This thesis investigates, through a body of interdisciplinary artwork, the representation of the grotesque body. It examines how it might be possible to manipulate the iconography of attraction and repulsion in contemporary art with the aim of confusing the binary opposition of what signifies pleasure and disgust. Each of the three artworks function to draw the audience into a powerful and affective relationship with representations that are simultaneously appealing and revolting. Using a number of modes and techniques to disrupt the dyad, including audience interaction and the use of seductive visual forms, the work focuses on my body as a site for the development of new knowledge about the representation of the non-preferred body. By bringing together otherwise unrelated discourses such as horror and formalist abstract painting, the artwork in this study attempts to call into doubt received wisdom about the nature of beauty and ugliness. There are a lexicon of different artistic mediums explored in this project including performance, installation, video and photography. The engagement with these disciplines represents an attempt to speculate on how we know and experience the body in an increasingly mediatised world. This research is also a key means of highlighting how our understanding of the body is informed by the differing effects of timebased, photographic and performative media. By creating a series of dialogues between the live and the virtual, timebased and static imagery, and the fragmentary body and its relationship to the holistic body, this project seeks to activate in the viewer/participant, a critical self-reflexivity. I ask how it is possible to know and experience corporeality in a virtual world of digitally manipulated bodies.

Thesis (MA)--University of Stellenbosch, 2007. / Bibliography. Also available via the Internet.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Texas at Dallas, 2008. / Includes vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 212-226)

Thesis (M.A.)--Carleton University, 1992. / Also available in electronic format on the Internet.

Orientador: Mário Fernando Bolognesi / Banca: Wagner Francisco Araújo Cintra / Banca: Plínio Santos Fontenelle / Resumo: O presente trabalho propõe reflexões sobre o fenômeno do grotesco, que se define a partir de alguns aspectos como: estranho, bizarro, disforme, ridículo, híbrido, monstruoso, extravagante, cômico, trágico e tragicômico, trazendo como foco para esta discussão sua capacidade de dialogar elementos aparentemente contraditórios. Estas oposições que identificam tal fenômeno manifestam-se a partir de seu aspecto tragicômico. Soma-se a esta reflexão, aspectos característicos da linguagem do palhaço, em que o grotesco tragicômico é apontado como um dos importantes elementos constituintes dessa figura cômica, conforme exemplificados na dupla de palhaços, Branco e o Augusto. Toda esta discussão nos leva ao principal objetivo deste trabalho que é estabelecer uma analogia entre o grotesco tragicômico no palhaço e as personagens Doutor, Capitão e Woyzeck da obra Woyzeck de Georg Büchner. Nesse sentido, a pesquisa mostra-se importante na medida em que, propõe a discussão sobre o fenômeno estético do grotesco tragicômico, de forte influência em inúmeras produções artísticas e dramatúrgicas, ampliando nossa compreensão sobre o homem moderno, fortemente caracterizado por suas contradições. Além disso, aliar essa reflexão ao palhaço, nos ajuda a compreender os aspectos cômicos dessa figura, expandindo nossa forma de conceber o riso naturalmente atrelado à figura do palhaço, na sua capacidade de buscar no trágico da vida inspiração para suscitar o cômico. É a partir dessa reflexão, que buscamos uma aproximação entre esses aspectos do palhaço com algumas personagens da obra Woyzeck mantendo vivos um autor e uma obra de grandes contribuições para a história da dramaturgia moderna e contemporânea / Abstract: This work proposes reflections on the grotesque phenomenon, which is defined from some aspects such as: strange, bizarre, shapless, ridiculous, hybrid, horrendous, extravagant, funny and tragicomic, bringing as focus to this discussion it's ability to dialogue seemingly contradictory elements. These oppositions that identify this phenomenon manifested from it's tragicomic aspect. Added to this reflection, characteristic features of the clown language, in which the tragicomic grotesque is pointed out as one of the important constituents of this comic figure, as exemplified in the pair of clowns, Branco and Augusto. All of this discussion leads us to the main goal of this work, which is to establish an analogy between the tragicomic grotesque on the clown and the characters Doctor, Captain and Woyzeck of the artwork 'Woyzeck' by Georg Büchner. In this way, the research shows itself important as far as proposes a debate of the aesthetic phenomenon of tragicomic grotesque, strong influence in many artistic and dramaturgical productions, expanding our understanding of modern man, strongly characterized by its contradictions. Also, combine this reflection to the clown, helps us to understand the comedic aspects of this character, expanding our way of conceiving the laughter naturally, linked to the clown character, in their ability to seek the tragic aspect of life, inspiration to raise the comic. It is from this reflection, we seek an approach between these aspects of the clown with some characters of Woyzeck work keeping alive an author and an artwork of great contributions to the history of modern and contemporary dramatic art / Mestre

