My dissertation focuses on an analysis of postmodern narrative strategies in Milan Kundera's The Unbearable Lightness of Being (ULB) and The Book of Laughter and Forgetting ( BLF) . By analysing the postmodern ab/use of narrative strategies, I argue that postmodern fiction marks a decided shift from both classical realism and modernism. My dissertation has predominantly been motivated through my contention that postmodern fiction is not elitist as it has been perceived to be. Rather, I suggest that postmodern fiction ab/uses narrative strategies to deconstruct the ontological boundaries between the political and private and fiction and 'fact'. Consequently, postmodern fiction interrogates the contrived intelligibility of History. A further argument that I raise is that postmodern fiction through its (re) appropriation, subversion and use of parodic structures creates.narrative space for the Other. In order not to canonize Kundera's texts, I situate both ULB and BLF as 'nodes' within a diffuse network of intertextual discourse. My analyses of the postmodern narrative strategies in ULB and BLF, attempt to interrogate the diffuse 'nature' of postmodern fiction which resists both authorative analysis and closure. In exploring the relationship between recuperation and postmodern narrative strategies in ULB and BLF and other works and/or texts of fiction, I argue that postmodern fiction does not revel in its narrativity, it constitutes, instead, a political strategy / Afrikaans and Theory of Literature / M.A. (Theory of Literature)

This study examines how themes, conventions and concepts in Gothic discourses are remediated or developed in selected works of contemporary interactive fiction. These works, which are wholly text-based and proceed via command line input from a player, include Nevermore, by Nate Cull (2000), Anchorhead, by Michael S. Gentry (1998), Madam Spider’s Web, by Sara Dee (2006) and Slouching Towards Bedlam, by Star C. Foster and Daniel Ravipinto (2003). The interactive fictions are examined using a media-specific, in-depth analytical approach. Gothic fiction explores the threats which profoundly challenge narrative subjects, and so may be described as concerned with epistemological, ideological and ontological boundaries. In the interactive fictions these boundaries are explored dually through the player’s traversal (that is, progress through a work) and the narrative(s) produced as a result of that traversal. The first three works in this study explore the vulnerabilities related to conceptions of human subjectivity. As an adaptation of Edgar Allan Poe’s famous poem “The Raven,” Nevermore, examined in chapter one, is a work in which self-reflexivity extends to the remediated use of the Gothic conventions of ‘the unspeakable’ and ‘live burial’ which function in Poe’s poem. In chapter two, postmodern indeterminacy, especially with regard to the tensions between spaces and subjective boundaries, is apparent in the means through which the trope of the labyrinth is redesigned in Anchorhead, a work loosely based on H. P. Lovecraft’s terror fiction. In the fragmented narratives produced via traversal of Madam Spider’s Web, considered in chapter three, the player character’s self-fragmentation, indicated by the poetics of the uncanny as well as of the Gothic-grotesque, illustrates a destabilized conception of the human subject which reveals a hidden monster within, both for the player character and the player. Finally, traversal of Slouching Towards Bedlam, analyzed in chapter four, produces a series of narratives which function in a postmodern, recursive fashion to implicate the player in the viral infection which threatens the decidedly posthuman player character. This viral entity is metaphorically linked to Bram Stoker’s vampire, Dracula. As it is the only work in the study to present a conception of posthuman subjectivity, Slouching Towards Bedlam more specifically aligns with the subgenre ‘cybergothic,’ and provides an illuminating contrast to the other three interactive fictions. In the order in which I examine them, these works exemplify a postmodern development of the Gothic which increasingly marries fictional indeterminacy to explicit formal effects, both during interaction and in the narratives produced.

