By fusing many of the established hypotheses on the source of the grotesque in Irish literature, this study establishes that these writers' impatience with all boundaries and limitations, physical or mental, led them to exploit the indeterminacy of the grotesque to achieve their particular aesthetic and epistemological objectives. / After an initial chapter on the relevant theoretical and national considerations, the prodigious cloacal visions of Beckett and Joyce are compared, with emphasis on their use of the grotesque to demythologize the creative process. A fourth chapter compares O'Brien's and Beckett's exploitation of the grotesque to undermine hegemonic philosophical and epistemological systems. / Like most writers of the grotesque tradition, Joyce and O'Brien assume a degree of moral responsibility by affirming, explicitly or implicitly, some traditional or utopian values and standards, while Beckett's deliberations on the complex relationship between Nature, the mind and the body end in negation, impotence and the hope of silence.

The impact of Johnson's beliefs and his statements of them have frequently been interpreted as excessively dogmatic. Indeed, some critics have chosen to view Johnson as an eccentric, the last defender of an obsolete neo-classical tradition. Moreover, before the twentieth century's reappraisal of Johnson's literary role, the nineteenth had heaped scorn and derision on his perceptive judgment.As a practitioner of most forms of literary criticism, Johnson was particularly qualified to pass judgment on the "faults and beauties" of. literary compositions. His own distinguished career as poet, biographer, essayist and journalist gave him direct and invaluable knowledge of the creative process so that his pronouncements represent a lifelong interest in and association with literature.Johnson was an empirical critic. His point of departure was always the literary text. Although he acknowledged that rules could be formulated from an analysis of poetry, he stressed the danger of rigid standards of measurement. While Johnson exemplified the classical tradition in criticism, he was no slavish conformist to rules even when they had evolved from the ancients in such matters as the unities.Truth, nature and reason were basic to Johnson's criticism. He insisted that conventions should harmonize with the dictates of reason and common sense. Moreover, he took an independent stand when occasion demanded it. Such was his opposition to the pastoral and his censure of the use of excessive mythology in poetry.Johnson was a strong advocate of general principles. He believed that only general effects were indicative of true worth, and so he repudiated both microscopic and telescopic methods of criticism. Particularity, he maintained in Rasselas, was to be avoided because the minute analysis of poetry fragmented the general spirit of the composition.Johnson was a moral critic. He never judged literature solely on aesthetic grounds, nor did he value literature for its own sake. Life and literature were inseparable for him. He supported the established custom in letters that held that poetry should provide utility and pleasure. Moreover, Johnson insisted that poets should teach man the correct view of manners, morals and social relations, for he strongly believed that literature should inculcate goodness, teach society principles of reason and justice and demonstrate the repression of evil.This study was divided into five chapters. Chapter I, "The Critic and Criticism," is devoted to Johnson's pronouncements on the role of the critic and the nature of criticism. Johnson forcefully provides a rationale for the dual function of poet and critic which he so admirably exemplifies. Chapter II, "Little Prefaces, Little Lives," reviews the circumstances that resulted in his last great work and includes a representative sampling of Johnson's critical declarations as it appears in a number of major and minor lives. Chapters III and, IV present an analysis of six major life studies: Dryden, Milton, Addison, Cowley, Swift and Pope. The accounts of these particular poets were selected for detailed comment because they represent Johnson's critical writing at its best. In each spirited rendition, Johnson weaves a rich tapestry of critical and biographical composition that is unrivalled in English letters.Finally, in Chapter V, "Critical Matrices," significant clusters of ideas are identified around which Johnson's critical attitudes adhere in all of his works. Thus it is with admirable consistency of statement, abundant illustration and clarity of example, that Johnson skillfully presents his view on mythology, imagination, decorum and imitation, as well as on the pastoral and the general and particular in literary criticism. Each of these topics, therefore, is discussed at some length in the last chapter, illustrated by examples from the Lives of the English Poets.

