The style and themes central to Bukowski's prose have roots in the literary tradition of the grotesque. Bukowski uses grotesque imagery in his writings as a creative device, explaining the negative characteristics of modern life. His permanent mood of angry disgust at the world around him is similar to that of the eighteenth-century satirists, particularly Jonathan Swift. Bukowski confronts the reader with the uglier side of America--its grime, its corruption, the constricted lives of its lower class--all with a simplicity and directness of style impeccably and clearly distilled. Bukowski's style is ebullient, with grotesquely evocative descriptions, scatological detail, and dark humor.

It is the purpose of this paper to demonstrate the nature of Thoreau's use of organic imagery by tracing recurrent symbols that represent key concepts and provide unity and coherence throughout Walden. By charting the patterns of imagery in Walden, one can observe Thoreau's movement from an initially pessimistic view of man's present state to one of transcendental optimism and hope for freedom in the future.

An examination of the persistent death motif in Twain's literature reveals a strong fusion of his art, personal experience and philosophical conclusions. Death imagery dramatizes Twain's pessimistic view of an estranged humanity existing without purpose or direction in an incomprehensible universe. Twain shows in his works that religious and social beliefs only obscure the fact that the meaning of death is beyond man's intellectual and perceptual powers. In Twain's view the only certainty about death is that it is a release from the preordained tragedies of existence. Illusions, primordial terrors, and mystifying dreams shape man's disordered reality, Twain concludes, and therefore death is as meaningless as life.

William Blake's prophetic works are made up almost entirely of a unique combination of symbols and imagery. To understand his books it is necessary to be aware that he used his prophetic symbols because he found them apt to what he was saying, and that he changed their meanings as the reasons for their aptness changed. An awareness of this manipulation of symbols will lead to a more perceptive understanding of Blake's work. This paper is concerned with three specific uses of serpent imagery by Blake. The first chapter deals with the serpent of selfhood. Blake uses the wingless Uraeon to depict man destroying himself through his own constrictive analytic reasonings unenlightened with divine vision. Man had once possessed this divine vision, but as formal religions and a priestly class began to be formed, he lost it and worshipped only reason and cruelty. Blake also uses the image of the serpent crown to characterize priests or anyone in a position of authority. He usually mocks both religious and temporal rulers and identifies them as oppressors rather than leaders of the people. In addition to the Uraeon and the serpent crown, Blake also uses the narrow constricted body of the serpent and the encircled serpent to represent narrowmindedness and selfish possessiveness. The second chapter deals with the serpent as a symbolic force of energy itself. Blake uses the serpent to represent birth, the life force, guardian of life forces, inner strength, resurrection, forces of destruction, and rebellion against tyranny. The Orc figure, a mythological creation of Blake, is the major representative of all phases of energy. He is a Promethean figure of rebellion and often described by Blake as having a "serpent body." His birth represents the awakening of a terrible, uncontrolled energy which will bring war, destruction, and death. He is an "eternal viper" with "ever-hissing jaws." Blake often uses this rebellious energy to deal with specific political issues in America, Ahania and Tiriel. The "serpent-formed transgressor of God's law" is also in rebellion against the binding, constricting laws of religion, and in a larger sense, against the visionless state into which mankind has fallen. The third chapter considers Blake's use of the serpent and tree image. It is significant that he uses these familiar Christian symbols in various ways which suggest that occult lore and antiquarian mythologies must also be considered in their interpretation. The following five major types of serpent-tree symbolism and Blake's usages are discussed in this chapter: The divine serpent and the tree of life, the serpent as guardian of the tree of life, the serpent as destroyer of the tree of life, the serpent-tempter and the tree of death, and the serpent as an unfaithful messenger of God. It is possible to draw all of these interpretations from Blake's works. By the very diversity of its symbolic associations the serpent provides a unifying factor in Blake. It is in itself a symbol of unity in that it appears consistently in almost all of man's religions and mythologies.

Research examining language in written and oral trauma narratives indicates that exposure and cognitive processing are important processes responsible for therapeutic change. Bio-informational theory, which defines emotions as the activation of response, stimulus, and meaning units in memory, provides a meaningful structure for evaluating language in traumatic and neutral essays. This study examined the effects of imagery training procedures designed to prime activation of response or stimulus units on word usage. The effect of writing instructions on activation of meaning units was also investigated. Unscreened undergraduates (n=246) were randomly assigned in a 2 writing condition (traumatic or neutral) x 3 training condition (response-training, stimulus-training, or no-training) design. Word count dictionaries were used to capture the effects of training and instructions on language. Overall, results supported predicted effects of stimulus training and trauma writing, but anticipated effects of response-training were inconsistent. Implications for theory and the use of language to measure emotion are discussed.

My thesis work is about flow. Indeterminate lines symbolize the developing plant form and explore the perception of space by experimenting with the subject's proportion and shape. Movement is also a vital factor of space, a notion found in the early forms of cursive script (grass script) of Far Eastern calligraphy. My individual plant pieces work as dots and lines of cursive script. An installation's ceramic pieces illustrate similar flow and movement when viewed as a whole.

My personal life experiences are reflected in my art. I use symbolic and expressive marks in developing my abstract imagery, which acts as a visual language. The combining of my past and current art work, fused together, has become what I call a creative matrix. I see my images as choreographed compositions using a mixed media approach. The open-ended interpretation of my art have expanded the never ending possibilities of creation.

