This thesis examines the crucial diagnostic and productive roles that the concepts of minor and major practice, two interrelated modes of cultural production set out by Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari in Kafka: toward a Minor Literature (1975), have to play in the present era of ubiquitous digital technology and informatics that Deleuze himself has influentially described as the control society. In first establishing the conditions of majority and majority, Deleuze and Guattari's historical focus in Kafka is the early twentieth century period of Franz Kafka's writing, a period which, for Deleuze, marks the start of a transition between two types of society – the disciplinary society described by Michel Foucault in Discipline and Punish and the control society that is set apart by its distribution, indifferent technical processes and the replacement of the individual with the dividual in social and political thought. Because of their unique conceptual location, at the transition between societies, the concepts of majority and minority present an essential framework for understanding the impact of ubiquitous digital technology and informatics on cultural production in the twentieth century and beyond. In order to determine the conditions of contemporary major and minor practice across the transition from disciplinary to control societies, the thesis is comprised of two interconnecting threads corresponding to majority and minority respectively. Drawing on the theoretical work of Deleuze and Guattari, Friedrich Kittler and Fredric Jameson alongside pioneering figures in the historical development of computation and informatics (Alan Turing, Claude Shannon and others), material observation on the technical function of digital machines, and the close examination of emblematic cultural forms, I determine the specific conditions of majority that emerge through the development of the contemporary control era. Alongside this delineation of the conditions of majority I examine the prospective tactics, corresponding to the characteristics of minority set out by Deleuze and Guattari in Kafka, which emerge as a contemporary counter-practice within the control-era. This is carried out through the close observation of key examples of cultural production in the fields of literature, film, video, television and the videogame that manifest prospective tactics for a control-era minor practice within the overarching technical characteristics of the control-era major. Through an examination of these interrelated threads the thesis presents a framework for both addressing the significant political and cultural changes that ubiquitous computation effects in constituting the contemporary control society and determining the ways in which these changes can be addressed and countered through cultural production.

This thesis examines imagery of the subconscious throughout the works of Fedor Mikhailovich Dostoevskii and how it can be used to analyse the psychology of his characters and the author himself. While studies exist on the role of, for example, dreams in Dostoevskii’s works, this thesis aims to comprehensively examine the author’s experience and use of subconscious phenomena as a whole, and their most important role in his texts: their effect on the characters who experience them. In each chapter, one form of this imagery in Dostoevskii’s works is explained and analysed with respect to individual characters or themes, and then Dostoevskii’s own experiences of the relevant subconscious phenomenon are explored. Chapter 1 looks at imagery arising through characters’ daydreams, while the author’s recurrent theme of childhood memories is also analysed as a type of nostalgic daydream. Chapter 2 examines the ‘greyer’ area of dreamlike reality, which in itself operates at two poles: confusion between dream and reality; and reality so intense as to appear unreal. The role of the ‘unreal’ city of St Petersburg is also analysed, as well as Dostoevskii’s narrative mode of ‘fantastic realism’. Chapter 3 looks at characters’ hallucinations, while Chapter 4 focuses on the character of Goliadkin in Двойник and his decline into split personality. Chapter 5 analyses the imagery of dreams, be they of anxiety and warning, of catharsis and peripeteia, or those featuring Dostoevskii’s recurring motif of the ‘Golden Age’ of mankind. The final chapter differs slightly in form by focusing on the overarching condition of epilepsy. Analysis of the author’s principal epileptic character, Prince Myshkin in Идиот, reveals the ‘deepest’ point of subconscious imagery, the ecstatic aura. Upon examining the condition’s recorded effects on Dostoevskii, epilepsy is ultimately discerned as the origin of many of the author’s experiences of subconscious phenomena and, in turn, the imagery of the subconscious used in his works. Moreover, experiences of subconscious phenomena are found to be a vital source of literary inspiration and motivation for Dostoevskii; so the correlating imagery of the subconscious is thus able to reveal fictional characters’ deepest drives and can be used as a means to glean vital, otherwise unseen, insights into their psychology.

