The dissertation seeks to take account of the implications of Jacques Derrida's deconstructive philosophy for literary theory and criticism through analysis of the work of non-deconstructionists theorists and critics. In particular, the dissertation deals with the attempt by much traditional Anglo-American literary theory to articulate what might be called a lq'logic of criticism' - an attempt evident in the use made by this theory of oppositions such as intrinsic/extrinsic, structural/genetic, essential/contingent, and so on. The attempt is considered with respect to three concerns of modern literary theory: organic form, authorial intention and the question of value. On the first issue, it is argued that the organicist's construal of the relation of form and content in poetry is analogous to Husserl's construal of the relation of signifier and signified in speech, and that Derrida's deconstruction of Husserl's privileging of voice provides the model for the deconstruction of organicism. In the case of intention, it is argued that modern criticism and theory has characteristically relied on a notion of the literary work as saturated by a fully conscious intention, a reliance which marks a succumbing to what Derrida calls 'the structural lure of consciousness'. Concerning the question of value, the target is the attempt to defend value by locating it as the ground, the centre, the telos or origin of the phenomenon to be accounted for. The dissertation concludes by broaching the question of the nature of a properly deconstructive literary criticism. It is argued that so-called deconstructionist criticism involves a neutralization of deconstruction, a defect which Derrida avoids in his own literary criticism.

This study is an investigation into the communicative power of visual metaphor and the ways in which it is used by artists. A wide range of works of art are used to exemplify the theories presented. The first part of the thesis is a discussion of whether the term 'metaphor' can be used to describe some of the transformations which take place in visual art. It is shown that works of visual art produce similar kinds of displacement of meaning as those created in verbal metaphor. An idea for a theory of visual metaphor is put forward. Some applications of this theory to specific works of art are discussed. The 'ironic glance' which is characteristic of the artist and often of the viewer is identified and explained. Historical ideas of irony are placed in context with modern concepts. It is postulated that all creativity requires the artist to exercise irony in his or her initial view of the world; in making; and in the implicit assumption of a `putative audience'. A detailed discussion of examples of visual art selected predominantly from 1800 to the present shows that metaphorical expression takes place in many kinds of visual art, from the allegorical to the apparently abstract. A discussion of the interaction between artist and viewer follows. The concept of `distance' in the making and viewing of artworks is considered, particularly in connection with the idea of an ironic stance. The idea of the 'ironic glance' incorporates within it a sense of distance in all aspects of making and looking at art. The different ways in which artists communicate metaphorically are discussed. The importance of 'received' knowledge, especially in connection with the 'formal' elements of artworks and the individual viewer's 'mental store'. is considered. The way in which a viewer approaches art is explored' by showing the way that metaphor directs thought in a way which paradoxically both illuminates understanding and limits our view. The viewer's `mental store' allows him or her to understand some artworks and through this understanding approach other works. It is suggested that the directive nature of metaphor means that the artist, either consciously or subconsciously, has in mind a putative audience. Throughout, the thesis is supported by a broad range of reference. Similar ideas expressed by philosophers, critics, theorists of language, poets and artists are drawn together to support the formulation of new ideas linking metaphorical expression, irony and the relationship of an artist to the putative viewer.

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<p>This thesis explores the potential advantages of incorporating color into musical analysis and musical concepts into art analysis. Music and the visual arts are vehicles of expression using two different perceptible waves as a medium. By comparing the physical attributes of these waves, analogous terminology between the disciplines is highlighted. Terminology parallels allow us to identify relationships between musical ideas and sonorities and color theory concepts and color harmonies. Cross-modal relationships have been explored in synesthetically inspired works in both disciplines. In Scriabin?s Prometheus, the luce presents the colors to the audience. These colors emphasize the harmonic, formal, and mystical elements of the piece. Messiaen?s Des Canyons aux etoiles features chords that were specifically included to paint the colors of the places he had visited. Sonata No. 6 by Ciurlionis is a painting that includes the three major sections of sonata form with the color changes to match. Symphony verte by Valensi includes complex structural variations and the various shading and saturations found in the timbral diversity of a symphony. Accounting for the bimodal aspects of these pieces provides us with a more concise holistic understanding of the artist?s purpose.

In an analysis of literary and historical documents from the sixteenth to the early eighteenth centuries, Gender, Genre, and the Eroticization of Violence in Early Modern English Literature examines depictions of love, beauty, and desire and identifies within these discourses a rhetoric of violence. It explores how eroticized violence can be deployed to privilege male speakers and silence female voices. It also reveals, by pairing female- and male-authored works that make specific claims to represent gendered experience that early modern writers both recognized the mechanisms of violent representation as literary conventions and realized they could be deployed, exploited, resisted, fashioned to new ends. By integrating feminist psychoanalytic, film and architectural theories with literary analysis, this study demonstrates how spatial topographies in literary works can function as stimuli that provoke desire to turn violent. Gender, Genre, and the Eroticization of Violence ultimately identifies how this body of literature constructs and maintains genders and points to violence as a structural principle, bound by the hydraulics of subjectivity and cultural anxieties about gender, class, and literary production. Finally, this study identifies the residue of early modern ideas about desire and violence in the materials of our modern culture.

