В настоящей работе проводится структурно-языковое изучение современной литературной волшебной сказки. Дается определение сказки как фольклорного и литературного жанра, систематизируются основные жанровые особенности сказки. Обобщая методологические аспекты изучения сказки, автор дает дефиницию и типологию волшебной сказки. Проводится анализ функций персонажей и волшебных средств в сказках. Рассматриваются основные языковые особенности сказки и способы ее перевода. Материалом для исследования служат сказки из сборника современных зарубежных авторов «The Kingfisher Book of Magical Tales», переведенного с английского на русский язык автором магистерской диссертации. / In this master’s thesis, a structural and linguistic study of a modern literary fairy tale is carried out. The definition of a fairy tale as a folklore and literary genre is given, the main genre features of a fairy tale are systematized. Summarizing the methodological aspects of the study of fairy tales, the author gives the definition and typology of a fairy tale. The analysis of the functions of characters and magical means in fairy tales is carried out. The thesis also considers the main linguistic features of the fairy tale and the ways of its translation. The material for the study is fairy tales from the collection of modern foreign authors "The Kingfisher Book of Magical Tales", translated from English into Russian by the author of the master's thesis.

<p>Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD) is a severe hereditary disorder caused by a loss of dystrophin, an essential musculoskeletal protein. Decades of promising research have yielded only modest gains in survival and quality of life for these patients and there have been no approved gene therapies for DMD to date. There are two significant hurdles to creating effective gene therapies for DMD; it is difficult to deliver a replacement dystrophin gene due to its large size and current strategies to restore the native dystrophin gene likely require life-long administration of a gene-modifying drug. This thesis presents a novel method to address these challenges through restoring dystrophin expression by genetically correcting the native dystrophin gene using engineered nucleases that target one or more exons in a mutational hotspot in exons 45-55 of the dystrophin gene. Importantly, this hotspot mutational region collectively represents approximately 62% of all DMD mutations. In this work, we utilize various engineered nuclease platforms to create genetic modifications that can correct a variety of DMD patient mutations.</p><p>Initially, we demonstrate that genome editing can efficiently correct the dystrophin reading frame and restore protein expression by introducing micro-frameshifts in exon 51, which is adjacent to a hotspot mutational region in the dystrophin gene. Transcription activator-like effector nucleases (TALENs) were engineered to mediate highly efficient gene editing after introducing a single TALEN pair targeted to exon 51 of the dystrophin gene. This led to restoration of dystrophin protein expression in cells from DMD patients, including skeletal myoblasts and dermal fibroblasts that were reprogrammed to the myogenic lineage by MyoD. We show that our engineered TALENs have minimal cytotoxicity and exome sequencing of cells with targeted modifications of the dystrophin locus showed no TALEN-mediated off-target changes to the protein coding regions of the genome, as predicted by in silico target site analysis. </p><p>In an alternative approach, we capitalized on the recent advances in genome editing to generate permanent exclusion of exons by using zinc-finger nucleases (ZFNs) to selectively remove sequences important in specific exon recognition. This strategy has the advantage of creating predictable frame restoration and protein expression, although it relies on simultaneous nuclease activity to generate genomic deletions. ZFNs were designed to remove essential splicing sequences in exon 51 of the dystrophin gene and thereby exclude exon 51 from the resulting dystrophin transcript, a method that can potentially restore the dystrophin reading frame in up to 13% of DMD patients. Nucleases were assembled by extended modular assembly and context-dependent assembly methods and screened for activity in human cells. Selected ZFNs had moderate observable cytotoxicity and one ZFN showed off-target activity at two chromosomal loci. Two active ZFN pairs flanking the exon 51 splice acceptor site were transfected into DMD patient cells and a clonal population was isolated with this region deleted from the genome. Deletion of the genomic sequence containing the splice acceptor resulted in the loss of exon 51 from the dystrophin mRNA transcript and restoration of dystrophin expression in vitro. Furthermore, transplantation of corrected cells into the hind limb of immunodeficient mice resulted in efficient human dystrophin expression localized to the sarcolemma. </p><p>Finally, we exploited the increased versatility, efficiency, and multiplexing capabilities of the CRISPR/Cas9 system to enable a variety of otherwise challenging gene correction strategies for DMD. Single or multiplexed sgRNAs were designed to restore the dystrophin reading frame by targeting the mutational hotspot at exons 45-55 and introducing either intraexonic small insertions and deletions, or large deletions of one or more exons. Significantly, we generated a large deletion of 336 kb across the entire exon 45-55 region that is applicable to correction of approximately 62% of DMD patient mutations. We show that, for selected sgRNAs, CRISPR/Cas9 gene editing displays minimal cytotoxicity and limited aberrant mutagenesis at off-target chromosomal loci. Following treatment with Cas9 nuclease and one or more sgRNAs, dystrophin expression was restored in Duchenne patient muscle cells in vitro. Human dystrophin was detected in vivo following transplantation of genetically corrected patient cells into immunodeficient mice. </p><p>In summary, the objective of this work was to develop methods to genetically correct the native dystrophin as a potential therapy for DMD. These studies integrate the rapid advances in gene editing technologies to create targeted frameshifts that restore the dystrophin gene around patient mutations in non-essential coding regions. Collectively, this thesis presents several gene editing methods that can correct patient mutations by modification of specific exons or by deletion of one or more exons that results in restoration of the dystrophin reading frame. Importantly, the gene correction methods described here are compatible with leading cell-based therapies and in vivo gene delivery strategies for DMD, providing an avenue towards a cure for this devastating disease.</p> / Dissertation