Made available in DSpace on 2016-08-10T11:06:55Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 CAROLINA MACHADO MOREIRA.pdf: 664639 bytes, checksum: eb5fb2440160ebfb1149b9e9d9700861 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2013-12-13 / This presents research is a study of the novelistic metamorphosis in A Força do Destino (1977), by Nélida Piñon. Its goal is to verify the narrative techniques employed in this novel, to establish correlations reflections on intercultural and discussing possible conclusions about the art of storytelling. The methodology applied is the theoretical research of qualitative nature. As to the means of investigation, it is a descriptive-explanatory literature since the work under consideration is an artistic expression and analysis explains how the development of the novel within the novel itself, typical case of historiographical metafiction occurs. The method used is deductive, and start from the premise that Nelida Piñon, to rescue the opera La Forza del Destino, by Giuseppe Verdi, reworks it in a parody way from the perspective of the chronicler Nélida, the narrator-character, do either A Força do Destino as simple mimesis. She breaks with the traditional Brazilian narrative and therefore intensifies, selectively, certain trends in the post- modernism. / Esta dissertação apresenta um estudo acerca da metamorfose romanesca em A Força do Destino (1977), de Nélida Piñon. O objetivo é verificar e analisar as principais técnicas narrativas empregadas nesse romance, para, em seguida, estabelecer reflexões sobre as correlações interculturais e discorrer sobre possíveis conclusões a respeito da própria arte de narrar. A metodologia empregada é a pesquisa teórica de natureza qualitativa. Quanto ao meio de investigação, trata-se de uma pesquisa bibliográfica descritiva-explicativa, uma vez que a obra em estudo é uma manifestação artística e sua análise explica como ocorre a elaboração do romance no interior do próprio romance, típico caso de metaficção historiográfica. O método adotado é o dedutivo, pois parte da premissa de que Nélida Piñon, ao resgatar a ópera La Forza del Destino, de Giuseppe Verdi, reelabora-a parodicamente a partir da perspectiva da cronista Nélida, a narradora-personagem, pois não quer A Força do Destino como simples mimesis. Ela rompe com a narrativa tradicional brasileira e, por conseguinte, intensifica, seletivamente, certas tendências presentes no pós-modernismo.

Este trabalho realiza um diálogo entre as obras dos autores Ruth Rocha, escritora brasileira, e José Cardoso Pires, escritor português. De Ruth Rocha utilizamos: O reizinho mandão, O sapo-vira-rei-vira-sapo, O rei que não sabia de nada, O que os olhos não vêem; e de Cardoso Pires: Dinossauro excelentíssimo. Ao trabalhar com esses livros, pretendemos mostrar a relação da ficção com a realidade dos países envolvidos. Partimos da hipótese de que essas obras, escritas durante o período militar brasileiro e o Salazarismo, colaboraram para o reconhecimento da importância de um regime político democrático para trazer a liberdade às nações brasileira e portuguesa. Nosso objetivo é também demonstrar como os autores denunciaram as situações históricas dos dois países, por meio da paródia, da alegoria e da carnavalização. As obras analisadas são destinadas tanto aos leitores mirins como aos adultos. Nossa pesquisa ampara-se em obras de Literatura Comparada, Literatura Infantil e Juvenil, História Política e Social do Brasil e de Portugal. / This work consists to dialogue the works of writer Ruth Rocha, Brazilian writer, and Jose Cardoso Pires, a Portuguese writer. From Ruth Rocha are used: O reizinho mandão, O sapo-vira-rei-vira-sapo ou o retorno do reizinho mandão, O rei que não sabia de nada, O que os olhos não veem; and from Cardoso Pires is used: Dinossauro excelentíssimo. We intend to show the relationship between fiction and reality in the countries involved working with these books. We started from the hypothesis that these works, written during the Brazilian military and Salazarism, contributed to the recognition of the importance of a democratic political system to bring freedom to the Brazilian and Portuguese nations. Our objective is also to demonstrate how the writers denounced the historical situations of the two countries, through the parody, the allegory and the carnivalization. The works analyzed are appropriate for junior readers as adult readers. Our research supports in works of Comparative Literature, Children and Youth Literature, Social and Political History of Brazil and Portugal.

