This essay examines The Myth of Sisyphus (1942), The Plague (1947), and The Rebel (1951). I have chosen these three works in an effort to triangulate Camus' intellectual development, his persistent interest in literature, and the historical background against which these take place. Sisyphus and The Rebel are Camus' two major philosophical essays. The former belongs to Camus' "First Cycle" of writing, in which he focused on the concept of "the Absurd"; the latter belongs to Camus' "Second Cycle", in which he focused on the theme of "revolt." Camus wrote The Myth of Sisyphus during the Nazi occupation of Paris, an event which he witnessed and experienced and which also served as the inspiration for his novel The Plague. Though the two books are connected by this event, thematically The Plague belongs to Camus' Second Cycle. For this reason, it serves as an illuminating work, demonstrating the importance of fiction to Camus' intellectual process and his particular way of thinking. From Sisyphus to The Rebel, Camus' argument for fiction comes down to the opportunity it offers to describe life rather than explain it. In his opinion, the best novelists exhibit the very philosophy that should generally govern human behavior. These novelists limit themselves to what they can be sure of – namely, their personal experiences; they patiently explore what it is like to live on this earth – how human beings deal with each other, manage their environments, and cope with the often tremendous complexities of life. Not co-incidentally, Camus' fiction took special interest in death of all kinds – from murder to sickness to suicide – in order to remind his readers that life is finite. According to Camus, writing fiction is a way to keep the reader conscious of the human condition, because good fiction plainly exhibits life as it is and death as our common fate. By reflecting on good literature, readers may form their own life ethic.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Indiana University, Dept. of Spanish and Portuguese Literature, 2008. / Title from PDF t.p. (viewed on Feb. 8, 2010). Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 70-05, Section: A, page: 1666.

This study focuses on Italy's transition to industrial modernity (in the years from the end of the Risorgimento to the rise of Fascism) from the perspective of some of its iconic objects: wristwatches, bicycles, cigarettes, and cameras. Through the combined analysis of their reception (engendering new social practices like tourism, sport, and photography) and their representation in contemporary art (literature, painting, photography), this research reconstructs the gradual transformation of Italy into a modern nation. These objects reveal a cultural laboratory of the nation's quest for a shared modern identity, both in the positive overlapping of tradition and modernity (challenging a polarized critical approach to the age), and in the interaction of concurring perspectives (derived from ads, newspapers, public debates, and literary and visual sources). By exploring the singular contrast between the social phantasmagoria surrounding these newly mass-produced items, and their striking symbolization in art as antiques, this study highlights a hidden moment of tension in the negotiation of modernity, which finds intellectual expression in the deliberate affinity of these objects with Baroque poetics. In reading the meaning of this reference to the 17th century, this work advances two main arguments. First, on an intellectual level, such allusions indicate not only, against the background of the coeval recovery of the 17th century, an important trait d'union between European and Italian Modernism, but also, against the background of the Italian scholarly debate regarding the Baroque (leading De Sanctis and Croce to equate it with their 'decadent' present), a significant instance for re-evaluating the vital or 'positive' aspect of the fin de siecle, challenging its established definition as Decadentism. Second, on a socio-cultural level, the experimental Baroque epistemology of these objects envisions, on a micro-scale, a peculiarly Italian quest for a singular modernity, which embraces the excitement of modernization while either containing it within the influence of the nation's past heritage, or re-elaborating it in new solutions. / Romance Languages and Literatures

This study seeks to unravel the intricate connection between a selection of graphic novels, the moments in which they were created, and the process of weaving an Italian cultural history. It analyzes graphic novels and comics from three periods in Italian contemporary history – 1968, 1977 and 2001 – and asks how the hybrid image-text language of graphic novels might provide a unique insight into the relationship between the individual and history in contemporary Italy. More specifically, it looks at how the comic medium not only reflects or represents historical events, but effectively re-writes and re-traces them, allowing us to re-think History. Ultimately, this work reveals how the graphic novel medium has been used as an instrument in the process of weaving an Italian cultural history since 1968. Comics not only reflect the time in which they are created, either explicitly or implicitly, but also work as cultural agents in the formation and re-telling of history. Whether they attempt to speak to and for a generation seeking change and a new reality of freedom, are a means of aggressive socio- political criticism in a moment of apathy and disillusion, or a space to reflect on and work through personal and historical trauma, graphic novels are shaped by, and help to shape, our vision of ourselves and our society. / Romance Languages and Literatures