My dissertation reexamines Chaucer’s debts to the Consolation by reconciling Boethius’s Neoplatonic distaste for the material world with Chaucer’s poetic celebrations of the variety and sensuality of human life. I revise the understanding of Chaucer’s poetry by recontextualizing it within a new Boethianism that stems from Chaucer’s interaction with the scholastic commentary on the Consolation by Nicholas Trevet. Although critics have long known that Chaucer’s Boece extensively borrows from, glosses, and cross references with Trevet’s commentary, very little attention has been given to what effect this had on Chaucer’s Boethian poetry. My dissertation argues that through Trevet’s immensely popular commentary, Chaucer received a predominantly Aristotelian-Thomist reading of the Consolation, one that reinvents Boethius’s Neoplatonic rejection of the sensual world as an apologetically materialist philosophy. The Aristotelian-Thomist influence of Trevet’s commentary is most visible in Chaucer’s treatment of the human interactions with the temporal world: in the functions of sense perception, the working of memory, and the desire to foresee the unknown future. / text

Much like oft-repeated quotes or catchy movie soundtrack tunes, famous illustrations often outweigh and outlast their original contexts and establish themselves as iconic cultural reference points for generations to come. Over the last 100 years in Sweden, John Bauer’s fairy tale illustrations have maintained a strong grip on that nation’s popular imaginary through over thirty reprint editions, museum exhibits, stamp collections, and, of course, stylistic imitations. While their century-old narrative contexts remain relatively unknown and uninteresting to contemporary audiences, his beautifully blonde children, enchantingly ugly trolls, and stark, Swedish landscapes continue to be bought, sold, and validated as embodying a typically Swedish relationship to nature. Why John Bauer’s work has remained so influential over time while the publication they appeared in has faded is a question that many of his biographers have attempted to answer. Harald Schiller, the most thorough of these, claims that “when one sees [his] images in black and white or color, they capture one’s interest to such a degree that there is none left for the text” (152). This essay uses Schiller’s comment as a starting point to pose one answer to this question. By exploring the dynamic potential of the relationship between Bauer’s images and their early twentieth-century contexts, it locates the artist’s appeal over against his narrative guidelines and the historical movements of his time. To this end, its comparative analysis of the textual and visual narratives in the illustrated Swedish fairy tale annual, Bland tomtar och troll (Amongst Gnomes and Trolls) explores how the interplay between the historical pregnancy of its fairy tale stories and the Swedophilic affects of John Bauer’s illustrations contributes to the project of imagining and proliferating a new Swedish national identity at the beginning of the twentieth century. / text

The validity of the traditional arts in contemporary society is often questioned by the wider public. This dissertation argues that one of the ways in which the arts attain value is through their function as political activism. In order to do so, it investigates the characteristics of resistance art. This is followed by a discussion of contemporary opera. While this genre is a minority interest when compared to popular music forms, it is, nevertheless, a form of resistance art that has the potential to fulfill a social and political function. The dissertation focuses on two case studies: John Adam's The Death of Klinghoffer (1990) and Paul Ruders's The Handmaid's Tale (2000), and concludes that contemporary opera can be relevant and effective socio-political critique. / Thesis (M.Mus.)--North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2007.

This thesis places Chaucer within the tradition of philosophical poetry that begins in Plato and extends through classical and medieval Latin culture. In this Platonic tradition, poetry is a self-reflexive epistemological practice that interrogates the conditions of art in general. As such, poetry as metapoetics takes itself as its own object of inquiry in order to reinforce and generate its own definitions without regard to extrinsic considerations. It attempts to create a poetic-knowledge proper instead of one that is dependant on other modes for meaning. The particular manner in which this is expressed is according to the idea of the loss of the Golden Age. In the Augustinian context of Chaucer’s poetry, language, in its literal and historical signifying functions is an effect of the noetic fall and a deformation of an earlier symbolism. The Chaucerian poems this thesis considers concern themselves with the solution to a historical literary lament for language’s fall, a solution that suggests that the instability in language can be overcome with reference to what has been lost in language. The chapters are organized to reflect the medieval Neoplatonic ascensus. The first chapter concerns the Pardoner’s Old Man and his relationship to the literary history of Tithonus in which the renewing of youth is ironically promoted in order to perpetually delay eternity and make the current world co-eternal to the coming world. In the Miller’s Tale, more aggressive narrative strategies deploy the machinery of atheism in order to make a god-less universe the sufficient grounds for the transformation of a fallen and contingent world into the only world whatsoever. The Manciple’s Tale’s opposite strategy leaves the world intact in its current state and instead makes divine beings human. Phoebus expatriates to earth and attempts to co-mingle it with heaven in order to unify art and history into a single monistic experience. Finally, the Nun’s Priest’s Tale acts as ars poetica for the entire Chaucerian Performance and undercuts the naturalistic strategies of the first three poems by a long experiment in the philosophical conflict between art and history. By imagining art and history as epistemologically antagonistic it attempts to subdue in a definitive manner poetic strategies that would imagine human history as the necessary knowledge-condition for poetic language.

In Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, The Monk's Tale is compromised of seventeen individual tales, which instead of serving a moral lesson one would expect of a clergy member, serves as a quasi-hunt that allows the Monk to participate in his favorite, violent hobby. The Monk personifies fortune as a hunter, striking down successful men who are unsuspecting of the violent downfall which awaits them. The Monk structures his tale to resemble the different stages of a hunt and fills it with violent, animalistic, and erotic imagery that works to strengthen the Monk's perception of his own masculinity while simultaneously providing a form of sexual pleasure that he is otherwise forbidden to experience. Hunting played a significant role in medieval society and literature. Though clergy members were typically forbidden or discouraged from participating in the sport, significant aspects of the history surrounding medieval hunting shed light on the Monk's identity as primarily a hunter.

Theatre performance for children of preschool age Thesis 2012 The central themes of the thesis are theater performances for children. Specifically focuses on young preschool children. Theoretical part outlines the basic terms of theater. It takes into account the personality of preschool age child, its development and influence of theater on children's psyche. The practical part contains the research, based on the testimony of teachers in kindergartens, compared with the responses of parents of children in this age group. The aim is to explore views on the importance of theater as a part of children's lives. Essential parts of the thesis are videos of performances focusing on the child spectator as performance consumer in the presence of family members, or kindergarten. More specifically the aim is to highlight the use of theatrical performances, attended by children of preschool age, not only as part of educational activities in kindergarten, but also nurture in the family. Keywords: theater, theater performance, preschool spectator, fairy tale

É de conhecimento geral o fato de que os contos de fada transmitem importantes mensagens carregadas de ideologia que, às vezes, diferem de maneira significativa. Isso ocorre em razão da época ou localidade em que a produção é contextualizada, como podemos bem ver nas variações do conto Chapeuzinho Vermelho, seja aqueles da tradição oral medieval, os adaptados por Perrault ou pelos Irmãos Grimm, ou mesmo as versões da contemporaneidade. Traçando um percurso histórico das transformações dos contos de fada de origem popular partindo da França, percorrendo Alemanha, Portugal e culminando no Brasil o presente estudo busca verificar as transformações ocorridas nessas sociedades, mostrando como elas foram representadas nos contos e quais mensagens transmitem. Para o presente estudo, serão utilizados o Comparatismo Literário e elementos de Teoria Literária por meio de um olhar sociológico e histórico. Após a definição do quadro teórico-metodológico e da base conceitual, partiremos para uma breve análise de algumas sociedades e como sua prática social pode, de certo modo, ser representada nos contos de fada. / It is of general knowledge that the fairy tales transmit important messages filled with ideology that, sometimes, differ significantly from one another. This happens due to the time or place where the production is contextualized, as it is possible to be seen in the variation of the Little Red Riding Hood tale, those from the medieval oral tradition, to those adapted by Perrault or brothers Grimm, and even the contemporary versions. Tracing a historic profile of the changes in the fairy tales of popular origin starting in France, passing through Germany, Portugal and culminating in Brazil the present study aims to verify the transformations that happened in these societies, showing how they were represented in the tales and what messages they pass on. For the present study, Literary Comparatism and elements of Literary Theory will be used through a sociological and historical look. After the definition of a theoretical-methodological picture and a conceptual basis, we will move on to a brief analysis of the different societies and how their social practice can, in a certain way, be represented in the fairy tales.

Thesis advisor: Caroline Bicks / Routinely recognized as deeply patriarchal, early modern England is an era in which men and characteristics of the male gender are assumed to have held unrelenting sway over their female counterparts. This description is largely justifiable, particularly given the era's legal codes. However, this thesis seeks to enrich discussions on early modern England by examining its male-female relationships through a markedly different lens. By highlighting the close relationships that existed alongside patriarchal mandates in the era - husband and wife, father and daughter, mother and son - a fuller portrait of the period is sketched. Through an examination of how a variety of genres - medical, religious, and dramatic - grappled with moments of union between the two sexes, particularly physical union and its concurrent or resultant emotional bonds, this thesis offers greater insight into how walls to male-female connection were both raised and bridged in the time period. / Thesis (BA) — Boston College, 2008. / Submitted to: Boston College. College of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: English. / Discipline: College Honors Program.