Depuis la nuit des temps, les autoconstructions médinales tunisoises ont été, souvent brutalement, rasées par les autorités. L’avènement de la révolution de 2011 a revivifié leurs réapparitions. Les dynamiter une nouvelle fois aggraverait l’hémorragie de leurs renouvellements. Les « valoriser », les regarder autrement au lieu de s’en débarrasser, pourrait ouvrir de nouveaux horizons. Les considérer dans un comparatisme avec le Déconstructivisme nous conduirait certainement vers de fructueuses voies. Comparer ainsi la complexité, le chaos, la bizarrerie formelle et géométrique déployée par la déconstruction architecturale et les caractères formels des autoconstructions de la médina, constitue l’hypothèse de travail qui nous a guidé. La problématique développée dans la thèse consiste à porter un autre regard sur les autoconstructions de la médina de Tunis, en convoquant l’esthétique du Déconstructivisme afin de le discuter, voire de l’enrichir, d’une part, et, d’autre part, de promouvoir une autre approche de l’habitat spontané dans la ville de Tunis qui serait susceptible de fournir une autre lecture du phénomène de son émergence. L’une des ressemblances de l’autoconstruction au regard de la déconstruction architecturale tient à sa non-réglementation. Il en découle des espaces totalement bizarres, des plans déformés, des angles insolites, des lignes brisées, des asymétries télescopées... L’« idée » de déréglementation des autoconstructions transgresse nos habitudes de voir l’architecture. Elles nous semblent plutôt « vides de règles » que « déréglementées » et apparaissent complètement non académiques, non architecturales et pratiquement sans architectes qualifiés. Une autre ressemblance entre les (auto-) et (dé-)constructions réside dans l’ « idée » de ruine. Témoins de déshérence générale, de précarité et de souffrances, les autoconstructions incarnent le lieu d’une défragmentation chaotique de l’architecture. Planchers abandonnés, poteaux inachevés, façades hasardeusement superposées, revêtements anarchiquement combinés, constructions complètement ou partiellement ruinées... ; tous ces fréquents aspects esthétiques entretiennent de curieuses résonnances avec beaucoup de réalisations déconstructivistes. Une troisième ressemblance réside dans l’aspect d’incomplétude. En parcourant les ruelles de la médina, nous rencontrons des talus de sables, des sacs de ciments, des graviers, des briques, des pierres, des tôles ondulées, des déchets de bois, etc. Les autoconstructions médinale tunisoise sont-elles en « voie de déconstruction » ? Pourraient-elles inspirer les architectes déconstructivistes ? Pourrions-nous proposer que le Déconstructivisme constitue le meilleur appui théorique pouvant valoriser les aspects esthétiques des autoconstructions tunisoises ? / Since the beginning of time, Tunisian autoconstructions of the medina had been brutally razed by the governement. The advent of the 2011 revolution revived the desire for their reappearances. The dynamiting them again aggravates the hemorrhage of their renewals. "Speculating", "valuing" them and looking at them differently instead of getting rid of them will open up new opportunities. In the present work, the comparative method between autoconstruction and Deconstructivism would certainly lead us to fruitful paths. The complexity, the chaos, the formal and bizarre geometry deployed by the architectural deconstruction and, from the outset, by the autoconstruction of the medina seem to us the first hypotheses. In these brief lines, we shall be content to develop other aspects. The problematic developed in the thesis is to take another look at the autoconstruction of the medina of Tunis, summoning the aesthetics of Deconstructivism to discuss it, even to enrich it, on the one hand, and on the other hand , to promote another approach to spontaneous housing in the city of Tunis that would be likely to provide another reading of the phenomenon of its emergence. One of the resemblances that combines autoconstruction with deconstruction is its ability to be deregulated. The result is totally bizarre spaces, distorted planes, unusual angles, broken lines, telescoped asymmetries, etc. The "idea" of deregulation of autoconstructions transgresses our habits of seeing architecture. More than deregulation, they seem "empty of rules" and remain completely non-academic, non-architectural and practically without qualified architects. Another resemblance between the (auto-) and (de-)construction lies in the "idea" of ruin. Witnesses general desertion, precariousness and suffering, autoconstructions embody the place of a chaotic defragmentation of architecture. Abandoned floors, unfinished posts, randomly overlapping facades, anarchically combined facades, completely or partly ruined buildings, etc ; all these frequent and current aesthetic aspects have strange resemblances to many deconstructivist achievements. A third resemblance resides in its incomplete appearance. Just by walking through the narrow streets of the medina, we come across sandy slopes, bags of cement, gravel, bricks, stones, corrugated sheets, wood waste, etc. The result is interminably open chantier. It also results in excessive use of precarious, urgent, essential building materials. Are the Tunisian autoconstructions of the medina in a "way of deconstruction"? Could they inspire deconstructivist architects ? Could we propose that Deconstructivism constitutes the best theoretical support that can enhance the aesthetic aspects of Tunisian autoconstructions ?

