Joseph Campbell, in The Hero with a Thousand Faces, establishes a pattern for the hero to answer the call to adventure, ask the question of the goddess and receive her boon, and return to his homeland. Campbell does not, however, make any suggestions about a myth whose protagonist is female. Erich Neumann, in The Origins and History of Consciousness, hints that the woman may, indeed, be her own goddess, that she must give herself the boon she already carries. The novels of Anita Brookner illustrate the dual nature of the feminine protagonist: the seeker and the boon giver. The feminine hero (even when Brookner's protagonist is masculine, he exhibits feminine qualities) hears the call to adventure, receives the teachings of the goddess and/or her representative, receives help fromother beings (in myth these would be supernatural beings), realizes that she carries the answer to the cosmic question of selfhood within her, and, following an apotheosis, makes a return to society. Much of the present work is spent delving into both the monomythic and feminist structures of Brookner's novels. Although Brookner characterizes herself as a "reluctant feminist," examination of her novels reveals a subtle adherence to feminist principles which can be ascertained by viewing each novel in terms of the monomyth schema.

In Overcoming the Regional Burden: History, Tradition, and Myth in the Novels of Cormac McCarthy, I contend that McCarthy's literary aesthetic develops and changes as he moves from Tennessee to Texas. McCarthy's conspicuous Southern and Southwestern regional affiliations have led critics to expect his works to recapitulate native history, traditions, and myths. Yet, McCarthy transcends provincial regionalism by challenging the creation of the regional and national myths we confuse with our actual histories and identities. McCarthy's fictions point away from accepted histories and point instead to figures marginalized by society and myth makers. These figures, according to McCarthy, are just as much a part of the creation of myth as those figures indelibly imprinted on our consciousness by literary and historical tradition. My dissertation, in many respects, focuses on McCarthy's debunking of both literary and historical tradition, and his concomitant revitalization of American identity.

Coolness is a desired but overlooked concept in fashion. The thesis The Vincent Vega in Helmut Lang: Framing Helmut Lang’s Coolness in Relation to Cool Movie Characters sheds light on how coolness is created in Helmut Lang’s spring 2004 collection in relation to movie representations. The thesis frames coolness as a myth and gendered performance. With the method of representation studies, several movies are analysed in how they present coolness. It is discovered that movies continuously reproduce the same myth. With critical visual analysis, Lang’s collection is put in context to these movies. It is shown that Lang’s collection has many similarities to the movie costumes and although he tries to break out the gendered myth, he still reproduces it. The thesis contributes to understand coolness as a concept but also that coolness, at least in Lang’s case, is heavily dependent on the cinematic representations rather than pursuing his own unique approach.

This thesis examines how authenticity is articulated and communicated in contemporary forms of branded entertainment. In a digital media landscape, participatory culture and co-creation has become of primary importance, leading to ‘authentic’ and ‘amateurist’ characteristics being strategically implemented in advertisements and professional media content production. At the same time, research on brand communication and authenticity have overlooked the many ways in which brands extend and mediate authenticity, especially in relation to symbolism and visual semiotics. In this thesis, we explore the way symbolic meaning is constructed in We the Bathers, a documentary produced in 2019 by director Phoebe Arnstein in collaboration with Lush, a cosmetic brand known for their vegan-friendly and cruelty-free products. The study was conducted using visual analysis which allows us to approach the study object in a qualitative and exploratory way. We then apply the theoretical frameworks of cultural myths and digital storytelling to analyze the effects and strategies employed in We the Bathers to communicate authenticity through the filmic medium. By extending Bell & Leonard’s framework for evaluating organizational storytelling, which highlights the role of the communicative codes of affinity, authenticity andamateurism, we argue that the overall notion of authenticity in video content produced for digital environments can be determined through either of these lenses. By examining the intention of the sender in terms of genuineness (authenticity), relatability (affinity), and techniques which lends the story a sense of ‘realness’ (amateurism), our findings indicate that authenticity can be viewed as a tool for producing certain media effects as opposed to arising from the mediation of inherent personality traits.