The aim of this dissertation is to study postmodern historical novels, which are labeled &ldquo / historiographic metafictions&rdquo / (Hutcheon 1989: 92), in terms of their allowing for different voices and alternative, plural histories by subverting the historical documents and events that they refer to. The study analyzes texts from feminist and postcolonial literature, Jeanette Winterson&rsquo / s The Passion and Sexing the Cherry, and Salman Rushdie&rsquo / s Midnight&rsquo / s Children and Shame as examples in which the transgression of boundaries between fact and fiction is achieved. Basing its arguments on postmodern understanding of history, the thesis puts forward that historiography not only represents past events but it also gives meaning to them, as it is a signifying system, and turns historical events into historical facts. Historiography, while constructing historical facts, singles out certain past events while omitting others, for ideological reasons. This inevitably leads to the fact that marginalized groups are denied an official voice by hegemonic ideologies. Therefore, history is regarded as monologic, representing the dominant discourse. The thesis will analyze four novels by Winterson and Rushdie as double-voiced discourses where the dominant voice of history is refracted through subversion and gives way to other voices that have been suppressed. While analyzing the novels themselves, the thesis will look for the metafictional elements of the texts, stressing self-reflexivity, non-linear narrative, and parodic intention to pinpoint the refraction and the co-existence of plural voices. As a result, historiographic metafiction is proved to be a liberating genre, for feminist and postcolonial writers, that enables other histories to be verbalized.

In the Time of the Butterflies é um romance da escritora dominicana-americana Julia Alvarez sobre a vida e a morte das Borboletas, Las Mariposas, codinome das irmãs Mirabal, membros de um movimento clandestino contra o regime ditatorial de Rafael Leonidas Trujillo na República Dominicana, que se tornaram símbolos da luta contra o Trujillato depois de serem assassinadas a mando do ditador. Essa dissertação tem como objetivo expor como forma literária e contexto social estão diretamente relacionados nesse romance. Ela defende a ideia de que o borramento de três gêneros literários distintos metaficção historiográfica, autobiografia e bildungsroman reflete o questionamento das fronteiras entre o privado e o público, o pessoal e o político, o eu e o outro, o individual e o coletivo, a literatura e a história, fato e ficção e história e subjetividade. Ela também tenta mostrar como a problematização dessas dicotomias implica na contestação de noções pré-concebidas de identidade, história e nação / In the Time of the Butterflies is a novel by the Dominican-American writer Julia Alvarez on the life and death of the Butterflies, Las Mariposas, codename of the Mirabal sisters in the national underground movement that fought against the dictatorial regime of Rafael Leonidas Trujillo in the Dominican Republic. The novel is an attempt to re-member the sisters assassination under the dictators orders, a story that has never been officially told. This dissertation aims to expose how literary form and political content are related in this novel. It argues that the blurring of three distinct literary genres historiographic metafiction, autobiography and the bildungsroman reflects the questioning of the boundaries between private and public, personal and political, self and other, individual and collective, literature and history, fact and fiction as well as history and subjectivity. It also tries to show how the problematizing of these dichotomies de-naturalizes received notions of identity, history and nation

