This project is concerned with the role of the storyteller in the production and maintenance of human community. Starting with Roland Barthes's critique of romantic and modernist authorship in "The Death of the Author," I trace the parallels between literary and political authority in the globalized modern world, and ask if they mean that a revision of the author opens space for the reimagination of political community. To answer this question, I draw on recent discussions of cross-cultural comparison and theories of oral tradition to redefine literary voice and its relationship to modern textual authority. I then refer to the distinct cultural traditions that inform McCarthy, Hurston, and Young Bear to understand each author's focus on the material aspects of human speech, such as breath. The emphasis on these aspects of voice changes its use from a way to claim metaphysical certainty and political authority into a means for physical interaction that founds community in mutual vulnerability. The individual author thus becomes a participant in conversation, rather than one who intuits truth from the margins of human society, and the storyteller or political leader is able to take part in but not define the continuance of a given community. In making this argument, I use a study of poetics to ask students and teachers of modern American literatures to see the field as a site for the ongoing legislation of American community and identity, and suggest a method for engaging in comparative analyses that allows for the distinctiveness of different literary and cultural traditions while appreciating the possibilities in their resonating responses to the modern world.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Chicago, Dept. of Classical Languages and Literatures, December 2003. / Includes bibliographical references. Also available on the Internet.

L'apostrophe est un marqueur de coénonciation et d'altérité dans le genre du discours les Questions au gouvernement. C'est une entité structurante incorporant soi-même et l'autre dans l'échange pendant l'exercice institutionnel Question / Réponse. Elle conforte la relation interpersonnelle préétablie par et dans la scène institutionnelle en déterminant les types de relations interpersonnelles sous-jacentes qui s'établissent entre les coénonciateurs dans la situation de face-à-face. / The apostrophe is a marker of coenonciation and otherness in the kind of the speech the Questions to the government. It is a structuring entity incorporating oneself and the other in the exchange during the institutional exercise Question / Answer. It consolidates the interpersonal relationship preestablished by and in the institutional scene by determining the types of subjacent interpersonal relationships which are established between the coénonciateurs in the situation of face-to-face discussion

Key words: diminution, apostrophe, pragmatics, speech situation, linguistic corpora Abstract: This master's thesis deals with pragmatic use of diminutives in French. The theoretical part defines the category of diminutives and possibilities of their classification, in particular with regards to their pragmatic use. Following Dressler-Merlini Barbaresi's model, this thesis accentuates emotional component of diminutives besides the traditional interpretation of dimensional meaning employed in child-centered speech situations, pet-centered speech situations and lover-centered speech situations. The master's thesis focuses on affected apostrophes. Between those hypocorisms in French, besides other forms, one can also find diminutive forms. The language materials for the empirical analysis are subcorpora of film subtitles and fiction in parallel linguistic corpora InterCorp aligned French-Czech. This alignment with Czech language on one hand serves to more efficient search of diminutives in pragmatic speech situations in French, on the other hand it serves to contrastive analysis. We used also monolinguistic corpora FRANTEXT and SYN2015 to demonstrate the frequency of diminutives forms in apostrophe in Czech and French. In the empirical part we analyze which diminutives are employed in those speech situations...

<p>  </p> <p>This thesis is a book length collection of poetry. Divided into four sections, the book explores longing, distance, and often reckons with absence, as the poems attempt to overcome absence to achieve connection. Each of the first three sections seek to reach connection in their own distinct ways: the first through engaging the natural world, the second through exploring universal challenges of the human condition, and the third through place and location. The fourth and final section displays connections achieved or reimagines absence as something that can take on a presence through language and art. Many poems throughout the book stem from personal experience, longing for a lover or reimagining childhood experiences. Other poems step outside of the self to explore historical figures, events, or places. Many poems blend personal experiences with historical or scientific research to arrive somewhere new. The poems range from narrative to lyric and often engage modes such as elegy, reverie, meditation, and ars poetica. The poems possess a strong attention to sound and line and often utilize horizontal whitespace to physically manifest absence or motion on the page. In <em>Smallest Excavations</em>, the poet can be thought of as a collector—of snippets of memories, factoids, places, people, and natural wonders. What is collected is changed by the speaker’s poetic rendering, just as what is collected changes and molds the speaker’s identity.</p>

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