The music of Benjamin Britten is both inspiring and intriguing: inspiring, because his music can move the listener; intriguing, because his use of triadic harmonies and rhythmic settings seems at once free, flexible, and spontaneous yet sensible and appropriate in representing the mood of the text. Although many of Britten’s harmonies are traditional in nature, e.g. major and minor triads, it is difficult, almost impossible or cumbersome at best, to assign Roman numerals to his harmonies because his manner of chord progression does not always conform to functional theory. In my analyses, I will demonstrate that the logic behind Britten's harmonic progressions can be explained through two types of neo-Riemannian transformation theories, namely Richard Cohn's Four Hexatonic Systems and Leonhard Euler's Tonnetz. In the case of the "Spinning Scene" from The Rape of Lucretia, Hindemith’s "Table of Chord-Groups" will be used to explain the presence of harmonies that are not part of the four hexatonic systems. Throughout, Schenkerian graphs will be presented to illustrate how the underlying structure and overall harmonic design of each piece work in conjunction with the emotion of the text. In addition, I will show that his rhythmic manipulations, when coupled with the meaning behind his chord progression, vividly paint the emotion of the text, as well as the state of mind of the poet or the character in an opera.

Cette thèse s'inscrit dans le cadre de l'étude de deux sujets concernant les problèmes d'évolution liés au p-laplacien. Le premier sujet concerne l'étude du comportement asymptotique des solutions bornées lorsque le temps $t\to+\infty$. Quant au deuxième sujet, il porte sur l'étude de la non existence des solutions positives non triviales. Cette thèse se répartit en trois chapitres. Le premier chapitre est consacré à une introduction générale. Le deuxième chapitre porte sur l'étude de la convergence, lorsque $t\to+\infty$, des solutions bornées d'une équation parabolique associée au p-laplacien dans un intervalle borné avec des conditions aux limites du type soit Dirichlet, Neumann ou Robin. Ce travail était l'objet d'un article \cite{hauer-convergence-2012} accepté pour publication dans « Nonlinear Differential Equations and Applications NoDea ». Le dernier chapitre concerne l'étude de la non existence des solutions positives des équations paraboliques associées au p-laplacien avec un terme de convection et un potentiel singulier. La deuxième et quatrième section du Chapitre 3 reprennent un article \cite{Hauer:2012fk} accepté pour publication dans le journal « Archiv der Mathematik ». La deuxième sous-section de la Section 4 du Chapitre 3 contient un résultat qui améliore le travail \cite{Goldstein-Rhandi-weighted-hardy-11} de G. Goldstein, J. Goldstein et A. Rhandi et le travail \cite{MR1616905} de J. P. García Azorero et I. Peral Alonso concernant la non existence des solutions positives. Ce résultat n'est pas encore publié / This thesis is dedicated to the study of two subjects in the field of evolution problems associated with the $p$-Laplace operator. The first subject is concerned with the study of long time behavior of bounded solutions and the second subject is devoted to the study of nonexistence of positive nontrivial solutions. The first chapter of this thesis is devoted to a general introduction to the p-Laplace operator and a résumé of this thesis. The first chapter is written in French. Chapter 2 is dedicated to the study of convergence as the time $t\to+\infty$ of bounded solutions of evolution problems associated with the p-Laplace operator on a bounded interval with homogeneous Dirichlet, Neumann, or Robin boundary conditions converges. The results of Chapter 2 are contained in article \cite{hauer-convergence-2012}, which was published in the journal « Nonlinear Differential Equations and Applications NoDea ». Chapter 3 is devoted to the study of nonexistence of positive nontrivial weak solutions of parabolic equations associated to the p-Laplace operator with a convection term and a singular potential. The results of Section 3.2 and Section 3.4.1 of Chapter 3 are contained in article \cite{Hauer:2012fk}, which was accepted for publication in the journal « Archiv der Mathematik ». The results of Section 3.4.2 of Chapter 3 are not yet published

