This project argues that there is a previously unnamed canon of literature called Magical Feminism which exists across many current popular (even lowbrow) genres such as science-fiction, fantasy, so-called realistic literature, and contemporary television and film. I define Magical Feminism as a genre quite similar to Magical Realism, but assert that its main political thrust is to model a feminist agency for its readers. To define this genre, I closely-read the image of the female magic user as one of the most important Magical Feminist metaphors. I argue that the female magic user–commonly called the witch, but also labeled priestess, mistress, shaman, mambo, healer, midwife– is a metaphor for female unruliness and disruption to patriarchy and as such, is usually portrayed as evil and deserving of punishment. I assert that many (although not all) of the popular texts this genre includes are overlooked or ignored by the academy, and thus, that an important focus for contemporary feminism is missed. When the texts are noticed by parts of the academy, they are mostly considered popular culture novelty acts, not serious political genres. As part of my argument, I analyze third wave feminism’s attempt to reconcile traits previously considered less than feminist, such as the domestic. I also deconstruct the popular media’s negative portrayal of contemporary feminism and the resulting reluctance for many young women to identify themselves as feminist. I also argue that this reluctance goes hand in hand with a growing attempt to seek new models for empowering female epistemologies. My assertion is that these texts are the classrooms where many readers learn their feminism. Finally, I list a short bibliography as a way of defining canon of texts that should be considered Magical Feminist.

This dissertation presents an edition of six poems from John Donne’s Songs and Sonets—“The Indifferent,” “Love’s Usury,” “The Will,” “The Funerall,” “The Primerose,” and “The Dampe”—and a digital edition of one additional poem, “To His Mistress Going to Bed.” Using the methodologies of The Variorum Edition of the Poems of John Donne, I have also adopted the edition’s principal goal—to recover and present Donne’s exact texts to the extent that this is possible. For each poem, I have selected a copy-text and emended it in accordance with the Variorum’s principles. A textual introduction for each poem explains how the copy-text was chosen and traces the circulation of the text in all seventeenth-century artifacts. I have also provided a textual apparatus for each poem, which, in addition to recording the texts collated, emendations to the copy-text, imperfections in the sources, and indentation patterns in the sources, also notes all verbal variants and variants of punctuation. Finally, I have created a stemma charting the transmissional history for each poem and giving a visual representation of how the textual artifacts relate to each other. The other major component of my dissertation, a digital edition of “To His Mistress Going to Bed,” is meant to serve as a prototype for what might usefully be done with Donne’s poems in a digital medium. While the actual digital edition of this poem cannot be fully represented on paper, my chapter on this edition outlines the process I used to create it and describes its major features. The digital edition itself can be found at <http://donnevariorum.tamu.edu/resources/tohismistress/tohismistress.html>.

In line with Wittgenstein's axiom that "what the solipsist means is quite correct; only it cannot be said, but makes itself manifest," this thesis aims to demonstrate how the gulf between analytic and continental philosophy can best be bridged through the mediation of art. The present thesis brings attention to Markson's work, lauded in the tradition of Faulkner, Joyce, and Lowry, as exemplary of the shift from modernity to postmodernity, wherein the human heart is not only in conflict with itself, but with the language out of which it is necessarily constituted. Markson limns the paradoxical condition of the subject severed from intersubjectivity, and affected not only by the grief of bereavement, which can be defined in Heideggarian terms as anxiety for the ontic negation of a being (i.e., death), but by loss, which I assert is the ontological ground for how Dasein encounters the nothing in anxiety proper.

The aim of this thesis is to evaluate the financial situation of the company A.W. spol. s r.o. and with the help of the tools of the financial analysis and under its results propose appropriate measures which will lead to the improvement of the financial situation and to the increase the competitiveness of this company.

Pendant cinquante ans, de 1833 à 1883, Juliette Drouet écrivit environ vingt-deux mille lettres à Victor Hugo. Le corpus étudié, composé de 653 lettres plus une enveloppe, propose la lecture continue des lettres, transcrites et annotées. Il s’inscrit dans un projet de l’édition intégrale de cette correspondance, dont Florence Naugrette, Professeur à l’Université Paris-Sorbonne, est la directrice. Ces lettres ont un triple intérêt : biographique, historique et littéraire. Juliette Drouet décrit la nouvelle vie de famille de Victor Hugo qui a décidé de réunir ses petits-enfants, sa belle-fille ainsi que Juliette Drouet, dans le même immeuble du 21 de la rue de Clichy, à des étages différents. Ce déménagement est annoncé dès le début de l’année 1874 et occupe nombre de lettres, tout comme l’aménagement du second étage où habite Juliette Drouet et où Victor Hugo travaille et reçoit ses invités lors de ses dîners et ses soirées. De plus, ces lettres sont un témoignage de la vie quotidienne d’une maîtresse de maison à la fin du XIXe siècle, et de ses domestiques. Elles évoquent aussi la proximité avec les animaux, l’usage des médicaments et donnent des renseignements précieux sur les relations entre les malades, la santé et la médecine. Leur intérêt littéraire se révèle dans les comptes rendus de l’accueil de Quatre-vingt-treizième et des lectures du Rappel, en plus du genre hybride de journal épistolaire que ces lettres possèdent. Beaucoup plus que la maîtresse, Juliette Drouet apparaît comme l’épouse de Victor Hugo. Il légitime cette relation par les cinq lettres qu’il lui écrit chaque année et montre que Juliette Drouet est bien la pierre angulaire de son existence. / For fifty years, from 1833 to 1883, Juliette Drouet wrote about twenty-two thousand letters to Victor Hugo. The corpus studied, 653 letters more one envelope, offers the continuous reading of the letters, transcribed and annotated. It is part of a project of the complete edition of this correspondence, which Florence Naugrette, Professor at the University Paris-Sorbonne, is the Director. These letters have a triple interest : biographical, historical and literary. Juliette Drouet describes new family life of Victor Hugo who decided to meet her grandchildren, daughter-in-law and Juliette Drouet, different floors in the same building of the 21 street of Clichy. This move is announced early in the year 1874 and occupies number of letters, just as the development of the second floor where lives of Juliette Drouet and where Victor Hugo works and receives his guests at his dinner and his evenings. Moreover, these letters are a testimony of the daily life of a housewife at the end of the 19th century, and her servants. They also evoke the proximity with animals, the use of drugs and give valuable information on the relationships between patients, health and medicine. Their literary interest is revealed in the reviews of Quatrevingt-Treize and the readings of Le Rappel, in addition to the hybrid kind of epistolary diary that these letters have. Victor Hugo legitimate this relationship with the five letters that he write her every year and shows that Juliette Drouet is the cornerstone of his existence.