This essay analyses Thomas Pynchon’s novel The Crying of Lot 49 (1966) in relation to postmodern literary theory, specifically the concepts of hyperreality and imaginary stations. In Simulacra and Simulation (1981), Jean Baudrillard proposes that the Disneyland theme park in California is an imaginary station that conceals the fact that it is the world outside of Disneyland that is hyperreal. These ideas were developed further in relation to California by Umberto Eco in Travels from Hyperreality (1986). Baudrillard’s model is applied in this essay to the housing development of Fangoso Lagoons in The Crying of Lot 49. By analysing the mediums through which it is portrayed, how it is described and the events that occur there, Fangoso Lagoons is found to be similar to Baudrillard’s example of Disneyland because it is presented as an amazing, fantastic and bizarre spectacle. However, the true hyperreality lies outside of the development, in the novel’s semi-fictional California. This essay argues that Fangoso Lagoons is presented as hyperreal, similar to Baudrillard’s example of Disneyland or Umberto Eco’s example of Hearst Castle, but that it is in fact an imaginary station. As Baudrillard and Eco propose, the purpose of the imaginary station is to make the world outside appear as real through contrast. The imaginary station achieves this by feeding reality energy to its hyperreal surroundings.

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Collage is presented as an allegoric art-form sui generis, considering allegory itself as an open-ended form of art. The research provides a suggestion to a different understanding of collage i.e.: as a catalyst for a search for structure and semiotic relationships in an attempt to overcome a constant disordered expansion of an intertextual web and hermeneutic possibilities; and as an open work, providing multi-layered meanings. As an open work collage is typified by the prominent role of its "readers", its ambiguity and the infinite net of references it summons. Collage may be conceived as a bridge between modernism and postmodernism, structuralism and post-structuralism; as a model for constant innovation and suppleness; as a stimulator for meta-artistic questions, acceptance of "soft" universals and reevaluation of the role of the Other within an artwork. Works by Jasper Johns, Michal Na'aman, Dina Hoffman and myself exemplify these ideas. / Visual Arts / M.A. (Visual Arts)

Main focus of my Master's Thesis is to conduct a research of mythological elements and themes that appear within the narrative structure of selected episodes of BBC television series Doctor Who, deriving from the initial hypothesis that such mythological patterns are still recurring and repeating even in the structure of stories produced by modern show-business industries, which renders their content intrinsically more attractive for any audience. We analyse selected episodes from both arks of the Doctor Who's story individually - the old one, which began in the sixties, and the new one, which is considered to be a reboot of the original series and aired in 2005. The originally intended educative element of the series and its sudden disappearance is also a part of our research. Main analysis of our paper consists of a semiotic analysis of the text of the television series utilizing the point of view of the critical reader that was introduced by Umberto Eco, and deriving from the definition of modern myth that appears in works of Roland Barthes, archaic myth, studied for example by Carl Lévi- Strauss, and Jungian archetypes.

This thesis identifies the existence and significance of a rhetorical gesture that has circulated widely since at least the nineteenth century: the comparison between war and sport. The introduction outlines the background for this rhetoric through a genealogy of the phrase, 'the battle of Waterloo was won on the playing fields of Eton', in nineteenth-century writing. Part one of the thesis examines the metaphors and cultural practices of energetics in European sporting life until the Second World War. The first chapter presents a cultural history of 'sporting aviation' between the Wright brothers' first European flight in 1908 and the declaration of war in 1914, arguing that the new technology of the aeroplane was initially understood through a tension between sporting and bellicose associations. The second chapter performs a close analysis of F.T. Marinetti's writings and Umberto Boccioni's paintings to reveal the role of sport in Italian Futurism and its significance for our understanding of its infamous glorification of warfare. Chapter three examines the militarist displays at the 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin and their enduring cultural legacy. Focusing on the role of crowds, rhythm is shown to be at the centre of how martial symbolism was embedded in the Games' sporting displays. Framing the transition into part two, the fourth chapter reads Georges Perec's use of the Olympics as an allegory for both the Second World War and the Holocaust in W, or the Memory of Childhood (1975) beside a number of post-war conceptualisations of 'play' and 'game'. The chapter identifies a re-organisation of the play concept according to an emerging concern with information, one which, in Perec, also articulates an alternative register for war's cultural memory. From here, the thesis' second part identifies the emergence of a metaphorical nexus of computation, war, and sport in post-war American culture. Chapter five argues that Don DeLillo's End Zone (1972) and David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest (1996) satirise the logic of nuclear strategy by employing the formal properties of information theory in their language, collapsing the distinctions between war and sport when each is subjected to computational representation. The final chapter analyses the 'military shooter' videogame, and the new form of sport it has produced - 'e-sports' - considering these games as a material instantiation of the convergence between the discourses of military and sporting culture. Across the case studies presented in these six chapters, a transition is identified from metaphors concerned with war and sport's energetic qualities to those concerned with the processing and abstraction of war and sport as information. Rather than conceive of this transition as an epistemic break, however, the thesis identifies continuities across the principles to be found in cultural energetics and informatics.