This research study is based on the visual marketing of African destinations and the colonial influence in a post-colonial world. Recent tourism research tourism has examined post-colonial realities in developing countries addressing the experience of British post-colonialism, however, only a few of those studies have examined the cultural consequences of tourism marketing image influence on culture and national identity. This study’s objective is to investigate the colonial imagery and visual representation of Kenya while evaluating the extent to which the colonial discourse has shaped tourism marketing in Kenya.To investigate the colonial imagery influences in destination marketing in Kenya, qualitative analysis tools such as content and discourse analysis were used to evaluate images in this study. By evaluating the images, the endeavour was to discern how marketing represents the tourism culture, the people and the place. The results conclude that the construction of Kenya’s tourism space in post-colonial times should be thought of from a neo-colonial perspective.The study mainly concludes that the images on Kenya’s tourism come out of a colonial fantasy and nostalgia that contributes to the manufacturing of ‘safari country’ initiated by the colonialist gaze. The colonial myths endure in Kenya’s tourism space and continue to shape the tourists’ fantasies as a majority of tourism marketer’s hail from western countries. The Kenya colonial myth is perpetuated through films and memoirs that depict Kenya through repeated images and analogies of beautiful prehistoric scenarios of fantasies. Like most developing countries and despite the COVID-19 pandemic, Kenya will continue to rely on its tourism industry for foreign exchange.While this study was aimed at a practical problem, future research on this topic is recommended to find out how consuming different cultures especially of former colonies could be done ethically, and how hosts’ active inclusivity and tourist diversity marketing should be upheld as part of responsible travel for travel agencies and luxury camps.

This dissertation analyses narratives of the Mašín brothers and their father, Josef Mašín senior. The Mašín brothers established what they called 'a resistance group' against the Communist regime in Czechoslovakia, which between 1951 and 1952 killed three people. The brothers, alongside the other member of the group, Milan Paumer, escaped from the country in 1953, heading for the Western sectors of Berlin. Despite more than 20,000 East German and Soviet troops hunting them, the group reached West Berlin safely. Later, the brothers went to the USA where they joined the U.S. army. The dissertation analyzes a whole range of discourses including newspaper articles, historical papers, books, detective stories, novels, memoirs and also one episode of the Czechoslovak television series, Třicet případů majora Zemana ('Major Zeman's Thirty Cases'), entitled Strach ('Fear'), from 1975. The dissertation is conceptually embedded in cultural studies and critical theory. Drawing on Roland Barthesʼs work on mythologies, Hayden Whiteʼs theory of history and Slavoj Žižekʼs theory of ideology, the dissertation considers the relationship of the Mašín brothersʼ narrative representations with respect to the dominant ideology of the time. The first chapter of the dissertation deals with narratives produced in Communist...

The social media influencer is becoming a prominent trope in contemporary media culture. In her Instagram performance artwork Excellences & Perfections, Amalia Ulman imitated the content and lifestyle of different types of influencers for five months in 2014, gaining attention and inciting controversy when she finally revealed her hoax. She captured problematic aspects of performativity online, examined how it related to tropes and myths in our culture, and ultimately to our sense of identity. By analysing images from her work and comments from her followers at the time, this thesis aims to understand how her art acts as a commentary on issues of digital labour and self-representation through images.

Denna studie granskar hur perspektiv på femininitet manifesteras i kvinnliga fotografers bilder av andra kvinnor på Instagram. En av de fundamentala drivkrafterna som kvinnliga fotografer på medieplattformen Instagram uppvisar i sitt arbete, är att förmedla ett kvinnligt perspektiv på världen. Genom kvalitativ semiotik undersöker studien de möjliga betydelser kring femininitet som går att utläsa i bilder vars teman berör upplevelsen av att vara kvinna. Den lyfter frågan om det egentligen finns ett enhetligt kvinnligt perspektiv - och i så fall, hur tar det sig uttryck? Resultaten indikerar att vad som definierar de kvinnliga blickarna i dessa bilder kan tolkas på ett antal sätt - som internaliseringar av patriarkala strukturer, som försiktiga brytanden mot normer av representationer av kvinnor i media, eller som ironiserande satirer. Men även att det finns en kvinnlig erfarenhet, som handlar om att växa upp som kvinna, bemötas och leva som kvinna, som syns i dessa fotografers arbete. / This study looks at how perspectives on femininity are manifested in female photographers’ images of other women on Instagram. One of the fundamental incentives that female photographers on the media platform Instagram show in their work is to convey a female perspective on the world. Through qualitative semiotics, the study explores the possible meanings about femininity that can be deduced in images with themes concerning the experience of being a woman. It raises the question of whether there actually is a homogenous female perspective - and if so, how is it expressed? The results indicate that what defines the female gazes in these images can be interpreted in a number of ways - as internalisations of patriarchal structures, as careful breaches against norms of female representation in the media, and as ironic satires. But also that there is a female experience that is about growing up defined as a woman— being treated as and living as a woman — that is visible in the work of these photographers.

