This dissertation is an extended study of how representations of violence inhabit operatic works, on a literary as well as musical level. Employing recent critical and theoretical developments in philosophy, psychoanalysis, linguistics and feminist theory, this study probes into issues surrounding gender/alterity and subject formation, as well as the aesthetics of violence within fin-de-siecle culture. The main goals of the dissertation are (1) to analyze from a philosophical and psychoanalytical point of view the notion of the feminine and its persistent conjunction with death, eroticism and music; (2) to explore various theoretical interpretations of violence within aesthetic production and the potential such violence holds for a negativity that is not only destructive but may also be considered affirmative; and (3) to offer a new interpretive approach to reading violence in opera, one that is modeled after the poststructuralist theories of the "semiotic" as developed by Julia Kristeva. The first section of the dissertation establishes the theoretical groundwork, exploring the writings of Nietzsche, Derrida, Lacan, Bronfen and Kristeva (chapters 1 and 2). An examination of expressionist poetics of negation (chapter 3) leads into the second section which comprises three case studies. Each of the operas under consideration engage issues concerning violence, representation and the feminine, and reveal three very different paths toward semiotic destabilization and negativity. "Morder, Hoffnung der Frauen, or, Overcoming the m/Other" (chapter 4) explores semiotic pulsions as "structural disjunction" both within Kokoschka's radical text and Hindemith's score, and critiques the appropriation of woman in the name of creative innovation. "The Voice of Lulu" (chapter 5) analyzes semiotic eruptions through the materiality and excessive sonority of voice, and explores its subversive effects both on subjectivity and characterization. The fmal case study, "Musical Eroticism

Thesis (Ph. D.)--West Virginia University, 2006. / Title from document title page. Document formatted into pages; contains ix, 138 p. : ill. Includes abstract. Includes bibliographical references (p. 110-118).

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Thesis (M.S.)--West Virginia University, 2003. / Title from document title page. Document formatted into pages; contains iii, 45 p. Includes abstract. Includes bibliographical references (p. 34-37).