Zugl.: Heidelberg, Univ., Diss., 2009

Originaire du milieu white trash, victime d’inceste, lesbienne et queer, Dorothy Allison appartient à une nouvelle génération d’auteurs qui, depuis les années 1980, perturbent le paysage littéraire et politique américain. Peuplée de personnages grotesques, dont les difformités physiques reflètent les normes sociales, sexuelles et de genre qui sous-tendent les discours dominants réduisant l’individu déviant au silence, l’oeuvre de l’auteure est pourtant un espace de prise de parole pour les sujets subalternes (les pauvres, les femmes, l’enfant abusée, et les homosexuels) que la société définit comme étant abjects. Ces recherches se concentrent sur les liens entre littérature et théorie, et sur la portée politique du témoignage minoritaire de Dorothy Allison, envisagé comme un espace de théorisation. À partir de l’analyse des théories du sujet, des études sur les classes et les « races », des critiques de l’autobiographie et de la théorie queer, nous expliciterons la manière dont le texte littéraire transmet le discours de revendication de l’individu subalterne, permet l’affirmation du sujet, et véhicule les « savoirs abjects » qui perturbent les normes. Ce travail s’attache à relire et repenser les théories à travers le prisme d’une oeuvre littéraire qui s’approprie le mode de représentation grotesque et accorde une place centrale au corps et aux sens. Faisant la part belle au langage du corps, le témoignage minoritaire romancé met à mal les hiérarchies et célèbre la profonde humanité des individus dévalorisés. / Born in a white trash milieu, a victim of incest, lesbian and queer, Dorothy Allison belongs to the new generation of writers who, since the 1980s, have troubled the American literary and political landscape. Overflowing with grotesque characters, whose physical deformity mirrors the social, sexual and gender norms underlying the dominant discourses that silence the deviant individual, the author’s work is nevertheless a space where inferior subjects (the poor, women, the abused child, homosexuals), defined by society as being abject, can speak. This research focuses on the connections between literature and theory, and on the political significance of Dorothy Allison’s testimony, here considered as a theorizing narrative. Using subject theory, class and race studies, autobiography criticism and queer theory, we shall explain how the literary text passes on the inferior individual’s claims, enacts the subject’s self-assertion, and transmits the “abject knowledge” which disrupts the norms. This research aims at re-reading and rethink various theories through the literary work which appropriates the grotesque mode of representation and grants the material body and the senses a central place. The fictionalized testimony makes bodily language paramount, interrogates established hierarchies and glorifies the intense humanity of discredited individuals.

This project explores the zombie’s status and function as an artistic traumatic grotesque within the 2000s. Coined as a grotesque “stream” by art historian Frances S. Connelly, the traumatic grotesque interrupts established visual norms by presenting contemporary social anxieties in monstrous form. Though a historically filmic monster, the zombie made its formal and enduring appearance in visual art amid the near-continuous cultural traumas of the 2000s. My goal was a better understanding of how the zombie, as expressed in art and film, embodies the traumatic imagery and psychology of three specific tragedies. They are: Britain’s 2001 Foot and Mouth disease outbreak, Damien Hirst and Jenny Saville, and Danny Boyle’s 28 Days Later (2002); 9/11, Dana Schutz’s “Self Eaters” series (2003-2005), and George A. Romero’s Land of the Dead (2005); and the 2008-2010 Great Recession, Jillian McDonald, and AMC’s The Walking Dead Season Four (2013-2014).The zombie’s iconographic crossover marks art history’s need for a detailed history of both zombie symbolism and how the social contexts of past and present iterations affect the monster’s function and reception. I used a combination of semiotics, psychoanalysis and critical theory to begin that examination. First, a brief historiographic analysis of grotesque theory establishes the artistic construct’s evolving “yes, and…” semiotic functions. From within a socio-historical breakdown of zombie movies, the monster uses its grotesque characteristics to critically challenge the viewer’s social identity. During cultural trauma, sociological and psychoanalytic effects transform the zombie into a traumatic grotesque. By invoking viewer identification and traumatic memory, the zombie traumatic-grotesque engages individual viewers in self-realized moments of either progressive or traditional cathartic trauma processing. / Art History

This study shows how the Grotesque Hero evolves from the grotesque victim in selected American novels from 1919 to 1972. In these novels, contradictory forces create a cultural dilemma. When a character is especially vulnerable to that dilemma, he becomes caught and twisted into a grotesque victim. The Grotesque Hero finds a solution to the dilemma, not by escaping his grotesque victimization, but by accepting it and making it work for him. The novels paired according to a particular contradictory dilemma include: Winesburg, Ohio and The Crying of Lot 49, As I Lay Dying and Wise Blood, Miss Lonelyhearts and The Dick Gibson Show, Cabot Wright Begins and Second Skin, The Day of the Locust and The Lime Twig, and Expensive People and The Sunlight Dialogues.

