Videogame adaptations have been a staple of cinema and television since the 1980s and have had a consistent presence despite receiving overwhelmingly negative reactions. Recognising the perseverance of videogame adaptations, I examine some of the key issues and debates surrounding the genre with in-depth analysis of the source material, the machinations of the film and videogame industries, and the films themselves, specifically relating to three prominent onscreen videogame adaptations. Following an introduction to the various theories and areas of study already performed in this field, all of which I incorporate into an intricate, blended methodology, I explore issues of fidelity, localisation, and evolution that occur when adapting Sonic the Hedgehog out of the confines of its limited narrative. In examining adaptations of Mortal Kombat and Street Fighter, I explore how cinematic genres (such as the Hong Kong martial arts and American action movies) have influenced the creation of videogames and the production of their film and television adaptations. Finally, I delve into the history of zombie horror films, which influenced the Resident Evil franchise. As this became the longest-running (and, by extension, most successful) live-action videogame franchise, I explore the complex production of videogame adaptations, their critical and financial reception, and their ability to evolve into multimedia franchises. Overall, my work is designed to take videogame adaptations seriously by examining them through in-depth analysis, exploring how they convey the gameplay mechanics of their source material, analysing why they remain so popular despite their negative reputation, and by establishing an academic framework by which to discuss them with the same reverence afforded to literary adaptations.

Abstract This thesis takes an algorithmic perspective on the correspondence between modal and hybrid logics on the one hand, and first-order logic on the other. The canonicity of formulae, and by implication the completeness of logics, is simultaneously treated. Modal formulae define second-order conditions on frames which, in some cases, are equiv- alently reducible to first-order conditions. Modal formulae for which the latter is possible are called elementary. As is well known, it is algorithmically undecidable whether a given modal formula defines a first-order frame condition or not. Hence, any attempt at delineating the class of elementary modal formulae by means of a decidable criterium can only consti- tute an approximation of this class. Syntactically specified such approximations include the classes of Sahlqvist and inductive formulae. The approximations we consider take the form of algorithms. We develop an algorithm called SQEMA, which computes first-order frame equivalents for modal formulae, by first transforming them into pure formulae in a reversive hybrid language. It is shown that this algorithm subsumes the classes of Sahlqvist and inductive formulae, and that all formulae on which it succeeds are d-persistent (canonical), and hence axiomatize complete normal modal logics. SQEMA is extended to polyadic languages, and it is shown that this extension succeeds on all polyadic inductive formulae. The canonicity result is also transferred. SQEMA is next extended to hybrid languages. Persistence results with respect to discrete general frames are obtained for certain of these extensions. The notion of persistence with respect to strongly descriptive general frames is investigated, and some syntactic sufficient conditions for such persistence are obtained. SQEMA is adapted to guarantee the persistence with respect to strongly descriptive frames of the hybrid formulae on which it succeeds, and hence the completeness of the hybrid logics axiomatized with these formulae. New syntactic classes of elementary and canonical hybrid formulae are obtained. Semantic extensions of SQEMA are obtained by replacing the syntactic criterium of nega- tive/positive polarity, used to determine the applicability of a certain transformation rule, by its semantic correlate—monotonicity. In order to guarantee the canonicity of the formulae on which the thus extended algorithm succeeds, syntactically correct equivalents for monotone formulae are needed. Different version of Lyndon’s monotonicity theorem, which guarantee the existence of these equivalents, are proved. Constructive versions of these theorems are also obtained by means of techniques based on bisimulation quantifiers. Via the standard second-order translation, the modal elementarity problem can be at- tacked with any second-order quantifier elimination algorithm. Our treatment of this ap- proach takes the form of a study of the DLS-algorithm. We partially characterize the for- mulae on which DLS succeeds in terms of syntactic criteria. It is shown that DLS succeeds in reducing all Sahlqvist and inductive formulae, and that all modal formulae in a single propositional variable on which it succeeds are canonical.

Typical critical patterns for studying children’s literature, defined in this study as a written text intended for a reader up to the age of 14, make it difficult to chart generic change across a large corpus of texts. Traditionally, criticism of children’s literature focuses on cherry picked archetypes, exemplars, and the standout extraordinary. This study employs interdisciplinary methods and data sources from library science, education, and literary studies to create a method for analyzing a sample corpus of children’s literature more holistically vis-à-vis distant, macroscopic reading techniques. In this dissertation, I macroscopically read the corpus of Newbery Medal-winning texts in order to identify patterns of change in the genre of prized 20th century American children’s literature, seeking to animate this corpus of texts in different ways than is possible through microscopic analysis alone. The resulting analysis foregrounds the shared conventions of the text set, including descriptive elements, including bibliographic information, author information, publisher information, illustrative content, and length; structural elements, point of view, literary form, and select measures of text complexity; and thematic elements, including book summaries and subject analyses from a range of library, publisher, and social media databases. In addition, I consider various metrics for assessing popularity of the corpus as a whole and the ways in which popularity changes as time passes. Ultimately, in this dissertation I distantly read the corpus in conversation with existing critical understandings of the Newbery Medal, which previous critics generated using microscopic, close reading techniques, in order to investigate what changes with the introduction of distant methods. Distantly reading this corpus in conversation with existing critical understandings of the Newbery reveal that a more holistic approach to analysis paints a broader, more complete picture of the genre of prized children’s literature than microscopic, close reading alone does. Further, distant reading underscores the critical importance of explicit attention to methodology. The results that distant reading uncovers are inextricably intertwined with the methodological decisions made.

