Thesis (Ph.D.)--Tufts University, 2003. / Adviser: Jose Alvarez-Junco. Submitted to the Dept. of History. Includes bibliographical references. Access restricted to members of the Tufts University community. Also available via the World Wide Web;

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Chicago, Department of East Asian Languages and Civilizations, August 2000. / Includes bibliographical references. Also available on the Internet.

The aim with this thesis is to investigate how the creative element of the compositional process can be improved, and to research how a composer can develop and sublimate his or her aesthetics. As a part of the research process two pieces of music have been composed, one for the chamber ensemble Norrbotten NEO and one for the symphony orchestra NorrlandsOperans symfoniorkester. The compositional processes of the two pieces are described in detail and the thoughts and ideas that emerged during the two separate composing processes are the main basis of the concluding discussion of this thesis. The thesis also contains a more theoretical section where creativity, learning styles and the aesthetics of the modernistic era, among other things, are discussed. The final section of the thesis is a concluding discussion that argues that one effective way to improve the creative flow in the compositional process is to initially not work with exact pitches. Regarding aesthetics the thesis claim that aesthetic values are uttermost personal and that it therefore is pointless for a composer to try to acclimatize to the surrounding world. The thesis contends that it is preferable for a composer to try to understand his or her own aesthetic values and thereupon, in a personal and genuine way, share them with the rest of the world.

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In response to early technologies of seeing, hearing, and moving at the turn of the twentieth century, modernist authors, poets, and artists experimented with forms of textual production enmeshed in mechanical technologies of the time. Unfolding a literary history of such mechanical forms, this dissertation sees modern manuscripts as blueprints for literary production, whose specific rules of assembly model historical mechanisms of cultural production in practice during their period of composition. Central to this analysis is the concept of the inscriptive procedure, defined as a systematic series of strategies for composing, revising, and arranging a literary text that emerge in the context of that text’s specific political and technological environment; in so doing, inscriptive procedures use composition as a material act that works through a set of political circumstances by incorporating them into the signifying process of the physical text. As such, procedurally authored texts do not neatly instantiate in the form of the print book. Reading modern manuscripts instead as media objects, this dissertation applies the physical operation of a given old media mechanism as a hermeneutic strategy for interpreting an author’s inscriptive procedure. It unspools the spectacular vignettes of Raymond Roussel, plays back the celluloid fragments of Marcel Proust, decrypts the concordances of Samuel Beckett, and processes a digital history of Djuna Barnes’s editorial collaboration with T.S. Eliot. Rather than plotting a positivist literary genealogy, this dissertation instead traces an ouroboros mode of literary critique that emerges in its own wake, as digital experiments with textual manipulation reveal analog bibliographic arrangement procedures. Using the methods of contemporary scholarly editing to undertake a procedural archaeology of experimental literature, this dissertation unearths an analog prehistory of digital humanities practice, one that evolves alongside the mechanisms of old media as they lead to the advent of the digital age. In so doing, it unfolds a historicity of cultural form, one whose mechanical and ideological apparatuses participate in the development of early methods in humanities computing. / Graduate / 2018-06-21

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ABSTRACT This research report explores A. S Byatt’s ambivalent relationship to postmodernism through a critical engagement with two of her recent novels, Possession and The Biographer’s Tale. Both use the techniques, while simultaneously constituting a critique, of postmodernism. The novels challenge postmodernism, indicating Byatt’s misgivings about the continuing suitability of this mode of literary representation. Possession is examined in detail, while The Biographer’s Tale is used to provide a backdrop to the discussion of Byatt’s viewpoints. Possession is a pastiche of styles, incorporating some of Byatt’s favourite literary forms. Postmodernism allows this experimentation but disregards qualities the author values highly, such as a celebration of traditional literature and the emotional affectiveness of history. Possession considers the positive and negative aspects of the literary movement. This thesis examines Byatt’s negotiation with postmodernism and the contribution of her critical attitude towards the success of Possession.

This thesis considers the hitherto unexplored question of modernism and non-fictional genres. Although modernist studies have long been attentive to the implications of modernism’s “manifestos”, and recent work on modernist magazines has shed new light on forms beyond poetry and fictional prose, little attention has been afforded to other non-fictional writing. Similarly, although a growing school of criticism has emphasised the significance of “the everyday” in modernist texts, few have examined non-fiction concerned with leisure or daily life – a particularly unusual omission given the rich possibilities such texts offer for our understanding of how everyday lives relate to wider society. This thesis examines instructional texts which make radical interventions in the social and political upheavals which follow the First World War. Contra to the well-debunked yet still pervasive narratives which typify the modernist text as a work of disinterested – even isolated – genius, these examples demonstrate a broad-ranging, complex engagement with popular venues. Surveying examples of popular genres such as cookbooks, travel guides and radio programs written by a range of canonical and lesser-known modernist writers, it demonstrates how modernist writers re-appropriated the common features of such mainstream forms in order to stage various (and varied) interventions in local and national affairs. Its reading of Sylvia Townsend Warner’s Somerset (1949) and Scottish Scene: The Intelligent Man’s Guide to Albyn (1934), by Hugh MacDiarmid and Lewis Grassic Gibbon, shows how adopting the “textual codes” of travel guides provided authors with a means of writing back against the over-simplistic narratives of region and nation popular in other examples of the genre. Likewise, The Alice B Toklas Cook Book (1954) and F.T. Marinetti’s The Futurist Cookbook (1932) are read as divergent examples of texts which stage radical interventions in food practices as they relate to nationhood and conflict. Comparable interventions are also unearthed in the media. Flann O’Brien’s Cruiskeen Lawn columns (1940-66), published under the name Myles na gCopaleen, are often read in studies of Irish political and cultural consciousness. This thesis argues that they must also be read in terms of genre, demonstrating how a subversive use of headlines, bylines and other page architecture signals O’Brien’s use of the newspaper form itself to pass comment on the cultural and political life of the Republic of Ireland. Finally, this thesis turns to broadcast culture, with a chapter on radio and documentary films. Through readings of Virginia Woolf and Elizabeth Bowen's radio broadcasts, and the GPO Film Unit collaboration of Benjamin Britten and W.H. Auden, this chapter shows how irony and experiment allowed writers to turn state-sanctioned media to their own ends during the interwar years – suggesting that literary readings are crucial to understanding modernism's engagement with new media. Through these different readings, this thesis highlights the sheer diversity of modernist genres which have either received little critical attention, or whose formal specifics have been under-acknowledged. As a result, it is able to reframe modernism’s approach to several areas of twentieth-century life, approaching anew pressing areas of concern in the field – for instance, space and place, the circulation of texts, the everyday, and the commercial, lowbrow and domestic – demonstrating the critical importance of instructive genres to understanding literary modernism.