This thesis studies Oscar Wilde’s encounter with the idea of China in late nineteenth century Britain. After Marcartney’s embassy to the Qing court and the two Opium Wars, “China” became an increasingly negative idea in nineteenth century Britain. Wilde’s sympathy with China under such historical circumstances induces reconsiderations of the relationship among aestheticism, orientalism, and modernism. The story of how Wilde utilized and appropriated Chinese culture is at the same time a story about how orientalism was used by British aestheticism to protest against the late Victorian middle-class ideology and invent the politics of modernist aesthetics. This thesis contributes to the study of the idea of China in nineteenth century Britain in general and to the scholarship on Oscar Wilde, aestheticism and modernism in particular. Wilde’s reading of Chuang Tzu and his appreciation of the anti-realist Chinese aesthetic and visual power embodied in patterned blue and white china helped him articulate his aestheticism. The thesis examines Chinese influence on his aesthetic, social and political ideas against British middle-class ideology. The historical contexts of Wilde’s encounter with Chinese philosophy and material culture are also scrutinized to show that China, as an exotic-familiar antithesis to British bourgeois ideology, became a critical point of reference for Wilde to launch his trenchant criticism of Western society. Works and collections by other proponents of British aestheticism, such as James McNeill Whistler and Dante Gabriel Rossetti, are also included to further demonstrate China’s role in the British Aesthetic Movement. The thesis is based on three interrelated central arguments: first, British aestheticism was a reaction to the social problems and consumer culture in late Victorian Britain, and it aims to aestheticize not only art, but also life and society; second, the nineteenth-century British construction of China, especially in the translation and deciphering of Chuang Tzu in early British sinology in Chapter one, and in Chapter Two, blue and white china’s visual anti-realism widely discussed and condemned in the late Victorian mass media, crucially participated in Wilde’s theory of art and British aestheticism in general; third, Wilde’s aestheticism, by incorporating Chinese thought and aesthetics, had experimented with modernist aesthetics before it came to be known as such. Although Wilde and other British aesthetes were complicit in the orientalist construction of China when placing China and the West into a binary position, they revised the nineteenth-century British imperial discourse that subjugated and denigrated the Orient and invested in the kind of Sino-British communication advocating and incorporating the aesthetic values of Chinese culture. / published_or_final_version / English / Master / Master of Philosophy

This thesis contributes to a discussion of the specificity of Roland Barthes' post-structural theorizing by examining some of the themes and techniques of aestheticization running through his writing--reverie, pleasure, "perversion," and the hyper-textualization of the human subject and culture. Following this thread/hypothesis of aestheticization, the thesis focuses upon changing notions of the human subject and textuality presented in Barthes' writings from "The Death of the Author" (1968) until Camera Lucida (1980). The opening chapter discusses aestheticizing and decadent discourses in nineteenth century French and English literary traditions, identifies relevant intertexts, and proposes a set of key themes in aestheticizing discourses--the rejection of the natural, the quest for separation and mediation expressed in a valorization of artifice, aesthetic pleasure, private experience, and anti-utilitarian, anti-bourgeois values. The second chapter lays out the myth of an alienated literary modernity underwriting Barthes' later theorizing. Subsequent chapters follow shifts in notions of subjectivity, textuality, and aestheticizing strategies in most of the major texts produced by Barthes during this period: S/Z, The Empire of Signs, Pleasure of the Text, Roland Barthes, Fragments of a Lover's Discourse, Camera Lucida, and essays collected in The Rustle of Language and The Responsibility of Forms. The last two chapters follow Barthes' half-ludic struggle with his earlier construction of the subject as public intertext. He dramatically moves away from conventional forms of theorizing into the cultivation of subjectivity, affectivity, and personal culture to escape being captured in the public texts of the cultural Imaginary. Finally, the thesis will consider some of the contributions and consequences of his theories, including whether the cultural skepticism and pose of fatal belatedness underwriting his positions can be maintained.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Tulsa, 1987. / Bibliography: leaves 310-330.

