Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas at Austin, 2001. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 239-249). Available also in a digital version from Dissertation Abstracts.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Missouri-Columbia, 2002. / Typescript. Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 358-363). Also available on the Internet.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Missouri-Columbia, 2002. / Typescript. Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 358-363). Also available on the Internet.

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This dissertation provides an exploration of the nature and scope of the category of the Unconscious as a necessary feature of rhetorical theory and criticism. In order to demonstrate the fundamental importance of the Unconscious to rhetorical theory and criticism, this dissertation focuses on Kenneth Burke's rhetorical theory of Dramatism. Burke is one of the most frequently cited theorists by rhetorical scholars, and offers a familiar site for rhetorical scholars to understand the Unconscious as a rhetorical factor. Burke formulated a theory of the Unconscious by drawing from Freudian psychoanalysis. Since Freud, Jacques Lacan has advanced and altered the Freudian understanding of the Unconscious. Therefore, by navigating the terrain of both Burkeian and Lacanian scholarship, this dissertation moves toward a BurkeLacanian theory and method to offer a more critical lexicon for the rhetorical study of the dialectical relationship between the conscious and Unconscious parts of the psyche. In doing so, this dissertation develops and answers the following questions: How can we theorize the Unconscious as a rhetorical factor? How is Burke's theory of the Unconscious rhetorically useful? How might we understand Burke's theory of rhetoric differently and better if we read his Freudian influences through Lacanian scholarship on the Unconscious? How is a theory of the BurkeLacanian subject rhetorically useful? How does a BurkeLacanian theory of the Unconscious inform productive criticism? This dissertation applies a BurkeLacanian theory of the Unconscious by introducing a rhetorical method called "Ideographic Cluster Quilting." This method moves toward the rhetorical study of texts as cultural psyches that are constructed from fragments of discourse that form around figures of abjection. In order to demonstrate the usefulness for studying Ideographic Cluster Quilts, this dissertation analyzes the cultural psyche that forms around the figure of the "illegal immigrant" as abject. In doing so, we gain an insight into the Unconscious hatred of humanity as the perverse core of American identity that qualifies which bodies do and do not matter. We will also gain an insight into the way nationalistic identities function within globalization by confining labor forces within national boundaries, while multinational corporations move freely around the world. / text

This thesis presents Bernardin de Saint-Pierre’s novel Paul et Virginie (1788) as a synthesis of the philosophy of Jean-Jacques Rousseau and the theology of François de la Mothe-Fénelon. While the novel’s prominent themes of the goodness of nature and the corruption of society are clearly associated with Rousseau, Bernardin rejects Rousseau’s ideals of independence and self-sufficiency as the basis for his moral theory and preference of nature. Instead, his novel appears to Christianize Rousseau’s philosophy by stressing dependence on a personal, beneficient God who is revealed through nature, thereby associating the natural life with a God-centered life where happiness can be found through dependence on God and selfless service to others. In seeking to pinpoint Bernardin’s Christian influence, this paper goes on to acknowledge Bernardin’s hyperbolic praise for François Fénelon, which leads to an investigation concerning, first, which of Fénelon’s teachings can be found in Paul et Virginie, and second, how Bernardin manages to preserve such enthusiastic admiration for a Christian thinker while also denying several important tenets of Christian orthodoxy. This investigation reveals that Fénelon appealed to Bernardin de Saint-Pierre not only on the basis of what he emphasized, but also what he failed to emphasize. On the one hand, a number of Fénelonian ideas find expression in Paul et Virginie, ideas such as a conception of worship that privileges inner realities over external performances; a glorification of pure, disinterested love toward God; an ideal lifestyle of simplicity and harmony with nature; and an acknowledgement of the role of sentiment in gaining knowledge of the divine. On the other hand, this paper also proposes that Bernardin’s unhindered admiration for Fénelon was made possible by his ability to misinterpret two of Fénelon’s most well-known works, Télémaque (1699) and the Traité de l’existence de Dieu (p. 1718), whose silence on particular doctrines like original sin and the authority of the Scriptures allowed Bernardin to preserve his beliefs about natural goodness and the sufficiency of natural revelation. / text

In this thesis, I will study two manifestations of the legacy of Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s educational and political theories between 1832 and 1833: George Sand’s Indiana (1832) and Honoré de Balzac’s Eugénie Grandet (1833). I will argue that both novels treat the difficulties that uneducated or domestically educated young women face when they first encounter the artificial relationships of society, and that both authors attribute their protagonists’ situation to the lack of connection between the ideology of their upbringing and that of society. Furthermore, I will view these texts within the context of Romanticism, which buoyed the influence of Rousseauvian thought in the early nineteenth century by declaring nature preferable to society, a critical tenet of Rousseau’s theories. Social and political changes, however, led to Romanticism’s decline as the nineteenth century progressed, and this waning influence, coupled with the rise of Realism, can be observed in Indiana and Eugénie Grandet. The first chapter of this work will discuss the ideas that Rousseau presents in Emile, ou de l’éducation (1762) and the Discours sur l’origine et les fondements de l’inégalité parmi les hommes (1754). Although women are painted as independent in the original state of Nature, Rousseau argues in Emile that they should be domesticated in society, and he outlines the male and female educations that he believes will best prepare men and women for their assigned gender roles in society. The two chapters that follow treat the interpretations of Rousseau’s theories that Sand and Balzac put forward in Indiana and Eugénie Grandet. Sand refutes the nineteenth-century discourse concerning women’s innate “irrationality,” attributing Indiana’s difficulties with love and social norms to the distance between her “natural” education on Ile Bourbon and the artificiality of French relationships, eventually rejecting the possibility that reformed education can purge society of its corruption. Balzac, meanwhile, traces Eugénie’s transition from naïve young woman to true adulthood, when she is versed in the relations of “intérêt” that govern those around her. Eugénie, raised to base her relationships on true affection, is eventually isolated by her education, but Balzac does not envision her possible escape from society. / text

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This essay examines the love affair between the two main characters of Rut Hillarp’s novel Sindhia. It draws attention to the schism between the Surrealist version of love as an extatic-religious fusion of the sexes – that in a way marks the relationship – and the yet remarkable coolness between the two lovers. With the theories of French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan, I will show how the man and the woman project their unrealistic individual fantasies on each other, thus rendering impossible the Surrealist Meeting, with its road to an absolute reality. The Surrealist "l’amour fou", I will argue, is trapped in the ritualized "l’amor interruptus"; a lacanian term for a certain kind of love that wishes to conceal the fact that desire will never find its object. It does so by pretending that the object would be found if only love had been consummated (thus the reason love is never consummated, since, as Lacan puts it, the object, or the Thing, is never to be found). I will, in brief, argue that the love affair depicted in the novel in different ways tries to deal with the “lack-of-being” that marks the subject according to Lacan; the absolute distance to the desirable Thing.

Rousseau's articles on music for Diderot and d'Alembert's Encyclopedie , and to a lesser extent his Dictionnaire de musique, have rarely attracted the scholarly attention they deserve. As a result, the pivotal role that Rousseau played in the early French reception of Rameau's theory of harmony has never been fully appreciated. Far from being a quarrel over musical aesthetics, Rousseau's dispute with Rameau raised fundamental questions about the composer's theory of harmony. Rousseau interrogated the empirical adequacy of Rameau's theory, the soundness of its foundations, the logic of its derivation, and its pretension to universality. Over the course of his criticism, Rousseau came to regard tonal harmony as a historically-induced particularity of Western music to be explained through historical inquiry. In this respect, he anticipates a range of ideas that historians of music theory have associated far more readily with Francois-Joseph Fetis.