This thesis examines the symbolism of food in the Italian narrative during the economic miracle of the 1950s and 1960s. It explores how food and hunger in selected texts reflect historical, social, and anthropological changes during Italy's transition from an agricultural to an industrial nation. Through works of Pier Paolo Pasolini, Italo Calvino, Luciano Bianciardi, Luigi Meneghello and Fabrizia Ramondino the study analyses the representation of food, or lack thereof, to criticise the emerging consumer society, reflect on the concept of homeland and emotions such as nostalgia, and examines generational, gender and class differences. The thesis further explores the inventions of traditions, as well as the connection between myth and tradition in relation to food culture. The selected literature primarily consists of works where food appears to be less relevant on first reading. At last, the aim of this thesis is to work out the strong symbolic power of food, especially for this period and in these works, and to demonstrate to what extent "si può parlare del cibo o attraverso Il cibo" (Ghiazza, Silvana: Le diverse funzioni del cibo nel testo letterario, p. 10).

This study explores the relationship between poetry and politics in Books 1 and 15 of Ovid’s Metamorphoses. Vergil had refashioned the concept of the golden age to better resonate with Roman values, and Ovid in turn responds to Vergil by making his own golden age free from law, seafaring, and warfare (Met. 1.89-112). Ovid’s golden age clearly foils his ‘praise’ of Augustus in Book 15 (819-70), and thus challenges Vergil’s innovations. Ovid closely connects his demiurge (opifex, 1.79), who created the conditions necessary for the existence of the golden age, to himself (15.871-9); they together display the potency of poetic power. Poesis is different than the power of empire, which is inherently destructive: Jupiter terminates the golden age (1.113), and Augustus’ accomplishments are only ostensibly ‘peaceful’ (15.823, 833). Ovid suggests that the power of poesis remains beyond the destructive reach of Augustus, since Rome’s power is limited to the post-golden, chaotic world, and that poesis enjoys the status of eternality which Rome and Augustus claimed to possess themselves.

Le présent travail de recherche se propose d’étudier comment se décline le concept d’entre-deux dans El Pasajero de Cristóbal Suárez de Figueroa, en prenant pour point de départ l’épineuse question de l’appartenance générique de cette œuvre. La première partie de cette étude définit les influences diverses dont s’abreuve le texte. Par-delà l’inspiration italienne, le texte plonge ses racines dans un substrat folklorique hispanique réaffirmant ainsi la prégnance du concept d’entre-deux dans la prose figuéroène. Ce dernier se manifeste, en effet, dès le paratexte puisque le titre complet de l’œuvre, El Pasajero, advertencias utilísimas a la vida humana doit être lu comme une invitation à une pratique étendue de la transtextualité, une invitation que viennent confirmer les dires du meneur de l’interaction. La porosité des frontières entre réalité et fiction tend à ériger le texte en laboratoire d’expérimentation littéraire et en lieu de passage vers de nouvelles formules littéraires, aspect auquel est consacrée la deuxième partie de cette étude. Le traitement de l’espace et du temps mais aussi celui des personnages sont autant de points qui attestent de la fonction déterminante que joue le concept d’entre-deux dans la genèse de l’œuvre figuéroène. Celle-ci oscille perpétuellement entre tradition et innovation littéraires. Enfin la dernière partie de cette étude montre comment au-delà d’une certaine bigarrure, l’entre-deux confère aussi au texte figuéroen une cohérence et une homogénéité en devenant un élément structurant, à l’instar du discours sur le mérite qui sous-tend l’œuvre. Autrement dit, l’entre-deux, chez Figueroa, devient une stratégie d’écriture qui passe par différents mécanismes de glissements qui confirment la nature profondément hybride de El Pasajero. / The purpose of this PhD thesis is to study the in-betweenness concept in Cristóbal Suárez de Figueroa's El Pasajero in all its forms and will first deal with the thorny issue raised by the generic identity of the work. The first part of this study aims to define the different influences pervading the text. Besides being Italian-inspired, the text is deeply rooted in the Hispanic folk substrate, which thus testifies to the prevalence of the in-betweenness concept in Figueroa's prose. Indeed, the concept emerges as soon as one reads the paratext, for the full title of the work, El Pasajero, advertencias utilísimas a la vida humana, has to be construed as an invitation to indulge in extensive transtextual practices, as confirmed by the words of the character who presides over interaction. The porous frontiers between reality and fiction tend to transform the text into a laboratory where literary forms are experimented on and a place of exchanges leading to new literary patterns, which are the focus of attention in the second part of the study. The treatment of space and time and characterization all contribute to underlining the key role played by the in-betweenness concept in the genesis of Figueroa's work. The latter keeps wavering between literary tradition and innovation. Finally, the last part of the study shows that beyond the colourful patchwork, in-betweenness gives consistency and homogeneity to Figueroa's text by becoming a structuring principle, like the discourse on merit inscribed in the work. In other words, in Figueroa's work, in-betweenness is the cornerstone of a writing strategy based on different slippage mechanisms that account for the profoundly hybrid nature of El Pasajero.