This thesis analyses the background in folk music, folk literature and folk art of Rimsky-Korsakov's sixth opera Sadko (1897). Attention is especially focused on the folk genre of the bylina, or Russian legendary and mythical oral epic narrative, from the field of which, uniquely in Russian opera, the plot of the opera is drawn. Furthermore, many incidental details of libretto and staging are derived from these epics, and, too, lengthy vocal extracts declaimed in the style of a typical Russian peasant bard. Rimsky-Korsakov also drew, however, on many other genres of folk music and folk art for his opera, and this thesis demonstrates that there is hardly one detail of this work, including cast list and stage directions, which does not derive from the Russian folk tradition. However, some critics have maintained that the measured oral unfolding of an epic narrative does not lend itself readily to adaptation for the stage, and that there are long periods of stasis in the action of the opera. The thesis rebuts this assertion by examining Rimsky-Korsakov's artistic and aesthetic conceptions, and by demonstrating that, through his adaptation of such epic material for the musical theatre, the composer was attempting to create a new genre of stage art, in which the conventional dramatic canons were to be set aside. This thesis, therefore, firstly analyses the genre of the bylina in detail, then studies Rimsky-Korsakov's background in the culture of his period, which led to his profound immersion in Russian folk culture. Subsequent to this, the other major sources of the opera Sadko are examined, as are Rimsky-Korsakov's collaboration with Mamontov's Private Opera Company, which premiered this work, owing to the composer's difficulties with the Imperial Theatres. Following an analysis of the score and libretto to ascertain how the composer incorporated his sources into his work, the thesis concludes with an evaluation of the alleged dramatic weakness and static quality of the score, and an analysis of whether the attempt to transfer an oral linear narrative to the stage was in fact successful.

Nabokov once said that "reality" is "one of the few words which mean nothing without quotes." He has often expressed his scepticism as to whether it is ever possible to know a thing: all one can do is to collect as many facts and data about a thing as possible, accumulate information about it and thus try to get nearer its reality. But even though one may know a lot about an object, one can never know everything about it: "It's hopeless", Nabokov says and concludes, "... we live surrounded by more or less ghostly objects." What applies to things applies in an even higher degree to persons. More often than not the complexities of their souls and characters escape us and we see not real persons, but "phantoms": images of people that are the products of our own minds and that are shaped by our own interests and expectations. Nabokov's questioning enters the provinces of metaphysics when he inquires into the nature of space and time, when he asks whether life may not be an illusion, a dream; whether life is just a succession of meaningless coincidences, or whether it has some sensible and meaningful pattern. Finally he inquires into the nature of death and poses the question whether death is indeed the end of everything. According to Nabokov, it is only the artist who, through his art, can penetrate to the true reality of things and who can answer these philosophical questions, since it is he who approaches the world free from all preconceived ideas which are imposed upon ordinary minds by custom or science or even philosophy. By using comic devices, most notably parody, Nabokov frees the reader's mind from all conventional ideas and stock responses, making it possible for him to follow his depicted artists in their exploration of true reality.

Three related elements of Nabokov's art are introduced at the beginning of the study: Nabokov's monist philosophy and the self-contained structures of his art, the necessity of the co-operation of the reader to bring the 'objective existence' of the novel into being and lastly the development of the consciousness as the measure of his characters in relation to the master consciousness Nabokov. All three of these elements are shown to depend on a law of unfulfilment operating in his work, which always seeks to match one mode with its provisional opposite. The abstract basis of this idea is then explained in terms of Nabokov's use of mirror images which (it is shown) educates the reader by teaching him what not to do before he can fully experience Nabokov's deeper structures. The three-fold mirror basis of his work (the artist - the work - the reader) is next related to the tripartite Hegelian method of philosophy. Hegel's ideas are shown to be explainable in mirror terms and the accordance between both writers is demonstrated. The unfulfilling theme is identified with the antithetic phase of the syllogism. These Hegelian and mirror insights are then applied to two novels: The Gift and The Real Life of Sebastian Knight. The conclusion seeks to define the experience of the reader's apprehension of Nabokov's art using the Hegelian vocabulary that has been developed. This study demonstrates that Nabokov evolved an informal yet developed metaphysic which must be understood as an avenue to the meaning of his art. The three-fold Hegelian formula, arrived at through the discovery of the role of unfulfilment in his work, provides the Nabokov reader with an indispensable key to the solution of Nabokov' s "riddles with elegant solutions".

This thesis is dedicated to the proposition that ideology is a spectrum through which the work of Vladimir Nabokov has not previously been considered. It is the first unambiguous attempt at a reading which foregrounds questions of politics and ideology, and one which does not conform to the intentional narrative of the author’s self-designated political provenance. In this sense, it represents an original contribution to the field. The work of Louis Althusser, in addition to other critics under the aegis of Marxist criticism such as Pierre Macherey and Fredric Jameson, are used to interrogate issues of ideology in Nabokov’s early career; a period between 1926-1939 which coincides with the publication of his first Russian novel to the completion of his first in English.

