Thesis (M.A.)--Oregon State University, 2008. / Printout. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 56-57). Also available on the World Wide Web.

Shakespeare’s Shylock from the Merchant of Venice is a complex character who not only defies simple definition but also takes over a play in which he is not the titular character. How Shakespeare arrived at Shylock in the absence of a Jewish presence in early modern England, as well as what caused the playwright to humanize his villain when other playwrights had not is the subject of much debate. This thesis shows Shakespeare’s humanizing of Shylock as a blurring of the lines between Jews and Christians, and as such, a shift of usury from a uniquely Jewish problem to a human problem. This shift is then explicated in terms of a changing England in a time where economic necessity challenged religious authority and creating compassion for a Jew on the stage created compassion symbolically for Christian usurers as well.

The aim of this thesis is to introduce, justify, and apply a better framework for analysing Sherlock Holmes, one of the most adapted characters of all time. The project works to resituate the focus of those involved in studying adaptations of Sherlock Holmes from an examination of the discrete transition of a text from page to screen, to the evolution of the character as it changes across various intertexts and through time. The purpose is to show that it is the character specifically, and not the literary text with its narrative, genric, and aesthetic qualifications, that is being adapted, and that with this in mind, studying adaptations of Sherlock Holmes should involve a study of the various processes, pressures, and mechanisms that shape, change, and define the character throughout its hundreds of screen afterlives. This thesis then analyses many of these processes with the aim of contributing to our understanding of how a character like Holmes is moulded through remediation. It takes into account how the character’s indices shift and accumulate as they are variously performed. It also considers how the mechanisms of selection function to privilege certain incarnations of the character, and how that privileging becomes a part of future readings. Finally, it addresses how reception and perception by audiences influence how the character is read, and thus how it is understood. By considering all of these aspects of the evolutionary process, and by avoiding a chronological or even a linear organization of the texts under scrutiny, this work seeks to offer a more complete answer to the question of how a single source can support a multitude of varied, even contradictory adaptations and remain relevant and interesting through the years.

The purpose of this thesis is to explore the importance of the orphan hero in film and his resonance with the American people. It explores the orphan and the American identities, the archetypes found in myths, and the hero in American culture. The three heroes (Batman, Anakin Skywalker, and Harry Potter) represent certain aspects of orphan heroes: the capacity for sacrifice and the need to resist focusing on oneself. The type of hero each becomes has its source in the response he takes to his orphanhood. These young men suffered great loss early in their lives, but found the strength to sacrifice themselves for others, the ultimate sign of a hero.

The desire for heroes is a global and cultural phenomenon that gives a view into society’s very heart. There is no better example of this truism than that of the superhero. Typically, Superheroes, with their affiliation to values and morality, and the notion of the grand narratives, should not fit well into postmodernist theory. However, at the very core of the superhero narrative is the ideal of an individual creating his/her own form of morality, and thus dispensing justice as the individual sees fit in resistance to metanarrative’s authoritarian and restrictive paradigms. This research will explore Superhero comic books, films, videogames and the characters Superman, Spider-Man and Batman through the postmodernist conceptions of power, plurality, and morality.

Thesis (M.A. (English))--University of the Witwatersrand, Faculty of Humanities, 2016. / This dissertation examines how particular combinations of image and text in sequential art reflect specific social, historical and political contexts. The analysis of how meaning is constructed is done through consideration of three iterations of the Batman superhero character, and argues for an eventual postmodernisation of the character. The first case study presented is the original version of Batman as it debuted in 1939, which naturally established much of the substance from which later depictions would take their cues. The second case study used is the “camp” 1960s TV series starring Adam West, which was influenced by the highly restricted Batman comics under the Comics Code Authority established in 1954. The main case study, and the central focus of this dissertation, is Batman – Arkham Asylum (1989), a graphic novel by Grant Morrison and Dave McKean, the latest of the three iterations, which represents the eventual disruption of the enforced or constructed harmony evident in the earlier versions of the character into a fracturing and fragmentation both of the world and the self. It is a version of Batman that privileges the interiority and psychological complexity of the character, representing a culmination of the 1980s shift toward a more mature audience with its incorporation of horror, violence and mental turmoil. These three examples are compared and contrasted, showing how each constructs a particular meaning using its own unique combination of image and text. Having established a historicity for the character and having constructed an argument for how Batman as a cultural icon echoes shifts in society, the focus of the dissertation is transferred to a deeper analysis of Arkham and attempts to trace more explicitly its status as a postmodern text by examining its fragmentary nature, its use of intertextuality and how meaning in Arkham is constructed in the mind. Following this, an exploration of the central theme of madness in the graphic novel is provided in order to show how the work both critiques the representation of madness in fiction as well as how the liminal setting of the asylum functions as part of the postmodernisation of Batman by creating a “landscape of madness” where irrationality and the uncanny dominate reality, in contrast to the logical, “left-brain” treatment of Batman which had become common prior to Arkham Asylum. The analysis of the three iterations is shaped by WTJ Mitchell’s theories on imagetext relationships and additionally by the principles of sequential art outlined by Scott McCloud. The postmodern theoretical framework is informed by John Docker’s explorations of fragmentation, intertextuality, inversion and the Carnivalesque. Additionally, the writings of Lillian Feder and Michel Foucault will inform the discussion of madness in Arkham. / GR2017