Samuel Rawson Gardiner (1829-1902) has traditionally been viewed as a quintessential late Victorian historian. His subject was politics, his methods consisted of empirical research in the archives, he wrote the kind of dry narratives being propounded in the newly professionalised discipline, and his account of the past was coloured by his religious and political biases. Such characterisations are, however, very wide of the mark. They have been constructed from the study of the context of his life. Through a close reading of the full range of his texts, it is possible to deconstruct this dominant image and put in its place a very different account of his thought, his methods and his writing. Gardiner was influenced by German Idealist philosophy, and as a result his interests lay in intellectual currents, his methods of analysis rested on the Fichtean dialectical method coupled with a dedication to insights derived from empathy and the imagination, and he understood the power of literary representation.

This dissertation offers both a theoretical investigation into the relationships between narrative, knowledge and personhood and a literary critical analysis of a group of Samuel Beckett's works in which narrative, knowledge and personhood are the central themes. / I present an account of the notion of narrative and explore the nature of justified narrative assertions. I then turn to skeptical and anti-realist arguments about the ability of narratives to represent truthfully the world. Such arguments are widespread in postmodernist and poststructuralist circles, and in order to evaluate them, I consider particular arguments of Jean-Francois Lyotard, Christopher Norris and Hayden White, all of whom question the ability of narratives to be true. The positions of these theorists rely upon deep conceptual confusion, and, after sorting out their claims, I conclude that they offer no compelling reasons to doubt that narratives can accurately and truthfully represent the world. / Next, I offer an analysis of the relationship between the notion of personhood and narrative. I argue against postmodernist and poststructuralist critiques of subjectivity, and, drawing on the work of various contemporary philosophers, I defend notions of subjectivity and selfhood while acknowledging and examining the essentially narrative nature of such phenomena. The concept of a "personal history" receives detailed analysis, as does the notion of a "situated self." While agreeing with particular criticisms of what is often called the "modern self," I argue that there are specific normative projects of modernity, namely autonomy and self-realization, that are worth preserving. / Finally, I explore the themes of narrative, knowledge and personhood in the nouvelles of Samuel Beckett. These works represent crises of narrative and personhood, and they depict the epistemic and ethical difficulties encountered by persons under conditions of modernity, conditions in which individual lives often lack narrative unity and meaning. I read Beckett as a critic of culture whose work, while deeply critical of certain trends in modern culture, points to the need for individual subjects to find true and meaningful narratives in which they can participate as co-authors.

Based on a joint process of analysis and translation, this research explores the challenges of translating into French a novel by Samuel Selvon titled The Lonely Londoners (1956), one of the first and few English Caribbeans novels entirely composed in a vernacular style and sold to an international English-speaking audience. Using a Bourdieusian methodology of praxis, the thesis analyses the interaction between the various levels of decision-making and the linguistic, political and aesthetic factors that interfere with the translation process, from the interpretation of the text to its rephrasing. It consists of six chapters that, from the second to the fifth, trace the stages of the translation process. Through a review of the critical reception of Selvon's novel, the second chapter examines the stakes of translating The Lonely Londoners from a theoretical perspective. Via a close reading of the text, the third delves into some of the interpretative suggestions made by recent critics. In a discussion leading to the layout of a translation project, the fourth explores the relation between the linguistic and cultural constituents interacting in Selvon's text and those that are likely to play a role in translation. Commenting on some of the translation strategies chosen, the fifth presents part of the formal realization of this project. The opening and closing chapters enlarge the framework by inscribing the object in a wider perspective. While the first chapter offers a panorama of the place of English Caribbean fiction in French translation, the final chapter reflects on the translation process undertaken in order to address more political/ethical issues. In the final analysis, the author concludes that for linguistic and political reasons as much as aesthetic ones, it is necessary to refocus the ongoing debate on the ethics and politics of translation, a debate traditionally dealt with in terms of particular translation strategies, on the interpretative process

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Zugl.: Witten, Herdecke, Universiẗat, Diss., 2005 u.d.T.: Brehme, Sabine: Geschlechterspezifische Therapie venerischer Krankheiten und Einstufung der Menstruation in der Frühzeit der Homöopathie.

Proefschrift Universiteit van Amsterdam. / Met index, lit. opg. - Met samenvatting in het Nederlands.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Washington. / Bibliography: l. 150-153.

Thesis (M.A.)--University of Adelaide, Dept. of English, 1993. / "Submitted as Ph. D thesis." Includes bibliographical references (leaves 468-493).