Détection d’hétérogénéités linéaires dans les textures directionnelles – application à la détection de failles en sismique de réflexion: les méthodes développées concernent la classe particulière de textures directionnelles. Dans un premier chapitre, nous rappelons la notion de texture, le concept de contour et le contexte applicatif concernant l’imagerie sismique. Le deuxième chapitre a pour objet l’analyse des différentes contributions que l’on peut trouver dans la littérature concernant la détection de contours dans le contexte des images texturées: les approches qui relèvent du domaine de la géophysique et les méthodes proposées par la communauté des traiteurs d’image pour la détection de contours. Le troisième chapitre regroupe nos propositions: une approche basée sur une un critère géométrique, une variante récursive robuste et une extension alliant mesure 2D et diffusion 3D. Ces propositions sont validées par une analyse quantitative par rapport aux méthodes existantes. / Linear disparity detection in directional textures – application to fault detection in seismic images: the developed approaches deal with the particular family of directional textures. In the first chapter the notion of texture and the concept of contour are introduced. Also, a detailed presentation of the application concerning seismic imagery is presented in the first chapter. The object of the second chapter is the analysis of the different contributions concerning edge and contour detection in textured images found in the literature: the approaches used in the field of geophysics and the approaches proposed by the image processing community. The third chapter regroups our contributions: a geometric criterion based approach, a recursive robust extension of the geometric approach and a 3D recursive robust extension combining a 2D measure and a 3D diffusion technique. Apart the qualitative comparisons, these contributions are validated by a quantitative analysis in comparison with the existing methods.

Quel rôle joue la gravité dans les représentations internes de l'action ? Au-delà des contraintes d'équilibre, le vecteur gravitaire influence-t-il l'action de façon globale, jusqu'à la perception des mouvements de nos semblables ? Ces questions ont été celles qui ont guidé mes travaux de thèse. L'originalité de notre approche a été de placer l'exécution et la perception de l'action dans un « continuum fonctionnel » s'articulant autour des représentations internes de l'action. Pour ce faire, l'outil de choix qui est commun aux trois expériences de cette thèse est la microgravité (0G). Les expériences de cette thèse ont montré que les représentations internes de l'action se nourrissaient des informations graviceptives pour se construire et s'adapter constamment. Cependant, dans certaines conditions telle que la 0G à court terme, apparaît un ordre de priorité. En effet, le SNC est capable de mettre en place des solutions immédiates et efficaces pour l'exécution, comme en témoigne la repondération sensorielle rapide qui s'opère en 0G dans une tâche d'orientation posturale. Cependant, un temps de latence est observé dans la recalibration des modèles internes sur la base des afférences sensorielles fortement perturbées. C'est ce que nous avons montré grâce à un protocole d'imagerie motrice, mettant en évidence une perte de l'isochronie entre les mouvements exécutés et imaginés en 0G. Enfin, nous avons mis en évidence, chez des sujets sans expérience aucune de microgravité, que la perception du mouvement humain est efficace même lorsque ce dernier est exécuté en apesanteur, bien que des réseaux cérébraux différents soient mis en jeux. / What is the role of gravity in the internal representations of action? Beyond the constraints of balance, does the gravity vector influence the action globally, up to the perception of our peers' movement? These issues have guided my thesis work. The originality of our approach was to place the execution and the perception of action in a "functional continuum" built around the internal representations of the action. To do this, the tool of choice, that is common to all three experiments presented here, is microgravity (0G). The experiments of this thesis showed that the internal representations of action are fed with graviceptive information to build and adapt constantly. However, under certain conditions such as short-term 0G, an order of priority appears. Indeed, the CNS is able to implement immediate and effective solutions, as we demonstrate it with the fast sensorial reweighting observed during a postural orientation task. However, a lag is observed in the recalibration of internal models based on sensory inputs severely disrupted. This is what we have shown through a protocol of motor imagery, showing a loss of isochrony between executed and imagined movements under 0G. Finally, we have demonstrated in subjects without any experience of microgravity, that the perception of human movement is effective even when it is performed in weightlessness, although different cerebral networks are involved.

Les travaux portant sur l’imagerie motrice (IM) ont montré l’identité des processus de production réelle et de représentation mentale du mouvement. Diverses voies expérimentales incluant la chronométrie mentale, les indices physiologiques (dont ceux issus de la neuroimagerie) ont été utilisées pour montrer que la représentation mentale de l’action repose sur les mêmes mécanismes que la préparation motrice et agirait sur la plasticité cérébrale. Le rôle de l’IM dans l’amélioration et l’apprentissage du mouvement, la récupération motrice après une lésion des effecteurs musculo-articulaires a été démontré chez le sujet sain. L’entraînement mental pourrait donc être intégré dans les protocoles thérapeutiques suite à une lésion centrale ou périphérique. Si plusieurs expériences ont montré son efficacité lorsqu’il est pratiqué après un accident vasculaire cérébral, aucune étude n’a porté sur son rôle dans la réadaptation fonctionnelle du patient médullo-lésé. L’hypothèse est que l’entraînement par IM associé à la rééducation classique peut facilement être intégrer dans les protocoles de réadaptation de ces patients et favoriserait la récupération et l’amélioration de la préhension chez les patients tétraplégiques / The mental representation of movement may help motor functions recovery after central or peripheral stroke. There is now ample evidence that motor performance and learning ma benefit from mental rehearsal in healthy subjects. However, whether the ability to perform motor imagery is preserved after spinal cord injury, the effectiveness of mental rehearsal on prehension rehabilitation has to be questioned. The review of relevant literature about motor imagery and rehabilitation show that integrating mental practice into the rehabilitation process may be a reliable tool. Traditional stroke rehabilitation therapies are usually based upon actual movement aimed at improving motor functions. However, this may be limited by muscle spasticity, muscle weakness, or persistent deficit in movement coordination. As motor imagery and actual movement share the same neural substrate, mental rehearsal may serve motor rehabilitation by involving cerebral plasticity and thus facilitating recovery. More specifically, it will be useful to elaborate guideline of mental practice in rehabilitation. Additional clinical issues, including brain mapping studies, need to be performed