In America today, adolescent boys do not have a structured, ritualized or guided passage From boyhood into manhood. Many young men feel unsure of their manhood even at an age that signifies the transition. This causes young males to need a self--‐created rite of passage. Tramping, the act of travelling by train, hitchhiking or foot, is one way in which young males can independently achieve manhood. This is a literary account of the lives of Jack Kerouac, Chris McCandless, and Zebu Recchia. Their personal stories allow a detailed view of the advantages and disadvantages found in a self--‐created rite of passage. While two of the accounts are successful, in Chris McCandless’s case the rite ends in a transition to death.Tramping as a rite of passage to adulthood seems effective but the danger in self--‐ creation appears to be the lack of guidance that comes in unstructured rites of passage. / Includes bibliography. / Thesis (M.A.)--Florida Atlantic University, 2013.

Places are deeply specific, and often richly resonant for us in terms of memory, emotion, and association, yet we nevertheless frequently move through them insensible of their constitution and diversity, or the shaping influences they have upon our lives. As such, place affords a vital window into the creation and experience of poetry where the poet is herself attuned to the presence and effect of places; the challenge for the scholar is to articulate place's nature and role with respect that poetry. In

This dissertation examines the early modern representation of the Ottoman sultan as merciless murderer of his own family in dramas depicting Islam that are also revenge tragedies or history plays set in empires. This representation arose in part from historical events: the civil wars that erupted periodically from the reign of Sultan Murad I (1362-1389) to that of Sultan Mehmed III (1595-1603) in which the sultan killed family members who were rivals to the throne. Drawing on these events, theological and historical texts by John Foxe, Samuel Purchas, and Richard Knolles offered a distorted image of the Ottoman sultan as devoid of pity for anyone, but most importantly family, an image which seeped into early modern drama. Early modern English playwrights repeatedly staged scenes in the dramas that depict Islam in which one member of a family implores another for pity and to remain alive. However, family killing became diffuse and was not the sole province of the Ottoman sultan or other Muslim character: the Spanish, Romans, and the Scythians also kill their kin. Additionally, they kill members of their own religious, ethnic, and national groups as family killing expands to encompass a more general self destruction, self sacrifice, and self consumption. The presence of the Muslim character, Turk or Moor, serves to underscore the political and religious significance of other characters' family killing. Part of the interest of English playwrights in the Ottoman history of family killing is that England had suffered its own share of family killing or the specter of it during the Wars of the Roses, the Babington Plot against Queen Elizabeth's life, and the martyrdom of many English during the Protestant Reformation. Through an analysis of such plays as Thomas Kyd's The Spanish Tragedy , William Shakespeare's Titus Andronicus , and Christopher Marlowe's Tamburlaine I and II , among others, I argue that English playwrights represented family killing to contend with England's past of civil war, its Protestant Reformation present, and its political future. The dramas that depict Islam portray rulers who elevate empire building above kinship bonds and who feel no pity for those in their own kinship, national, or religious groups. The plays illustrate that the emotion, pity, leads a ruler to the just action of extending mercy and that the converse, lack of pity, leads a kingdom or empire to injustice and destruction. The plays ultimately declare empire building unjust because it is pitiless, creating an argument against empire for English audiences.

<p>Bilaga: 1 partitur</p>

In this paper I have strived to provide a new view on a timeless classic of children’s literature, Winnie-The-Pooh. In psychoanalytic literary criticism concepts and theories of psychoanalysis is implemented while interpreting literature; in this paper, I have interpreted the novel incorporating concepts of the psychoanalytic schools of Sigmund Freud and Jacques Lacan while arguing that the denizens of the Hundred Acre Wood are manifestations of parts of the narrator’s unconscious. The first two sections of the paper present the theories and concepts of the two major schools of psychoanalysis as an introduction aimed at increasing the readability of the interpretation. The individual interpretations of each character are then presented separately, every section in some way involving psychoanalytic theory. Kanga, Roo, Piglet, Winnie-the-Pooh, Christopher Robin, Rabbit, Owl and Eeyore are shown to be repressed memories, feelings or thoughts. Included theoretical concepts are the Oedipus complex, the sexual development of infants, the journey of children towards consciousness, Lacanian desire and lack, Freudian dream interpretation and the conception that the unconscious is structured as language, among others.