A dissertation submitted to the Faculty of Arts, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in Engiish. / This dissertation grapples With the activity of critical production. It answers not to an interpretation which would constitute the writer within the institutionalised category of effect and object of knowledge, but rather to an explosion, a proliferation of critical paths at the limit of the doxa: a veritable labyrinth. The terms of my title open up a methodological field within which I enact the play of associations, contiguities, relations among four texts: The Name of the Rose, lost. in the Funhouse, The Naked Lunch and 'The library of Babel'. The terms themselves disseminate across the text argument in citations, references, echoes. The labyrinth is used throughout as a trope which deconstructs its own performance within the text. Legends are myths, inscriptions on maps, legenda or "things for reading" (through an etymological supplement), "lesser libraries." Barthes cites the biblical words of the man possessed by demons: "My name is Legion for we are many" and demonstrates how the demonlacal plural brings with it fundamental changes in reading strategies. The notion of the demoniacal plural is used to problernatlse the debates around subjectivity. The belief in unitary, rational selfhood is debunked and the subject is Seen to be plural, irreducible, heterogenous. Subjectivity is further problernatlsed by demonstrating the slippage among the labyrinthine multiplicity of discursive positions occupied by readers: the monoloqlcal models of meaning developed from each reading position constantly shift. The discursive position recuperated and sanctioned by the Law or the institution is impossible to maintain as Subjects are seduced by language into confrontation with other positions through their continuous renarnings of each other. Subjectivity and discursive positioning form .their own labyrinthine intentionality. The argument then moves towards an exploration of the current calculation of the subject for the writer. (Distinctions between author and critic begin to collapse here since meaning is shown to be governed by neither). The reading\writing subject strolls in a vast labyrinth of text - a postmodern flaneur who frustrates the work of exegesis by enacting the play of the signifier. The line traced by this hypothetical traveller does not engender a definitive theoretical or discursive map of the domain but rather a contingent and highly provisional, backward turning path. The demoniacal plural is also used to problematise notions of an original and innovative critical voice which "speaks" the dissertation. The logic regulating the argument is the already-written, The dissertation plavs with each text (both critical texts and fictions) looking for a practice which reproduces them but in another place. My imagined (ideal?) reader wmtreat the argument as that Which. lt was not simply meant to be,will. follow.the argument and be seduced by it: an echoing. structure with dead ends, wrong turns, false entrances fictitious exits; misleading threads and deceptive lines, / AC 2018