L’étude prend pour point de départ la conquête arabo-musulmane de l’Égypte (641) qui a mis pour la première fois en contact le monde arabo-musulman avec la Nubie alors dominée par le royaume chrétien de Makouria. Notre enquête se prolonge jusqu’à l’effondrement de ce dernier qui disparaît, dans des circonstances encore nébuleuses, vers la fin du XVe siècle. Durant cette longue période se sont nouées des relations inédites entre l’une des principales puissance du monde musulman et un royaume chrétien installé aux portes du dār al-islāmmais qui ne fut pourtant jamais conquis. Les deux parties de ce mémoire de thèse s’articulent autour de la prise de la citadelle de Qaṣr Ibrīm par Šams al-Dawla Tūrānšāh en 1173 qui marque la fin de l’âge d’or des relations égypto-nubiennes et ouvre une période d’ingérence accrue de l’État égyptien dans les affaires de Nubie. Ce travail se fonde principalement sur l’analyse critique du corpus des sources historiographiques arabes (annales, chroniques, biographie…) que nous avons confronté, le cas échéant, aux sources épigraphiques et documentaires nubiennes. Notre approche se veut aussi attentive au contenu des récits qu’aux conditions de leur élaboration et de leur transmission qui déterminent pour une large part leur compréhension. / Our study begins with the Arab Muslims’ conquest of Egypt in 641, as it was the first ever contact established between the Arab-Muslim world and Nubia, which was – at the time – under the yoke of the Christian kingdom of Makuria. Our enquiry then follows through to the very fall of the aforementioned kingdom, around the end of the fifteenth century, under circumstances that remain hazy to this very day. Throughout this lengthy period of time, groundbreaking ties were forged between one of the foremost powers in the Muslim world and a Christian kingdom that, although located right at the doorstep the dār al-islām, wasnever conquered. The two distinct parts that make up this doctoral dissertation are structured around the 1173 takeover of the Qaṣr Ibrīm citadel by Šams al-Dawla Tūrānšāh, which signaled the end of the golden age of peaceful relations between Egypt and Nubia as well asushered in a phase of increased Egyptian interference into the running of the Nubian State. This work hinges on a critical analysis of the corpus of Arab historiographical sources (annals, chronicles, biographies…) that we have compared, whenever possible, to Nubian epigraphic and documentary sources. Our approach aims at paying just as much attention to the contents of the various accounts we have gathered as to the conditions in which they were recorded and transmitted, as the latter plays a major part in how they should be consideredand understood

My dissertation focuses on an analysis of postmodern narrative strategies in Milan Kundera's The Unbearable Lightness of Being (ULB) and The Book of Laughter and Forgetting ( BLF) . By analysing the postmodern ab/use of narrative strategies, I argue that postmodern fiction marks a decided shift from both classical realism and modernism. My dissertation has predominantly been motivated through my contention that postmodern fiction is not elitist as it has been perceived to be. Rather, I suggest that postmodern fiction ab/uses narrative strategies to deconstruct the ontological boundaries between the political and private and fiction and 'fact'. Consequently, postmodern fiction interrogates the contrived intelligibility of History. A further argument that I raise is that postmodern fiction through its (re) appropriation, subversion and use of parodic structures creates.narrative space for the Other. In order not to canonize Kundera's texts, I situate both ULB and BLF as 'nodes' within a diffuse network of intertextual discourse. My analyses of the postmodern narrative strategies in ULB and BLF, attempt to interrogate the diffuse 'nature' of postmodern fiction which resists both authorative analysis and closure. In exploring the relationship between recuperation and postmodern narrative strategies in ULB and BLF and other works and/or texts of fiction, I argue that postmodern fiction does not revel in its narrativity, it constitutes, instead, a political strategy / Afrikaans and Theory of Literature / M.A. (Theory of Literature)

In the Time of the Butterflies é um romance da escritora dominicana-americana Julia Alvarez sobre a vida e a morte das Borboletas, Las Mariposas, codinome das irmãs Mirabal, membros de um movimento clandestino contra o regime ditatorial de Rafael Leonidas Trujillo na República Dominicana, que se tornaram símbolos da luta contra o Trujillato depois de serem assassinadas a mando do ditador. Essa dissertação tem como objetivo expor como forma literária e contexto social estão diretamente relacionados nesse romance. Ela defende a ideia de que o borramento de três gêneros literários distintos metaficção historiográfica, autobiografia e bildungsroman reflete o questionamento das fronteiras entre o privado e o público, o pessoal e o político, o eu e o outro, o individual e o coletivo, a literatura e a história, fato e ficção e história e subjetividade. Ela também tenta mostrar como a problematização dessas dicotomias implica na contestação de noções pré-concebidas de identidade, história e nação / In the Time of the Butterflies is a novel by the Dominican-American writer Julia Alvarez on the life and death of the Butterflies, Las Mariposas, codename of the Mirabal sisters in the national underground movement that fought against the dictatorial regime of Rafael Leonidas Trujillo in the Dominican Republic. The novel is an attempt to re-member the sisters assassination under the dictators orders, a story that has never been officially told. This dissertation aims to expose how literary form and political content are related in this novel. It argues that the blurring of three distinct literary genres historiographic metafiction, autobiography and the bildungsroman reflects the questioning of the boundaries between private and public, personal and political, self and other, individual and collective, literature and history, fact and fiction as well as history and subjectivity. It also tries to show how the problematizing of these dichotomies de-naturalizes received notions of identity, history and nation