<p>In this paper I have strived to provide a new view on a timeless classic of children’s literature, Winnie-The-Pooh. In psychoanalytic literary criticism concepts and theories of psychoanalysis is implemented while interpreting literature; in this paper, I have interpreted the novel incorporating concepts of the psychoanalytic schools of Sigmund Freud and Jacques Lacan while arguing that the denizens of the Hundred Acre Wood are manifestations of parts of the narrator’s unconscious. The first two sections of the paper present the theories and concepts of the two major schools of psychoanalysis as an introduction aimed at increasing the readability of the interpretation. The individual interpretations of each character are then presented separately, every section in some way involving psychoanalytic theory. Kanga, Roo, Piglet, Winnie-the-Pooh, Christopher Robin, Rabbit, Owl and Eeyore are shown to be repressed memories, feelings or thoughts. Included theoretical concepts are the Oedipus complex, the sexual development of infants, the journey of children towards consciousness, Lacanian desire and lack, Freudian dream interpretation and the conception that the unconscious is structured as language, among others.</p>

This dissertation examines Samuel Beckett's powerful legacy and influence on contemporary theater (on plays written and produced since 1980), and it defines this influence in both text and performance as gestures of emptiness and impotence. The plays selected for analysis here have been categorized at times as belonging to a tradition and legacy of the so-called "Theater of the Absurd," but, finding this category to be at once too restrictive and too loose, their relationship to the absurd is defined by their explicit use of and inspiration taken from Beckett's theater. Beckett's intentional and innovative use of emptiness and impotence, both spatially and textually, is decisively paradoxical: while emphasizing blank spaces and powerlessness, his plays find meaning in emptiness and unexpected control in what he called the "exploitation of impotence." In each of the plays analyzed in this dissertation, (Dans la solitude des champs de coton, Koltès; La secreta obscenidad de cada día, de la Parra; Blasted, Kane; and Laughing Wild, Durang), the explicit use of both emptiness and powerlessness are examined, and at the same time, I define what it is about each of these gestures that renders them particularly Beckettian as they relate to these works. In all of the plays examined here, gestures of emptiness and impotence become their opposites: significance and power. Four of Samuel Beckett's plays (Fragment de théâtre I, En attendant Godot, Fin de partie, and Happy Days) are compared and contrasted with the work of Koltès, de la Parra, Kane and Durang respectively. The parallels revealed, made both intentionally and unintentionally by their playwrights, demonstrate not only the certainty of Beckett's continued influence, but also reflect his persistent, widespread impact. What is shown, with broader implications for future study, is that Beckett's use of emptiness and impotence as theatrical, literary and artistic gestures have led to a new kind of hopefulness, and a new kind of artistic inspiration that is unique to our time. / text

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This thesis explores reasons and disagreement in ethics, and their connection to personal identity. I begin by arguing that reasons are open; what gives them direction is how they feature in my life and weigh with me. Of course, this does not tell us what reasons are available to a person when they act. In this connection I argue against Bernard Williams’ internal reasons thesis, showing that there are occasions when we will want to say someone has a reason to act even though they are unable to see it. Continuing with Williams, I explore moral necessity, drawing also on the works of Winch, Rhees and Cordner, arguing that Williams too readily conflates psychological with ethical limits. In particular, the possibility of recanting what we took to be necessary should inform our view of moral necessity, since it can show that I had misconstrued the nature of the limits I took myself to have reached. Following this use of recantation, I explore narrative in detail, arguing that my narrative is partly constitutive of who I am. My agency is therefore interpretive. This has ramifications for thinkers such as Christine Korsgaard and Jonathan Dancy, whose work I explore in two excursuses. In different ways, both fail to appreciate the significance of our interpretive identities.

This diploma work analyzes the contemporary rise of the number of atheists in the United States of America, basing this presupposition on numerous nation-wide surveys, primarily conducted by Gallup Poll and Pew Research Center. It goes into depth on the definition of atheism and strictly delineates the meaning of this word and the use of its alternatives in the work. Given the fact that the thesis is written by a Czech author, it also provides necessary background covering the differences between Czech atheism and American atheism. Since the work is purposely not one of literary analysis but rather of socio-political and cultural nature, reasons for this decision are given in a separate subchapter analyzing Flannery O'Connor's novel Wise Blood. History of atheism in America is touched upon in the beginning of Chapter 3, but since the fundamental focus of this work is on the contemporary state of affairs, the roots of modern atheism in America are sought after mainly in the twentieth century. In particular, the greatest causes of the weakening of church's power and the rise of secularism (or atheism, for that matter) are given as following: Madalyn Murray O'Hair's fights against church's influence in public schools and against its public funding; the argument about the non-scientific nature of belief...