The working cowboy remains part of the contemporary culture of Texas. A visual record of him appeared early in the state's history, in daguerreotypes, followed by representations in contemporary black and white as well as color photographs, film and video. Although the way of life for the Texas cowboy has changed, it remains a thriving part of the Texas economy, society, and culture. Moreover, the image of the cowboy has permeated popular culture and fine art. This paper explores what late twentieth century popular culture and fine art images of the cowboy signify, emphasizing aspects of how they signify in relation to an existing tradition of photographic representations. Using Barthes' "Myth Today," it considers how the documentary aspect of early photographic representations of cowboys is transformed in contemporary popular culture and fine art to become mythology, for example, by the exaggeration of features of dress to connote ideals allegorically.

Ce travail étudie les rapports que les mythes (considérés du point de vue de la psychologie analytique) entretiennent avec le cinéma et la vidéo, supports devenus, grâce à leurs caractéristiques techniques, discursives et esthétiques propres, des moyens idéaux à l’expression moderne du mythe, lui apportant en même temps de nouvelles possibilités de construction ainsi que des dynamiques nouvelles. En comparant d’une part, la conception du mythe chez Carl Gustav Jung, Joseph Campbell et autres auteurs, et d’autre part, les techniques et structures cinématographiques, on montre que le mythe continue de se produire de nos jours au sein de notre société tout en se métamorphosant et en se nourrissant des possibilités qu’offre le cinéma. Les outils et techniques cinématographiques, de par leurs caractéristiques, amplifient les traits caractéristiques fondamentaux du mythe, donnant lieu à des dynamiques particulières entre cinéma et mythe. Les médias audiovisuels diffusent un nombre important de productions que l’on appellera ici cinéma-mythe. Par la comparaison parallèle de la structure cinématographique et les techniques audiovisuelles d’une part, et de la structure du monomythe (Campbell) d’autre part, il est montré que les caractéristiques inhérentes au cinéma et à la vidéo rendent ceux-ci des moyens idéaux à l’élaboration du mythe. Le schéma narratif du mythe, selon Jung et Campbell, s’exprime essentiellement au travers du signe, qui fuit la pure appréhension intellectuelle. Ce sont les rapports entre les signes qui déterminent le discours et le message du mythe. / This thesis analyses the relationship between myths (according to analytical psychology), films and video, cinematographic forms who became the ideal medium of modern myth expression due to their technical, aesthetical and discursive characteristics. This relationship allows new dynamics and construction possibilities in cinema and myth.By comparing Carl Gustav Jung’s and Joseph Campbell’s conception of myth and cinematographic techniques and structures, it is shown that myth production goes on nowadays, in our society, nourished and metamorphosed through cinema possibilities. Cinematographic techniques and tools, by their characteristics, magnify myth’s essential elements, allowing particular dynamics between myth and film. Audiovisual productions feature some examples of what we should call cine-myth.By comparing cinematographic structures and techniques, and monomyth’s structure (Campbell), it is shown that inherent characteristics about cinema and video make them ideal mediums for myth creation. According to Jung and Campbell, the narrative schema of myth is essentially expressed through symbol, who is not merely reduced to intellectual understanding. The relationships between symbols create the message and meaning of myth.