The topic of this thesis are adjectival antonyms in child-directed fiction. The primary aim of the thesis is to compare the usage of antonyms in adult fiction and child-directed fiction on the basis of a contextual co-occurrence of antonyms. The two areas of focus are the discourse functions of antonymy and the canonicity of antonyms. The thesis presents an analysis of antonyms identified in the context of 51 most frequent adjectives in a corpus of fiction written for children. The thesis is structured into three major parts. The first part provides a theoretical framework which summarizes the research of the discourse functions of antonymy and reviews the methods of measuring antonym canonicity. The second, methodological part, explains the methodology and describes the data used for the purposes of this study. The selection of data relies mostly on manual classification of the concordance lines. The third, analytical part, analyses and classifies the antonyms found in the corpus of child-directed fiction and compares them with selective samples extracted from adult fiction. A comparison of the most frequent adjectives in both corpora is also provided. Keywords: antonymy, discourse functions, antonym canonicity, ancillary antonymy, coordinated antonymy

This work is an attempt to answer one simple question: What is Hamlet? Based on the material of Hamlet translations into Russian, the dissertation scrutinizes the problems of literary canon formation, translation and textuality proceeding in two parallel directions: the historical analysis of canon formation in translation and the conceptualization of Hamlet’s textuality. The methodological framework is defined in the context of Jurij Lotman’s semiotics of culture, which is invaluable for an understanding of the mechanisms of literary evolution, the theory of translation and literary canon formation. The study examines the history of Hamlet in Russia from 1748 until the present with special attention to analysis of the canonical translations, theater productions of the Shakespearean classic and the phenomenon of Hamletism. The case study of the 1964 film by Grigorij Kozincev focuses on the problem of the cinematographic canon of Hamlet. Further, the work scrutinizes various types of representation of Hamlet in such semiotic systems as the theater, the cinema, and the pictorial arts, and also examines how Hamlet functions as a specific type of sign. The final section returns to the question of canon formation and textuality. The results of the research show that 1) the literary canon appears to be closely associated with the concepts of genre and myth, 2) in order to become canonical it is imperative for a literary text to function on the level of microcanon and to be represented in modes other than the written.

This study examines the myth of the surrogate power of canonicity by exposing the condition of liminality of the Zimbabwean short story genre within African literary canon. Building on the hypothesis that canonisation distorts literature the study postulates that literary canon produce predictable biases in construing the position of the short story. It fossilises and condenses the marginal genres to the extent that the existing canon repertoire hardly recognises them. The peripheral but de facto canon of the short story genre entertains a strong relationship of heteronomy to the mainstream/central canon. This thesis studies this relationship which determines canon formation within the African literary systems. It challenges the prevailing status quo in which the short story is polarised against other literary modes. The polarity creates a charged diametric force between the presumed canonical genres and the supposedly non-canonical short story mess. What lacks in this equation of conflicts is a sense of revival, reformation and continuity of the short story canon. The marginality of the short story canon is predicated on factors external to the genre itself, such as the influence of colonial institutions, collegiate institutions and publishers on writers. These factors pervade the dialectics of canonical marginality of the genre. The study, which argues that there is no unanimity on theory of canon, proposes Africulture, as both a theory and praxis of Afrocentricity, to function as an arbiter of short story literary reputation and consecration. The research reveres the autonomous value of African story-telling tradition which withstood the test and movement of time, in the process, surviving not only the historical-cum-cultural threat of colonial loss and canonical displacement, but also the throes and will power of new media and digital technologies. The ascendancy of the electronic short story genre to canonical status remains questionable. Critical controversies abound about the canonicity of electronic literature. The study employs Technauriture as a theoretical model for rethinking the transcendence of the electronic short story canon. The study concludes that, by virtue of its resilience, the short story ought to be treated as a wholesale and independent genre, worth of full scale appreciation. / African Languages / D. Litt. et Phil. (African Languages)

