O objetivo geral desta dissertação é interpretar o corpo enquanto instância semântica no poema O Casamento do Céu e do Inferno (1790), do poeta inglês William Blake. Sustenta-se que uma semântica profunda de TMHH instaura uma forma ativa, integrada e franca de viver. Investigaremos a concepção de corpo presente do poema a fim de validar a hipótese de que é possível ter a vida transformada pela leitura de um texto altamente poético. Essa transformação, em última instância, é uma consequência da apropriação do texto pelo leitor. Tal apropriação se dá não só pela via mental, mas de fato pela incorporação do texto literário. O trabalho será realizado com base na hermenêutica de Paul Ricoeur, especialmente na dialética da conjectura e da validação. Já o livro de artista, ramo da arte conceitual do qual Blake é visto como um dos precursores, será apresentado enquanto performance e demonstração dos sentidos de corporeidade vislumbrados pela presente interpretação do poema. Em termos de embodiment, o papel da gravura em metal do processo criativo completo de Blake abre-nos possibilidades para um amplo horizonte de metáforas relacionadas às especificidades dessa técnica quando em articulação com o poema. / The general objective of this dissertation is to interpret the body as a semantic instance in the poem The Marriage of Heaven and Hell (1790), from English poet William Blake. It holds that the depth semantics of TMHH establishes an active, integrated, and franc way of living. We will investigate the conception of a present ‘body’ of the poem to validate the hypothesis that it is possible to have lives transformed by the reading of a highly poetic text. This transformation is ultimately a consequence of the appropriation of the text by the reader. Such appropriation is not only mental, but it takes place in the incorporation, or embodiment, of the literary text. The work will be based on Paul Ricoeur’s hermeneutics, especially the dialectics of guess and validation. The artist’s book, a field of conceptual art of which Blake is seen as precursor, will be presented as performance and demonstration of the senses of corporeality foreseen in this interpretation of the poem. In terms of embodiment, the role of engraving in Blake’s complete creative process opens to a wild horizon of metaphors concerning the specificities of this art in relation to the poem.

Este trabalho analisa diferentes concepções da ideia de animalidade a partir de três obras de escritores contemporâneos: Hotel Hell, de Joca Reiners Terron; Húmus, de Paulo Bullar; e Ainda Orangotangos, de Paulo Scott. Os pontos de convergência das diversas animalidades presentes nestas obras são: a indistinção homens/animais e cidade/selva; a pele (superfície) geradora de sentidos; a relação homem/animal mediada pelo devir; a aproximação das ideias de animalidade e de mal. Os principais textos utilizados nas reflexões teóricas foram os Mil Platôs, de Gilles Deleuze e Félix Guattari, e A cultura popular na Idade Média e no Renascimento – O contexto de François Rabelais, de Mikhail Bakhtin. / This work analyses different conceptions of the animality idea from three books of contemporary writers: Hotel Hell, by Joca Reiners Terron; Húmus, by Paulo Bullar; and Ainda Orangotangos, by Paulo Scott. The points of convergence of the various animalities ideas in these books are the indistinctness of men/animals and city/jungle; the skin (surface) that generates senses; the men/animal relationship mediated by becoming; the approximation of the animality and evil concepts. The main texts used in theoretical reflections was Mil Platôs, by Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, and A cultura popular na Idade Média e no Renascimento – O contexto de François Rabelais, by Mikhail Bakhtin.

Este trabalho analisa diferentes concepções da ideia de animalidade a partir de três obras de escritores contemporâneos: Hotel Hell, de Joca Reiners Terron; Húmus, de Paulo Bullar; e Ainda Orangotangos, de Paulo Scott. Os pontos de convergência das diversas animalidades presentes nestas obras são: a indistinção homens/animais e cidade/selva; a pele (superfície) geradora de sentidos; a relação homem/animal mediada pelo devir; a aproximação das ideias de animalidade e de mal. Os principais textos utilizados nas reflexões teóricas foram os Mil Platôs, de Gilles Deleuze e Félix Guattari, e A cultura popular na Idade Média e no Renascimento – O contexto de François Rabelais, de Mikhail Bakhtin. / This work analyses different conceptions of the animality idea from three books of contemporary writers: Hotel Hell, by Joca Reiners Terron; Húmus, by Paulo Bullar; and Ainda Orangotangos, by Paulo Scott. The points of convergence of the various animalities ideas in these books are the indistinctness of men/animals and city/jungle; the skin (surface) that generates senses; the men/animal relationship mediated by becoming; the approximation of the animality and evil concepts. The main texts used in theoretical reflections was Mil Platôs, by Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, and A cultura popular na Idade Média e no Renascimento – O contexto de François Rabelais, by Mikhail Bakhtin.

