Neste estudo de análise e interpretação de Moby-Dick (1851), de Herman Melville (1819-1891), pretendemos formular e esclarecer questões relativas ao momento de definição do romance norte-americano, bem como à obra que se traduz como o esforço mais radical de um norte-americano na tentativa de, então, levar a forma romance ao estudo e reflexão sobre sua sociedade. Para tanto, recuperamos da leitura da obra os aspectos que mais fortemente tematizam tal intento: a crise ideológica de fins da década de 1840, quando os ideais revolucionários de igualdade da antiga república são finalmente confrontados com as consequências de sua integração no sistema capitalista mundializado questão central de Redburn (1849) e White-Jacket (1850), romances que preparam Moby-Dick e marcam as primeiras experiências de Melville como escritor social; o conceito de fronteira, problema de definição identitária norte-americana que abarca desde a ocupação da wilderness puritana no século XVII ao estabelecimento, à época de Melville, de uma política de Estado imperialista e, ademais, passa pela cristalização de perspectivas culturalmente particulares de propriedade e formação social de classe; e, finalmente, as noções de técnica e trabalho, diretamente implicadas na atividade baleeira e, de modo mais amplo, no avanço civilizatório norte-americano, e para quais pesam a consciência do valor social do trabalho livre e sua coexistência com a escravidão. É sob tais preocupações que contemplaremos, à luz da teoria crítica e da tradição crítica brasileira, as especificidades formais do romance, a saber, a apropriação estrutural do trágico em contraposição à épica, que define o percurso de Ahab, o capitão do Pequod, em sua caçada a Moby Dick, e a formação de um narrador reflexionante, o sobrevivente Ishmael, que retoma o passado da catástrofe para ferir o presente em que se perpetuam, no roldão do ingresso norte-americano na modernidade, as condições para sua reprodução. / Through an analytical and interpretative study of Herman Melvilles Moby-Dick I intend to formulate and clarify the historical turning point of the American novel, specifically what is deemed the most radical effort of an American writer to bring a comprehensive study on society into novelistic form. In order to accomplish that, I reconsider some of the features of Moby-Dick that strongly appealed to the times. First the ideological crisis of the 1840s, when the equalitarian revolutionary ideals of the Independence were finally confronted by the consequences of the U.S. being fully compromised to the Industrial Revolution and the capitalistic worldwide system. This is a central issue in Redburn (1849) and White-Jacket (1850), both novels where some major features of Moby-Dick are anticipated and firstly tested. Second, I scrutinize the concept of frontier -- a national identity issue that can be traced back to the Puritan 17th century errand into the wilderness that is strongly attached in the age of Melville to the ideological making of American imperialism. Besides, it also has had a major role in the crystallization of culturally specific perspectives on property and the establishment of social classes. Finally, I reconsider the notions of technique and labor, directly implied in the whaling industry and in a more general way in the marching of American civilization towards the West, which has had a strong impact on the understanding of the social significance of free labor and its coexistence with slavery. With those things under consideration, and through the surmises of the Critical Theory and the Brazilian tradition of social and literary criticism as well, it is my aim to shed light on some esthetical features of the novel, particularly on the tragic structure (as opposed to the epic) that defines the career of Pequods Captain Ahab and his obsessive chasing of Moby Dick, and the constitution of a self-reflexive narrator, the survivor Ishmael, who recalls the past of the catastrophe in order to attack the social reproduction of its conditions in the present.