What is at stake for female fans and followers of horror cinema? This study explores the pleasures in horror film viewing for female members of the audience. The findings presented here confirm that female viewers of horror do not refuse to look but actively enjoy horror films and read such films in feminine ways. Part 1 of this thesis suggests that questions about the female viewer and her consumption of the horror film cannot be answered solely by a consideration of the text-reader relationship or by theoretical models of spectatorship and identification. A profile of female horror film fans and followers can therefore be developed only through an audience study. Part 2 presents a profile of female horror fans and followers. The participants in the study were largely drawn from the memberships of horror fan groups and from the readerships of a cross-section of professional and fan horror magazines. Qualitative data were collected through focus groups, interviews, open-ended questions included in the questionnaire and through the communication of opinions and experiences in letters and other written material. Part 3 sheds light on the modes of interpretation and attempts to position the female viewers as active consumers of horror films. This study concludes with a model of the female horror film viewer which points towards areas of female horror film spectatorship which require further analysis. The value of investigating the invisible experiences of women with popular culture is demonstrated by the very large proportion of respondents who expressed their delight and thanks in having an opportunity to speak about their experiences. This study of female horror film viewers allows the voice of an otherwise marginalised and invisible audience to be heard, their experiences recorded, the possibilities for resistance explored, and the potentially feminine pleasures of the horror film identified.

The artistic is always political, even if not overtly so—each work carries with it the histories of the artist, the means of production, the subject matter, and the many art historical precedents that overlap and diverge to constitute the theoretical circumstances surrounding it. Since I began translating my lived experience into artworks, I have become interested in the ways in which my personal politics have affected the choices I have made in material and narrative substance. This is a deconstruction of the politics of representation as a method for better understanding the art historical context in which contemporary materials- and performance-based art work exists and to conceptually develop the work I want to produce in the future.

Modernism is a plurality, not a singular concept. This project explores examples of Art Nouveau nudes to describe the particular expressions of the modern through varied and complicated allegorical bodies. The female nude as a nexus for ideals of gender, art, and beauty, is informed by and constructs the understanding of these ideals within society. Art Nouveau thus employed the nude to represent complex manifestations of modernity. Three diverse cases provide the subjects of each chapter. All explore modernism through objects and interiors, in public and private environments, and each connects the decorative arts with accounts of European modernism in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. The modernist movement, in these decades, is still predominantly understood through painting. This project draws its case studies from Paris, Glasgow, and Vienna, each a distinct cultural arena during the 1890s and 1900s: the sculptural furniture of François Rupert Carabin (1862-1932); the metalwork of Margaret Macdonald (1865-1933) and her sister Frances Macdonald (1873-1921); and the graphic motifs of Ver Sacrum, created by the artists of the first Vienna Secession (1897-1905). In conception and expression, these nudes articulated the diverse representational practices of different modernisms. They each embody drastically different histories, aesthetics, and social expressions. Their varied modernisms expose the prominent nationalism of Art Nouveau. Examination of these three very different cases expands and complicates current understandings of the nude, allegory, and the modern.

Though prevalent in non-academic debate, the subject of Thomas Kinkade and his artwork is discernibly absent from the realm of academic discourse. This paper is an investigation into that condition and the circumstances for its perpetuation. Central to the issue is Kinkade's art theory and practice, which establishes his coexistence in both the art and business domains, creating inherent contradictions. Further explication is revealed through an evaluation of the contemporary criticism of four posthumously canonized artists: William Blake, Phillip Otto Runge, Vincent van Gogh, and Henri Rousseau. Consistencies among them correlate to the treatment of Thomas Kinkade, suggesting a common art historical methodology in operation. An evaluation of these findings generates alternative perspectives for considering his artwork and presents the possibility for relevant, engaging research into concerns well beyond its aesthetic merit.

The Revolt against Mourning calls into question the widespread critical alignment of literary modernism with Freudian melancholia. Focusing instead on “mourning,” through close readings of Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway, James Joyce’s Ulysses, and William Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury, I demonstrate how their depictions of this notion overturn both its traditional and contemporary understandings. Whereas Freud conceives mourning as a psychic labor that the subject slowly and painfully carries out, Woolf, Joyce, and Faulkner convey it as a destabilizing, subversive, and transformative force to which the subject is radically passive. For Freud, mourning is a matter of severing one’s libidinal bond to the lost other and reinvesting the free libido in a new object. But these modernists show that this bond is not in fact something we have the power to sever. Rather, precisely because we must stay internally bound to the lost other, we are always exposed to being usurped and altered by its alterity. Indeed, what my readings disclose is that these novels end up being (dis)possessed by the spectral force unleashed in them. I argue, however, that each writer can be read as attempting a textual exorcism to free his or her novel from this force by invoking a vital, dynamic movement I call “life.” But although Woolf, Joyce, and Faulkner seek such liberation, their narrative experiments ultimately fail to achieve it. And yet, for that very reason, Mrs. Dalloway, Ulysses, and The Sound and the Fury further illuminate how mourning both precedes and exceeds our desire to master it and binds us to the others we lose, perhaps for the entirety of our lives.