This dissertation begins from the problem that is built into realism as a literary genre: its commitment to capturing the unfiltered circumstances of human life will always be at odds with the artifice of its representational constructs and its fiction. In this study, I consider visuality as a central, productive part of this problem and seek intensely visual moments within realist novels where realism wages its own struggle with itself as it attempts to navigate its limitations and push forward its possibilities. These moments pause the narrative as they prioritize picture over action. As descriptive moments work to render visual images through words on the printed page, they are fraught with realism’s struggle to use the artifice of fiction as a means for approximating an ostensible reality. Facing this difficulty, realist practitioners take up vastly different strategies. In this project, I investigate why and how visuality is deployed so differently by those who chose to write in this mode. I seek that which is piercing in the nineteenth-century realist novel by locating moments of crisis and tension, both within the plot and also within the strategies of the stories’ delivery. These are moments where the novel becomes troubled by the visual, revealing the potential and limit of the image. In realism, visuality encompasses a broad and varied array of strategies, including instances of enargeia and ekphrasis, passages that seek to evoke a sense of place or milieu through a rich catalog of visual detail, expressive self-renderings in the dialog and inner monologs of the characters, explorations of the embodied act of seeing, and moments where perception fails or visual description exposes itself as insufficient. I consider a small group of canonical authors: George Eliot, Thomas Hardy, Henry James, and Joseph Conrad, who are of critical importance to this genre and to nineteenth century realism, as it moves towards modernism. By examining moments in their novels where descriptive imagery is at its most acute, I seek to explain how moments of intense visuality are crucial nodes where each author, using unique and distinctive methods, negotiates the problem of realist representation.

Cette thèse est dédiée à l'étude d'opérateurs de composition pondérés sur plusieurs espaces fonctionnels sous fond du problème du sous-espace invariant. Cet important problème ouvert pose la question de l'existence pour tout opérateur sur un espace de Hilbert, complexe, séparable de dimension infinie, d'un sous-espace fermé, non-trivial et invariant par cet opérateur. La première partie est consacrée à l'étude spectrale et à la caractérisation des vecteurs cycliques d'un opérateur de composition à poids particulier sur L^2([0,1]^d) : l'opérateur de type Bishop, introduit comme possible contre-exemple au problème du sous-espace invariant. Les seconde, troisième et quatrième parties abordent ce problème sous un autre aspect : celui de l'universalité d'un opérateur. Ces opérateurs universels possèdent la propriété d'universalité : la description complète des sous-espaces invariants d'un opérateur universel permettrait de répondre au problème du sous-espace invariant. Déterminer l'universalité d'un opérateur repose sur l'établissement de propriétés spectrales fines de l’opérateur considéré (théorème de Caradus). Dans ce but, nous établissons des propriétés spectrales ad-hoc de classes d’opérateurs de composition à poids sur L^2([0,1]), les espaces de Sobolev d’ordre n, sur les espaces de Hardy du disque unité et du demi-plan supérieur, permettant de déduire des résultats d’universalité. Nous obtenons aussi une généralisation du critère d’universalité. Dans la dernière partie, nous donnons une caractérisation des opérateurs de composition rsid16415432 inversibles et une caractérisation partielle des opérateurs de composition isométriques sur les espaces de Hardy de l’anneau / In this thesis, we study classes of weighted composition operators on several functional spaces in the background of the invariant subspace problem. This important open problem asks the question of the existence for every operator, defined on a complex and separable infinite dimensional Hilbert space, of a non trivial closed subspace invariant under the operator. The first part is dedicated to the establishment of the spectrum and the characterization of cyclic vectors of a special weighted composition operator defined on L^2([0,1]^d) : the Bishop type operator, introduced as possible counter-example of the invariant subspace problem. The second, third and fourth part approach the problem from the point of view of universal operators. More precisely, universal operators have the universal property in the sense of the complete description of all the invariant subspaces of a universal operator could solve the invariant subspace problem. A sufficient condition for an operator to be universal (Caradus’theorem) is given in terms of spectral properties. To this aim, we establish ad-hoc spectral properties of a class of weighted composition operators on L^2([0,1]) and Sobolev spaces of order n, of composition operator in the Hardy space of the unit disc and of the upper half-plane, which lead us to deduce universality results. We also obtain a generalization of the universality criteria mentioned above. In the last part, we give a characterization of invertible composition operators and a partial characterization of composition operators on the Hardy space of the annulus

This thesis is about Thomas Hardy's presentation of marriage and divorce in his last novel Jude the Obscure. It presents how Hardy as a representative of his time reflected important ideologies such as marriage, free union, and divorce.