The leper is the ultimate symbol of the social outcast. Plagued by connotations of not just contagion but of sinfulness and moral depravity, lepers have long been stigmatized and excluded from society. The Hebrew Bible declared them to be unclean, and their influence was believed to be wholly corrupting, as if their physical deformities were an external sign of their defiled souls. In the Middle Ages, those diagnosed with leprosy were made to undergo a particularly severe ritual that closely resembled the office of the dead, making them effectively dead to the world. They were then isolated from the healthy population in leprosariums, and their movements and behaviors were strictly controlled. However, their exclusion can be seen as serving a larger purpose than just the protection of normal society from infection in that it can be used by those in power as a mechanism of social control. The imputation of danger to undesirable persons of a given community ensures that they will be duly feared and ostracized. It is within this context that Italo Calvino and Umberto Eco make use of the idea of the leper as a social outlier in their novels, Il visconte dimezzato and Il nome della rosa, as a way to critique certain processes of exclusion, namely the construction and stigmatization of a social “other” as a means of maintaining social order. This report draws on the historical and literary treatments of the leper to discuss the ways in which Calvino and Eco successfully employ the image of the leper to represent the machinery of exclusion and to shed light on the continued marginalization of outcast groups down to the present day. / text

Este trabalho tem como objetivo estudar a presença da figura do leitor e a teorização do ato da leitura como elementos fundamentais das obras Museo de la Novela de la Eterna, de Macedonio Fernández, e Rayuela, de Julio Cortázar. Com base na teoria da estética do efeito, de Wolfgang Iser, e nas argumentações desenvolvidas por Umberto Eco em Lector in Fabula, tentaremos descrever a forma em que se dá a interação do leitor com os romances mencionados. No percurso do trabalho, estabelecem-se comparações entre as estratégias das obras e entre alguns pontos teóricos discutidos. A conclusão aponta as particularidades das ficções que, ao romper com a tradição literária e, consequentemente, com os hábitos de leitura, devem incorporar as orientações necessárias para que a tentativa do leitor de concretização da obra não se veja frustrada. / This thesis aims to study the presence of the figure of the reader and the theorization of the act of reading as central elements in the novels Museo de la Novela de la Eterna, by Macedonio Fernández, and Rayuela, by Julio Cortázar. Based on Wolfgang Iser's theory of the aesthetics of effect and on Umberto Eco's arguments in Lector in Fabula we describe how the reader interacts with these novels. Throughout the thesis we establish comparisons between the novels' strategies and some of the theoretical points discussed. The conclusion points towards the particularities of fictions that, because they break away from the literary tradition and, thus, from reading habits, must incorporate the necessary guidelines so that the reader's attempt of concretization of the work is not frustrated. / Este trabajo tiene como objetivo estudiar la presencia de la figura del lector y la teorización del acto de la lectura como elementos fundamentales da las obras Museo de la Novela de la Eterna, de Macedonio Fernández, y Rayuela, de Julio Cortázar. De acuerdo a la teoría de la estética del efecto, de Wolfgang Iser, y a las argumentaciones presentadas por Umberto Eco en Lector in Fabula, intentaremos describir la forma en que sucede la interacción del lector con los romances mencionados. En el desarrollo del trabajo, se establecen comparaciones entre las estrategias de las obras y entre algunos puntos teóricos discutidos. La conclusión apunta a revelar particularidades de las ficciones que, al romper con la tradición literaria y, consecuentemente, con los hábitos de lectura, deben incorporar las orientaciones necesarias para que el intento del lector de concretización de la obra no resulte frustrado.