Thesis (M.A.)--Bowling Green State University, 2007. / Document formatted into pages; contains v, 144 p. Includes bibliographical references.

This work processes and systematically describes the latest knowledge in the field of setting up fictitious companies in the Czech Republic, characterizes their current status and future trends. The main objective of this work is the analysis of the current level and the comparison between setting up fictitious and real company in terms of general business and legal requirements, simplicity and delays and in terms of comparison of individual legal forms and types of business representation. The theoretical part of the work deals with the procedure of starting a real company in time-sequential steps. In the practical part of the work, except for explaining the procedure setting up a fictitious company, is the attention focused on the comparison of the two procedures. There are described the individual differences in detail, which in many respects results from formal dissimilarities of the participated subjects. For this purpose was done a survey conducted among teachers of the school subject the Fictitious Company. The main aim of this work is to provide teachers, teaching the subject, with a didactical and teaching aid that, apart from the information on setting up fictitious companies, provides a comparison with the setting up of a real company. Defining the differences between setting up fictitious and real companies is an important tool for understanding the nature and the meaning of fictitious companies and help to improve the quality of teaching.

Les jeux à champ moyen (MFG) sont une classe de jeux différentiels dans lequel chaque agent est infinitésimal et interagit avec une énorme population d'agents. Dans cette thèse, nous soulevons la question de la formation effective de l'équilibre MFG. En effet, le jeu étant très complexe, il est irréaliste de supposer que les agents peuvent réellement calculer la configuration d'équilibre. Cela semble indiquer que si la configuration d'équilibre se présente, c'est parce que les agents ont appris à jouer au jeu. Donc, la question principale est de trouver des procédures d'apprentissage dans les jeux à champ moyen et d'analyser leurs convergences vers un équilibre. Nous nous sommes inspirés par des schémas d'apprentissage dans les jeux statiques et avons essayé de les appliquer à notre modèle dynamique de MFG. Nous nous concentrons particulièrement sur les applications de fictitious play et online mirror descent sur différents types de jeux de champs moyens : Potentiel, Monotone ou Discret. / Mean Field Games (MFG) are a class of differential games in which each agent is infinitesimal and interacts with a huge population of other agents. In this thesis, we raise the question of the actual formation of the MFG equilibrium. Indeed, the game being quite involved, it is unrealistic to assume that the agents can compute the equilibrium configuration. This seems to indicate that, if the equilibrium configuration arises, it is because the agents have learned how to play the game. Hence the main question is to find learning procedures in mean field games and investigating if they converge to an equilibrium. We have inspired from the learning schemes in static games and tried to apply them to our dynamical model of MFG. We especially focus on fictitious play and online mirror descent applications on different types of mean field games; those are either Potential, Monotone or Discrete.

Detective fiction highlights those qualities of masculinity that are most valuable to a contemporary culture. In mysteries a cultural context is more thoroughly revealed than in any other genre of literature. Through the crimes, an audience can understand not only the fears of a particular society but also the level of calumny that society assigns to a crime. As each generation has needed a particular set of qualities in its defense, so the detective has provided them. Through the detective's response to particular crimes, the reader can learn the delineation of forgivable and unforgivable acts. These detectives illustrate positive masculinity, proving that fiction has more uses than mere entertainment. In this paper, I trace four detectives, each from a different era. Sherlock Holmes lives to solve problems. His primary function is to solve a riddle. Lord Peter Wimsey takes on the moral question of why anyone should detect at all. His stories involve the difficulty of justifying putting oneself in the morally superior position of judge. The Mike Hammer stories treat the difficulty of dealing with criminals who use the law to protect themselves. They have perverted the protections of society, and Hammer must find a way to bring them to justice outside of the law. The Kate Martinelli stories focus more on the victims of crime than on the criminals. Martinelli discovers the motivations that draw a criminal toward a specific victim and explains what it is about certain victims that makes villains want to harm them. All of these detectives display the traditional traits of the Western male. They are hunters; they protect society as a whole. Yet each detective fulfills a certain cultural role that speaks to the specific problems of his or her era, proving that masculinity is a more fluid role than many have previously credited.