Esta tese procura compreender de que modo a elaboração modernista da colagem e da montagem no romance Manhattan Transfer, de John Dos Passos, expressa e ilumina processos sociais e políticos de seu tempo. Publicada em 1925, essa obra é a primeira a investigar as transformações pelas quais passava Nova York, desde a virada do século XX até o início dos anos 1920, por meio de uma experimentação formal então única na literatura dos Estados Unidos. Além disso, defende-se a especificidade do romance de 1925, o qual não seria apenas uma preparação para a trilogia U.S.A. (1930-1936), mas configuraria um retrato singular do espírito de sua época. A sua forma se revelaria, então, não ruptura, mas continuidade do projeto realista de interpretação da sociedade. Propõe-se igualmente desenvolver uma discussão sobre a complexa interação entre modernismo e cultura periférica no começo dos anos 1920, com base em certa tradição da crítica literária brasileira (da qual os grandes nomes são Antonio Candido e Roberto Schwarz) atenta às relações contraditórias entre o processo de modernização e a forma literária. Nesse sentido, busca-se entender de que maneira a cultura dessa ex-colônia refletiu, pela obra de Dos Passos, sobre a sua própria condição periférica no período em que os Estados Unidos cresciam como potência econômica e militar. Por fim, procura-se mostrar como Manhattan Transfer foi capaz de formular literariamente e tornar visíveis os nexos na época, nada evidentes entre a urbanização de Nova York, a industrialização, a guerra e as novas tendências imperialistas que começavam a despontar. / This thesis looks at how the modernist use of collage and montage in John Dos Passos Manhattan Transfer expresses and sheds light upon the social and political processes of its time. Published in 1925, the book is the first to investigate the transformations undergoing New York from the turn of the 20th Century to the beginning of the 1920s by means of a formal experimentation hitherto unique in the literature of the United States. Moreover, this thesis argues for the specificity of the 1925 novel, which should not simply be understood as groundwork for the U.S.A trilogy (1930-1926), but rather as a singular depiction of the spirit of its time. Its form, accordingly, would prove to be not a break, but rather an unfolding of the realist project of interpretation of society. The complex interaction between modernism and peripheral culture in the early 1920s is likewise addressed here through a discussion based on a certain tradition of Brazilian literary criticism (featuring, among its major authors, Antonio Candido and Roberto Schwarz) particularly attentive to the contradictory relations between the process of modernization and the shifts in literary form. In this regard, the analysis carried out seeks to grasp in what way the culture of this former colony reflected, though the work of Dos Passos, on its own peripheral condition during the period marked by the rise of the United States as an economic and military power. Lastly, this thesis aims to show how Manhattan Transfer was able to formulate literarily and render visible the links far from evident, at the time connecting the urbanization of New York, the process of industrialization and the new imperialist tendencies that were beginning to emerge.

Esta dissertação busca apresentar uma leitura do ensaio A teoria do romance, de Georg Lukács, atentando para o nexo formulado pelo autor entre a forma romance e a modernidade. Para este objetivo, procurou-se retraçar os momentos de diálogo que essa obra estabelece com a teoria do romance de Friedrich Schlegel. Não se trata de uma tentativa de rastrear as influências que por ventura estejam presentes no ensaio de Lukács, mas de mostrar como A teoria do romance pode ser reconstituída a partir das críticas à teoria do romance do romantismo. Pretende-se expor como a investigação da forma romance, essa forma que como nenhuma outra expressa o desabrigo transcendental, consiste para Lukács em uma via de acesso e crítica à experiência de alienação que vigora no mundo moderno. / This dissertation aims to present a reading of the essay A theory of the novel, by Georg Lukács, paying special attention to the link between the novel form and modernity formulated by the author. To this end, the moments of dialogue that Lukács work establishes with the theory of the novel of Friedrich Schlegel were retraced. It is not an attempt to track influences that may be present in the essay, but to show how The theory of the novel can be reconstructed from the critiques of the romantic theory of the novel. We intend to point out how the investigation of the novel form, the form that like no other expresses the transcendental homelessness, consists for Lukács in a gateway to and critique of the experience of alienation that takes place in the modern world.

