954 bytes, checksum: ee39bd1860c65405bb91911eca676040 (MD5) / The topic studied in this master’s thesis is the investigation about the contribution of Grupo Matrícula to consolidate a regional literary system in Serra Gaúcha. Understanding the literature like a particular system, elements of production will be analyzed, as the publication, and diffusion in relation to the group. Writers, readers, books, publishing houses, universities, libraries, bookstores, and critical analysis are part of this system. The literary landscape, where the anthology arises, will be observed, and, also, the literary configuration after that. Based on the sociology of literature, this research is firstly developed considering a literary system in its totality, and, gradually, it reduces to the regional literary system in Serra Gaúcha, and, finally, it verifies the role of the Grupo Matrícula in the consolidation of a system. The studies about cultural region, regionalities, regional literature and literary systems will be used as theoretical basis. The social and cultural factors of a region that act on the production and reception of literature, the institutions that constitute a regional literary landscape, and, also, the conditions of reading and the literary public are investigating elements of this work. They contribute to understand the literary life in Serra Gaúcha, between 1950 and 1980.

Alguns elementos da realidade histórica e cultural, identificados em obras de ficção que tratam do Rio Grande do Sul, contribuíram e ainda contribuem para a construção de um imaginário social e de uma identidade regional, seja nas representações do ambiente em que se passa a narrativa ou na própria linguagem utilizada pelo escritor. Partindo do pressuposto de que as escolhas lexicais do escritor, em seu texto, são fatores relevantes para a configuração do contexto histórico de uma determinada época, este trabalho analisa as relações entre o léxico do romance A casa das sete mulheres (2002), de Leticia Wierzchowski, e a cultura regional gaúcha. Para atingir os objetivos, a presente dissertação desenvolve uma análise léxico-semântica da representação das características histórico-culturais e sociais do Rio Grande do Sul a partir da seleção de lexias, organizadas em campos lexicais conforme a teoria de Coseriu (1979). Utiliza-se como aporte teórico os Estudos lexicais, Lexicologia, Lexicografia e Terminologia, enfatizando o léxico relacionado a aspectos de cultura e regionalidade. / Submitted by Ana Guimarães Pereira (agpereir@ucs.br) on 2015-11-03T13:16:52Z No. of bitstreams: 1 Dissertacao Michele Marques Baptista.pdf: 246208 bytes, checksum: e3ccda1d95afef563893a6922c1ab239 (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2015-11-03T13:16:52Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Dissertacao Michele Marques Baptista.pdf: 246208 bytes, checksum: e3ccda1d95afef563893a6922c1ab239 (MD5) / Some elements of historical and cultural reality, identified in fiction about the State of Rio Grande do Sul, have contributed and still contribute to the construction of a social imaginary and of a regional identity, whether in representations of the environment in which the narrative takes place or in the language used by the writer. On the assumption that the writer’s lexical choices are relevant factors to setting the historical context of a given season, this paper aims to examine the relation between the lexicon of the novel called “The House of Seven Women”, by Leticia Wierzchowski (2002) and regional culture. To achieve these goals, this dissertation develops a lexical-semantic analysis of the representation of the historicalcultural and social characteristics of Rio Grande do Sul from the selection of lexias, organized into lexical fields according to Coseriu's theory (1979). As theoretical contribution it was used the lexical studies, Lexicology, Lexicography and Terminology, emphasizing the lexicon related to culture and regional aspects.

O tema da presente dissertação consiste na investigação acerca da contribuição do Grupo Matrícula para a consolidação de um sistema literário regional na Serra Gaúcha. Ao compreender a literatura como um sistema particular, serão analisados elementos de produção, publicação e circulação em relação ao Grupo. Sob esse viés, fazem parte do sistema escritores, leitores e obras, e também editoras, universidades, livrarias, bibliotecas, análises críticas e outros. Será ainda observado o ambiente literário em que surge a antologia, assim como o ambiente que emerge após a sua publicação. À luz da sociologia da literatura, parte-se da totalidade de um sistema literário e, gradativamente, reduz-se ao sistema literário regional da Serra Gaúcha, para, finalmente, verificar o papel do Grupo Matrícula na consolidação desse sistema. Para tanto, servirão como aporte teórico os estudos sobre região cultural, regionalidades, literatura regional e sistemas literários. Os fatores sociais e culturais específicos de uma região, que agem sobre a produção e recepção da literatura, as instituições que constituem uma paisagem literária regional, assim como as condições de leitura e público literário são elementos investigativos da pesquisa em questão que contribuem para que se compreenda a vida literária na Serra Gaúcha, entre os anos de 1950 e 1980. / The topic studied in this master’s thesis is the investigation about the contribution of Grupo Matrícula to consolidate a regional literary system in Serra Gaúcha. Understanding the literature like a particular system, elements of production will be analyzed, as the publication, and diffusion in relation to the group. Writers, readers, books, publishing houses, universities, libraries, bookstores, and critical analysis are part of this system. The literary landscape, where the anthology arises, will be observed, and, also, the literary configuration after that. Based on the sociology of literature, this research is firstly developed considering a literary system in its totality, and, gradually, it reduces to the regional literary system in Serra Gaúcha, and, finally, it verifies the role of the Grupo Matrícula in the consolidation of a system. The studies about cultural region, regionalities, regional literature and literary systems will be used as theoretical basis. The social and cultural factors of a region that act on the production and reception of literature, the institutions that constitute a regional literary landscape, and, also, the conditions of reading and the literary public are investigating elements of this work. They contribute to understand the literary life in Serra Gaúcha, between 1950 and 1980.