Le lien entre Paris et la Turquie remonte à l’ouverture des relations diplomatiques entre les deux pays au 17e siècle. Depuis lors, la culture, la langue et la littérature françaises occupent une place importante au sein de l’intelligentsia turque, première victime de l’instabilité que connaît le pays depuis 1960. Paris a ainsi joué le rôle de fenêtre sur l’Occident, conduisant des générations d’écrivains à cultiver le mythe de la Ville Lumière, cité de l’amour, des révolutions et des libertés. Le débat sur la place de la Turquie en Europe justifiait une étude approfondie des images de Paris dans la littérature turque contemporaine. Pour ce faire, il s’agissait de se pencher sur trois écrivains, qui œuvrent sous l’ombre de leur aîné, le précurseur Attilâ Ilhan, décédé en 2005. Demir Özlü, le solitaire nauséeux pour qui Paris reste un rêve inaccessible, Nedim Gürsel, l’amoureux prolixe qui en fit sa maîtresse, et Enis Batur, l’explorateur scientifique qui en scruta chacune des pierres, ont, chacun à leur façon, placé Paris au cœur de leur production littéraire, préservant ainsi la place particulière dont jouit la capitale française dans l’imaginaire turc. Au travers de leurs exils et errances, ils servent de pont entre une Turquie traditionnellement enracinée dans l’Orient et Paris, qui incarne un Occident tantôt flamboyant, tantôt décadent mais toujours obsessionnel. Le fait qu’ils soient constamment tiraillés entre deux langues, deux cultures et deux lieux, Paris d’une part et Istanbul et la Turquie d’autre part, les conduit à une lancinante et permanente quête de leur identité d’homme et d’écrivain. / The link between Paris and Turkey was founded when both countries opened diplomatic relationships in the 17th century. Since then, the French culture, language and literature has been key to the Turkish intelligentsia, the first victim of the political instability the country is experiencing since 1960. Paris played the role of a window into the Western world, driving generations of writers to cultivate the myth of the Ville Lumière, city of love, revolutions and freedom. The debate on the place of Turkey in Europe justified a close look into the images of Paris in the contemporary Turkish literature. This study focused on three contemporary writers, who all worked under the shadow of Attilâ Ilhan the precursor, who died in 2005. Demir Özlü, the nauseated loner, for whom Paris will always remain an inaccessible dream, Nedim Gürsel, the prolix lover who turned the city into his mistress, and Enis Batur, the scientific explorer who observed each and every of its stones, have each in their own way placed Paris at the heart of their literary production. In doing so, they preserve the special status the French capital city enjoys in the Turkish collective imagination. Through their exiles and wanderings, they serve as a bridge between Turkey, whose traditions are grounded in the Middle-East, and Paris, which incarnates a Western world that is depicted either as flamboyant or decadent but will always remain obsessive. The fact that they are constantly split between two languages, cultures and places, Paris on the one hand, Istanbul and Turkey on the other hand, pulls them into a gnawing and permanent quest of their identity of human being and writer.

This thesis engages with Wilson Harris's vision for the Caribbean in light of the processes of land settlement, appropriation, genocide and slave trafficking that have historically denied the region's population of human identity. Concerned primarily with Wilson Harris's first four published novels, Palace of the Peacock (1960), The Far Journey of Oudin (1961), The Whole Armour (1962), and The Secret Ladder (1963), which were then grouped together and republished as The Guyana Quartet (1985), the study of this quartet also focuses on Harris's critical essays, most notably "The Amerindian Legacy" (1990). Firstly, this thesis situates Wilson Harris within the context of postcolonial thought and Caribbean literature in the 20th century. Then, it focuses on the remnants of colonial conquest that appear continuously in Harris's four novels under the repeated motif of pursuit. By exploring the presence of Jungian thought in Harris's fictional writing and critical writing, as well as the immanent ontology of the Caribbean that underpins the author's vision, the thesis draws out Harris's response to the cycle of persecution that he believes to stagnate the Caribbean. Harris's mythopoetic revisioning of Caribbean identity in The Guyana Quartet proposes a form of rebirth that transforms the dialectic between...