Essa dissertação tem como objetivo analisar os contos da escritora Dorothy Parker em diálogo com seus poemas, tendo em vista a modernidade com a qual construiu suas histórias e o papel do humor em sua criação. Ao analisar as obras dessa autora de grande destaque nos Estados Unidos da América do Norte, nos anos 1930, veremos como o humor se transforma numa importante ferramenta que se relaciona com a construção do feminino e com a questão social da mulher, a fim de desestabilizar e transformar o status quo. O estudo, com o apoio teórico de Vladimir Propp e de Henri Bergson, intenciona demonstrar que, embora Dorothy Parker possa ser considerada uma escritora datada, seu senso satírico continua atual e reflete claramente o contexto no qual as mulheres estavam inseridas. / The aim of this study is to analyse Dorothy Parker´s short stories in dialogue with her poems in order to show the modernity of her writings and the function played by humour. Analysing the works of the great american writer in the thirties, we see how humour is used as a tool in the construction of the feminine and the social role of women, with the purpose of destabilizing and making a change in the status quo. The theoretical framework based on Vladimir Propp and Henri Bergson helps to demonstrate that in spite of Dorothy Parker´s work being considered dated by some, the satiric sense that emerges from her writings is still present in our times and reveals the context in which those women were inserted.

A partir de algumas considerações sobre o humor e as narrativas jocosas na comunicação e na linguagem, esta pesquisa se concentra no estudo de um personagem folclórico misto de sábio e bobo largamente conhecido entre os falantes da língua árabe pelo nome Juha e de algumas anedotas por ele protagonizadas, pondo em foco as suas principais características e os temas relacionados: sociedade, política, miséria, entre outros; além de apontar a presença de algumas anedotas em diferentes livros, do século X ao XXI, inclusive numa coletânea editada por Mussa Kuraiem em São Paulo na década de 60 do século passado, o livro Giha, Hoja e Nasredin, que constitui o corpus desta dissertação. / Starting from some considerations about humor and playful narratives in communication and language, this research focuses on the study of a mix of wise and foolish folkloric character - widely known among the speakers of the Arabic language by the name Juha - and on some anecdotes played by him, bringing into focus their main characteristics and issues: society, politics, poverty, among others, while pointing out the presence of some anecdotes in different books, from X to XXI century, including a collection edited by Mussa Kuraiem in São Paulo in the 60s of the last century. This book, Giha, Hoja and Nasredin, forms the corpus of this dissertation.

Face aux incertitudes génériques liées à la perte des contours stricts entre les genres, qui se renforce dans les années 1950 avec les oeuvres du « Nouveau Théâtre », la théorisation de la comédie contemporaine et sa définition selon des critères génériques s'avèrent problématiques. Puisque les structures, les procédés d'écriture et les intentions des comédies divergent suivant les auteurs et leurs pratiques, dans une démarche descriptive et analytique, cette thèse propose un état des lieux de la situation de la comédie contemporaine française d'un point de vue générique. Trois manières d'écrire la comédie se dessinent. Les auteurs composent dans le genre, en pratiquant l'intertextualité, à partir des comédies classiques françaises, de la farce ou du vaudeville. Profitant d'un cadre structurel établi, ils s'approprient et radicalisent les procédés de ces genres issus de la tradition. Ils usent ensuite de techniques de composition coutumières du drame et de la tragédie pour créer des comédies catastrophiques qui superposent le comique et le tragique et jouent avec l'« horizon d'attente » de la comédie. Ils élaborent enfin des comédies scéniques à partir du plateau, en s'appuyant sur les formes comiques populaires. Malgré leur diversité, ces comédies présentent des éléments de poétique communs : elles maintiennent une ligne de fable, l'existence de personnages et la présence de dialogues, qui tendent à la conversation. Le comique reste l'élément essentiel du genre et se retrouve dans la vitalité des comédies burlesques, l'équivoque des comédies humoristiques et la critique des comédies satiriques. Forte de son hétérogénéité, puisant dans sa tradition qu'elle réinvente et osant l'inédit, la comédie contemporaine persiste en tant que genre. / Theorizing about contemporary comedy and defining it according to generic criteria has been getting harder and harder ever since the frontiers between literary genres became blurry, especially since the 1950s with the influence of the "Nouveau Théâtre". Since the structures, literary devices, and intentions of comedies vary according to their authors and the latter's practices, we will adopt a descriptive and analytical approach in assessing the situation of French contemporary comedy from a generic point of view. Three ways of writing comedy will emerge from our study. Some authors compose their texts from within the generic frame of comedy by building intertextual bridges with French classic comedy, farce or vaudeville and by exaggerating the traditional devices of the genre. Some choose to use composition techniques usually found in drama or tragedy in order to create comedies that end in disaster thus juxtaposing comedy and tragedy in a playful attitude with comedy's usual "horizon of expectation". Finally, others write comedies from the stage onwards and draw on popular comic conventions. Despite their diversity, these comedies share common poetic traits: they are all built around a storyline, characters and dialogues that verge on idle talk. The comic remains the essential element of the genre, be it in the vitality of burlesque comedies, the ambiguity of humorous comedies, or the criticism of satirical comedies. Contemporary comedy, buoyed by its heterogeneity and its ability to reinvent its own traditions, remains a relevant genre in today's theatrical landscape.