Este trabalho, de natureza teórica e empírica, tem como objetivo discutir a educação como prática da liberdade frente a uma sociedade capitalista, problematizando esta questão por meio da Educação de Pessoas Jovens e adultas. Essas pessoas mostraram buscar na educação algo relacionado a sua própria formação humana, ou seja, algo muito além da instrução funcional pragmática com fins salariais. Discute também, idéias tais como: a captura de nossas consciências pelo sistema econômico em que vivemos, a aceitação da desigualdade social como algo natural, que resulta no conformismo com este modo de viver como único possível. Propomos a desmistificação destas questões, tomando como referencial considerações advindas de estudos da antropologia que tomaram como base sociedades indígenas, firmadas sob outra lógica não capitalista, referencial esse comum entre alguns autores fundamentais tais como Bruno (1991), Costa (2004) e Kehl (2004).Outros autores, não menos importantes, ajudaram a discutir o direito à educação como bem incompressível, portanto como parte de um direito humano, como Candido (2004), outros ainda situaram esta educação como Di Pierro (2007) e Soares (1990); já Fétizon (2002) e Freire(1987), a definiram e propuseram uma reflexão crítica sobre esta como, prática que liberta da opressão mitificante do sistema econômico e político. Por último, apresentamos os depoimentos dos sujeitos da pesquisa e a análise de suas entrevistas e, finalmente, concluímos que se concebemos o ser humano como ser político, capaz de articular, resistir e lutar então nem tudo esta perdido. / This theoretical, empirical study aims at discussing education as a practice of liberty when confronted to the capitalist society. In doing so, it does it by means of the Education for Young and Adult people. Its discussion deals with the following ideas: materialization of consciences, and conformation of social structures; and proposes the demythification of the State. It also takes as a reference some considerations originated in History, Sociology, Anthropology, and Psychology. We propose a discussion among scholars who deal with education and the capitalist system, such as Bruno (1991), Candido(2004), Costa (2004), Di Pierro (2007), Fétizon (2002), Freire (1987), Kehl (2004), Saviani (1977) and Soares (1990). Finally, once we consider that men are political beings, able to articulate, resist, and struggle, we thus conclude thay not everything is lost.

La reconversion professionnelle pose d’une manière originale la question du processus de biographisation et de définition de soi. Dans ce cadre, notre recherche vise à comprendre la manière dont les individus s’adaptent pour faire face au bouleversement potentiel de repères antérieurement construits. La théorie du mythe personnel, issue des travaux nord-américains de psychologie du développement et, peu connue en France, offre un cadre heuristique pour étudier les ressources psychosociales dont disposent les individus pour y faire face. Cette thèse, inscrite dans une perspective anthropologique et herméneutique de la recherche biographique en éducation, s’intéresse donc aux modalités de subjectivation du parcours de reconversion professionnelle en interrogeant les liens entre narration et biographisation de l'histoire de vie. Elle est soutenue par un corpus théorique multiréférentiel et interdisciplinaire qui cherche à faire dialoguer la recherche en éducation avec certains apports de la psychologie du développement, de la psychanalyse et des Sciences sociales, afin d'accéder au processus de construction de l’expérience du sujet. / Professional reconversion poses the question of the process of biographisation and definition of self in an original way. In this context, our research seeks to understand how individuals cope with this landmark change that was hence constructed. The theory of personal myth, prominent in North American studies in developmental psychology though hardly known in France, offers a heuristic framework to study the psychosocial resources that individuals dispose of to face these changes. This thesis, inscribed in an anthropological and hermeneutical perspective of the biographical research in education, is thus interested in the modalities of subjectivation of the course of professional reconversion by questioning the links between narration and biography of the life story. It is supported by a multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary theoretical corpus that seeks to create a dialogue with educational research with some contributions from developmental psychology, psychoanalysis and social sciences, to access the process of constructing the subject's experience.

Although the most well-known collaborations of William Plomer and Benjamin Britten are the three church parables (or church operas) - Curlew River, The Burning Fiery Furnace, and The Prodigal Son - by the time of the completion of Curlew River in 1964, the librettist and composer had been working together for well over a decade. During that time, they had completed the opera Gloriana and had considered collaborating on three other projects: one a children's opera on Beatrix Potter's The Tale of Mr. Tod, one on an original story of Plomer's called "Tyco the Vegan," and one on a Greek myth (possibly Arion, Daedalus and Icarus, or Phaëthon). Far from being footnotes to the parables, these early collaborations established Plomer and Britten's working relationship and brought to light their common interests as well as their independent ones. Their successive early collaborations, therefore, can be thought of as a conversation through creative expression. This metaphor of conversation can be applied both to successive collaborations and to the completed Gloriana, in that the libretto and the music can be seen as representing different interpretations of both major and minor characters in the opera, including Elizabeth I and Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex. In Gloriana, Britten employed at least three specifically musical methods of challenging the meaning of the libretto: instrumental commentary, textural density, and dramatically significant referential pitches. Plomer and Britten's conversation, carried out through these early collaborations, touches on the function of art, activism, and modern morality, but it is best circumscribed by the concept of myth. Two divergent and very influential interpretations of myth - Matthew Arnold's "sweetness and light" and primal liberation (deduced from Nietzsche) - can be usefully applied to Plomer and Britten's unfolding conversation. The implications of Plomer and Britten's adoption of myth as the topic and language of their collaborative conversation are vast and must be considered in order to understand more fully their work together.