Poets such as Thomas Hardy, Augusta Webster, and Amy Levy portray prostitutes who seem guiltless about their choice of profession. Hardy's Amelia seems to symbolize the mutation of a pure country girl into a soiled disciple of evil; yet in the poem the changes in her life brought on by prostitution are evident in her drastically changed physical appearance and mannerism. Webster's Eulalie is an intelligent and well-spoken woman who undermines the stereotypical generalizations about prostitutes, relocating the source of the Great Social Evil from her profession to the institutionalized educational failure that trains women for nothing better than housekeeping. Levy's unnamed Magdalen, disease ridden and dying, may resemble a fallen woman. However, her lack of regret over the out-of-wedlock relationship with a man would make her an unrepentant prostitute in the eyes of the Victorians and she openly points to the real unmentionable of Victorian prostitution—the male client.

An operator-theoretic formulation of the interpolation problem posed by Nevanlinna and Pick in the early twentieth century asks for conditions under which there exists a multiplier of a reproducing kernel Hilbert space that interpolates a specified set of data. Paul S. Muhly and Baruch Solel have shown that their theory for operator algebras built from W*-correspondences provides an appropriate context for generalizing this classic question. Their reproducing kernel W*-correspondences are spaces of functions that generalize the reproducing kernel Hilbert spaces. Their Nevanlinna-Pick interpolation theorem, which is proved using commutant lifting, implies that the algebra of multipliers of the reproducing kernel W*-correspondence associated with a certain W*-version of the classic Szegö kernel may be identified with their primary operator algebra of interest, the Hardy algebra. To provide a context for generalizing another familiar topic in operator theory, the study of the weighted Hardy spaces, Muhly and Solel have recently expanded their theory to include operator-valued weights. This creates a new family of reproducing kernel W*-correspondences that includes certain, though not all, classic weighted Hardy spaces. It is the purpose of this thesis to generalize several of Muhly and Solel's results to the weighted setting and investigate the function-theoretic properties of the resulting spaces. We give two principal results. The first is a weighted version of Muhly and Solel's commutant lifting theorem, which we obtain by making use of Parrott's lemma. The second main result, which in fact follows from the first, is a weighted Nevanlinna-Pick interpolation theorem. Other results, several of which follow from the two primary results, include the construction of an orthonormal basis for the nonzero tensor product of two W*-corrrespondences, a double commutant theorem, the identification of several function-theoretic properties of the elements in the reproducing kernel W*-correspondence associated with a weighted W*-Szegö kernel as well as the elements in its algebra of mutlipliers, and the presentation of a relationship between this algebra of multipliers and a weighted Hardy algebra. In addition, we consider a candidate for a W*-version of the complete Pick property and investigate the aforementioned weighted W*-Szegö kernel in its light.