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My dissertation, The Female Body, Motherhood, and Old Age: Representations of Women in Hell in Sixteenth and Seventeenth Century Japan, examines the literary and visual representations of women in hell in late medieval and early modern Japan, with particular attention to the female body, motherhood, and old age. My focus is the late Muromachi and early Edo periods, when a constellation of new hells began to be conceptualized that had serious ramifications for representation of women. I examine a group of otogizōshi texts and hell paintings of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, which were disseminated widely through different media (picture scrolls, screen paintings, and narrative texts) and which generated a set of motifs representing women in the afterlife. I relate the emergence of these motifs to the larger history of the discursive construction of the female body and the evolution of representations of hell in premodern Japan. I argue that in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, representations of women in hell in these texts and paintings shifted in their focus to domestic relationships, specifically mother-child and wife-husband relationships. This change is best exemplified by the late medieval set of gendered hells (The Hell of Barren Women, The Hell of Two Wives, and Children’s Limbo), which represent the body of the woman from three perspectives: 1) as infertile (as in the Hell of Barren Women), 2) as related to animals (such as the serpentine queen in Daibutsu no go-engi (The Venerable Origins of the Great Buddha) and the serpent-women in the Hell of Two Wives), and 3) as stigmatized or punished for excess desire/attachment in their mother-child and wife-husband relationships (as in the Hell of Two Wives). This dissertation also analyzes woman as erotic object, as mother, and as aging body from a comparative Japan-China perspective. By comparing similar motifs that emerged at approximately the same historical moments—the snake queen falling into hell in Daibutsu no go-engi with the snake queen in “Empress Xi turning into a python,” and Datsueba (Clothes-snatching Hag) with Meng Po (Lady of Forgetfulness)—I am able to highlight distinctive features of these new hells for women as well as compare the differing functions of hell shown by these Japanese and Chinese examples. In Chapter 1, “Women Falling Into Hell in Early Medieval Japan,” I analyze three early medieval tales of women journeying to and from Tateyama hell in the eleventh-century Dai Nihonkoku Hokkekyō genki and twelfth-century Konjaku monogatari shū in order to provide background for my later discussion on the new concerns for women that emerged in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. I show how the salvation of the deceased female protagonists depended on the proper rituals being performed by family members and I make clear the significance that motherhood was accorded in early medieval Buddhist tales of women in hell. I then examine how representations of women evolved and became more complex in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries with the emergence of the Hell of Barren Women, where childless women are punished, and the Hell of Two Wives, in which two serpent women coil their bodies around a man with whom they had become involved in a triangular relationship. In Chapter 2, “Barren Women Hells and Daibutsu no go-engi (The Venerable Origins of the Great Buddha),” I show how the Hell of Barren Women stresses the reproductive responsibilities of women. The representations of the Hell of Barren Women, reflecting a growing female audience in the late Muromachi and early Edo periods, are clear evidence of a belief that it is motherhood that is a woman’s passport to salvation. In Chapter 3, I examine “The Serpentine Queen and the Chinese Tale of Empress Xi Hui Turning Into a Python.” A comparison with Daibutsu no go-engi shows that the Chinese stories about Empress Xi focus more on the feelings and observations of the living, while Daibutsu no go-engi stresses the accumulation and elimination of negative karma. Chapter 4, “The Hell of Two Wives: Transformed Women and the Jealousy of Joint-Wives,” examines the motif of the “transformed woman” found in the Lotus Sutra, the eleventh-century Hokke genki, and the mid-sixteenth century Dōjōji engi, showing how a negative connection between women and the dragon-serpent body was established, and how the animalized female body relates to the question of desire. The entwined threesome in the Hell of Two Wives not only exemplifies a domestic narrative of betrayal and resentment; it also shows a transition from a general stigmatization of the female body towards a more specific condemnation of lust, jealousy, and resentment—which are all gendered female. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, women’s roles evolved to reflect a desire to maintain the stability of family. At the same time, these representations began focusing more on situations in which women’s efforts to control body or mind met with failure. Chapter 5, “Old Women as Keepers of the Borders: Datsueba and Meng Po,” analyzes two figures of hags in hell: Datsueba in Japan and Meng Po in China. While Datsueba watches over the dead as they descend to the depths of hell to receive judgment, Meng Po cares for them as they make their way out of hell to achieve reincarnation. I argue that both Datsueba and Meng Po reinforce the border of hell by depriving the deceased of their social identities, but while Datsueba punishes and purifies the deceased, Meng Po focuses on the transitional stage between death and the next life, and her memory-erasing function shows that, paradoxically, in Chinese hell deceased souls are not liberated from the basic Confucian relationships that are so important to the living.

