The aim of this s tudy is to investigate the three great existential questions—anxiety, love and death—in the works of Stig Dagerman. Emphasis is placed on the novels Ormen [The Snake] (1945), De dömdas ö [The Island of the Doomed ] (1946), Bränt barn [A Burnt Child] (1948), and Bröllopsbesvär [Wedding Worries] (1949), as well as the play Den dödsdömde [The Condemned] (1948). To this end, interpretation is used in the sense given to it by Paul Ricoeur—interpretation that leads to an understanding of a double meaning. In the present case, this means that the texts' symbolic level is revealed and accorded as great an importance as the story at the surface, manifest level . The theme of anxiety is most apparent in the first novel, while the question of eroticism is central to De dömdas ö and Bränt barn. Each novel expresses a pessimistic view of erotic love as a realizable possibility. Death, which has concrete, motivational and abstract aspects , occurs in every text. Murder and suicide interact with inner, spiritual deadness. This state means acquiring a lowered or threatened inner vitality in which the psyche becomes "icebound". Inner deadness is a form of anxiety. Analysis reveals that anxiety, the complications of love and the problem of death are related to a mother figure. The mother figures in the texts are alternately the objects of destructive hatred and excessive love. Behind these mother figures is concealed the experience of a mother who has betrayed, and who is there fore the object of both aggression and longing. This longing, according to Freudian-Lacanic theory, is expressed in a desire for the mother's body, i.e. a longing fo r the lost unity with the mother in original symbiosis. Thus, the mother figure in the texts also has mythical dimensions—Mother and death are in a sense equivalent. To die is to return to the mother, but death, or the proximity of death thus also provides the opportunity for a symbolic rebirth. Both the proximity of concrete death—as in thwarted suicide attempts—and a symbolic death — as in the form of extreme self-degradation—give rise to an increased feeling of life, if only for a moment. The psychologist Robert Jay Lifton has shown that murder can be a conscious step in a process of self- destruction. Murder is in this case a phase in a search for revitaliza-tion, which is thus the ultimate aim of suicide. This phenomenon appears on the symbolic level in Dagermans works, especially in the play Den dödsdömde. The interpretation reveals that the existential question that dominates Dagerman's texts is the struggle against the threat of inner deadness. The fixation with death in the texts is, in the final analysis , an expression of a desire to live. / digitalisering@umu

The objective of this thesis is to examine the impact audiences have on the director’s process of creating a mise-en-scène and to understand the ways in which we might begin to understand and articulate such impact. I argue that the influence audiences have on theatre directors' mise-en-scenes have been ambiguous, and therefore there is a lack in a systematic approach to theatre-making. Through a detailed investigation on the arbitrary methods employed by a selected group of theatre directors, I propose that a communicative approach in capturing audiences’ expectations is necessary in shaping mise-en-scenes, directly and indirectly. More specifically, this thesis makes explicit these cognitive processes through a technical investigation, a mechanism which I propose and have graphically represented that can be used to harness the impact audiences have on theatre-making. In this thesis, the historical role and influence of the audience is discussed in Chapter One. This is followed by focusing on different of aspects of the audience, such as the attraction and captivation of audience, reception and perception of audience, and audience and culture. In Chapter Two there are two sections to define dramaturgy and mise-en-scène. I also argue that there are three key points in the communication between the audience and the theatre group: (i) audience pleasure, (ii) deadness, and (iii) distance. I present a diagram in order to suggest the relationship between the director, audience and mise-en-scène with an emphasis on their pathways in receiving audiences’ expectations. The diagram is developed throughout the thesis. In Chapter Three the study is motivated primarily by the individual styles and mise-en-scenes of Augusto Boal, Eugenio Barba, Peter Brook and Robert Lepage. Here I explore specifically the ways in which they have imagined, created, and performed mise-en-scenes, and the role audiences play in impacting their mise-en-scenes. Chapter Four is based on three case studies with the final suggested diagram at the end. As part of my research, I created and examined three case studies to support the hypothesis that audiences have an important impact on directors’ mise-en-scenes, i.e. how and why the director controls and manipulates theatrical elements. In conclusion, four main pathways for receiving audiences’ expectations are suggested.

This paper studies the perception of the Christian body during the second and third centuries CE. It engages with this question with the aid of early Christian literature from this time period, additionally containing a particular focus on how the Pauline theology of the body influenced later Christian bodily conceptions. By subjecting these works to a close reading and with the aid of an intertextual theory, this thesis attempts to ascertain whether this early Christian perception of the body was fractured in nature, and whether aspects of this division – if evident – can be derived from and ascribed to a Pauline influence. This thesis argues that corporeality was a particularly complex component within the early Christian faith, the fractured nature of which could be derived from the contrasting influences of prior Graeco-Roman and Jewish theologies. / Den här uppsatsen studerar den kristna uppfattningen av kroppen under 100- och 200-talet e.v.t. Den behandlar denna fråga med hjälp av tidig kristen litteratur från denna tidsperiod, och inbegriper utöver detta även ett särskilt fokus på hur den Paulinska teologin om kroppen påverkade senare kristna uppfattningar av det kroppsliga. Genom att utsätta dessa verk för en närläsning och med hjälp av en intertextuell teori  så försöker den här uppsatsen därmed att avgöra om denna tidiga kristna uppfattning av kroppen var motsägelsefull i sin natur, och huruvida aspekter av denna splittring – om synlig – kan härstamma från eller tillskrivas Paulinsk influens. Den här uppsatsen argumenterar för att kroppslighet var en särskilt komplex komponent inom den tidiga kristna tron, vars splittrade natur kan härstamma från de kontrasterande influenserna av tidigare grekisk-romerska och judiska teologier.