Cette thèse porte sur la poétique du roman de Victor Hugo, Theodor Fontane et Thomas Hardy en s'appuyant plus spécifiquement sur l'étude de L'Homme qui rit (1869), Errements et Tourments (1888) et Tess d'Urberville (1891). En rapprochant ces trois romanciers majeurs mais tenus à l'écart des théories générales du roman, il s'agit de montrer le maintien d'une conception du roman moderne comme forme poétique du monde, s'inscrivant dans un horizon de pensée idéaliste, progressiste et critique. Hugo, Fontane et Hardy, romanciers qui se disent avant tout poètes, font le choix de faire du roman une tragédie, forme poétique du monde qui va à l'encontre du prosaïsme moderne et romanesque théorisé par Lukacs, à la suite de Hegel. Face au nihilisme et aux théories du roman réaliste qui voient le jour dans la seconde moitié du XIXe siècle et tentent de définir – au sens restrictif du terme – le genre romanesque, ils retrouvent le modèle du roman romantique et le redéfinissent face au roman réaliste. Leur poétique est alors fondée sur la « poiétisation » de la prose, autrement dit, sur l'imagination, le symbolique et le métaphorique. Ils affirment ainsi la spécificité et la possibilité d'une expérience poétique, c'est-à-dire subjective, héroïque et morale du monde, ainsi que la capacité du roman à produire un savoir poétique sur le monde et l'histoire. / This thesis deals with the poetics of the novel in Victor Hugo, Theodor Fontane and Thomas Hardy, with a specific focus on The Man who Laughs (1869), Trials and Tribulations (1888) and Tess of the d'Urbervilles (1891). By bringing together these three novelists who are widely acknowledged as major writers yet ignored by general theories of the novel, this study will show how a vision of the modern novel as a poetic rendition of reality, with an idealist, progressive and critical background, has maintained itself. Hugo, Fontane and Hardy, three novelists who considered themselves to be poets first and foremost, opted to turn the novel into a tragedy, a poetic rendition of reality which stands in contrast with Lukacs’ post-Hegelian theories of the modern novel as a prosaic literary genre. In the face of nihilism and the theories of the realist novel which surfaced in the second half of the XIXth century and attempted to define – in the restrictive sense of the word – the genre of the novel, they turned back to the model of the Romantic novel and reinvented it at a time when the realist novel was preeminent. Their poetics was therefore based on the “poietisation” of prose, in other words, based on the imaginary, the symbolic and the metaphoric. This enabled them to assert the specificity and possibility of a poetic, that is to say subjective, heroic and moral experience of the world, as well as the ability of the novel to generate poetical knowledge about the world and history.

Neste estudo de análise e interpretação de Moby-Dick (1851), de Herman Melville (1819-1891), pretendemos formular e esclarecer questões relativas ao momento de definição do romance norte-americano, bem como à obra que se traduz como o esforço mais radical de um norte-americano na tentativa de, então, levar a forma romance ao estudo e reflexão sobre sua sociedade. Para tanto, recuperamos da leitura da obra os aspectos que mais fortemente tematizam tal intento: a crise ideológica de fins da década de 1840, quando os ideais revolucionários de igualdade da antiga república são finalmente confrontados com as consequências de sua integração no sistema capitalista mundializado questão central de Redburn (1849) e White-Jacket (1850), romances que preparam Moby-Dick e marcam as primeiras experiências de Melville como escritor social; o conceito de fronteira, problema de definição identitária norte-americana que abarca desde a ocupação da wilderness puritana no século XVII ao estabelecimento, à época de Melville, de uma política de Estado imperialista e, ademais, passa pela cristalização de perspectivas culturalmente particulares de propriedade e formação social de classe; e, finalmente, as noções de técnica e trabalho, diretamente implicadas na atividade baleeira e, de modo mais amplo, no avanço civilizatório norte-americano, e para quais pesam a consciência do valor social do trabalho livre e sua coexistência com a escravidão. É sob tais preocupações que contemplaremos, à luz da teoria crítica e da tradição crítica brasileira, as especificidades formais do romance, a saber, a apropriação estrutural do trágico em contraposição à épica, que define o percurso de Ahab, o capitão do Pequod, em sua caçada a Moby Dick, e a formação de um narrador reflexionante, o sobrevivente Ishmael, que retoma o passado da catástrofe para ferir o presente em que se perpetuam, no roldão do ingresso norte-americano na modernidade, as condições para sua reprodução. / Through an analytical and interpretative study of Herman Melvilles Moby-Dick I intend to formulate and clarify the historical turning point of the American novel, specifically what is deemed the most radical effort of an American writer to bring a comprehensive study on society into novelistic form. In order to accomplish that, I reconsider some of the features of Moby-Dick that strongly appealed to the times. First the ideological crisis of the 1840s, when the equalitarian revolutionary ideals of the Independence were finally confronted by the consequences of the U.S. being fully compromised to the Industrial Revolution and the capitalistic worldwide system. This is a central issue in Redburn (1849) and White-Jacket (1850), both novels where some major features of Moby-Dick are anticipated and firstly tested. Second, I scrutinize the concept of frontier -- a national identity issue that can be traced back to the Puritan 17th century errand into the wilderness that is strongly attached in the age of Melville to the ideological making of American imperialism. Besides, it also has had a major role in the crystallization of culturally specific perspectives on property and the establishment of social classes. Finally, I reconsider the notions of technique and labor, directly implied in the whaling industry and in a more general way in the marching of American civilization towards the West, which has had a strong impact on the understanding of the social significance of free labor and its coexistence with slavery. With those things under consideration, and through the surmises of the Critical Theory and the Brazilian tradition of social and literary criticism as well, it is my aim to shed light on some esthetical features of the novel, particularly on the tragic structure (as opposed to the epic) that defines the career of Pequods Captain Ahab and his obsessive chasing of Moby Dick, and the constitution of a self-reflexive narrator, the survivor Ishmael, who recalls the past of the catastrophe in order to attack the social reproduction of its conditions in the present.

