This thesis focuses on Conrad's representation of space and atmosphere in the "impressionistic" works published between 1897 and 1904, notably The Nigger of the "Narcissus" (1897), "Heart of Darkness" (1899), Lord Jim (1900), and Nostromo (1904). The many conflicting statements regarding the nature of Conrad's impressionism lead one to ask two fundamental questions: What constitutes this strange and elusive phenomenon, and how does it bear upon interpretation? This thesis works towards defining the elusive quality of Conrad's writing by investigating and assessing the contribution of impressionist techniques in the creation of a pervasive space and atmosphere; secondly, it considers how the various constituent elements interact with, and complement one another to form a dominant mode of fictional space in each work; and, thirdly, it indicates the possible impact that these particular Conradian configurations of space and atmosphere might have upon the interpretation of his impressionist works. The thesis argues that the existential condition of isolatio~experienced by Conrad's heroes and narrators is a consequence of epistemological frustration and fragmentation, which, in turn, is a function of impressionist ontology. There is a definite and complementary relationship between each of these notions in Conrad's fiction. The mysterious atmosphere in his works results from the interplay between various configurations of theme, narration and description, and these novelistic elements correspond roughly with the notions of existential isolation (the dominant theme), epistemology (narrating, telling and (re)telling as a method of knowing and understanding the space in which the characters find themselves) and, lastly, the ontological dimensions of the various modes of fictional space (as realized in description). The evocation and invocation of cosmic space in The Nigger of the "Narcissus," the mapping of a dorriinant symbolic space in "Heart of Darkness," the (re)constructions of Jim's psychological space in Lord Jim, and, finally, the "transcription" and "inscription" of a mythical space in Nostromo, indicate a definite development from epistemological to ontological issues. Phrased in more theoretical terms, this development is a movement from asking predominantly epistemological questions like "How can I interpret this world of which I am a part?" "What is there to be known?" "Who knows it ... and with what degree of certainty?", to asking predominantly ontological questions, such as "Which world is this?" "What kinds of worlds are there ... and how are they constituted?". Such questions, categorized by McHale as the dominant characteristics of Modernist and Postmodernist fiction respectively, are already present in Conrad's texts, thus undermining any clear-cut division between these broad categories. Indeed, this thesis suggests that these categories are at best tenuous, and that they should perhaps be used heuristically, rather than definitively

In line with Wittgenstein's axiom that "what the solipsist means is quite correct; only it cannot be said, but makes itself manifest," this thesis aims to demonstrate how the gulf between analytic and continental philosophy can best be bridged through the mediation of art. The present thesis brings attention to Markson's work, lauded in the tradition of Faulkner, Joyce, and Lowry, as exemplary of the shift from modernity to postmodernity, wherein the human heart is not only in conflict with itself, but with the language out of which it is necessarily constituted. Markson limns the paradoxical condition of the subject severed from intersubjectivity, and affected not only by the grief of bereavement, which can be defined in Heideggarian terms as anxiety for the ontic negation of a being (i.e., death), but by loss, which I assert is the ontological ground for how Dasein encounters the nothing in anxiety proper.