This thesis looks at the poetics of colour in Stefan George, Rainer Maria Rilke, Wassily Kandinsky and Else Lasker-Schüler. It argues that focusing on colour words allows us to think more carefully about the sort of making that poetry, around the turn of the twentieth century, was seen to be, its purpose and effects. In doing so it thinks also about this making-about the ways that words can be seen as the material of poetry, the ways poems relate to objects, and are objects, the ways poets negotiate semantic space and communicability. While other accounts argue for the specificity of a particular period, author, or hue, I argue for the specificity of the medium, a conclusion which seems necessary when considering how these particular poets thought about and through colour. While the poets' projects differ, colour can be used in each case like a prism, to separate out their attitudes and commitments towards their medium and its place in the world. The combination of these four poets, which is, to the best of my knowledge, unique, also allows new connections to be seen, whether, facing inward, in terms of colour itself, or outward towards the commitments regarding the poem that an approach via colour exposes. The four poets share an interest in the involvement, and in some cases, aesthetic education, of readers, and in how and what we can learn through reading, and particularly reading colour. What we learn has less to do with colours and how they are experienced than to do with the constructed world of the poem and its mechanisms, and of the role we have to play in animating this world.

Submitted by Thaís de Souza Almeida null (thaisalmeida_unesp@yahoo.com.br) on 2017-07-13T04:17:28Z No. of bitstreams: 1 Dissertação - Thais de Souza Almeida.pdf: 1574627 bytes, checksum: 40886a2966bfc7063f0acaa5646cc8a2 (MD5) / Approved for entry into archive by Monique Sasaki (sayumi_sasaki@hotmail.com) on 2017-07-14T17:51:52Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 1 almeida_ts_me_arafcl.pdf: 1574627 bytes, checksum: 40886a2966bfc7063f0acaa5646cc8a2 (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2017-07-14T17:51:52Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 almeida_ts_me_arafcl.pdf: 1574627 bytes, checksum: 40886a2966bfc7063f0acaa5646cc8a2 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2017-05-29 / Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico (CNPq) / A retomada do mito bíblico de Salomé, retratado primeiramente nos evangelhos de S. Marcos e S. Mateus, fez escola no movimento simbolista francês. Salomé, que até então havia sido apresentada como mero apêndice de sua mãe, Herodíade, aparece, no final do século XIX, como a grande personificação da anima perversa, assumindo o papel que outrora pertencera a Cleópatra e Helena. O mito trata da história de Salomé, princesa da Judeia, que, sob a influência de sua mãe, realiza a dança dos sete véus para seu padrasto e, como prêmio pelo espetáculo voluptuoso, recebe a cabeça do profeta João Batista. Retratada pelos artistas de diversas vertentes da arte, essa Salomé remodelada vem representar a essência própria do movimento simbolista – a transgressão da linguagem, da temática e da atitude do poeta com relação à produção artística –, bem como a de seus poetas (e artistas) malditos, que se vêem marginalizados por uma sociedade opressora e utilitarista, e que, fazendo justiça à princesa, fazem justiça à própria classe. Assim, com a princesa-odalisca Salomé, o simbolismo afirma sua postura combativa, de luta pela libertação da poesia e da arte. Neste trabalho, pretende-se analisar e comparar as obras Salomé (1891), drama de Oscar Wilde (1854 – 1900), e Hérodiade (1864 – 1898), poema de Stéphane Mallarmé (1842 – 1898), com a finalidade de verificar se existem e quais seriam as confluências – e mesmo influências – entre as duas produções, visto que ambas foram idealizadas na mesma época e cenário – o simbolismo francês, no final do século XIX. A importância das duas obras para a arte moderna é incontestável: com Hérodiade – que, embora carregue em seu título o nome da mãe por questões sonoras, trata, na verdade, de Salomé –, vemos surgir em uma obra que