This dissertation explores the role of ignorance in the process of early modern self-fashioning. Renaissance historiography has, by and large, been based on a Cartesian-cum-Hegelian understanding of the subject as a subject of knowledge. An individual's recognition of her self-motivated agency, her power to act as an independent self, has been read as the product of the generation of knowledge and epistemologies that assert human ability to pursue and master knowledge. Critical theories of subjectivity have challenged the humanist subject and its epistemological foundations, but ignorance and the unknown have rarely been theorized as anything more than empty spaces to be invaded and filled by knowledge. Building on recent philosophical and cultural materialist investigations into knowledge, ignorance, and the subject, my work studies how ignorance can operate as a positive force in the production of the self and how, paradoxically, knowledge can erode the epistemological foundations of subjectivity. Primarily focused on the literature of early modern Europe, this dissertation advances the study of early modern subjectivity as well as the relationship between epistemology and the self as perceived in contemporary theory by tracing the hitherto ignored operations of ignorance and complicating the assumption of a teleological connection between knowledge and subjectivity. In particular, the major areas of study are: how hegemonic discourses produce not only knowledge but also ignorance in order to stabilize the existence and authority of social hierarchies and empowered subject; how the creation and pursuit of knowledge outside of these demarcations can erode the foundations of social identity and individual subjectivity by revealing the fiction of cultural "truths"; how cultural spaces of ignorance can provide disempowered individuals opportunities for resistance and self-fashioning against socially prescribed norms; and how submission to or acknowledgment of one's own ignorance can become internalized as an essential part of a subjectivity that does not rely on knowledge as a form of power.

<p> Theorists of the sublime have struggled to make the category coherent because they have collapsed its causes, the experience of the event itself, its subsequent effects on a subject, the symptomatic appearance of those effects in written texts, and the effects such texts have on a readership or audience, all into one concept: "the sublime." However, by slowing down the sublime event, parsing out its stages temporally, and drawing out their distinctive qualities, we not only can make some parts of the total sublime experience effable and coherent, but also we can discover meaning and significance in texts, such as strange or difficult poems, that may otherwise seem to be incomprehensible, irrational, or irresponsible uses of language. In turn, because such sublime texts refer both to experiences and to the subject that has them, such readings invite expanded understandings of human being (noun) and human being (gerund). This hypothesis is not new, but I complicate it by understanding human being through not one but at least three interrelated lenses: existential/experiential, biological/embodied, and social/civilizational. Therefore, to show adequately the sublime event's reputed "interruption of being", its continued relevance to the study of being, and what it reveals about human being, I analyze three types of poetries interested in these three aspects of human being. </p><p> In my introductory chapter, I critically review arguments made about the sublime in literary history, both canonical &ndash; such as Longinus's, Burke's, and Kant's &ndash; and more recent, such as Suzanne Guerlac's, Francis Ferguson's, and Neil Hertz's. I attend to the sublime's delineations as well as its rewards and risks. I differ, however, when I conclude that the cause is a perception that interrupts meaning-making and self-making cognitive processes. I clarify why the experience of the event is reputably private, contingent, and virtually ineffable. I argue that the sublime can only enter public discourse through the logic of symptom, of which poems can be examples. In other words, because poems are in and of language, they show a recovery from the sublime event, to which they can refer but which they cannot represent. I read Sappho's Ode and a section of Wordsworth's "Prelude" to demonstrate the effectiveness of reading poems in this way. </p><p> In each of the chapters that follow, I read both typical poems and sublime recovery poems, highlighting the qualities that make a sublime recovery poem recognizable within the context of its respective poet's work. Thereafter, I discuss the consequences of the meaning these poems make. In my analysis, I remain faithful to the terms the poet develops across his body of work. </p><p> I introduce the existential sublime event through Zagajewski's poetry. I build the contextual background that the sublime event interrupts through an overview of Zagajewski's more typical Dasein poems. Against this background, his sublime recovery poems emerge. They expand the meaning of human being (gerund) to include atemporal experiences &ndash; a virtual contradiction in terms considering that being happens in time and that time plays a strong role in Zagajewski's poetics. As a consequence, I argue, his sublime poems propose to the reader possible being that is non-ethical, asocial, and transcendent and that contrasts with Zagajewski's speaker's more usual ethical stance of praise. They also invite important questions about human consciousness that can reinvigorate our understanding of Dasein. </p><p> In chapter three, I examine the biological sublime, an interruption in Holub's organic, empirical context that typically acknowledges both failure and paradox in science, thought, and art. In response, poems act as intensive care for being by holding off the encroachment of non-being, which threatens in moments of failure or paradox. In "Transplantace Srdce," however, Holub's speaker adopts uncharacteristic language associated with sublime recovery and reaches unempirical, rational certainty about being's presence where non-being should be. This conclusion redefines the parameters of embodied being. </p><p> In chapter four, I begin with the civilizational sublime, to which Grossman's elaborate edifice of poetic theory and poems, on which he seeks to hang the value of persons, responds. The rupture in civilization is marked by Trinity, the first atomic explosion that entered social consciousness and ushered in the use of nuclear weapons and the ever-imminent threat to repeat sociability's utter failure. Grossman's search for a non-violent account of representation that protects sociability culminates in a collection of poems distinguished by their inclusion of others' speech, which I read as a poetics of courtesy that is not violent. Courtesy requires the simultaneous presence of both the speaker and the one who is offered a chance to speak; otherwise, it fails. </p><p> In the Coda, I discuss the relevance of my approach to other theories of the sublime, to the study of poetry, and to the philosophy of consciousness. (Abstract shortened by UMI.)</p>