[pt] Filipenses 2,6-11 é texto fundamental na cristologia do cristianismo primitivo e neotestamentária. Inserido na parênese da carta de Paulo aos Filipenses, a passagem desenvolve uma narrativa cristológica que começa na preexistência, passa pela encarnação e culmina na exaltação de Jesus. No contexto da carta funciona como um chamado ético aos que estão em Cristo à obediência ao Senhor exaltado. Literariamente o texto é um hino composto de duas partes: 2,6-8 e 2,9-11, e a leitura proposta é ver nesta segunda seção o clímax do hino, que justamente trata da exaltação de Jesus. O tema da exaltação é apresentado dentro de uma perspectiva escatológica, pois o início do senhorio de Jesus é o cumprimento da esperança israelita no triunfo de Deus, é a virada escatológica que traz o tempo de salvação. Através da exaltação Deus compartilhou com seu Filho a soberania sobre o universo, implicando que todos os seres precisam agora dobrar os joelhos diante de Jesus e reconhecê-lo como Senhor. Aqueles que já fazem isso voluntariamente vivenciam antecipadamente o que será a realidade escatológica final. Esse novo papel de Jesus é descrito pelo título kurios, que combinado com outros elementos do texto atribui a ele contornos divinos e de igualdade com YHWH, além de uma oposição às ideologias romanas. A exaltação de Jesus também está ligada com a revolução cristológica que aconteceu no culto cristão primitivo, quando os cristãos judeus adoraram Jesus ao lado de Deus Pai, sem renunciar ao seu monoteísmo. O final do hino enfatiza exatamente que a exaltação de Jesus foi conduzida por Deus e resulta em sua própria glória. / [en] Philippians 2,6-11 is a fundamental text in the Christology of early Christianity and the New Testament. Inserted in the parenesis of Paul s letter to the Philippians, the passage develops a Christological narrative that begins in the preexistence, passes through the incarnation and culminates in the exaltation of Jesus. In the context of the letter functions as an ethical call to those who are in Christ in obedience to the exalted Lord. Literarily, the text is a hymn composed of two parts: 2,6-8 and 2,9-11; and the proposed reading is to see in this second section the climax of the hymn, which precisely deals with the exaltation of Jesus. The theme of exaltation is displayed within an eschatological perspective, since the beginning of the lordship of Jesus is the fulfillment of the Israelite hope in the triumph of God, it is the eschatological turn that brings the fulfillment of salvation. Through exaltation, God shared with His Son the sovereignty over the universe, implying that all beings must now bend to his knees before Jesus and acknowledge him as Lord. Those who already do so voluntarily experience in advance what will be the reality of the eschatological end. This new role of Jesus is described by the title kurios, which combined with the other elements of the text gives it contours to the divine and equality with YHWH, in addition to opposition to Roman ideologies. The exaltation of Jesus is also connected to the Christological revolution that happened in the worship of the early Christian, when the Jewish Christians worshipped Jesus alongside God the Father, without giving up their monotheism. The end of the hymn emphasizes exactly that the exaltation of Jesus was led by God and results in his own glory.

The text of the Bible projects for its readers a Biblical-textual world. Christians live within the seminal, normative contours of this symbolic Biblical world. In this regard, a Ricoeurian hermeneutics presents a helpful apparatus to the reader of the Biblical text. In his hermeneutical studies, Ricoeur organises his considerations around four poles that operate as guidelines for this study – distanciation, objectification, projecting of a world and appropriation. In this thesis each of these considerations is applied to Proverbs 10:1–15:33 to facilitate an exploration of the symbolic-textual world projected for the reader in this literature. It is the thesis of the study that the proposed reading strategy is, in terms of the threefold movement within postmodern thought – the movements beyond foundations, beyond totalities and towards the Other – a most productive effort. When this reading strategy is utilised for Proverbs 10:1–15:33, with specific reference to the fear of the Lord, the concept of the fear of the Lord is found to have a functional definition within this collection rather than an ontological or theoretical one. With this approach, the fear of Yahweh-proverbs in Proverbs 10:1–15:33 are understood not to be dogmatised, absolute, universal truths but finds, in line with the movement beyond totalities, its authority in the context within which it is applied. Instead of communicating propositional content, which is in line with the movement beyond foundations within postmodern thought, by their power to disclose a symbolic world, it confronts the reader with the Other, in line with the movement toward the Other, and consequently opens up new modes of being, orienting the reader’s practical actions. / Thesis (PhD)--University of Pretoria, 2013. / gm2013 / Old Testament Studies / unrestricted