The major theme of this thesis is {\clq}qCourtly and moralistic literature and Spanish aristocratic society of the Golden Age``. The goal is to portray european courtly-moral literature, which described aristocratic society of 16th and 17th century. Thesis is devided into six chapters, each presents one of the essential works of art which have influenced the behaviour of the society of the court and which have contributed to the mentality changes of the noble class. The reader thus gains not only a comprehensive picture of Spanish courtly literature and culture of the Golden Age, but of the Spanish courtly society as a whole.

abstract: ABSTRACT Mexican Golden Age Cinema materialized the narratives of identity, unity and morality that became the obligated point of reference to understand social stability and mexicaness during the post-revolutionary period. Hence, film stars evolved into cultural icons that embodied the representation of patriarchal order as a synonym for nationalism. However, dissident depictions that challenged carefully tailored heteronormative roles were as much a part of the post-revolutionary reality as was the attempt to manufacture a utopic heterosexual family on screen, that functioned as a metaphor for national reunification under the law of the father/president of the Mexican Republic. Nonetheless, even when an distinguished member of the Mexican star system, Sara García´s queer performativity of her quintessential sainted mother and even more revered grandmother characters highlights fissures in the effort to naturalize sexual passivity and heterosexual motherhood as the core of Mexican women identity. Furthermore, García took advantage of her romanticized butch characters in order to revert lesbian invisibility in movies where she portrait roles that exemplified sapphic households. In most of García's films masculine presence became redundant, hence challenging male privilege. Not very far from her own reality, García's queer women of a certain age, involved in female marriages, contested the post-revolutionary discourse of stability and mexicaness even in the heteronormative realm of Golden Age Filmmaking. Regardless of her queerness, unlike any other transgressive figure, Sara García became a national icon in her time and her image continues to hold relevance in current Mexican popular culture. More than five decades after her death young generations are still familiar with her legacy and her image has evolved into the representation of the nostalgia for tradition and alleged "more simple" times. / Dissertation/Thesis / Ph.D. Spanish 2014

The purpose of the present work is to analyze the function of three major conventional scenes, broadly termed topoi, in three pastoral plays: the Aminta of Tasso, Guarini's Pastor Fido and the Bergerie by Montchrestien. The initial part of this study presents the basic features of pastoral drama in the last quarter of the sixteenth century in both Italy and France. It is concerned especially with some of the theoretical dicta expressed at that time and with the manner in which they may have influenced the handling of major dramatic scenes by different playwrights. Particular attention is devoted to the acrimonious querelle that took place around the Pastor Fido. The successful defense of Guarini's tragicommedia pastorale was, in fact, of great significance in the development of the pastoral dramatic genre because it guaranteed the dignity of pastoral tragicomedy alongside the established forms of tragedy and comedy. The main part of the dissertation is a detailed textual study of three major recurring scenes in pastoral drama; namely, those involving Cupid, the Golden Age theme and the Satyr. The use of each of these famous topological structures reveals, of course, the dramatist's conception of them and, more importantly, his audience's expectations. Whether a particular topos is elaborated more decoratively than dramatically, it must have an integral function in the structure of the play. Contrary to the entrenched opinion on pastoral drama, these were plays that were written in order to be staged, an important fact which is too often forgotten and only recently, thanks to the work of such critics as Clubb, Igliozzi and Dalla Valle, has been given due emphasis. / Arts, Faculty of / English, Department of / Graduate