The diploma thesis "Athletes as heroes - construction and evolution of Czech olympic medalist image" deals with media construction of olympic Winter image and its following trasformation into national hero myth. It approaches the topic from the perspective of semiotic analysis. It informs about the key concepts of semiotics and media studies like visual communication, sign, code, myth, social construction of reality, representation and stereotype. These concepts are consequently used as tools for the analysis of photos (thein legends) and headlines in daily press. The text shows on the case of six olympic winners (between years 1998 - 2008) how Czech daily press dealt and built individual stories a basic archetypes. In its first part it offers basic theoretical frame serving to understand the hero image as the social construct. Athlete with his win attracts new - medial constructed - identity. In the second part text tries to analyse media contents that deal with athetes images immediate after their olympic victory. It arrives to following conclusions: media have a tendency to produce the stories od victory, that are gender unequal and stereotyped. And finally, text show us individual images, their basic signs and confrontation, that signifies very similar narrative pracices and zero progress in time.

Le roman d’avant-garde espagnol a longtemps souffert d’un discrédit tenace en raison du préjugé de « déshumanisation » auquel il était systématiquement associé. Ce travail de thèse entend démontrer que, loin de donner congé à l’homme, le roman d’avant-garde est hanté par l’expression, la représentation et la mise en écriture du sujet, entendu comme une réalité à la fois romanesque ou actantielle, métaphysique ou existentielle, morale ou politique, dans ses rapports avec le monde qui l’entoure. Afin de rendre compte, au plus près des textes, de l’expression romanesque de l’avant-garde nous avons souhaité combiner une approche thématique ordonnée autour d’une problématique englobante, celle de l’expression du sujet aux prises avec la modernité, avec une perspective diachronique qui tienne compte des modulations et des variations dans le temps et selon les auteurs. Les deux premières parties réévaluent ainsi l’image et le mythe, longtemps incriminés comme facteurs de déréalisation et de déshumanisation, pour mettre à jour un processus de subjectivisation du monde par l’image et d’humanisation du mythe par sa réécriture féconde. « Sujet regardant » dans l’image, puis « sujet regardé » dans le mythe, l’homme est enfin envisagé comme « sujet agissant », engagé dans l’Histoire, dans une troisième partie qui s’attache à rendre compte des dernières évolutions historiques de l’avant-garde, lorsque celle-ci prend le tournant de la réhumanisation, dès l’orée des années 30. / The Spanish Avant-Garde Novel has long suffered from an ongoing disrepute because of the dehumanizing prejudice to which it was systematically associated. This work intends to show that far from being neglectful of man, the avant-garde novel is haunted by the expression, representation and writing of the individual subject, considered here as a plural reality - both novelistic and actantial, metaphysical and existential, moral and political – interconnected with the world. To reflect the novelistic expression of the Avant-Garde, with close textual reading, I have decided to combine a thematic approach, dealing with the individual subject facing modernity, with a diachronic perspective that takes account of modulations and variations in time and of the authors’ individual perspectives. The first two parts reassess Image and Myth, long implicated as factors of derealization and dehumanization, to reveal a process of subjectivization of the world through images and humanization of myths by their fertile rewriting. First considered as an « examining subject » through the displaying of images, then as an « examined subject » through myths, man is finally thought as an « acting subject » in the third part of this work which endeavours to report on and assess the last historical developments of the Avant-Garde, at the turning point of rehumanization in the early 1930s.