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En prenant comme point de départ l'interprétation de l'épopée homérique par Erich Auerbach, ce mémoire se consacre à la notion d'immersion fictionnelle, non sous son versant psychologique de phénomène contingent de la conscience imageante, mais sous son versant imaginaire, en tant que mythe sociétal d'immédiateté déterminant des stratégies esthétiques et médiatiques concrètes, que j'articule autour des poétiques contemporaines de construction de mondes (world building). L'enjeu est de saisir les répercussions esthétiques de ce fantasme d'une représentation qui occulterait à la fois sa médiateté et le réel-sensible, à une époque où la transfictionnalité et la transmédiaticité s'élèvent tranquillement comme modes narratifs dominants de notre culture occidentale contemporaine. Avec cette conviction que le terme d'immersion doit être replacé dans le cadre de ses effets, le premier chapitre s'affairera à démêler quelques difficultés théoriques que pose la notion en la problématisant sous l'égide des questions ontologiques de vérité et de la position phénoménologique de Sartre sur l'imaginaire. Tout en posant les outils théoriques nécessaires aux analyses subséquentes, le deuxième chapitre approfondit cette problématisation en empruntant aux théories modales des mondes possibles un cadre conceptuel opératoire, qui amènera, notamment grâce au concept formalisé de «~monde~», à concevoir la fiction comme un mouvement de distanciation. Appuyé par la lecture du roman tolkienien, le troisième chapitre tourne le fantasme d'immersion du côté d'une pulsion encyclopédique de complétude, concrétisée par des stratégies textuelles d'accumulation informationnelle et de virtualisation de données diégétiques laissées en suspens -- effets d'actualité que je qualifie d'extra-narratifs en les présentant en contraste des principes prescriptifs du \emph{muthos} aristotélicien formant une chaîne causale téléologique fondée sur une loi d'économie narrative. Le quatrième et dernier chapitre, articulé autour de la notion encore trop peu étudiée de canonicité, observe les poétiques de construction de mondes telles qu'elles se désamorcent elles-mêmes, dans le contexte des univers partagés, en engendrant des incohérences logiques donnant lieu à la tenue d'un discours auctorial-éditorial régissant les vérités fictionnelles comme moyen de maintenir l'immersivité de la représentation. L'analyse générique des comic-books de superhéros et une enquête sur la gestion éditoriale de l'univers de Star Wars permettront d'identifier les multiples modalités de délimitation de la frontière entre canon et apocryphe. En conclusion, je reviens brièvement sur la notion d'immersion, ainsi exemplifiée, en la resémiotisant comme une médiation compétitive de mise en présence de l'être. / Starting from Erich Auerbach's interpretation of the Homeric epic, this master's dissertation studies the notion of fictional immersion, not in its psychological aspect of a contingent phenomena of human consciousness, but rather in its collective imaginary sense, as a societal myth of immediacy generating concrete aesthetic and media strategies that I investigate from the standpoint of contemporary poetics of world building. The objective is to apprehend the aesthetic repercussions of this desire for a mediation that would conceal both the real and its own mediacy, in a time where transfictionality and transmedia storytelling are becoming more and more the dominant narrative modes of our contemporary western culture. Under the conviction that immersion must be looked at as a set of cultural strategies, the first chapter unravels some theorical difficulties bounded to the term by problematizing it towards ontological questions of truth and Sartre's phenomenological stance on the imaginary. While laying a necessary theorical toolset for subsequent analyses, the second chapter examines these problems by borrowing to possible worlds modal theories a set of working concepts, which will lead to the assumption that fiction is a movement of distanciation, notably with the aide of the formal concept of ``world''. Through a reading of the tolkienian novel, the third chapter directs the desire for immersion towards an encyclopedic impulsion for completeness, embodied by textual strategies such as informational proliferation and allusion to virtual diegetic data -- strategies leaving an impression of the actual that I describe as extra-narrative in contrast to Aristote's \emph{muthos} forming a teological causal chain based on a principle of an unitary narrative. The fourth and final chapter, articulated around the still too little studied notion of canonicity, observes poetics of world building as they neutralize themselves, particularly with shared universes, by generating logical inconsistencies giving birth to authorial and editorial discourses stating fictional truths as a way of maintaining the mediation's immersivity. The analysis of the superhero comics genre and an inquiry of the editorial management of the Star Wars universe will exemplify the multiple modalities of this delimitation between the canon and the apocryphal. As a conclusion, I briefly come back to the notion of immersion itself by redescribing it as a competitive mediation of presence.