This thesis investigates and examines the manifestations of ideology in paratexts, specifically concentrating on forewords and afterwords in Czech translations of novels written during the Spanish Golden Age and translated into Czech between 1948 and 1989. To uncover and classify each display of ideology, a new methodology was proposed. Its creation was based on research documented in the theoretical part of this thesis which discusses translatological concepts, studies ideology and censorship and characterizes the literature of Spanish Golden Age. The translatological concepts covered in this thesis are: the communicative model and praxeology of Anton Popovič, André Lefevere's concept of rewriting, and the paratext theory of Gérard Genett. The functionality of the proposed methodology was tested in the thesis's empirical part, in which nine paratexts were analyzed. On the basis of this paratext analysis, the trends of each ideology manifestations were established as well as factors that contribute to their presence.

The aim of my master’s thesis is to study how of nationalism was expressed in Swedish and Danish paintings c. 1850 to 1865. In both Sweden and Denmark there were strong feelings of nationalism in the 19th century. The development towards a modern nation state meant that people began to feel like citizens of a nation rather than subjects to a king. In the words of the Irish-American anthropologist and political scientist Benedict Anderson they had the feeling of being in an imagined community.  I examine how nationalism was expressed, what factors influenced the portrayal of national feelings and the purpose of choices of subject. The final question is if there are differences between the countries and, if any, possible reasons. The time period I have chosen is the time between the two Slesvig wars in Denmark, which is now often seen as the latter part of the Danish Golden Age. It is also the period when many Swedish painters chose to travel to Düsseldorf to study painting and the Düsseldorf school became especially important in genre and landscape painting, often with nationalistic subjects. My study is divided into four themes, Mythology, Monarchs, People and Nature, covering different aspects of life and also of different categories of painting. For each theme I examine one painting by a Swedish artist and one by a Danish artist using Panofsky’s iconological method.  I include other paintings and texts for reference.  The expression of nationalism shows similarities between the countries, such as use of old Norse mythology and genre paintings of rural people in traditional costumes. Landscape paintings reflected the geographical differences between the countries. Current events, in particular the Slesvig wars for Denmark, also left their mark on nationalism and found their way into art.

During the nineteenth-century “Golden Age” of children’s literature, many British writers conceptualized childhood through the lens of restorative nostalgia, writing books that attempted to re-create an idealized version of childhood that never actually existed. This has led critics of children’s literature from this era to characterize many Victorian authors’ depictions of childhood as a fictionalized adult product that serves to colonize child readers, interpellating them into adult narratives and ideologies. Edith Nesbit was well aware of this tendency, and in The Story of the Treasure Seekers (1899), she attempts to subvert it with her child narrator, Oswald Bastable. With Oswald, Nesbit works to create a version of childhood that crosses what she calls the “great gulf” separating adult writers and child readers by activating “contraband memory.” Contraband memory is, for Nesbit, memory lacking the cloying nostalgia that makes other authors’ versions of childhood falsely idealized. Oswald begins the novel seeking to mimic the idealized memories he finds in children’s books, stealing them and reshaping them to fit his everyday life. But he soon discovers that many of these stolen memories do not play out in real life as they do in books, and Oswald ends the novel with an archive of unidealized memories that offer readers a model of resistance to the literary colonization common in children’s literature. By archiving his childhood memories before they have time to be distorted by adult nostalgia, Oswald creates the kind of contraband memory that Nesbit feels will lead to something new: the representation of more realistic versions of childhood.

This is a study about María de Zayas y Sotomayor, a seventeenth century Spanish writer who has slowly but surely started to become one of the most read and researched female writers of her time among current scholars. Zayas’s work is that of a baroque writer and as such her critics are notorious for having divergent views about her work. The purpose of this study is to discern the reason behind the controversy that exists about her narrative. The present study is an attempt to elucidate the ambiguity around the feminist views Zayas has been adjudicated. Taking into consideration her context as a female writer amidst a patriarchal society and her social status as a member of the nobility, this study analyses some of the apparent contradictions that critics underscore to support their conclusions. It has been the purpose of this study to include a diverse group of critical views in order to come to a conclusion about her literary opus: her only known dramatic play La traición en la amistad followed by her two collections of short stories Novelas amorosas ejemplares and Desengaños amorosos. Additionally, this study considers other realms of study that would benefit from a more profound study by future researchers.