Esta tese procura compreender de que modo a elaboração modernista da colagem e da montagem no romance Manhattan Transfer, de John Dos Passos, expressa e ilumina processos sociais e políticos de seu tempo. Publicada em 1925, essa obra é a primeira a investigar as transformações pelas quais passava Nova York, desde a virada do século XX até o início dos anos 1920, por meio de uma experimentação formal então única na literatura dos Estados Unidos. Além disso, defende-se a especificidade do romance de 1925, o qual não seria apenas uma preparação para a trilogia U.S.A. (1930-1936), mas configuraria um retrato singular do espírito de sua época. A sua forma se revelaria, então, não ruptura, mas continuidade do projeto realista de interpretação da sociedade. Propõe-se igualmente desenvolver uma discussão sobre a complexa interação entre modernismo e cultura periférica no começo dos anos 1920, com base em certa tradição da crítica literária brasileira (da qual os grandes nomes são Antonio Candido e Roberto Schwarz) atenta às relações contraditórias entre o processo de modernização e a forma literária. Nesse sentido, busca-se entender de que maneira a cultura dessa ex-colônia refletiu, pela obra de Dos Passos, sobre a sua própria condição periférica no período em que os Estados Unidos cresciam como potência econômica e militar. Por fim, procura-se mostrar como Manhattan Transfer foi capaz de formular literariamente e tornar visíveis os nexos na época, nada evidentes entre a urbanização de Nova York, a industrialização, a guerra e as novas tendências imperialistas que começavam a despontar. / This thesis looks at how the modernist use of collage and montage in John Dos Passos Manhattan Transfer expresses and sheds light upon the social and political processes of its time. Published in 1925, the book is the first to investigate the transformations undergoing New York from the turn of the 20th Century to the beginning of the 1920s by means of a formal experimentation hitherto unique in the literature of the United States. Moreover, this thesis argues for the specificity of the 1925 novel, which should not simply be understood as groundwork for the U.S.A trilogy (1930-1926), but rather as a singular depiction of the spirit of its time. Its form, accordingly, would prove to be not a break, but rather an unfolding of the realist project of interpretation of society. The complex interaction between modernism and peripheral culture in the early 1920s is likewise addressed here through a discussion based on a certain tradition of Brazilian literary criticism (featuring, among its major authors, Antonio Candido and Roberto Schwarz) particularly attentive to the contradictory relations between the process of modernization and the shifts in literary form. In this regard, the analysis carried out seeks to grasp in what way the culture of this former colony reflected, though the work of Dos Passos, on its own peripheral condition during the period marked by the rise of the United States as an economic and military power. Lastly, this thesis aims to show how Manhattan Transfer was able to formulate literarily and render visible the links far from evident, at the time connecting the urbanization of New York, the process of industrialization and the new imperialist tendencies that were beginning to emerge.