Esse estudo trabalha com as formulações de Umberto Eco sobre a abertura poética e os limites da interpretação, as quais caracterizam um modelo de teorização sobre a plurissignificação/ambiguidade das obras artísticas e o entendimento de que as estratégias semióticas que essas obras veiculam não permitem toda sorte de interpretação, sendo necessário percorrer a intenção da obra e transformar o leitor empírico em estratégia textual (a noção de leitor-modelo). Além disso, o estudo defende que o pensamento econiano, ao privilegiar a atividade de interpretação como sendo uma negociação entre a intenção da obra e a intenção do leitor(-modelo), possa oferecer um tipo de aparato crítico-teórico que contribua, em sentido amplo, para as reflexões acerca do entendimento da figura do leitor em formação projetada em contextos de ensino de literatura. De modo a percorrer esses intentos, dividimos nossa pesquisa em quatro capítulos: o primeiro deles volta-se para a formulação principal sobre o modelo teórico-crítico econiano; o segundo, contém exemplos de experiências interpretativas que almejem uma aplicação do modelo em questão; o terceiro, foca-se na função do leitor no domínio desse modelo, segundo o qual o leitor passa a ser uma estratégia interpretativa; e o quarto capítulo delineia uma noção de autonomia do leitor que caiba nesse mesmo contexto. Outra parte importante do nosso estudo é a das “Considerações iniciais”, em que comentamos sobre as escolhas que orientaram a pesquisa em tela e também sobre as principais limitações filosóficas e teóricas do pensamento econiano visitado. / This study works with the notions of openness and the limits of interpretation formulated by Umberto Eco. These notions characterize a model of theorization of plurisignification/ambiguity of artistic works and also the understanding that the semiotic strategies which these works present do not allow for every kind of interpretation, being it necessary to percuss the intention of the text, and to transform the empirical reader in a textual strategy (the notion of model reader). In addition this study proposes that Eco’s critical/theoretical model, since it gives special attention to the activity of interpretation as a negotiation between the intention of the text and the intention of the (model)reader, might contribute in a broad sense to the understanding about the reader as beginner which is placed in literary teaching contexts. In order to undergo these attempts, we divided our research in four chapters. The first one targets the main formulation about Eco's critical/theoretical model. The second contains examples of interpretative experiences that aim at applying the theoretical model in question. The third focuses on the role of the reader in this model’s scope, in which the reader becomes an interpretative strategy. The fourth chapter delineates a notion of the reader’s autonomy that fits the same context. Another important part of our study is the “Initial considerations” in which we comment both on the choices that guided the research on screen and on the main philosophical and theoretical limitations of the Eco's thoughts. / Este estudio trabaja con las formulaciones de Umberto Eco sobre la abertura poética y los límites de la interpretación, las cuales caracterizan un modelo de teorización sobre la plurisignificación/ambigüedad de las obras artísticas y el entendimiento de que las estrategias semióticas que esas obras conducen no permiten toda la suerte de interpretación, siendo necesario recorrer la intención de la obra y transformar al lector empírico en estrategia textual (la noción de lector modelo). Además, el estudio sostiene que el pensamiento econiano, cuando favorece la actividad de la interpretación como una negociación entre la intención de la obra y la intención del lector(-modelo), puede ofrecer una especie de aparato crítico-teórico que contribuya, en sentido amplio, con la reflexión sobre la comprensión de la figura del lector en formación diseñada en los contextos de enseñanza de la literatura. Con el propósito de recorrer dichos intentos, dividimos nuestra investigación en cuatro capítulos: el primero de ellos se dirige para la formulación principal sobre el modelo crítico-teórico econiano; el segundo contiene ejemplos de experiencias interpretativas que pretenden una aplicación del modelo en cuestión; el tercero se centra en la función del lector en el dominio de dicho modelo, en el cual el lector pasa a ser una estrategia interpretativa; y el cuarto capítulo delinea una noción de autonomía del lector que corresponde a ese mismo contexto. Otra parte importante de nuestro estudio es el de las “Consideraciones iniciales”, en que comentamos sobre las elecciones que orientaron la presente investigación y también sobre las principales limitaciones filosóficas y teóricas del modelo econiano analizado.

Collage is presented as an allegoric art-form sui generis, considering allegory itself as an open-ended form of art. The research provides a suggestion to a different understanding of collage i.e.: as a catalyst for a search for structure and semiotic relationships in an attempt to overcome a constant disordered expansion of an intertextual web and hermeneutic possibilities; and as an open work, providing multi-layered meanings. As an open work collage is typified by the prominent role of its "readers", its ambiguity and the infinite net of references it summons. Collage may be conceived as a bridge between modernism and postmodernism, structuralism and post-structuralism; as a model for constant innovation and suppleness; as a stimulator for meta-artistic questions, acceptance of "soft" universals and reevaluation of the role of the Other within an artwork. Works by Jasper Johns, Michal Na'aman, Dina Hoffman and myself exemplify these ideas. / Visual Arts / M.A. (Visual Arts)