In Albanian, there is more than eight hundred Latin and Romance loanwords. The suggested chronological stratification is following: 1) Latin loanwords, 2) Balkan-Romance loanwords, 3) loanwords from the time of Via Egnatia and 4) Venetian loanwords. By the chronological classification of the words is decisive both the phonetic development of the word and the semantical point of view. Many loanwords went through dramatical phonetic development, which can be characterised by neutralisations and syncopes. The oldest Latin loanwords are those from the field of religion, craft, construction or transport; in the Balkan-Romance phase we find many pastoral words, names of the plants and animals or names of the body parts, some cultural words, marine words or some articles of daily use. The study of Latin loanwords offers a new view on the ethnogenesis of Albanian people and the question of their Illyrian origin. Together with the interdisciplinary view (history, archeology, zoology etc.) we come to the conclusion that Albanians met Latin first in the northern part of the Balkan peninsula and later in the time of the Slavic expansions they were in an intense contact with the romanized Vlah people in the mountains of Central Balkan.

The purpose of my research is to investigate the processes and mechanisms of semantic change in two basic colour terms: green in English and zielony in Polish. My research methodology focuses on existing English and Polish corpora, namely the British National Corpus, the Corpus of Contemporary American English and the National Corpus of Polish. I analyze my data both synchronically and diachronically (comparing two periods of time: 1985-1994, 2001-2010). My study also evaluates the use of corpus evidence for the purpose of investigating the processes of semantic change. Various factors have caused the Basic Colour Terms (BCTs) green and zielony to form metaphorical and metonymical meanings that have been conventionalised in English and Polish respectively. These processes have long played an important role in our understanding of the surrounding world. Investigating semantic changes in these two colour terms and two periods of time is key to my cross-cultural research, and this entails answering the questions: Why do green and zielony develop different senses? What are the similarities and differences between these two colour terms? How have these two terms developed and might they develop new senses in future? Are metonymy and metaphor the only mechanisms of semantic change in green and zielony? The semantic change of each colour term is shown through a network of meanings, where all the different meanings of green and zielony are presented together with their stages of development in the form of codes. Additionally each stage is a separate prototype. The aim of the network is to show the etymological prototype and various senses (new prototypes) developing from this original sense. Moreover the number of occurrences of each prototype might indicate which meaning or meanings are most common or even central in a given language at a certain point in time. The network of meanings is a visual representation of semantic change and processes involved in it. A very detailed analysis of corpus examples provides an insight into the uses of green and zielony in English and Polish respectively. The data are analyzed both qualitatively and quantitatively. Such an approach offers a thorough analysis of the two terms in question.

This thesis presents a linguistic ethnographic study of language ideologies and identities in a multilingual, university community in Kazakhstan: a university aspiring to put Kazakhstan’s ‘Trinity of Languages’ project, aimed at developing societal tri-lingualism in Kazakh, Russian and English, into practice. Data was collected at a Kazakhstani university from 2012 to 2013, combining participant-observation and fieldnotes, audio recordings and interviews. Drawing on the concept of heteroglossia (Bakhtin 1981), the research investigates how young people draw on ideologies of separate and flexible multilingualism (Blackledge and Creese 2010) and on the often contested indexicalities of Kazakh, Russian and English linguistic resources to negotiate identities as multilingual people in Kazakhstan, particularly in contexts of performance, and stance-taking. Consideration of these ideological and linguistic resources also sheds light on Kazakhstan’s wider ‘processes of ideological transformation’ (Smagulova 2008:195) and their real-life implications for multilingual people. Furthermore, the analysis highlights how participants construct stances towards translanguaging (Garcia 2009) and suggests that acts of contextualisation, which frame interactions as being more or less ‘on-stage’ or ‘off-stage’, shape the way that speakers draw on linguistic resources and their indexical meanings, and how these contexts can afford or constrain speaker agency in the negotiation of identities.

This thesis will examine the emergence of Albanian national identity. It will analyze this process in two different phases. The first phase includes the period after the League of Prizren until the independence. The second phase starts after the independence. This thesis will try to understand this process by focusing on the intellectual activity of the Albanian intellectuals and mainly on the intellectual thoughts of three Albanian figures: Semsettin Sami, Ismail Kemal, and Fan S. Noli. These intellectuals formulated their ideas on the basis of both the process of modernization and the international context. As such, they enabled the transition from a mere ethnic Albanian identity to an Albanian national identity. The main components of the Albanian national identity analyzed in this thesis are language, territory, and myth.