transcende o episódio sanguinário da decapitação do profeta João Batista, para se debruçar sobre a imagem da princesa virginal submersa em ennui, que, em suas próprias palavras, “não quer nada de humano” e que almeja até o último e imaculado fio de seus cabelos a sua “desconcretização” enquanto ser desse mundo, na busca incessante pela Pureza. Já em Salomé, deparamo-nos com aquela que se tornou a versão “eleita” do mito, e que povoou o imaginário de diversos artistas do século XX, desde compositores até diretores cinematográficos. Em Wilde, à dança dos sete véus e à decapitação do profeta, segue-se uma dose fatal de loucura, que conduz a princesa a uma morte sanguinária. O fio condutor de ambas as produções parece culminar naquilo que Balakian (2000, p. 65) classificou como “narcisismo obsessivo, não-recompensador, porque não tem saída” ao tratar da obra mallarmeana: em Hérodiade, a autocontemplação leva a princesa à solidão, ao ennui e ao desejo de evasão do mundo; em Wilde, a autocontemplação conduz ao caminho da loucura e, em seguida, da morte. Em ambas, portanto, e cada uma a seu modo, o leitor se depara com a estéril (auto)contemplação. Seja por meio da Salomé wildeana - sanguinária, apaixonada, delirante - ou mallarmeana – pura, virginal, ennuyée – essas duas representações da princesa-odalisca se debruçaram fatalmente sobre a estéril contemplação – contemplação vã de sua própria beleza ou da beleza do outro – e, de maneira magnânima, unem-se ao sem-número de obras dedicadas à musa absoluta, topus do fin-de-siècle. / The resumption of the biblical myth of Salome, first portrayed in the Gospels of St. Mark and St. Matthew, became a school in the French symbolist movement. Salome, who has been presented as a mere appendage of his mother, Herodias, appears, at the end of the nineteenth century, as a great personification of perverse anima, assuming the role that once belonged to Cleopatra and Helen. The myth deals with the story of Salome, Princess of Judea, who, under the influence of her mother, performs a dance of the seven veils for her stepfather, and, as a reward for the voluptuous spectacle, receives the head of the prophet John the Baptist. Portrayed by artists of all segments of art, this remodeled Salome represents the essence of the symbolist movement itself – with the transgression of the poetic language, theme and attitude of the contemporary artistic productions – as well as his maudits poets (and artists). They are marginalized by an oppressive and utilitarian society, and that, by doing justice to the princess, they do justice to their own class. Thus, with a Princess-Odalisque Salome, symbolism affirms its combative stance, of struggle for the liberation of poetry and art. In this work, we intend to analyze and compare the works Salomé, drama in one act by Oscar Wilde, and Hérodiade, dramatic poem by Stéphane Mallarmé, in order to verify if there are and which would be the confluences – and even influences – between the two productions, whereas they were both idealized at the same period and scenario: the French symbolism, at the end of the nineteenth century. The importance of these two works for the modern art is unquestionable: with Hérodiade – who is actually Salomé, although bears his title from the mother's name on account of the sonority – we see the ontological mallarmean scheme emerging, one of the most important precursors of modern poetry, in a work that transcends the epithet of the bloody beheading of the prophet John the Baptist, to dwell on the image of the virgin princess submerged in ennui, who, in her own words, “doesn't want anything human”, and who longs until the last and unblemished thread of his hair to unconcretize herself while a human being in the pursuit of Purity. Meanwhile in Salomé, we came across the one that became the "elected" version of the myth, and that populated the imaginary of several artists of the twentieth century, from composers to cinematographic directors. In Wilde, to the dance of the seven veils and to the beheading of the prophet, follows a fatal dose of madness, leading a princess to a bloodthirsty death. The leading thread of both productions seems