This essay discusses the relationship between the characters Vladimir and Estragon in Samuel Beckett’s play Waiting for Godot and the vernacular clowning tradition. The discussion is supported by analyzing similarities between Waiting for Godot and Mikhail Bakhtin’s concept of grotesque realism as it is presented in his work Rabelais and His World, as well as elements of the Italian Commedia dell’Arte and 20th century silent movie comedy. The essay concludes that Beckett was considerably influenced by vernacular comic elements and utilised these influences in his play Waiting for Godot in order to question the high level of artificiality in Modernist literature.

The essay a small papper book, deals from a personel angle with different aspekts of the artist practice. Up against a suppelogik the essay jumps from subjekt to subject. The first chapter talks about the link between making a snowball and the painting process. Next chapters are working up against the paintingdialogue with the canvas, here are some historical referangser to Guston and Hans Hoffmann. After this the essay have to chapters, one about the potential of humor and one chapter about artistic seduction linked to the artistic production trying to find the border, between the necessary and seduction. / <p>Examensarbetet består av en skriftlig del och en gestaltande del. Alternativ titel anger namnet för den gestaltande delen. </p><p>The master work includes a written essay and a forming part. The alternative title is the name of the forming part.</p>

En 1920, au sortir de la Grande Guerre qui sonna le glas de quatre siècles de domination ottomane, le Grand Liban fut proclamé, d’abord mandaté par la France, avant que le pays n’obtienne l’indépendance politique, en 1943. La politique économique libérale propre au Mandat français s’imposa alors, préfigurant le style gouvernemental qui s’instituera durant les trente glorieuses de la République. Cette période s’achèvera avec la guerre du Liban en 1975, faisant émerger des forces miliciennes avec leur corrélat de découpage géographique et social. Ainsi, en guise de réponse au délabrement des institutions symboliques régissant le lien social, l’on assista au surgissement d’une langue provocatrice, dont on trouve une anticipation dans les inventions littéraires de grands auteurs (Ionesco, Céline). Nous allons ici soutenir que ce qui a permis au vivre-ensemble libanais de résister à toutes les colonisations, à la domination du discours capitaliste, puis au désastre de la guerre, procède d’une tournure de l’esprit relevant du registre de la farce. Conçue dans cette recherche comme une modalité contemporaine du rire, elle semble être une réponse à la faillite des ontologies au temps de la postmodernité. Or ce style subjectif, tel que nous le débusquerons dans le parler des sujets libanais, loin d’être une idiosyncrasie libanaise, une sorte de « folie » isolée, pourrait être annonciateur d’un mode d’être au monde voué à se généraliser bien au-delà des frontières du Liban. / Greater Lebanon was founded in 1920, at the end of the Great War, which sounded the death knell for four centuries of Ottoman rule; the country did not gain independence until 1943. The French Mandate of the intervening period included free-market economic policies that foreshadowed the governing style of the trente glorieuses of the Lebanese Republic. That era drew to a close with the Lebanese Civil War, which began in 1975 and led to the emergence of militia forces and a corresponding geographical and social division. At this time, and in response to the deterioration of the symbolic institutions responsible for the social bond, a provocative language began to be heard, one that had been anticipated in the literary work of authors such as Ionesco and Céline. This thesis will show that what has allowed the Lebanese way of coexistence and togetherness to resist these colonial occupations, as well as the domination of the capitalist discourse and then the disaster of war, proceeds from a specific mindset that has its source in farce. Conceived here as a contemporary mode of laughter, farce seems to be a response to the bankruptcy of ontologies in the post-modern epoch. This subjective style, which will be explored on the basis of the spoken words of Lebanese people, is in no sense an idiosyncrasy found only in that part of the world as a sort of isolated “madness,” but could instead be a precursor of a mode of being in the world destined to become widespread and to be transmitted beyond the borders of the country of Lebanon.