Habilitationsschrift--Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg, Erlangen. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 275-280).

Thesis (MDram (Drama))--University of Stellenbosch, 2009. / This dissertation investigates the potential for horror in the comic repertoires and performance styles of clowns, in an attempt to address the popular questions of why clowns inspire fear as well as laughter, and what makes them effective monsters in the horror genre. Notwithstanding short articles which offer a general and broad account, the question of why circus clowns are often viewed as frightening figures remains largely unexplored. For this reason I intend to undertake an in-depth exploration of the wide-ranging history of clowning – which includes anthropology, theatre, film, and literature. This study focuses on finding the primary causes of clowns’ horrific potential, rather than being satisfied with secondary causes such as the effect of their depictions in horror narratives on audiences. During my investigation of specific killer clown films, graphic novels and prose novels, and by drawing on works such as Noël Carroll’s Philosophy of Horror (1990), Mikhail Bakhtin’ Rabelais’ World (1984), and various other studies of the genres of horror and , or instances of practising clowns turning to crime, or simply accepting the view that they play tricks on their audiences, or that their make-up acts as a mask and therefore makes their faces and motives ‘unreadable’. Although these explanations are legitimate, they do not adequately explain why certain clown types prove to be such effective monsters in horror narratives. Clowns typically, albeit to varying degrees, flout taboos on deformity, scatology, violence and insanity, and carry with them the latent stigma attached to these phenomena, which are also recognised as the common themes of the horror genre. The focus of this study is not on clowns as figures of comic relief in horror, but as legitimate monsters in their own right, and an attempt is made to discover how audiences’ anticipation of comic relief and the ‘laws’ of comedy are used deceptively in the construction of clowns as figures of fear. During my investigation of specific killer clown films, graphic novels and prose novels, and by drawing on works such as Noël Carroll’s Philosophy of Horror (1990), Mikhail Bakhtin’ Rabelais’ World (1984), and various other studies of the genres of horror and comedy, as well as anthropological studies of clowns, I argue that, when clowns are shifted from comedy to horror, the comical features and actions that flout the taboos on deformity, scatology, violence and insanity are reinstated as elements of horror and fear. I propose that clowns have the potential to be appropriated as monsters in the horror genre because they exhibit a paradoxical duality of fear and humour, and they have the ability to transgress and violate comedy elements to horrific effect.

This dissertation examines the notion of the female in performance, the latter term applying to occasions that are outside as well as within theatrical venues. I attempt to address the complex and mutually entailed interrelation between the 'normative' as it has, and continues to, govern female behaviour, and those manifestations deemed transgressive of these in some respect. I seek to postulate a conception of the performing female as a phenomenon which owes its force to the presence of both polarities. My preferred term for such a figure is the female bouffon, and after a preliminary definition of associated terms, I discuss the carnivalesque, socially licenced occasions of 'misrule' in pre-modern societies, where norms were temporarily suspended to permit women to 'make a spectacle of themselves'. Some contemporary parallels are furnished. I then address the larger and more discursive issues of the reflexive and self-applied norms of proper female conduct as offered and justified by industrial, scientifically authorized societies. From the above, I turn to the extraordinary creative ferment of the turn of the twentieth century, which witnessed the rebellious re-institution of older performance genres as well as the invention of new ones. I then discuss the associated theatrical theorizing that accompanied this era. After a detailed examination of the work of two contemporary practitioners, who, I consider, gather together past and present themes of bouffonerie in a compelling way, I give examples of my own performance practice, and some analysis of its reciprocal relation with an audience. I conclude with some speculative thoughts as to the future of the bouffonesque female performer.

Elizabeth Bishop (1911-1979) was a Pulitzer-prize winning American poet who did not produce much published work in her career. This was partly due to her low confidence, depression, alcoholism, and difficult personal life, but it was also due to her meticulousness as a poet. Colleagues and critics praised her strong description and mastery of technique, but criticized her early work as lacking depth. While appearing simple, her early works present complex themes of dualism and isolation. Using characteristics of the carnivalesque and the grotesque, her poetry explores these concepts and the need to cover them. This study's close analysis of four works ("From the Country to the City, " "Cirque d'Hiver, " "Pink Dog, " and "The Man-Moth") reveals characteristics of the carnivalesque and the grotesque, adding a previously unnoticed depth to her early work.

