The following essay discusses Herman Melville’s “I and My Chimney” (1856) as a text that engages architecture and writing as interrelated systems of signification. Fueled by a variety of historical developments, domestic architecture emerges as a powerful purveyor of meaning in the antebellum decades. Architecture, in this cultural context, is construed in analogy to writing (and, to some extent, vice versa), as creating houses-as-texts that tell stories about their inhabitants in terms of their individual, familial, and national identities. Thus conceived, domestic architecture is characteristically enlisted in the articulation and stabilization of hegemonic narratives of, e. g., gender and nationhood. Melville’s text invokes this cultural convention to cast the signifying function that architecture and writing perform as being vulnerable and in crisis. This crisis is narrated by an idiosyncratic narrator for whom the semiotic instability documented by his narrative resonates with the social and cultural vulnerability that he experiences—his authority as master of his house and family is challenged in the course of the tale, along with the structural integrity of his chimney with which he wants to symbolically reinforce his authority. I argue that this crisis of signification performs double work in the text. On the one hand, it serves to articulate the anxiety of mid-nineteenth-century cultural elites about what they perceive as a cultural decline. On the other hand, allegedly dysfunctional signification unfolds a critical potential, bringing to light things which ‘functional’ signification had worked to conceal and thereby unlocking hermetic narratives of self, family, and nation.

Permission from the author to digitize this work is pending. Please contact the ICS library if you would like to view this work.

No description available.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Catholic University of America, 1940.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Catholic University of America, 1940.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Lehigh University, 2005. / Includes vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 225-238).

Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico / O presente trabalho se constitui em uma apresentação do pensamento e sistema filosófico do holandês Herman Dooyeweerd. Nele, discutem-se os fundamentos sob os quais o autor constrói o que ele denominou de filosofia cosmonômica, identificando-se no movimento do neocalvinismo do final do séc. XIX, de Abraham Kuyper, como a tradição na qual o pensamento dooyeweerdiano está localizado. Com vistas ao oferecimento de uma introdução aos principais elementos presentes no pensamento do filósofo de Amsterdam, este trabalho está estruturado em três capítulos. No primeiro, intitulado Panorama da modernidade, faz-se uma breve discussão a respeito desse período histórico e do ideal de racionalidade advindo com ele, para em seguida, apresentar a proposta de Dooyeweerd, como uma leitura crítica da modernidade, via a denúncia do dogma da autonomia religiosa da razão. O segundo capítulo, Elementos constitutivos da filosofia cosmonômica, versa a respeito da linguagem conceitual do autor, refletindo sobre o significado de cosmonomia e seus desdobramentos para a construção de uma filosofia genuinamente cristã, que se diferencia de uma proposta escolástica. No terceiro capítulo, denominado A recepção do pensamento de Dooyeweerd no contexto brasileiro, é realizada uma análise, a partir da tradição kuyperiana-dooyeweerdiana, de possíveis modelos de relação entre o cristianismo e a cultura no Brasil. Na sequência, aponta-se a crítica dos neocalvinistas a um modelo dualista e segmentado de interação com a esfera cultural. Em contraposição a ele, é defendida uma compreensão de cristianismo como força transformadora e redentora da cultura. Em seguida, faz-se uma reflexão a respeito dos pontos de aproximação e de tensão entre a visão neocalvinista e as perspectivas teológicas da Missão Integral e da Teologia da Libertação, em uma tentativa de diálogo entre essas ricas tradições. Por fim, faz-se um balanço e avaliação de possíveis contribuições da construção dooyeweerdiana, tanto em termos acadêmicos, como é o caso do diálogo entre fé e racionalidade, e, em conversa com o desenvolvimento de uma Teologia Pública. / This dissertation constitutes itself as a presentation of the thought and the philosophic system of the Dutch Herman Dooyeweerd. In it, is discussed the foundations upon which the author built what he called the cosmonomic philosophy, identifying in the nineteenth century neocalvinsm movement of Abraham Kuyper the tradition in which the dooyweerdian thought is located. Aiming to introduce the main elements of the amsterdammer philosophers thought this work is structured in three chapters. In the first one, called Panoramic view of modernity, is made a brief discussion about this historical period, reflecting on the ideal of rationality that came with it in order to present the Dooyeweerds proposal as a critic view of modernity, by the means of his denounce of the dogma of the religious autonomy of reason. The second chapter, Constitutive elements of the cosmonomic philosophy, demonstrates the authors conceptual language, reflecting about the meaning of cosmonomic and its unfolding towards a construction of a truly Christian philosophy which differs itself of the scholastic perspective. In the third chapter, named The reception of the Dooyeweerds thought in the Brazilian context is made an analysis from a kuyperian-dooyeweerdian tradition of possible models of relation between Christianity and culture in Brazil. In the sequence, it is showed the neocalvinistic critic towards a dualistic and segmented model of interaction with the cultural sphere. In opposition to this model, is defended an understanding of Christianity as a power of transformation and redemption of the culture. Following that, a reflection is made about the convergent and divergent elements between the neocalvinstic view and the theological perspectives of Missão Integral (Comprehensive Mission) and Liberation Theology, in an attempt to establish a dialog between these traditions. Finally, it is presented an evaluation of possible contributions of the dooyeweerdian construction in academic terms as well as in the case of a faith/rationality dialog, having in perspective the developing of a Public Theology.