This thesis addresses a research study predicated on practice in order to explore aspects of participation in Performance Art. The study makes a contribution to knowledge in participative performance practice and the positive deployment of using interruptive processes; this is in order to provoke participation within the context of Performance Art as well as gain a better understanding of the operations of power relations at play. Within the discourse of impoliteness study (Bousfield, 2008; Culpeper, 2011 et al.), there is a term that deserves much greater attention: interruption . Examining interruption and exploiting its virtues using practice brings out some productive insights that go beyond abstract theorisation. Working in response to Nicolas Bourriaud s conception (1998) of participation in Relational Aesthetics as a means of attacking power relations, I use my practice as an artist/performance provocateur and amplify consideration of my previous usage of interruption in order to provoke participation and then interrogation of power relations. Slapstick and heckling as extreme versions of interruptive processes that are physical in nature are put forward as tactics of interruption that extend comedy tactics within my practice. Circumventing commentary of interruption that often posits the term and its affiliation with impoliteness and capacity to be disruptive as negative (Bilmes, 1997), interruption is used for the purposes of my study as the key strategy that underpins the performance Lost for Words (2011) and the collaborative project Contract with a Heckler (2013), and are presented as prime examples of the operations of interruption in practice. Lost for Words supports the difficulties of participation when interruptive processes connected to physical and bodily slapstick are structurally engineered into a live performance and Contract with a Heckler supports power relations when live performance is predicated upon physical and linguistic interruptive processes relating to heckling. Both Lost for Words and Contract with a Heckler demonstrate a complex knitting of theory and practice whereby argument is supported by the undertaking of action (by the necessity of experiencing interruption in practice). The written dimension of the thesis operates in conjunction with the accompanying photographs and video recordings included here as documentation serving to deconstruct the examples of practice presented. Writing adds detail in the form of critical analysis, reflective commentary and personal experience to the supplied documentation and is used as a tool to communicate that working with interruption on a theoretical, practical and emotional level can be exciting, provocative and dangerous.

This study attempts to define more clearly the concepts 'flat character' and 'round character' by examining instances of Sepedi literature. Definitions provided by theorists are in most cases vague and may lead to unsatisfactory interpretations. The best examples in this instance are the definitions provided by Forster - they create problems particularly with references to the concept 'round character'. Forster's definition creates the impression that the difference can be based on the manner of characterization. In this investigation, attention is thus paid to characterization, while it is pointed out that these concepts are not to be confused with the concepts 'antagonist', 'protagonist' and 'tritagonist'. The latter types of characters are classified as structural elements while the former are thematically important. The Sepedi literary works chosen for the purposes of this study represent the four most important prose genres in Sepedi. Tsebe's Noto-ya- Masogana ( 1954) is the representative of the category 'love story'; Kekana's Nnete Fela (1989) is a detective story; Rammala's Lukas Motsheletshele (1963) and Mphahlele's Letsogo Ia Molao (1984) are tragic narratives , while Phatudi concentrates on and describes elements of pathos in his Tladi wa Dikgati (1971 ). The characters in Tsebe and Kekana's narratives are flat. Whereas Tsebe's Lesibana is portrayed as a multidimensional character, Ariel in Kekana's detective story is presented as one - dimensional. According to the definitions of Forster, Lesibana could be classified as a round character and Ariel as a flat character. The problem that surfaces in this instance also becomes manifest in the investigation into Rammala, Mphahlele and Phatudi's works. Rammala's Lukas Motsheletshele and Mphahlele's Faro are multidimensional characters as opposed to Phatudi's Tladi who is onedimensional, yet all of them are round characters. The distinction that can be drawn between the concepts 'flat character' and 'round character' has to do with humaneness. The reader's identification with the flat charater is based on the reader's ability to distinguish between good and evil, while an understanding of and a feeling for fellow human beings determine identification with the round character. The author brings about this identification process by using a variety of literary devices. In this thesis, a great deal of emphasis is placed on the theme of each of the mentioned works and on how this theme determines the character types. The concept of 'identification' is a central issue in this study and has thus been explained in detail. The specific literary devices used by the author to bring about this identification have thus also been carefully investigated and discussed. It was discovered that characterization as such does not determine whether characters are flat or round; instead, this is determined thematically. / Thesis (PhD)--University of Pretoria, 2002. / gm2014 / African Languages / unrestricted

