In spite of over three hundred years of commentary on Molière's plays, one area of research has been neglected by scholars, namely the role of language in the creation of comedy. Of those critics who have analysed Moliere's use of language, the majority have limited their focus to a small number of plays and do not consider what makes his discourse comic. Even more surprising is the fact that virtually no Moliériste has attempted to view Molière's language from the perspective of modern literary and linguistic theory. Consequently, the aim of this thesis is to explore the extent to which contemporary theory elucidates, or perhaps even obscures, our understanding of Moliere's language. While critics in the past have tended to apply a single theory to his plays, we will consider whether a multi-theoretical approach can best account for the range of Moliere's linguistic humour. The analysis of the comedies will be informed by post-Saussurean theories of language, many of which have never been applied to Moliere's work before. The first part of the thesis, entitled 'Language and Society' will address a long-standing debate which continues to divide Molièristes as to the nature of his comedy. Whereas W. G. Moore and Rene Bray have portrayed Moliere as an actor and director, whose primary aim was to amuse his audience, this theatricalist position has been challenged in recent years by the socio-critical theories of James Gaines, Paul Benichou, Larry Riggs and Ralph Albanese. We will consider whether it is possible to reconcile these two opposing approaches through an examination of parody. The second part of the thesis moves from the notion of language as representational to the focus on the ludic function of language games, and discusses whether these represent a retreat into a fantasy world or whether they have a subversive role. Finally, we will turn from the conscious humour of language games to the comedy of the unconscious, in which characters accidentally reveal more than they intend in their speech. The thesis concludes with a recognition of the extent to which recent critical theories may help inform our reading of the comic dramatist.

This thesis offers a Bakhtinian perspective on the operation of discourse in critical practice. Bakhtin's account of the individual's relation to language provides the basis for an examination of the ways in which discourse operates as a constraint upon and motive for acts of interpretation. In this my thesis breaks with the dominant use of Bakhtinian theory in which it is deployed as a means of analysing the operation of discourse in literary texts. In what follows I begin with an account of Bakhtin's sociolinguistics. Having established the theoretical framework for my analysis I move on to characterise the discourses of the heteroglossia in Britain in the period 1900 to 1930. For ease of analysis my account is divided into two sections. In the first of these the discourses operating at the societal level are discussed whilst the second section is concerned with the discourses which operated in literary critical circles at this time. In the third section of this work I offer an intermediate synthesis via an analysis of the operation of the discourses identified in preceding section in the practice of leading literary critics from this era. This section also enables me to offer a fuller account of the various discourses informing critical practice at this time. In the fourth section I examine the criticism generated by Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness in the period 1899 to 1930 and offer a detailed account of the ways in which the discourses identified in previous sections operate as constraints upon the act of criticism. More general works on Conrad from this period are also analysed. In my Conclusion I step back from the minutiae of critical practice and offer an account of some of the problems associated with adopting a Bakhtinian perspective on the processes of criticism. I end with a brief statement of the value of Bakhtinian theory as a basis for critical practice.

Habilitationsschrift--Heidelberg, 1966. / Bibliography: p. 131-138.

Habilitationsschrift--Heidelberg, 1966. / Bibliography: p. 131-138.

Ferdinand Masing's Thesis (doctoral)--Leipzig, 1878. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references.

Despite the steady amount of research that has gone into the life and mind of Viennese music theorist Heinrich Schenker (1868-1935) in recent decades, certain facets of his thinking continue to puzzle scholars. These include the question of how a thinker nowadays highly regarded for his considerable powers of insight into the music of Bach, Mozart, and Beethoven came to hold views that were bigoted, odious, and militantly German-nationalist. This thesis confronts the issue by recapturing Schenker’s hitherto uncharted engagement with one of the phenomena of modern life that he vocally rejected: music journalism. Although a profession that is today considered as duly coexisting with the musical academy that Schenker’s analytical practice helped to shape, he was far less tolerant of what was written about music in the only mass medium of its day. This study offers a close reading of a variety of archival sources that include an unpublished essay on music criticism by the theorist as well as his diary and correspondence, most of which is newly accessible through Schenker Documents Online. In order to situate his thinking within the cultural hothouse of his day, my research also draws on an selection of newspaper articles, mostly on the subject of criticism, that Schenker deemed significant enough to file with his own papers. As a result of this procedure, this study establishes Schenker’s trepidations about music journalism and assesses their context. It reveals his critical view of journalism as a manifestation of individualism and democracy escalating alongside the rapid social and artistic transformations that he witnessed after the turn of the twentieth century. It also illustrates his increasingly agitated perception of music journalism as directly damaging his career. Finally, this thesis demonstrates how, in the course of the 1910s, Schenker came to conflate his antagonism towards one particular journalist, German critic Paul Bekker, with his embrace of German nationalism. By engaging not only with Schenker’s writings but also his reading materials, this study locates his thinking within that of his contemporaries and, as a result, helps us make sense of some of his often opaque assertions about art, society, and criticism.