An understanding of the influence of Shakespeare on the structure and language of Moby-Dick is important because the plays of Shakespeare gave Melville a sudden insight into the significance of form and because his absorption of Shakespearean rhetoric enabled him to solve a serious artistic problem. In Moby-Dick Melville wished to write a work of symbolic fiction which would have both epic scope and tragic depth, but his difficulty lay in finding a structural and stylistic method which would provide the amplitude necessary to epic and at the same time could achieve the compression and verbal economy necessary to tragedy. He solved this problem by learning from Shakespeare to create a multi-layered dramatic structure and to use a dramatic language which becomes one layer of that structure. In Shakespeare's greatest plays there is a virtual fusion of form and meaning, and it is this fusion which, in its greatest moments, the language of Moby-Dick achieves.

The following essay discusses Herman Melville’s “I and My Chimney” (1856) as a text that engages architecture and writing as interrelated systems of signification. Fueled by a variety of historical developments, domestic architecture emerges as a powerful purveyor of meaning in the antebellum decades. Architecture, in this cultural context, is construed in analogy to writing (and, to some extent, vice versa), as creating houses-as-texts that tell stories about their inhabitants in terms of their individual, familial, and national identities. Thus conceived, domestic architecture is characteristically enlisted in the articulation and stabilization of hegemonic narratives of, e. g., gender and nationhood. Melville’s text invokes this cultural convention to cast the signifying function that architecture and writing perform as being vulnerable and in crisis. This crisis is narrated by an idiosyncratic narrator for whom the semiotic instability documented by his narrative resonates with the social and cultural vulnerability that he experiences—his authority as master of his house and family is challenged in the course of the tale, along with the structural integrity of his chimney with which he wants to symbolically reinforce his authority. I argue that this crisis of signification performs double work in the text. On the one hand, it serves to articulate the anxiety of mid-nineteenth-century cultural elites about what they perceive as a cultural decline. On the other hand, allegedly dysfunctional signification unfolds a critical potential, bringing to light things which ‘functional’ signification had worked to conceal and thereby unlocking hermetic narratives of self, family, and nation.

Embora haja um intervalo de mais de um século entre a publicação de Moby-Dick (1851) e a de Grande sertão: veredas (1956), o romance de João Guimarães Rosa apresenta, quer na forma, quer no conteúdo ou em seus respectivos desdobramentos alegóricos, muitos pontos em comum com o livro de Herman Melville. Produtos de literaturas periféricas de países ainda em processo de formação, essas obras são narrativas híbridas que não se encaixam na concepção original do romance moderno europeu (ou novel): ambas resgatam e transformam a épica e a tragédia, os chamados gêneros altos, para dar voz a um indivíduo que, à margem da sociedade de seu tempo, erra por um vasto espaço inóspito enquanto empenha-se em combates mortais. O propósito deste estudo é analisar, sob um ponto de vista comparativo, passos de Moby-Dick e Grande sertão: veredas, divididos de acordo com os gêneros literários que abarcam e, destacando semelhanças e diferenças, propor Moby-Dick, livro que Guimarães Rosa tinha em sua biblioteca pessoal, como uma das fontes inspiradoras do Grande sertão. / Although written more than a century apart, American Herman Melvilles Moby-Dick (1851) and Brazilian João Guimarães Rosas The Devil do Pay in the Backlands (1956) sharewhether in format, content, and even in their allegorical significancemany common traits. As products of peripheral literatures of countries undergoing a formative process, both are hybrid narratives that do not fit into the original concept of the European novel; their authors resort to, and transform, the so-called high genres, the epic and the tragedy, to give voice to an individual who, at the margin of the society of his time, wanders through a vast and hostile space whilst engaged in lethal combats. In telling his memories, that individual also outlines a survey of the society from which he is excluded, mixing his history with that of his country. The purpose of this study is to examine and compare extracts from Moby-Dick and The Devil to Pay in the Backlands, divided according to the literary genres that both used and transformed, and, by highlighting similarities and differences, identify Moby-Dick, a book that Rosa had in his personal library, as one of the literary sources for The Devil to Pay in the Backlands.