By using the concept of forms in this analysis of “The Renegade,” postwar domestic life is analyzed for the uncanny. By locating repetitions in domestic life, between characters, and in speech, situations are identified where the uncanny moves into the domestic. As a result, the perception of reality of the protagonist, Mrs. Walpole, is damaged, reiterating the impossibility of sanity in a postwar housewife’s domestic life.

Saad Yahya, born in Zanzibar in 1939, studied architecture and town planning in Great Britain and in Canada; since 1968 he has lectured at the University of Nairobi. He portrays everyday life of typical inhabitants of Zanzibar and Nairobi, displaying a penetrating understanding of their problems and of their state of mind, linked with a remarkable stylistic ability. He is an acute observer who presents his characters with humour and irony, but also with a profound insight. Furthermore, in his stories, under the surface of everyday activities there is always some hidden antagonism or passion, never spelled out, but only alluded to. Several years ago Yahya sent me the manuscript of two other stories which I hoped to translate and publish in Italy, but ultimately it was not possible. I have included one of them, called Nyoko-nyoko and consisting in five typewritten pages, in the syllabus of my literary courses in Naples and in Paris. It is a rare - if not unique - Swahili story in which the main character is a Mzungu, a white man: the British governor of an imaginary East-Aftican country called Nyalia, who has to abandon his post suddenly for unspecified reasons. He regrets to must leave the country he has learned to know and to like; however, behind the mask of liberality and tolerance is hidden a self-conceited racist. The story describes his last day in Africa after a long stay.

Lʼœuvre littéraire dʼHonoré de Balzac témoigne dʼune profonde connaissance du système judiciaire et dʼune grande réflexion à son sujet. La violence et le crime, certainement pas les côtés les plus reluisants de lʼHomme, font tout de même partie intégrante de la société. Puisque Balzac a lʼambition de montrer la nature humaine telle quʼelle est, il consent à peindre le meurtre sans euphémismes. Loin de rejeter entièrement lʼesthétique romantique sanglante, il décrit le crime comme une action fondamentalement ambivalente, cʼest-à-dire, quʼil ne le condamne pas absolument ni ne le défend ouvertement. Nous retrouvons dans Balzac ce dont très peu dʼécrivains, et encore moins de philosophes, savent rendre compte : la complexité même de la vie. Lʼengagement social de Balzac invite à penser sa façon de mettre le meurtre en fiction en rapport au contexte sociologique et historique de ses œuvres. Dans la réflexion balzacienne sur le meurtre, quatre thèmes importants reviennent constamment : lʼargent (aspect économique), la jeunesse, la famille (aspects sociaux) et le remords (aspect moral). La dimension philosophique de La Comédie humaine justifie, quant à elle, le choix dʼune lecture également philosophique de lʼœuvre de Balzac. Les meurtres de quatre nouvelles appartenant aux Études philosophiques (El Verdugo, LʼAuberge rouge, Les Marana et Un drame au bord de la mer), assurent une pensée multiple sur des thèmes tels que la justice, le droit, le nom de famille, lʼhonneur, la culpabilité et le glissement dʼune société ancienne vers une société nouvelle dominée par lʼargent. / The literary work of Honoré de Balzac testifies to a deep knowledge and reflection of the judicial system. Violence and crime, certainly not the brightest sides of humanity, are nevertheless an integral part of society. Since Balzacʼs ambition is to show human nature as it is, he agrees to depict murder without euphemisms. Far from entirely rejecting the bloody romantic aesthetic, he describes crime as a fundamentally ambivalent action, meaning that he neither absolutely condemns it nor openly defends it. We find in Balzac what very few writers, and even fewer philosophers, can account for : the very complexity of life itself. Balzacʼs social commitment invites us to think about his way of putting murder in fiction in relation to the sociological and historical context of his works. In Balzacʼs reflections on murder, four important themes constantly recur : money (economic aspect), youth, family (social aspects) and remorse (moral aspect). The philosophical dimension of La Comédie humaine justifies the choice of an equally philosophical reading of Balzacʼs work. The murders of four short stories belonging to the Études philosophiques (El Verdugo, LʼAuberge rouge, Les Marana and Un drame au bord de la mer), ensure a multiple reflection on themes such as justice, law, family name, honour, guilt and the shift from an old society to a new money-dominated society.