China is a world force. Not only is China seen in the daily news but it has produced the largest church in the world. The church is 100 million people strong (Hattaway 2003:13). Since 1978, modern China has begun to populate the world community with her immigrants. Vast Diaspora communities have been created. The church in China shows all the signs of a Jesus People movement. In 1949 the communist came into power. They ordered all Christian missionaries to leave the country (Aikman 2003:44). By 1953 the last missionary had left (Thompson 1978:186). Mao closed the churches, confiscated property, burned books and bibles and had leaders sent to re-education camps. A time of persecution had begun. Rather than destroy the church, this made it stronger. The church grew from 750,000 to 100 million today. Can this Jesus People movement be experienced in the Diaspora community in South Africa? To evaluate this we use Allan Hirsch’s “The Forgotten Ways” (2006). In this he speaks of Apostolic Genius and the six elements that compose it. Thos elements are Jesus is Lord, Making Disciples, Missional-Incarnational Impulse, Apostolic Environment, Organic Systems and Communitas. These six elements are found expressed within a Jesus people movement. When they are all fully involved, a Jesus People movement is underway. There are 14 Chinese Christian churches in South Africa. The Chinese Diaspora community is 300-350,000 people. The Chinese mostly come from the Fujian province in China. Seventy percent are entrepreneurs and businessmen running shops selling Chinese goods. The researcher has found that the leadership of the churches is from Taiwan. Bringing everything together, the researcher finds the churches are growing at a moderate rate. The expected explosive growth of the church in China is not found in South Africa. The elements of Apostolic Genius are present but only partially expressed. There continues to be potential for the Chinese House church movement to field workers in South Africa. There has been some expressed interest. The Back To Jerusalem Movement is putting missionaries all over the Middle East (Hattaway 2003). It is the opinion of the researcher that putting workers in the Diaspora communities would be a natural extension of that that effort. / Dissertation (MA Theol)--University of Pretoria, 2013. / gm2014 / Science of Religion and Missiology / unrestricted

Bringing together current research strands stemming from the Festinger tradition of failed prophecy, and by observing a recent case of a prophetic group dealing with disconfirming events under a period of 210 days, I theorize on what roles cognitive dissonance, rituals and continuous prophetic adaptation play in the management of prophetic groups’ alternative world views. The traditional conception of dissonance management is reinterpreted as a process of maximizing mental desirability, which is contingent on the level of cognitive dissonance as well as cognitive activity. Through the use of rituals, prophetic groups maintain a certain mental network of categories (world) that invalidates the judgement standards of the mainstream society in favor of the prophet. Finally, prophecy itself is considered to be a device that regulates the collective level of cognitive dissonance and activity in order to maintain an ideal state of collective mental desirability; it is a tool to organize the present, rather than a prediction to be judged based on its accuracy. This sociological study is an assessment of the research on prophecy stemming from Festinger and makes the contribution of synthesizing it under the single logic of world management through the study of an empirical case.

No description available.

In recent decades there have been many attempts to pull Austen into the fold of high Romantic literature. On one level, these thematic comparisons are useful, for Austen has long been anachronistically treated as separate from the Romantic tradition. In the past, her writings have essentially straddled Romantic classification, labeled either as hangers-on in the satiric eighteenth-century literary tradition or as early artifacts of a kind of proto-Victorianism. To a large extent, scholars have described Austen as a writer departing from, rather than embracing, the literary trends of the Romantic era. Yet, while recent publications depicting a “Romantic Austen” yield impressive insights into the timeliness of her fiction, they haven't fully addressed Austen's participation in some of the most crucial literary debates of her time. Thus, it is my intention in this essay to extend the discussion of Austen as a Romantic to her participation in Romantic-era debates over emergent literary categories of authorship and realism. I argue that we can best contextualize Austen by examining how her model of authorship differs from those that surfaced in literary conversations of the time, particularly those relating to the high Romantic myth of the solitary genius. Likewise, as questions of solitary authorship often overlap with discussions of realism and romance in literature, it is important to reexamine how Austen responds to these categories, particularly in the context of a strictly Romantic engagement with these terms. I find that, though Austen's writing has long been implicated in the emergence of realism in literature, little has been written to link this impulse to the earlier emergence of Romantic-era categories of authorship and literary creativity. I contend that Austen's self-projection (as both an author and realist) engages with Romantic-era literary debates over these categories; likewise, I argue that her response to these emergent concerns is more complex and nuanced than has heretofore been accounted for in literary scholarship.