CoordenaÃÃo de AperfeiÃoamento de NÃvel Superior / A busca por uma revelaÃÃo do passado, durante o romantismo, concretizou-se no romance histÃrico, o qual, mesmo tendo perdido popularidade entre os escritores com o advento da influÃncia de teorias cientificistas ao final do sÃculo XIX, nÃo foi de todo abandonado e, tomando um novo fÃlego a partir do segundo quartel do sÃculo XX, chegou aos nossos dias com variadas nomenclaturas. Essa diferenciaÃÃo entre os termos à considerada vÃlida e està sendo usada em diversas pesquisas e anÃlises de romances contemporÃneos de fundo histÃrico. O que se levanta na presente pesquisa, no entanto, pÃe em dÃvida o conceito contemporÃneo do subgÃnero, pois o questionamento de grandes verdades atravÃs da ironia jà estava em uso desde o sÃculo XIX no Brasil. Daà vem a ideia de analisar as obras e os conceitos de romance histÃrico e metaficÃÃo historiogrÃfica a partir de suas semelhanÃas e nÃo de suas diferenÃas â como enfatizam os estudos fundamentados no conceito de Linda Hutcheon â, baseando-se em observaÃÃes decorrentes de estudos anteriores, que incluem a anÃlise de As Minas de Prata (1865), do escritor Josà de Alencar, os quais indicaram serem os romances do autor brasileiro tÃo inovadores e questionadores da âverdade histÃricaâ quanto os romances de cunho historiogrÃfico ditos pÃs-modernos, que se adequam ao termo âmetaficÃÃo historiogrÃficaâ, mais precisamente para as obras surgidas a partir da dÃcada de sessenta do sÃculo XX. Intenta-se investigar, o âfazer historiogrÃficoâ de um autor do sÃculo XIX e um do sÃculo XX, sendo Josà de Alencar e Josà Saramago, respectivamente, os escolhidos para a anÃlise, atravÃs dos romances Guerra dos mascates (1958) e Memorial do convento (2011). A investigaÃÃo aborda a configuraÃÃo de romance de cada um, a construÃÃo dos personagens, a abordagem das personalidades histÃricas presentes nas obras e sua relaÃÃo com os personagens ficcionais e, por fim, a construÃÃo do mundo ficcional a partir de perspectivas tÃo distantes temporalmente / The search for a revelation of the past during Romanticism was achieved in the historical novel, which, although having lost its popularity among writers with the advent of the influence of scientific theories at the end of the nineteenth century, was not entirely abandoned and, taking a new breath from the second quarter of the twentieth century, came to our days with varied nomenclatures. This distinction among the terms is considered valid and is being used in several researches and analyzes of contemporary historical background novels. What is raised in the present research, however, calls into question the contemporary concept of the subgenre, once the questioning of great truths through irony was already in use since the nineteenth century in Brazil. Hence the idea of analyzing the works and concepts of historical novel and historiographic metafiction from their similarities and not from their differences â as emphasized by the studies based on Linda Hutcheon‟s concept â, basing itself on observations from previous studies, which include the analysis of the novel Minas de Prata (1865), by the writer Josà de Alencar, which indicated that the Brazilian author‟s novels are as innovative and questioning of âthe historical truthâ as the so-called postmodern historiographical novels that fit the term âhistoriographic metafictionâ, more precisely for the works that emerged from the sixties of the twentieth century. It is attempted to investigate, the âhistoriographical makingâ of an author of the nineteenth century and one of the twentieth century, being Josà de Alencar and Josà Saramago, respectively, the ones chosen for the analysis, through the novels Guerra dos mascates (1958) and Memorial do Convento (2011). The research deals with the novel configuration of each one, the construction of the characters, the approach of the historical personalities present in the works and its relation with the fictional characters and, finally, the construction of the fictional world from such temporarily distant perspectives.