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Title: Vladimir Nabokov’s Russian short stories (1921-1942): The game between real and supernatural in short fiction. (Italian title: I racconti in lingua russa di Vladimir Nabokov (1921-1942): il gioco tra reale e soprannaturale nella forma breve). In this Ph.D. research project, I examined several short stories written by Vladimir Nabokov (1899-1977). I focused my attention on the relationship between the real and the supernatural and examined how such a relationship evolved over the years. My research aims to highlight how Nabokov introduced innovations in the European literary tradition with his supernatural short fiction. The core of Nabokov’s first short stories is a binary opposition between something that can be described as real (or realistic), and something that belongs to the realm of the fantastic. The dynamic tension between the real and the supernatural allows Nabokov to renew the European and Russian tradition of “novellas” and supernatural tales. Gradually, Nabokov phased out the fantastic elements and focused on the inner life of the characters that he unveiled through a series of epiphanic moments. The evolution of Nabokov’s short fiction reflects the crisis of the artistic representation experienced by the European intellectuals at the beginning of the 20th century. Nabokov experimented with different kinds of narratives forms to examine the condition of the Russian immigrants and how they relied on imagination and memory to deal with the pain of exile. In this regard, he underscores that only the act of remembering can give new life to the lost past thus conferring dignity to the troublesome present life. The first chapter starts with an overview of numerous studies on short fiction to determine what a “short story” actually is. I then examine the definition of “real” and “supernatural” as well as the most significant scholars’ interpretations of Nabokov’s short stories. Subsequently, I investigate the social, cultural, and historical background of Nabokov’s stories. Finally, I present a chronological list of the stories examined in the thesis. In the second chapter, I carry out the analysis of the short stories I selected for my research. Most of the stories are characterized by the presence of fantastic and supernatural elements. I divided the stories into five different sections, each dedicated to a specific type of supernatural. In this chapter, I examine the different interpretations that have been offered by Nabokov scholars and I provide a new understanding of the evolution of Nabokov’s narrative. In the third chapter, I analyze the relationship among the different short stories to draw a hermeneutic map of the transformations of the narrative core and the themes of the stories. In the conclusion, I outline the main insights of my research.

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本研究以台灣中部地區一所高級職業學校的27名三年級學生為對象，旨在探討利用課外時間應用短篇故事引導學生英語句型寫作的效果。藉由學習日記、教學觀察日記、以及訪談等質化研究方法收集資料，資料分析則以深入了解研究對象對於短篇故事教學的感受為目的，並於研究期間經由不斷反思與調整，以尋求更為實用可行的教學方法。本研究結果發現：一、短篇故事教學能更強化研究對象的句型寫作能力與學習動機；二、短篇故事教學的經驗對於研究者的課程設計能力以及教學技巧具有相當大的助益；三、經由不斷地反思與調整，研究者逐步發現了更為實用可行的教學方法；四、對於研究對象的句型寫作能力發展具有真正影響力的是他們自身的學習態度，而不是程度高低。根據上述幾點發現，研究者於文末總結出幾項研究重點與局限性，並對未來相關研究提出建議。 / Targeting 27 senior three students at a vocational high school in central Taiwan, this action research project used extracurricular activities to explore the effects of applying short stories on the development of learners’ sentence writing competence. By means of qualitative techniques, including learning logs, teaching logs and interviews, results were analyzed and interpreted with an attempt to have a profound understanding of the participants’ responses to short story teaching and to derive a more feasible approach through continuous reflections as well as adjustments. The findings concluded from the results included: 1) short story teaching could better enhance both the development of the participants’ sentence writing and their motivation; 2) the experience of short story teaching was beneficial for the teacher researcher’s curriculum design and teaching techniques; 3) a more feasible approach had been built through continuous reflections and adjustments; 4) it was not a learner’s proficiency level but his learning attitude that affected the development of his sentence writing during the teaching stages. Based on these findings, pedagogical implications and limitations of this project are proposed; in addition, recommendations for future studies are provided at the end of this thesis.

The dissertation firstly looks at how the Arabic essay and short story developed in Egypt since the beginning of the nineteenth century. Then a discussion follows on the life and contribution of the Egyptian author, Mustafā Lutfī al-Manfalūtī, as representative of this literary evolution. The general influences on Egyptian literature are discussed, and the general development of Arabic prose from 1850 onwards is then detailed, including the efforts to save Arabic literature from stagnation and degeneration. Following this, the focus is on the origins of the essay and short story. This leads to dealing with the growth and advancement of the essay and short story, together with the revival of the Arabic heritage and how the Arabic novel came into being. Then Mustafā Lutfī al-Manfalūtīs biography, environmental circumstances and personalities that influenced his writings are focused on. Afterwards, the core discussion is Al-Manfalūtīs seven literary works, and his ideas and opinions as reflected in his writings. In conclusion, the relevance of his writings and an appraisal of his literary contributions are detailed. / Religious Studies & Arabic / M.A. (Arabic)