[pt] discurso escatológico seminal de Jesus, presente em Mc 13, traz em seu corpo algumas descrições de abalo cósmico, guerras e tribulações que não deixam nada a desejar se comparado às melhores produções cinematográficas e literárias da atualidade. Este cenário apocalíptico é explorado exegeticamente nesta pesquisa, tomando como objeto material Mc 13,24-27. A motivação para a escolha da perícope se deve ao interesse do autor pelo campo que investiga o uso das fontes bíblicas e extrabíblicas na narrativa evangélica; e justifica-se pela incipiente produção acadêmica que versa sobre o fenômeno da intertextualidade em Marcos. O problema da pesquisa parte da seguinte indagação: quais as contribuições da análise intertextual em Mc 13,24-27? Diante desse questionamento, o objetivo geral do trabalho visa apresentar as contribuições da análise intertextual a partir dos textos-fonte e contextuais utilizados em Mc 13,24-27. Para alcançar tal objetivo, o estudo terá como objetivos específicos: descrever o contexto literário de Mc 13; realizar a análise exegética do objeto material pelo método histórico-crítico; investigar os pressupostos hermenêuticos e como a exegese bíblica era empregada no período apostólico; e, por fim, examinar a intertextualidade entre os textos-fonte e contextuais que compõem Mc 13,24-27. O trabalho pretende despertar a atenção para o uso das diversas fontes que entraram ou podem ter entrado em contato com os autores do Novo Testamento e, de certo modo, influenciado na releitura do Antigo Testamento. / [en] The seminal eschatological discourse of Jesus, present in Mc 13, brings in his body some descriptions of cosmic upheaval, wars and tribulations that can be equally compared to a Hollywood production or literary story of today. This apocalyptic scenario is explored exegetically in this research, taking Mc 13,24-27 as material object. The motivation for choosing the pericope is due to the author s interest in the field that investigates the use of biblical and extra-biblical sources in the evangelical narrative; and it is justified by the incipient academic production that deals with the phenomenon of intertextuality in Marcos. The research problem starts from the following question: what are the contributions of the intertextual analysis in Mc 13,24-27? In view of this questioning, the general objective of the study aims to present the contributions of intertextual analysis based on the source and contextual texts used in Mc 13,24-27. To achieve this objective, the study will have as specific objectives: to describe the literary context of Mc 13; perform the exegetical analysis of the material object by the historical-critical method; investigate hermeneutic assumptions and how biblical exegesis was used in the apostolic period; and, finally, to examine the intertextuality between the source and contextual texts that make up Mc 13,24-27. The work intends to draw attention to the use of the various sources that got or may got in touch with the authors of the New Testament and, in a way, influenced the reinterpretation of the Old Testament.

This project explores the narrative arcs of strong female characters in Young Adult (YA) fantasy literature. Taking up Rosemary Jackson’s assertion that fantasy literature can ‘subvert patriarchal society,’ this thesis examines the fantasy ‘legacy code’ of strong and subversive female characters who settle into a stereotypical performance of gender after finding fulfillment in the heteronormative roles of lover, wife, and mother. This pattern is exemplified by Lady Éowyn of J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Two Towers (1954) and The Return of the King (1955), and reproduced by Hermione Granger of J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series – consisting of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone (1997), Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (1998), Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (1999), Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (2000), Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (2003), Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (2005), and Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (2007). In contrast Keladry of Mindelan in Tamora Pierce’s Protector of the Small series – consisting of First Test (1999), Page (2000), Squire (2001), and Lady Knight (2002) – demonstrates the impact ‘refactoring’ fantasy ‘legacy code’ has on the narrative conclusions of female characters. Using Judith Butler’s theory on the performative nature of gender and building on Farah Mendlesohn’s computer programming analogy of ‘legacy code,’ this thesis illustrates the ways in which fantasy literature often fails to be the literature of subversion Jackson envisions, and demonstrates how refactoring aspects of a female character’s narrative exemplifies subversive narrative conclusions for young adult readers of fantasy literature. / Thesis / Master of Arts (MA) / This thesis examines the ways in which a heteronormative ‘legacy code’ – exemplified by Lady Éowyn in J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings – has been perpetuated in literature marketed towards young adult readers by Hermione Granger in J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series and ‘refactored’ by Keladry of Mindelan in Tamora Pierce’s Protector of the Small series. Starting with Rosemary Jackson’s analysis of fantasy literature as a genre with subversive potential and with Judith Butler’s assertion that gender is performative, this thesis analyses the narrative arcs of Éowyn, Hermione, and Kel and demonstrates how the continual representation of strong female characters finding fulfillment in the roles of lover, wife, and mother is limiting, and highlights the subversive potential in ‘refactoring’ heteronormative ‘legacy code.’