Recognizing that the grotesque is a common characteristic of much popular art, and recognizing that grotesque images are integral to the sensual world of Dickens' novels, the thesis seeks to discover what grotesque images are shared by Dickens and contemporary popular artists, and whether similar meanings can be attributed to their use in the caricatures, the pantomime, the gothic novels, and childrens' literature and in Dickens' fiction. The essence of grotesque art can best be understood from a survey of historical grotesque images and the thesis traces these briefly. The grotesque image usually involves the double face, two or three beings united within one formal structure. It may however be typified by its extreme ugliness, its deviance from aesthetic standards of beauty. Or it may exist as a mimic re-creation of man in man-made terms, through costume or mask, or as a puppet, robot or doll. The grotesque humour in the caricatures, the pantomime and the nursery rhymes, with its dispensing with boundaries between the animate and the inanimate and mimic re-creation of the world in new forms, implies a delight in the sensual qualities of the material world. In the gothic novels the grotesque images, particularly the complex of images revolving around prisons, are seen to function as physical manifestations of the obsessive reasoning and fears that plague the characters. The grotesques in the fairy tales are related essentially to the role of magic, supernatural power in these tales being wielded either through object-talismans or by grotesque figures. Dickens merges grotesques from all these sources into one fictional universe, and consequently any one grotesque in Dickens' work may recall imagery from several of these art forms, as well as the traditional images. The thesis does not attempt a comprehensive study of the grotesque in Dickens' novels. It examines only three novels, The Old Curiosity Shop, Our Mutual Friend, and The Mystery, of Edwin Drood, with references to A Tale of Two Cities and Hard Times, analyzing the thematic patterns that revolve, around the grotesques. In The Old Curiosity Shop the grotesque hallucinations of Nell, her grandfather, and the narrator are linked to their passivity, their fear of confronting or having to manipulate a naturalistic reality. Quilp and the other natural grotesques are, on the other hand, seen to resemble clowns, in their use of the grotesque image as a source of comedy, and in their skill at using this humour to control their environment. Our Mutual Friend is approached from one viewpoint only, though it is one considered vital to the nineteenth century British imagination, the relationship of its grotesque imagery to children's art. Through meshing picturesque figures of innocence with the vicious, the deformed and the decaying, Dickens establishes a vision of beauty growing out of the destruction of innocence and the imaginative vitality of anarchic grotesques. In The Mystery of Edwin Drood the architecture of the cathedral city gives material shape to the type of obsessive thinking that permeates The Old Curiosity Shop, and concurrently functions as a spell-bound environment for those who seek to deny their relationship with the brutal or ugly. As with the prisons of the gothic novels, this architecture breeds grotesque figures whom Dickens employs for a dual, purpose, to represent the hallucinations of his spiritually trapped characters, and as a natural artistic counterpart to the cold rigidity of the cathedral. / Arts, Faculty of / English, Department of / Graduate

This thesis attempts to demonstrate the manner in which Barlach used the phenomenon of the grotesque in his prose and dramatic writing. The concept of the grotesque has been examined in the light of a number of the more significant attempts to define it. Particular attention has been paid to the recent studies of the grotesque by Wolfgang Kayser and Lee Byron Jennings, but extensive reference has also been made to the definitions of George Santayana and John Ruskin, as well as to the 1929 dissertation of Ernst Schweizer and the 1940 discussion of the grotesque by Robert Petsch. The paper attempts to demonstrate that Barlach made use of the grotesque to mystify reality and to point to otherwise hidden mythological aspects of the world, as well as to give expression to what he called a "Panik vor dem So-Sein," i.e., a panic which he felt whenever he compared the temporal existence to the potentiality of some higher realm of being. To demonstrate the universality of the grotesque experience, reference has also been made to the concept of the demonic as described by Goethe, and the grotesque is related to it. Representations of the divine in Barlach's works appear grotesque from a human vantage, because man, in his struggle to maintain his identity and to perpetuate his own trivial world has no eye for higher values or higher modes of existence. Man interprets the intrusion of the divine into his world.as a threat to his existence, not as an act of grace. The influence of Theodor Daeubler and Albert Kollmann is considered with respect to Barlach's concept of the "high lord", and an attempt is made to come thereby to an understanding of Barlach's relationship to deity. The divine is represented by Barlach as not an extension and perfection of the human, but supra-human and hostile to man in his closed little world. To demonstrate the manner in which the elements of the divine intrude into man's world and threaten his orientation, a study has been made of Barlach's use of grotesque metaphors, objects, and situations, with special reference to Barlach's novel Seespeck and his early dramatic works. The phenomenon of the grotesque is seen to be related to that of the absurd as presented by modern playwrights, and Barlach is shown to have anticipated the Absurd in many respects. But it is pointed out that Barlach refused to accept the idea of an absurd universe, despite his admitted incapacity to resolve his doubts. Barlach's later plays and correspondence are considered, to establish that he became resigned in his mature years to a state of "not-knowing" as a way of life in which the panic of the earlier years, and with it the grotesque, diminished. / Arts, Faculty of / Central Eastern Northern European Studies, Department of / Graduate

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This essay is an analysis of the character María Josefa in the play 'The House of Bernarda Alba' (1936) by Federico García Lorca. It is hypothesized that the character of María Josefa can be considered a distorting mirror of the femininity presented in the play, and that through María Josefa this femininity is both revealed and problematized. The analysis adopts theories from the field of the (female) grotesque, using terminology both from Mikhail Bakhtin and Mary Russo. Throughout the analysis it is demonstrated how the character of María Josefa challenges the boundaries and norms which are dictated by Bernarda to control the women of the house. These conventions are challenged by María Josefa with the use of her loud speech, her dressed up appearance, and in her physical resistance. In this manner María Josefa is creating and embodying an alternate feminine view that is uncovered through her consistent provocation and by making herself into "a spectacle", a transboundary behaviour that is well interpreted within the theories of carnival, the grotesque body, and the spectacle of the female grotesque.