Dans cette thèse, nous étudions l’équation parabolique non linéaire ∂ t u = ∆u + a |x|⎺⥾ |u|ᵅ u, t > 0, x ∈ Rᴺ \ {0}, N ≥ 1, ⍺ ∈ R, α > 0, 0 < Ƴ < min(2,N) et avec une donnée initiale u(0) = φ. On établit l’existence et l’unicité locale dans Lq(Rᴺ) et dans Cₒ(Rᴺ). En particulier, la valeur q = N ⍺/(2 − γ) joue un rôle critique. Pour ⍺ > (2 − γ)/N, on montre l’existence de solutions auto-similaires globales avec données initiales φ(x) = ω(x) |x|−(2−γ)/⍺, où ω ∈ L∞(Rᴺ) homogène de degré 0 et ||ω||∞ est suffisamment petite. Nous montrons ainsi que si φ(x)∼ω(x) |x| ⎺(²⎺⥾)/⍺ pour |x| grande, alors la solution est globale et asymptotique dans L∞(Rᴺ) à une solution auto-similaire de l’équation non linéaire. Tandis que si φ(x)∼ω(x) |x| (x)|x|−σ pour des |x| grandes avec (2 − γ)/⍺ < σ < N, alors la solution est globale, mais elle est asymptotique dans L∞(Rᴺ) à eᵗ∆(ω(x) |x|−σ). L’équation avec un potentiel plus général, ∂ t u = ∆u + V(x) |u|ᵅ u, V(x) |x |⥾ ∈ L∞(Rᴺ), est également étudiée. En particulier, pour des données initiales φ(x)∼ω(x) |x| ⎺(²⎺⥾)/⍺, |x| grande, nous montrons que le comportement à grand temps est linéaire si V est à support compact au voisinage de l’origine, alors qu’il est non linéaire si V est à support compact au voisinage de l’infini. Nous étudions également le système non linéaire ∂ t u = ∆u + a |x|⎺⥾ |v|ᴾ⎺¹v, ∂ t v = ∆v + b |x|⎺ ᴾ |u|q⎺¹ u, t > 0, x ∈ Rᴺ \ {0}, N ≥ 1, a,b ∈ R, 0 < y < min(2,N)? 0 < p < min(2,N), p,q > 1. Sous des conditions sur les paramètres p, q, γ et ρ nous montrons l’existence et l’unicité de solutions globales avec données initiales petites par rapport à certaines normes. En particulier, on montre l’existence de solutions auto-similaires avec donnée initiale Φ = (φ₁, φ₂), où φ₁, φ₂ sont des données initiales homogènes. Nous montrons également que certaines solutions globales sont asymptotiquement auto-similaires. Comme deuxième objectif, nous considérons l’équation de la chaleur non linéaire ut = ∆u + |u|ᴾ⎺¹u - |u| q⎺¹u, avec t ≥ 0 et x ∈ Ω, la boule unité de Rᴺ, N ≥ 3, avec des conditions aux limites de Dirichlet. Soit h une solution stationnaire à symétrie radiale avec changement de signe de (E). On montre que la solution de (E) avec donnée initiale λh explose en temps fini si |λ − 1| > 0 est suffisamment petit et si 1 < q < p < Ps = N+2/N−2 et p suffisamment proche de Ps. Ceci prouve que l’ensemble des données initiales pour lesquelles la solution est globale n’est pas étoilé au voisinage de 0. / In this thesis, we study the nonlinear parabolic equation ∂ t u = ∆u + a |x|⎺⥾ |u|ᵅ u, t > 0, x ∈ Rᴺ \ {0}, N ≥ 1, ⍺ ∈ R, α > 0, 0 < Ƴ < min(2,N) and with initial value u(0) = φ. We establish local well-posedness in Lq(Rᴺ) and in Cₒ(Rᴺ). In particular, the value q = N ⍺/(2 − γ) plays a critical role.For ⍺ > (2 − γ)/N, we show the existence of global self-similar solutions with initial values φ(x) = ω(x) |x|−(2−γ)/⍺, where ω ∈ L∞(Rᴺ) is homogeneous of degree 0 and ||ω||∞ is sufficiently small. We then prove that if φ(x)∼ω(x) |x| ⎺(²⎺⥾)/⍺ for |x| large, then the solution is global and is asymptotic in the L∞-norm to a self-similar solution of the nonlinear equation. While if φ(x)∼ω(x) |x| (x)|x|−σ for |x| large with (2 − γ)/α < σ < N, then the solution is global but is asymptotic in the L∞-norm toe t(ω(x) |x|−σ). The equation with more general potential, ∂ t u = ∆u + V(x) |u|ᵅ u, V(x) |x |⥾ ∈ L∞(Rᴺ), is also studied. In particular, for initial data φ(x)∼ω(x) |x| ⎺(²⎺⥾)/⍺, |x| large , we show that the large time behavior is linear if V is compactly supported near the origin, while it is nonlinear if V is compactly supported near infinity. we study also the nonlinear parabolic system ∂ t u = ∆u + a |x|⎺⥾ |v|ᴾ⎺¹v, ∂ t v = ∆v + b |x|⎺ ᴾ |u|q⎺¹ u, t > 0, x ∈ Rᴺ \ {0}, N ≥ 1, a,b ∈ R, 0 < y < min(2,N)? 0 < p < min(2,N), p,q > 1. Under conditions on the parameters p, q, γ and ρ we show the existence and uniqueness of global solutions for initial values small with respect of some norms. In particular, we show the existence of self-similar solutions with initial value Φ = (φ₁, φ₂), where φ₁, φ₂ are homogeneous initial data. We also prove that some global solutions are asymptotic for large time to self-similar solutions. As a second objective we consider the nonlinear heat equation ut = ∆u + |u|ᴾ⎺¹u - |u| q⎺¹u, where t ≥ 0 and x ∈ Ω, the unit ball of Rᴺ, N ≥ 3, with Dirichlet boundary conditions. Let h be a radially symmetric, sign-changing stationary solution of (E). We prove that the solution of (E) with initial value λ h blows up in finite time if |λ − 1| > 0 is sufficiently small and if 1 < q < p < Ps = N+2/N−2 and p sufficiently close to Ps. This proves that the set of initial data for which the solution is global is not star-shaped around 0.