Orientador: José Leonardo do Nascimento / Banca: Amílcar Torrão Filho / Banca: Sergio Mauro Romagnolo / Resumo: A presente dissertação aborda o conceito de Grotesco na Estética e na História da Arte, analisados sob dois aspectos principais: da forma como esse conceito foi transformado desde a época da Grécia Antiga até o século XIX (período de grandes mudanças formais da representação humana nas Artes) e do exemplo do artista Francisco de Goya, através de sua série de gravuras Los Desastres de la Guerra, composta por imagens violentas; grotescas, híbridas e trágicas, que refletem esteticamente o horror advindo da Guerra de Independência e do retorno de um Estado Monárquico e Absoluto. Nossa pesquisa tem por meta avaliar as mudanças políticas, sociais e culturais que influenciaram a transformação desses conceitos estéticos e a aceitação desses novos paradigmas que resultaram numa mudança de visão e fruição da própria Arte entre os séculos XVII e XIX (época de ascensão do Liberalismo e Iluminismo), mostrando como os acontecimentos históricos podem transformar os conceitos artísticos de acordo com as necessidades humanas de retratar seu próprio tempo. Os procedimentos metodológicos foram de revisão bibliográfica parcial sobre as questões do Grotesco na Arte e uma pesquisa sobre a vida e obra de Goya, utilizando as imagens acima citadas, que aqui são analisadas do ponto de vista iconológico / Abstract: The current dissertation accosts the concept of "Grotesque" in Aesthetics and history of Arts analysed under two main aspects: the way this concept was transformed since the times of Ancient Greece until the nineteenth century ( a period of great formal changes of the human representation and other pictorial genres, and the example of the artist Francisco de Goya through his series of etchings The Disasters of War, composed by violent, hybrid and tragic images, which reflect aestheticly the horrors resulted from the War of Independence and the return of a Monarchic and Absolutist State. Our research objectives have the aim of appraising political, social and cultural factors that influenced the processing and acceptance of new paradigms such as the Grotesque in art making, that resulted in a change of vision and enjoyment of the Art itself between the seventeenth the nineteenth centuries (time of the rise of Liberalism and Iluminism), showing how this concept was transformed by artistic, cultural and historical events according to the Human needs of portraying their own time. The methodological procedures were of a partial bibliographical review about the issues of the Grotesque in art and a research of the life and work of Goya, using the prints cited before, which are here analysed from an iconological point of view / Mestre

Este estudo tem como eixo a relação entre a prática artística e política do ator. A partir da pesquisa com o bufão pretende-se analisar a eficácia de seu jogo na realização de ações políticas, em lugares cênicos e/ou públicos. Esta pesquisa, que se refere ao campo da bufonaria, circunscreve a investigação na esfera do grotesco cômico popular. Sendo assim, centrado no caráter de denúncia e protesto do bufão, examina-se os jogos de paródia e blasfêmia que endereçam suas críticas e ações sempre em favor da liberdade. Parte-se da referência dos bufões e bobos da Idade Média para entendermos as raízes populares do jogo do bufão, analisando como os bobos do rei desempenhavam seu papel nesse período. Para pensarmos na evolução do trabalho com esta figura emblemática no teatro, vamos ao encontro de Bertolt Brecht, que percebe na figura bufonesca de Karl Valentin elementos para o ator de seu teatro político. E na atualidade, comparando a gestualidade crítica do bufão com a de artivistas, por exemplo, examina-se os trabalhos de Reverend Billy, Guillermo Gómez-Peña e Leo Bassi que se utilizam do grotesco, da ironia e da bufonaria para denunciar as injustiças contra o homem na sociedade capitalista. Por fim, trazemos uma abordagem pedagógica sobre o trabalho do bufão para atores que desejam exercitar a denúncia de atitudes que consideram equivocadas na sociedade utilizando como ferramenta o humor e o prazer da blasfêmia da bufonaria. / This study has as its axis the relationship between artistic practice and politics the actor. From the research I seek to analyze the buffoon with the effectiveness of his play in carrying out political actions in public places or scenic. This research, which belongs to the field of buffoonery, limited research in this sphere of popular comic grotesque. Thus, focusing on the character of complaint and protest buffoon, I examine the play of parody and blasphemy that address their criticisms and actions always in favor of freedom. It starts with the reference of buffoons and jesters of the Middle Ages to understand the grass roots of the game buffoon, analyzing how the fools King played its role in this period. To consider the evolution of working with this iconic figure in the theater, we meet Bertolt Brecht, who perceives the buffoon figure Karl Valentin elements for the actor in the political theater. And presente, comparing the critical gesture of buffoon with the man who graphite, for example, examine the works of artivists as Reverend Billy, Guillermo Gómez-Peña and Leo Bassi who use the grotesque, irony and buffoonery to denounce the injustices against the man in capitalist society. Finally, we present a pedagogical approach on the work of buffoon for actors who wish to exercise social critique as a tool using humor and pleasure of buffoonery.