Both the “crisis of masculinity” and “quality TV” have been popular discourses in academia in recent years. Many of these contemporary quality TV series feature male anti-heroes at the center of their narratives. This dissertation argues that the constructions of masculinity in series such as "Breaking Bad" and "The Walking Dead" are informed by the Western hero. Furthermore, the dissertation links this recourse to an arguably outmoded model of masculinity to recent crisis tendencies in the USA, most notably the recent economic downturn and the aftermath of September 11 2001. Moreover, the return of the Western hero can be understood as a process of remasculinization in light of the crisis of masculinity.

This thesis examines a problem regarding the separation of post-mortem persons into ‘heaven’ and ‘hell’, taken to mean two eternal and inescapable eschatological destinations for human persons: the former being an ultimate satisfaction of sorts, the latter being characterized by eternal misery. The question that is contemplated is whether the saved in heaven can experience their heavenly existence as genuinely blissful, whilst at the same time being aware of the sufferings of the lost – especially if the lost consists of one or more persons whom they love dearly, such as a close family member. Arguments given by Christian philosophers Thomas Talbott and William Lane Craig are analysed in order to establish whether the problem, referred to as ‘the problem of eschatological separation’, gives us reason to abandon the idea of an eternal hell and opt, instead, to endorse the doctrine of universal reconciliation. Talbott makes the claim that an eternal hell, considering the problem of eschatological separation, is a logical impossibility. Craig, on the other hand, puts forth two objections that he believes proves that hell is a logical possibility. Both of Craig’s objections are shown to be unsound, and the problem of eschatological separation is thus considered to be sufficient reason for rejecting the possibility of an eternal hell.

“Where the Shadows Lie: Finding the Other in the Spatial Depictions of the Underworld in The Book of Enoch, Inferno and Paradise Lost” answers a question of spatial behaviour in the three texts, in terms of the portrayal of the characters of Fallen Angels, who have been Othered from Heaven, in each text within the spatial context of their respective heterotopias. The spatial behaviour refers to how these characters are portrayed to act within a certain space, with that behaviour directly shaped and influenced by the space and place that the characters are depicted in. The question of spatial behaviour in this study revolves around whether the behaviour within the Othered space is that of acceptance, or of rebellion. The narrative of each text is analysed as a whole, in order to be contextualised through a Narratological analysis, as well as a Hermeneutic reading and a contextualisation within the realm of Social-Scientific Criticism. The texts are then analysed in more detail, with particular focus given to 1 Enoch 6-21, lines 1-9 and 22-57 in Inferno, and lines 33-45, 52-55, and 64-110 in Paradise Lost in order to Deconstruct their base similarities and then to answer the research question of spatial behaviour through Critical Spatiality. This analysis investigates the aspect of Thirding-as-Othering, in terms of how the Othered space is represented, and how the (Othered) Fallen Angels inhabit that space, based on the choices available to them: either, accept the imposed differentiation and division, or to resist their own “Otherness” and the Othered space that they were sentenced to. These spatial behaviours depict the choices taken by the author of each text, based on the cultural and religious values of their times and cultures, to represent the spatial behavioural options of their narratives’ characters. These options are the choice to fight against the banishment and make a space of Power out of the Othered space, or to accept being Othered and accept the Othered space for the prison it is meant to portray. This study incorporates a Narratological Analysis of The Book of Enoch, Inferno and Paradise Lost, followed by a Hermeneutical Interpretation and Social-Scientific reading. The texts are then analysed in terms of the focal points of 1 Enoch 6-21, lines 1-9 and 22-57 in Inferno, and lines 33-45, 52-55, and 64-110 in Paradise Lost, and are Deconstructed in terms of the spatial depictions of the Underworlds in order to determine the similarities in conditions, both physical and emotional, that are created by the Thirding, which is ultimately investigated, in terms of Critical Spatial Theory, in order to answer the aforementioned research question. / Dissertation (MA)--University of Pretoria, 2012. / Ancient Languages / unrestricted

"transgression" is a poetry collection with claws and nail polish. Across four acts, Reres uses a chorus of voices to interrogate the role of the transgressing woman—both present and past, privately and publicly. Transgressing, for Reres, is a performance. Moreover, it is a performance in which women have been asked, coerced—even forced—to participate for millenia. By stepping into the role of the transgressing woman deliberately, Reres turns this tradition on its head. In these pages, she shows that there is power in putting on masks and costumes, just as there is power in taking them off. The difference—between performance as power and performance as prison—resides in the freedom to choose. / Master of Fine Arts / "transgression" is a poetry collection.

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