Überarb. zugl.: Diss., 2001.

Th.--Lett.--Nice, 1984.

Diss.--Freiburg-im-Breisgau--Albert-Ludwigs-Universität, 1994. / Bibliogr. p. 241-260.

No description available.

No description available.

Crocodilians (crocodiles, alligators, caimans and gharials) have a particular category of signals used for long-distance communication of location and status. These signals are composed of acoustic and non-acoustic components with different physical properties, such as vocal sounds, slaps, infrasound, odor and postures. A survey of extant species and a comparative study of allopatric conspecific populations inhabiting different habitats show that the composition of these signals is adjusted to optimize their ability to carry information in each habitat. Studies of animals living in changing habitats and of animals inhabiting different habitats within the same geographical areas show that these adaptations are evolved differences between populations and species rather than a result of behavioral adjustments by individual animals in response to habitat structure. Details of adjustment process help elucidate information about the functions of each signal component. Experimental data obtained in the course of the study show that crocodilians have the ability to locate the sound underwater. In addition, novel information on signaling by almost all extant crocodilian species is provided. This information gives important new evidence for solving the long-standing controversy of crocodilian systematic, showing that false gharials are aberrant crocodiles rather than members of the gharial lineage. It also sheds some light on the evolution of crocodilian signaling, allowing to plot the events of signal evolution on the phylogenetic tree, and explaining the puzzling absence of small species among extant crocodilians.

This dissertation examines the reaction of many post-WWII American authors against the modernist privileging of form. These authors predicate their response upon what I call "blissful realism," a term which reflects an unlikely conflation of the critical work of Roland Barthes and Georg Lukács. I argue that Saul Bellow and John Updike are exemplars of a larger post-war contingent, including Flannery O'Conner, Bernard Malamud, Joyce Carol Oates, and John Cheever, to name a few, who use the liminal space between the waning of modernism and a burgeoning postmodern sensibility to complicate and critique modernist formalism while exploring (and often presciently critiquing) the nascent ontological inclinations of postmodernism. The characters within their novels endeavor to declare and maintain their autonomy by, through, and against their contact with a cold reality and defining ideological structures. This tension is mirrored in the aesthetic project of the authors as they work by, through, and against modernist strictures. This dissertation also offers a comparison between Bellow and Updike and the work of Ralph Ellison and Vladimir Nabokov in an effort to distinguish and delineate blissful realism from "late modernism." The concluding chapter posits that recent "post-postmodern" work draws heavily on its blissful realist predecessors. Many contemporary authors' concerns with subjective autonomy, authenticity, and notions of transcendence, in spite of postmodern declarations to the contrary, offer different sensibilities and political possibilities that turn away from irony, play, and image toward agency, meaning, and morality.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Wisconsin--Madison, 1972. / Typescript. Vita. eContent provider-neutral record in process. Description based on print version record. Includes bibliographical references.

Argues that Bellow purposefully creates ambiguity and deception using impersonal narration and free indirect discourse in order to present Herzog and The Dean's December as reflections of an ambiguous and deceptive world. The discussion of impersonal narration is based on Wayne Booth's theories about the confusion of distance resulting from impersonal narration; the discussion of free indirect discourse is drawn from a number of definitions. Utilizes a number of specific references to the texts and to criticisms of the texts to demonstrate the absence of norms and the effect that the ambiguity and deception may have on readers.

The purpose of this study was to prove that Saul Bellow‘s characters are questing heroes and to show how human quest is reflected in Bellow‘s novels „Herzog“ and „Henderson the Rain King“. Different forms of human quest in literature have been investigated referring to Ihab Hassan‘s „Selves at Risk. Patterns of Quest in Contemporary American Letters“. The method of textual analysis has been chosen for the study. The research demonstrated that both Herzog and Henderson are questing heroes searching for identity, social assertion, communication, love, understanding, self-worth and the meaning of life. The main heroes undergo a series of difficulties, loss and recovery, and finally they create identity and learn to be human��to tolerate and accept human behaviour, to live here and now.