This dissertation follows a collection of agentive objects around and through the networks of humans and nonhumans in four disparate works of English literature: the Anglo-Saxon poem The Dream of the Rood, William Shakespeare's narrative poem The Rape of Lucrece, Thomas Hardy's novel The Woodlanders, and Philip Pullman's trilogy His Dark Materials. Applying the emergent discourses of object-oriented analyses, I posit the need for a critique that considers literary objects not as textual versions of real-world objects but as constructs of human imagination. What happens when we treat nonhuman or inanimate objects in literature as full characters in their own right? What work do nonhumans do to generate the story and the characters? How does our understanding of the human characters depend on the nonhuman ones? Most importantly, what motivates the agency of the fictive nonhuman? I argue that in this particular collection of texts, nonhuman agency stems from authorial nostalgia for the Garden of Eden: a time long past in which humans, nonhumans, and God existed in perfect harmony. Each text preserves this collective memory in a unique way, processing the myth as the author's cultural moment allows. The Dream of the Rood chapter uncovers the complex network of mirrors between the poet, the fictive Dreamer, the True Cross who speaks to the Dreamer, and the reader(s) of the poem. I use Jacques Lacan's stages of psychosexual development to trace the contours of this network, and I demonstrate how the poet's Edenic vision takes the form of an early medieval feast hall in heaven in which God presides over a banquet table like Hrothgar over Heorot. The Rape of Lucrece chapter posits that a series of domestic actors (weasels, wind, door locks) join with various "pricks" in the poem in an attempt to protect Lucrece from her rapist, Tarquin. Through these objects, I investigate the limits of women's speech and its efficacy before concluding with a consideration of the poem's Edenic vision, a Humanist paradise-on-earth, in the guise of the Roman Republic. The next chapter follows a shorn section of hair through The Woodlanders as it performs various functions and is assigned responsibility and power by several different human characters in the novel. The hair acts within a network of "man-traps" that illustrate the dangers of human artifice in an industrial era, and it reveals to readers Hardy's certainty that we will never reclaim Eden in our postlapsarian world. Finally, I navigate the fantastic worlds of His Dark Materials with the aid of three powerfully agentive objects: a golden compass, a subtle knife, and an amber spyglass. The first and second, I insist, resist not only their user's intentions but also their author's, because they are imbued with so much life and power that the narrative cannot contain them. The spyglass, by contrast, performs exactly as it was designed to do, and reveals the secret of the perfectly symbiotic world of the creatures called mulefa, who model for us a very contemporary new Eden that is populated by hybrids, sustained by materialism and sensuality, and presided over by earthly individuals rather than an omniscient Creator. Pullman's trilogy brings us back to the Garden but insists that our fallen state is our triumph rather than our tragedy.

This thesis is concerned with explicating the role of language in mobilising action through management emails. Situated within the context of organisational change in a globalised manufacturing business, the project is framed by behavioural observations from management scholars Palmer and Hardy (2000) of mobilisation strategies that utilise linguistic resources since they: (a) involve a sense of obligation or inclination in directives; (b) show how co-operation will produce mutual benefits; (c) construct desired actions as legitimate, beneficial or inevitable; and (d) use past or anticipated meanings, for or against certain actions. Systemic Functional Linguistics is the underlying framework employed to provide a theoretically principled account of the intuitively derived observations from Palmer and Hardy (2000) which are applied to a sample of twenty-seven email texts, through corpus- and text-based analysis. A major finding is that the representation of action is enacted interpersonally through the verbal group. This view complements experientially dominated accounts of the verbal group which focus on the tense system. Further, action is found to be motivated through the negotiation of evaluative stance. By relating the grammar of the verbal group as well as other resources to the discourse semantics of Appraisal, modulation (of obligation or inclination) is found to be enabled by both negative as well as positive judgements of capacity. Specifically, judgements of capacity are re-interpreted as invocations of high obligation as managers seek to mobilise (further) positive performance. The analysis demonstrates that elements in the verbal group (complex) and Appraisal co-opt action through enabling positioning of the writer, in terms of assessing and grading categorical meanings, manipulating interpersonal time, or foregrounding solidarity. A significant contribution to the thesis is an extension of the system of GRADUATION: FOCUS (Hood, 2004a) through the demonstration of how resources of the verbal group negotiate expectations of appearances and achievements. This study has also extended the resources of GRADUATION: FORCE by applying it to the management context. The practical contribution of the study is that these insights may more explicitly inform management training and enable managers to participate more effectively within their community of practice.