This thesis investigates the Medicean ability to present divergent messages to different audiences through the manipulation of art and architecture of the Palazzo Medici. I examine several works of art commissioned and authored by the Medici. First, Donatello’s bronze David, located in the Medici Courtyard, is interpreted through the traditional Christian perspective as seen by the vicini, making the Medici appear pious, reverent, and religiously devout. This work is also interpreted from the amici point of view using ancient and contemporary authors to trace the development of ideas amongst the circle of Classically educated friends of the Medici. Second, Donatello’s bronze Judith and Holofernes, located in the adjacent Medici Garden, is examined in the same way to highlight the divergent message of humility juxtaposed with pride. This exercise shows the Medici had the ability to use one piece of art to set the stage for several different messages. Each type of visitor would view the same piece of art and come away with a different message specifically tailored to them, which allowed the family to increase support for their political faction and maintain their status as de facto rulers of Florence. The Medici family’s success is undisputed amongst scholars, but Cosimo’s use of the Augustan model and his use of the palace as propaganda is a subject that has been left scarcely examined. Much research has been conducted on the exterior due to what is extant, but how those in the Medici faction viewed it is non-existent. This work builds upon F.W. Kent’s position that Renaissance palace were built with several groups in mind. Through this examination of the Medici’s use of polyvalent messaging, a new understanding of the Medici emerges, which shows they were masters of propaganda and can explain why the Palazzo Medici became the model for palaces through Florence, the Italian Peninsula, and eventually greater Europe.

This study aims to better understand the realisation of grammatical tense and aspect in Maltese. We first consider the different temporal and aspectual interpretations related with the verbal and participial morphology. The main focus will then be the identification of different sorts of auxiliaries that contribute to the realisation of the morphosemantic tense and aspect features as they combine with one another and with lexical verbs and participles in periphrastic structures. The bleached semantics displayed by the forms to be discussed will be taken to be our primary identifier of an auxiliary status. Only one auxiliary expresses tense in the language, however a number of auxiliaries realize Viewpoint and Phasal aspect. The auxiliaries discussed range from invariable particles that simply realize feature-values to auxiliaries that display predicate-like behaviours, in that they are the semantic nucleus of their own clause. Three of the auxiliaries to be discussed are pseudo- verbs. While providing a much-needed account of their morphosyntactic behaviour, and what they bring to the overall constructions in which they are present, in terms of temporal and aspec- tual interpretations, we will for the first time posit that Maltese synchronically realizes perfect aspect through the use of at least two of these pseudo-verbal auxiliaries. The Lexical Functional Grammar framework will underlie this study’s morphosyntactic account, with which we aim to identify which syntactic analyses best account for the different auxiliaries as these combine with themselves and with other lexical predicates, particularly whether they come to form bi- or mono-tiered/clausal f-structures. The framework also underlies our quest in trying to better understand the (mis)matched behaviours that obtain across the morphology- semantic-syntax modules/levels of linguistic analysis, in the realm of the expression of tense and aspect in Maltese. We will see how in places, the morphological information expressed may even be contradictory to the interpretation expressed at the semantic level. This will compel us to argue that the yielded temporal and aspectual interpretations cannot always be taken to imply the realisation of tense/aspect values at the syntactic level.

"Los heroes y Minerva en la narracion del libro de caballerias Cristalian de Espana de Beatriz Bernal" adds to the advancement of knowledge due to the novelty of the topic and findings that have been incorporated throughout this research. This work analyzes the first two volumes of the Cristalian de Espana, which is one of the few novels of chivalry written by a woman in Spain during the 16th century. The main objective of this investigation resides in exploring the role of hero in relation to the classic hero portrayed in chivalry novels using Amadis de Gaula as a point of reference, and the configuration of Minerva's image as the narrator's desire of a more accurate representation of women in the Early Modern Spain literature.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Harvard University, 1998. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves [277]-297).