Firefighters respond to a wide range of critical incidents in which they face exposure to multiple stressors. Previous studies have reported prevalence rates of various symptomatology and identified some risk factors for firefighters, but accord has not been reached across studies on the extent of vulnerability or resilience and potential predictors of each have not all been identified. Studies with firefighters in the United Kingdom are comparatively rare. The purpose of this series of studies was, therefore, to investigate the prevalence of PTSD symptomatology and that of its associated comorbid conditions (depression, anxiety and alcohol misuse) in UK firefighters. On the basis of a literature review, the role of thought control, counterfactual thinking and humour style in predicting symptoms was examined. Study I examined this together with the demographic, occupational, event-specific and cognitive factors associated with these conditions in a retrospective, cross-sectional analysis of multiple exposure in firefighters. Results indicated that these firefireghters demonstrated high levels of resilience, recording relatively low rates of PTSD, depression, anxiety and alcohol misuse symptomatology. No DSM-IV Criterion A1 exposure variable independently predicted symptomatology of PTSD, but A2 responses of fear and helplessness predicted PTSD symptomatology, and A2 fear predicted alcohol misuse. Individual aspects of A1 exposure did predict symptomatology of depression, anxiety and alcohol misuse; one operating schedule predicted symptomatology of depression and anxiety; and both previous divorce and previous psychiatric diagnosis predicted symptomatology of alcohol misuse. Of the three cognitive predictors, nonreferent counterfactual thinking and self-defeating humour independently predicted higher levels of PTSD symptomatology, whilst self-enhancing humour predicted lower symptomatology of depression. Results were essentially the same in both regression models, indicating no difference between the predictive power of these cognitive constructs between the models where humour was used at work and when used with the person closest to the participant. Study 2 evaluated the same symptomatology in a longitudinal investigation of firefighters exposed to a single critical incident in which the casualty's life could not be saved, again addressing the cognitive factors of thought control strategies, counterfactual thinking and humour style. Results showed high levels of resilience with firefighters recording relatively low rates of PTSD, depression, anxiety and alcohol misuse symptomatology, although symptomatology of depression, anxiety and alcohol misuse increased over time for a small number. Factors associated with development of symptomatology were firefighter type and rank, A2 horror, body recovery, and the use of thought suppression and 'if only' counterfactuals). However, these were not long-lasting. Similarly, associations between depression/anxiety symptomatology and A2 helplessness; anxiety and previous psychiatric diagnosis also had a short term effect on symptoms. Those who were younger and who had not been involved in body handling had higher depression scores at T2 although the sample size was small and these results may be anomalies. Study 3 explored the firefighters' responses to the same critical incident in greater depth in order to draw out any aspects of it which caused distress and any factors which were found to be helpful in coping with such distress. This qualitative exploration was designed to identify the meaning attached to aspects of critical incidents and how firefighters individually experienced such a critical incident response in comparison with other critical incidents. Results showed positive emotions, professional pride and a strong sense of duty were expressed far more than 'negative' emotions, suggesting a high degree of resilience. Identification with the dying or dead is a marker for distress because meaning has been attributed to the event through recognition of the deceased's humanity. Dissonance arose because of the struggle between this recognition and the desire to protect colleagues and it appears that it is this dissonance which adversely affects those with responsibility for making decisions. Feelings of helplessness arose through operational limitations and are also a marker for distress. Avoidance techniques were utilised, but thought suppression was not identified as such, although the transposition of distressing images through humour was reported. Downward counterfactuals were reported more frequently than upward, and the latter related to decision making and operational difficulties. The type of humour commonly used is banter which includes 'taking the piss' out of colleagues and situations although it was not experienced the same way by all firefighters. The purpose of banter is to cope with the stressors inherent in the job of firefighting and to facilitate bonding through its use as a private language. This study identified three 'rules of banter': it is reciprocal, the timing of it is critical, and it has contextual restrictions. Adaptive banter may be expressed as the self-enhancing or affiliative styles of humour and maladaptive as self-defeating, or banter may itself be a separate style of humour. Together, the studies' findings show that these firefighters were resilient to exposure to a range of stressors but that suffering may be seen on a spectrum. This has implications for theory and further research, and for the development of psychoeducational interventions to increase resilience in those first responders who may be at risk of developing symptoms.

This thesis investigates the field of amateur translation in Brazil, with particular emphasis on the translation of Morrissey’s lyrics for understanding purposes in four different sources: magazines, fansites, virtual communities and general websites. It examines whether existing theories on the translation of popular songs (Kelly 1987, and Low, 2003, 2005, 2008) find some resonance in the practice of amateur translators. The collective construction of meaning, and the social acceptance of the Target Text are essential parts of the process. The analysis follows Toury’s (1995) descriptive model in order to systematise how these translators operate. The Brazilian amateur translators’ regularity in the use of particular techniques to render meaning to lyrics for understanding purposes enables the description of their practice as a genre its own. Following the theoretical framework, chapters four, five and six focus on the translation of the main challenges amateur translators of Morrissey’s lyrics face. The translation of cultural aspects proved to be an exercise of creativity in which the translators had to provide equivalents to culture-specific items (Aixelá, 1996) that find no mirror in the target culture. Ambiguous lyrics tended to present translations as varied as the translators’ personal agendas, understanding of the lyrics or target language’s limitations, such as lack of neutral personal pronoun. The different humour and irony styles in source and target culture resulted in every group of translators finding their own strategies to render meaning. As the first project aiming to rationalise amateur translators of lyrics in Brazil, this study represents an attempt to enrich and broaden the discussion on the translation of pop songs, with special attention to the practices of translation for this type of texts in a country where the audience is high dependent on translations in order to understand the lyrics are in great demand.