This study is a thematic-descriptive investigation of the reproduction and transformation of norms in the theoretical discourse on the novel during the 1960s. Primary literature consists of articles and essays published in West German literary and cultural journals 1959-1967. The term ‘discourse’ is applied partly in accordance with Busse/Hermanns/Teubert (1994), the term ‘theory of the novel’ chiefly in accordance with Lämmert (ed. 1984). ‘Ideology’ is not used in the sense of ‘false ideology’ but rather as an umbrella term for various types of value-related statements. From this, the theory-of-the-novel discourse is perceived as an aesthetic-ideological discourse, containing statements directed at the contemporary novel which have clear programmatic function and significant thematic width. The objective of the investigation is to show that specific comprehensive thematic fields – Werteverlust (breakdown and loss of values), Subjektproblematik (‘problematisation of the concept of the subject’), Sprachproblematik (language related problems) and Realitätszerfall (reality loss, breakdown of the reality concept) – bear discursive significance as regards the discussion of literary norms during the 1960s, and that this discussion realises itself as two aesthetic-ideological discourses competing for interpretative precedence. The major issues are: Which reiterated patterns of argumentation, i.e. norm-related categories, concepts and rhetorical patterns, are used in the discourses for diagnoses and programmatic imperatives? How are the comprehensive thematic fields accentuated? What is treated, postulated or set aside as ‘truth’? How - based on the above – is the novel formulated as a ‘problem’ (‘crisis of the novel’)? The investigation confirms that the comprehensive thematic fields are particularly central to the theoretical discussion of literature in the 1960s. This manifests itself as a discursive re-evaluation process which may be characterised as a conflict between an ‘aesthetic-conservative discourse’ and a ‘discourse of change’ (‘Veränderungsdiskurs’) where the right to define and evaluate the novel in terms of literature is at stake. It is in the collision between these two discourses and their largely incompatible concepts of literature that the novel discursively becomes a ‘problem’. The discourses are maintained by specific reiterated patterns of argumentation which in the investigation are subsumed under the following headings: die negative Modernität (negative modernity), das bloß Moderne (phenomena of ‘fashionable character’, simply expressing trends) and das Überzeitliche und das Ganze (the timeless and the totality); respectively die traditionelle, bürgerliche Gesellschaft (traditional bourgeois society), die technisch-sprachliche Realität (technolinguistic reality) and der subjektive, sprachliche Realitätsausschnitt (‘subjective language based slice of reality’). The first group of argumentation patterns is linked to universal, ‘eternal’ and essential categories and inherited norms, ethical-aesthetical educational grounding and a ‘rhetoric of the spirit’ or of ‘mankind’, oriented around a specific reception of German Classicism and Idealism, a downgrading of the present and an upgrading of the past. The other group embraces an incipient constructivism, contextually bound and societal categories and norms as well as implicitly critical programmes of enlightenment, devaluing the past and ‘acknowledging’ rather than criticising the present. In doing so they tend rather to realise a rhetoric of the linguistic and political reality and of more modest programmatic proposals.

Essay über Thomas Mann, sein Verhältnis zur Romantik und die romantischen Elemente in seinem Werk. Die Gliederung des Textes folgt mit sieben Abschnitten dem Vorbild des "Zauberberg" (1924), der eine wichtige Rolle in Peters' Ausführungen spielt. Kommentare zu Thomas Manns Bildungsroman sind eingebettet in Betrachtungen zu der Polarität von Klassik und Romantik oder zu Künstlertum und Bürgertum. Der 4. Abschnitt des Essays befasst sich mit den "himmelblauen" Vorurteilen zur Romantik und hebt die ganzheitliche Weltkonzeption der Romantiker hervor sowie deren humanistisch geprägtes, am Universalmenschen der Renaissance orientiertes Bildungsideal. Das Manuskript von "Thomas Mann und die Romantik" befindet sich im zweiten Heft des Manuskriptes von "Heine Steenhagen wöll ju dat wiesen!" und steht in einem metadiskursiven Verhältnis zu Peters' parodistischem Bildungsroman: im 7. und letzten Kapitel seines Essays befasst sich Peters mit Romantheorie auf der Grundlage von Zitaten aus Novalis und Thomas Mann ("Versuch über das Theater"). Er unterstreicht hier zentrale Merkmale des Bildungsromans und entwickelt so die Poetik zu "Heine Steenhagen".