Le jeu de hasard comme thème littéraire prend, à l’époque romantique, une signification tragique : il devient pleinement un paradigme du défi, du jeu existentiel, de l’ordalie, et fait alors écho au mythe de Faust. L’analyse de l’évolution du thème littéraire du jeu de hasard montre l’émergence de cette figure romantique du joueur. D’abord envisagé comme un simple divertissement, et traité sur le registre comique, le jeu devient progressivement un geste désespéré de ce personnage. La présente étude s’intéresse aux littératures française et russe, mais aussi anglophone et italienne, et retrace les étapes principales de l’évolution du thème ludique du Moyen Age au XXe siècle. Elle montre comment l’activité, d’abord réservée aux fripons et moralement blâmée, acquiert une considération grâce à sa prise en compte par les mathématiques et l’anthropologie. Avec l’émergence de la notion de risque, dès la Renaissance, le jeu de hasard apparaît comme un modèle possible pour penser l’action humaine. A partir de l’époque classique en France, il s’impose comme thème littéraire, et sa mutation vers le tragique devient nette. Le renversement le plus significatif s’effectue dans la littérature russe du XIXe siècle, mais les auteurs français de cette époque l’illustrent également. Le XXe siècle présente quelques grandes figures de joueurs romantiques, qui recherchent la perte. / Gambling as a literary theme takes on, with romanticism, a tragic meaning: it fully becomes a paradigm for defiance, for games whose stakes are existence itself, even for the tradition of the ordeal, and resonates with the Faustian myth. The analysis of the evolution of gambling as a literary theme shows how it gave birth to the romantic figure of the Gambler. Gambling, first seen as mere entertainment, and treated along comedy lines, gradually became a gesture of despair of this character.The analysis covers French and Russian literature, with extensive excursions into Anglophone and Italian literatures, in order to retrace the theme of play and gambling from the Middle Ages through to the Twentieth century. It shows how such activity, first the preserve of rascals and knaves and morally condemned, gradually acquired respectability through its recognition in mathematics and anthropology. With the emergence of the notion of risk, at the Renaissance, games of chance become potential models for the understanding of human endeavour. From the Classical period in France, they become a literary theme, and the treatment of gambling starts veering towards the tragic. The most significant mutation of this sort takes place in nineteenth century Russian literature, but a number of French authors of the period also demonstrate it. Finally, a number of powerful romantic figures of the Gambler emerge in twentieth century literature, figures bent upon their own destruction.

This thesis deals with the construction of ideal female reader inscribed on the Czech edition of the magazine Harper's Bazaar. The theoretical part handles the important findings in the field of semiotics. The semiotic analysis itself is the crucial part of my work. Within the wide angle of field of semiotic processes character and its function, mentions the various concepts and theories that are linked to this issue. Chapter which binds to the functioning of the secondary semiotic system, in other words, the myth is based on the work Mythologies by Roland Barthes. Mythological analysis is crucial for the practical part. The theoretical framework also deals with studies on "inscribed" readers from Colin Sparks and Michelle Campbell that was one of the main motivations for creating this text. It analyzes important aspects of the theory of coding and decoding Stuart Hall. Last but not least, refers to the sociology of knowledge through the work of Social Construction of Reality from a pair of authors Peter L. Berger and Thomas Luckmann. Practical part includes mythological analysis of the individual sections in selected publications between years 2002 and 2014. Also it doesn't focus only on the text itself, but also on the selected accompanying visuals. It deals with the Czech myths and legends. It...

6 Abstract The presented thesis deals with the portrayal of female beauty or rather of how it was seen and what was believed to be the essence of it in the time of the first republic. The basic presumption I work with is that the ideal of beauty is culturally, socially and historically conditioned as well as is its appraisal. A goal of this paper is to analyze and to compare images of beauty described in woman magazines of the Czech production which were published during 20s and 30s of last century, a period in which the media already have been contributing to the creation and reproduction of normative femininity, stereotypes and standards of physical appearance significantly. Now the development of mass communication technology could lead to the spread of the ideal image of female beauty among the public and so in this way patterns of femininity became the part of everyday life in society. Key words: ideal of female beauty, body, beauty myth, gender, gender stereotypes, media