Un regard sur l’actualité de cette Église laisse apparaître que la collaboration entre autorités magistérielles et théologiensparticipant à la tâche d’enseignement doctrinal et catéchétique de l’Église catholique romaine connaît quelques difficultés, a fortiori dans des sociétés davantage pluralistes et sécularisées. Parfois les recherches théologiques contribuent à mettre en péril la communion ecclésiale ou sa cohésion quant à la foi et à la théologie morale. L’instruction de la Curie romaine Donum veritatis du 24 mai 1990 intervient en doctrine et en procédure de régulation de l’exercice de la liberté et de la responsabilité du théologien catholique et les critères d’ecclésialités à respecter pour garantir la pleine communion. Ce sont les critères d’orthodoxie, d’orthopraxie, d’adhésion et de communion ecclésiale.La question du statut canonique du théologien est débattue et l’autorité catholique a dû préciser la doctrine et le statut du théologiencatholique. Le code de droit canonique latin de 1983 prévoit-il des dispositions pour la régulation de la mission du théologien enfonction de l’exigence de pleine communion ecclésiale ? Une thèse en droit canonique était nécessaire pour proposer un premierbilan sur la vocation du théologien catholique, sur l’institution de la théologie catholique, et sur l’état de vie canonique de théologiencatholique. Comment la canonicité accompagne-t-elle un fidèle qui, par l’acquisition de compétences reconnues, veut devenir unthéologien catholique ? Comment analyser l’idonéité du postulant ? Comment lui octroyer, puis si nécessaire lui retirer un mandatcanonique concernant cette mission d’Église ? Comment garantir la conscience et la liberté du théologien catholique ? En cas dedissentiment-désaccord, comment qualifier cette situation ? Donc, le théologien jouit des libertés reconnues par son Eglise mais dansles limites du devoir de communion dont traite le canon 209 §. 1 du Code latin de 1983 et le canon 12§. 2 du Code des Canons desÉglises Orientales. / A glance of the current events of this Church brings to light that the collaboration between magisterial authorities and theologians involved with the task of doctrinal and catechetical education of the Roman Catholic Church experiences some difficulties, especially in more diverse and secularized societies. Sometimes theological research contributes to put the endangerment of the ecclesial communion or its cohesiveness with regard to the faith and moral theology. The instruction of the Roman Curie Donum veritatis of May 24th, 1990 enters in doctrine and in the procedure of regulation of the exercise of the freedom and the responsibility of the catholic theologian and the ecclesiastic to be met to ensure full communion. They are the criteria of orthodoxy, orthopraxy, ecclesial membership and communion.The question of the canonical status of theologians is debated and the catholic authority is obliged to specify the doctrine and the status of the catholic theologian. Does the code of Latin canon law of 1983 foresee rules for the regulation of the mission of the theologian according to the requirement of full ecclesial communion? A thesis in canon law was necessary to provide an initial assessment of the vocation of the catholic theologian, the institution of catholic theology, and the status of catholic theologians under Canon law. How does canonicity assist a faithful who, by the acquisition of recognized skills, wants to become a catholic theologian? How does one evaluate the suitability of the applicant? How to grant a candidate the status of theologian under Canon law and, if necessary, withdraw such status for the good of the Church? How does one guarantee the consciousness and the freedom of the catholic theologian? In case of differences of opinion or disagreement, how does one qualify this situation? Thus, the theologian enjoys liberties recognized by his Church but within the limits of the duty of communion described in canon # 209 § 1 of the Latin Code of 1983 and canon # 12 § 2 of the Code of the Oriental Churches’ Canons.

Both theatre and drama were imported to Canada from European colonizing nations, and as such the canonical master-texts of European drama, particularly the works of Shakespeare, have always occupied a prominent place in Canadian theatre. This presents a challenge for living Canadian playwrights, whose most revered role model is also their most dangerous competition, and whose desire to represent the spectrum of contemporary Canadian experience on stage is often at odds with the preferences of many producers and spectators for the “classics.” Since the 1990s, a number of Canadian playwrights have attempted to challenge the role of canonical plays and the values they represent by appropriating and critiquing them in plays of their own, creating a body of work which disturbs conventional distinctions between “adaptations” and “originals.” This study describes and analyzes the adaptive dramaturgies used by recent Canadian playwrights to appropriate canonical plays, question the privileged place they occupy in Canadian culture, expose the exclusionary hierarchies they legitimate, and claim centre stage for Canadian perspectives which have hitherto been waiting in the wings. It examines how playwrights challenge, usurp, or exploit the cultural capital of the canon by “re-citing” old plays in new works, how they or their producers attempt to frame the reception of their plays in order to address cultural biases against adaptation, and how audiences respond. This study draws from and builds upon contemporary theories of adaptation and particularly (Canadian) Shakespeare adaptation, seeking an understanding of adaptation based on the motives, tactics, and efficacy of adaptation. Simultaneously, it challenges the dominance of “Shakespeare,” in critical as well as theatrical practice, by comparing appropriations of Shakespeare to appropriations of Chekhov which exhibit similar tactics and motives.