My study seeks to explore the interest that Spanish women authors such as Josefina Aldecoa, Carme Riera, Nuria Amat, Esther Tusquets, Marina Mayoral, Carmen Martín Gaite, and Olga Guirao have taken in the revival of epistolary fiction in recent decades. Eighteenth- and nineteenth-century epistolary fiction in Spain was conditioned by social practices and by literary conventions that typically confined its heroines to an amorous plot and women authors to anonymity. I contend that if modern tradition of epistolary practices and other male-discriminatory practices kept women writers silenced or invisible in the Spanish literary world, contemporary women writers sketch themselves back into their texts. Fictional letters function as written self-portraits for them to reflect and tell their own stories, thereby creating a playful mirror effect between the fictional epistolographer and the historical author. By pushing the conventional boundaries of letter writing as a sentimental genre, contemporary women authors take liberty to rewrite female representation and to give the fictional protagonists a new voice and visibility. They revisit the theme of love in epistolary literature to explore refashioned—and often transgressive—discourses on gender, sexuality, and subject identity.

<p> The creative content contained within this thesis is comprised of two collections of short stories: <u>The Death of an Escargot (or Strange Feelings of Petrov)</u> and <u>&amp; Stories.</u> Together, these story collections represent the fruits of my labors as a student of the M.F.A. program at California State University at Long Beach. <u> The Death of an Escargot (or Strange Feelings of Petrov)</u> is a story cycle that places emphasis on experimentation and creative possibility. The second section, <u>&amp; Stories,</u> represents my engagement with more traditional methods, as well as an earnest attempt at giving voice to distinct communities that are often under-represented within the literary cannon. It is my intention that these stories be understood as representations of my interests as a writer, as well as artifacts to be considered as aides in the formation of my own creative identity.</p>

In recent years, Silicon Valley has become virtually synonymous with startup companies. These companies are defined by their famous "startup culture." An interesting and unanticipated outcome of this research was the finding that the discourse of Silicon Valley startups is framed centrally in terms of culture. I use discourse analysis to understand the way people create and perpetuate structures of power, gender, and culture. By studying the way people in startup companies talk about their expectations and experiences, this analysis hopes to gain a deeper understanding into the normalized cultural discourses surrounding startup organizations, as well as the way individuals negotiate their subjective realities within this sphere.

Shen Congwen [沈从文] (1902 – 1988), the famous Chinese writer most active from the late 1920s to the end of the 1940s, took particular interest in music throughout his literary career. From Shen’s earliest works, folksongs feature in his regional stories about West Hunan, his home region. These songs not only provide the stories with a special local colour, but also indicate Shen’s strong connection with Western anthropology and psychology. From the mid-1930s, Shen developed a passion for Western classical music. He stated on several occasions that he wished he could use the method of musical composition in his writing, even though he never attempted to learn to compose. This thesis will investigate Shen’s insistence on the assumption that the method of musical composition – especially the use of ‘harmony’ – would make literary works more beautiful and infinite. Shen’s discussion of Western classical music also points to the connection between music and abstraction. In Shen’s later career, he seems to be consistently pursuing the beauty of abstraction. At the same time, he writes about ‘soundless music’, which goes beyond concrete music such as folksongs or Western classical music. In the analysis of Shen’s ideas on music, one question remains: what are the possible sources of these ideas? Shen started writing after May Fourth Movement, a movement that massively involved learning from the West. His career thrived while socialising with a group of Chinese writers whose works bear evident marks of Western literature, and some of whom were also the translators of many Western works. Furthermore, Shen’s ideas on music appear to reflect those of Western literature, especially modern literature. This thesis will consider possible influences on Shen, starting with an examination of what Shen might have read or known about Western literary ideas. Finally, according to the evidence uncovered in my research, this thesis will propose a comparative study between possible Western sources of influence and Shen’s ideas on music, focusing on the influence of Western anthropology, psychology, Goethe (1749 – 1832), French Symbolism, Nietzsche (1844 – 1900), and Joyce (1882 – 1941).