to culminate in that Balakian (2000, p. 65) classified as "obsessive, non-rewarding narcissism, because it has no way out", in relation to the mallarmean work: in Hérodiade, the self-contemplation leads the princess to solitude, to the boredom and the desire to evasion the world ; In Wilde, (self) contemplation leads to the way of madness and death. In both, therefore, and in each in its own way, we are faced with sterile (self) contemplation. Be it trhough Wilde's bloody, passionate, delirious Salomé, or Mallarmé's pure, virginal, ennuyée Hérodiade, these two representations of the princess fatally leaned on a barren contemplation – vain contemplation of their own beauty, or of beauty of other – and, magnanimously, join the countless works dedicated to the absolute muse, topus of the fin-de-siècle.

This thesis explores the way Willa Cather’s writing parallels visual art’s tenebrism – a dramatic way of illuminating a single person, object or idea by juxtaposing light against dark. Throughout her career, Cather uses this technique to convey truths relating to self realization, aestheticism, spirituality, and social awakening.

This thesis contributes to a discussion of the specificity of Roland Barthes' post-structural theorizing by examining some of the themes and techniques of aestheticization running through his writing--reverie, pleasure, "perversion," and the hyper-textualization of the human subject and culture. Following this thread/hypothesis of aestheticization, the thesis focuses upon changing notions of the human subject and textuality presented in Barthes' writings from "The Death of the Author" (1968) until Camera Lucida (1980). The opening chapter discusses aestheticizing and decadent discourses in nineteenth century French and English literary traditions, identifies relevant intertexts, and proposes a set of key themes in aestheticizing discourses--the rejection of the natural, the quest for separation and mediation expressed in a valorization of artifice, aesthetic pleasure, private experience, and anti-utilitarian, anti-bourgeois values. The second chapter lays out the myth of an alienated literary modernity underwriting Barthes' later theorizing. Subsequent chapters follow shifts in notions of subjectivity, textuality, and aestheticizing strategies in most of the major texts produced by Barthes during this period: S/Z, The Empire of Signs, Pleasure of the Text, Roland Barthes, Fragments of a Lover's Discourse, Camera Lucida, and essays collected in The Rustle of Language and The Responsibility of Forms. The last two chapters follow Barthes' half-ludic struggle with his earlier construction of the subject as public intertext. He dramatically moves away from conventional forms of theorizing into the cultivation of subjectivity, affectivity, and personal culture to escape being captured in the public texts of the cultural Imaginary. Finally, the thesis will consider some of the contributions and consequences of his theories, including whether the cultural skepticism and pose of fatal belatedness underwriting his positions can be maintained. / Arts, Faculty of / English, Department of / Graduate

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This M.A. thesis focuses on the problematic relationship between Henry James and Aestheticism and Decadence on the example of his two masterpieces-The Portrait of a Lady () and The Golden Bowl (). The main task is to document the evolution of this relationship and to point out that despite his lifelong preoccupation with these two artistic movements in his literary works, James refuses to assume a concrete stance toward them. Before the literary analysis of the two abovementioned novels, the author devotes the first chapter to a brief historical survey as to the nature and purpose of the work of art, to the development Aestheticism and Decadence in Europe and Britain, and to James's relationship with some of the proponents of British Aestheticism. The rest of the thesis is devoted to the literary analysis of the two novels through the optics of Aestheticism and Decadence. Keywords: James, Henry; Aestheticism; Decadence; literary analysis; transatlantic studies