We read a novel one sentence at a time. The first scale of attention for even the longest novel is the play of forces within the thousands of individual sentences. This project aims to rescale the analysis of novelistic form, elucidating this play of forces: how do they shape attention, and how do structures of attention give rise to aesthetic experience? We recognize the importance of form in music and architecture in part because there is no referential content to distract us. When it comes to the realist novel, however, its rich referential field easily obscures the dynamics of experience created by form. This study seeks to elucidate those dynamics. Chapter One analyzes Austen’s long interval of tension. Austen’s capacious sentence stretches attention over an entire descriptive event, producing drama and crises even when events in the fictional world are characterized by equilibrium and serenity. With the syntax of the sentence unresolved, attention cannot rest. An achieved description thus has perceptual corollaries in temporal commitment, and in attention that is divided between the immediate claims of elaboration and the prospect of closure. In Dickens, microstructures of just one to three sentences elicit the sudden apercu. Like metaphor, the apercu emerges through our recognition of a meaningful relationship between actions, facts, and utterances. Dickens presents only the raw materials of discovery (say, by juxtaposing a character’s mutually contradictory statements), leaving to us the second-order activity of recognition (her disingenuousness). Chapter Three examines how Hardy employs linguistic analogues to represent the essential structure of perceptual experience. Chapter Four, on late James, shows how shifts in attention on two scales produce two distinct experiences. Shifts to the periphery of a scene act as a temporal ballast, adding weight to the perceived dimensions of the passage. Shifts within the sentence elicit intense perceptual involvement, even when that absorption exceeds what is warranted by the semantic plane. The essence of the novel’s referenced world can be preserved in memory, but linguistic form resists memory; it is immediate and ephemeral. During the act of reading, it is one of the novel’s greatest pleasures.

To many readers, the Victorian novel is synonymous with moral insight and Victorian criticism with moral philistinism. While the novel remains celebrated for its complex treatment of decision-making and sympathy, the evaluative judgments of Victorian critics have been dismissed as thematically reductive and imprecise. However, this study argues that the virtue terms that pervade Victorian discourse--words like "natural," "manly," "lucid," and "sincere"--invest sentence-level stylistic properties with ethical value because they embody aesthetic character. Rather than focus on the novel's action, characters, or themes, these "stylistic virtues" ascribe moral significance to "literariness" itself.

Realism is a mode of representation that purports to depict contemporary society objectively and in its entirety. By contrast, modernist artists are often regarded as having turned away from external reality to represent subjective states and to emphasize the artistic (versus mimetic) qualities of art. Building on recent scholarship that has demonstrated that Spanish realist authors were mindful of the limitations of the realist project, this study examines frames as devices through which both realist and modernist authors and artists working in fin-de-siècle Spain signal the limits of perception and representation. / Romance Languages and Literatures

published_or_final_version / English / Master / Master of Philosophy

Lou, the heroine of Marian Engel's Bear, attempts to confront the difficulties she has with male domination in a relationship with a semi-tame bear, but fails to resolve them because both female subjectivity and the patriarchy are socially constructed.

Edward Whittemore (1933-1995) is a now almost unknown American writer. This project seeks to bring Edward Whittemore to light. Though he has a simple voice and a subtle but vast knowledge of history, he writes with a fantastic imagination and dramatizes a timely but tragic message. In “Part One” of Sinai Tapestry, Whittemore explores the complex relationship between Chaos and Order through the extravagant lives of his major characters, Plantagenet Strongbow and Skanderbeg Wallenstein. Through a biography of Whittemore’s life and a close analysis of Strongbow’s and Wallenstein’s relationship, I will highlight Whittemore’s depth as an author and thinker, make evident his availability to literary analysis and critical theory, and argue the presence of Whittemore’s own ideology regarding the systems that govern human experience.

В первой части магистерской работы реферативно представлена теория романа М.М.Бахтина, а также научный взгляд на данную теорию. Во второй, практической, части представлен литературоведческий анализ финалов/ эпилогов классических романов XIX в., и сде��ана попытка применить теорию романа М.М.Бахтина на практике. / Pirmoje magisrto darbo dalyje yra referuojama M.M. Bachtino romano teorija, o taip pat kitų mokslininkų požiūris į šią teorija. Antroje, praktinėje, dalyje atlikta literatūrologinė klasikinių XIX a. romanų finalų analizė ir yra mėginama panaudoti M. M. Bachtino romano teoriją praktikoje. / In the first part the works is the theory of the novel of M.M.Bachtin, and also a scientific view on the given theory is presented. In the second, practical, to a part it is presented the analysis conclusions/epilogues of classical novels of XIX century, and attempt to put the theory of the novel of M.M.Bachtin into practice is made.

Bakalauro darbe lyginamuoju aspektu nagrinėjami du lietuvių autorių (Lauros Sintijos Černiauskaitės „Benedikto slenksčiai“ ir Romualdo Granausko „Duburys“) grožiniai kūriniai, didžiausią dėmesį kreipiant į auklėjimo romano žanro variacijas juose.Moksliniuose darbuose išsamiai pateikta Bildungsromano teorija, tačiau apskritai trūksta mokslininkų platesnio grožinių kūrinių aptarimo, detalesnės jų analizės auklėjimo romano aspektu. Šiame bakalauro darbe aptartos ir esminės auklėjimo romano ypatybės (kanonai), ir minėtu požiūriu smulkiau išanalizuoti bei tarpusavyje palyginti du grožiniai kūriniai. / There in the final bachelor work have been examined in comperative aspect two Lithuanian authors‘ (Laura Sintija Černiauskaitė „Benedikto slenksčiai“ and Romualdas Granauskas „Duburys“) novels focusing on parenting novel genre variations in them.Work theme – parenting novel variations: Laura Sintija Černiauskaitė „Benedikto slenksčiai“ and Romualdas Granauskas „Duburys“.

The use of functional foods by individuals to address health issues has become increasingly common. Pomegranate fruits and other pomegranate products contain phytochemicals, including several antioxidants that may have benefits when consumed as a functional food. The production of pomegranates in the United States is concentrated in California; yet pomegranates can be grown successfully in other regions. The purpose of this study was two-fold: 1) to address the market potential and consumer preferences for pomegranate fruits and other pomegranate products in Texas and 2) to address issues of experimental auction design and estimation in regards to novel products and health benefits of food products. A nonhypothetical experimental procedure was developed that combined preference rankings with a uniform nth-price auction to elicit preferences and willingness-to-pay (WTP) for pomegranate fruit products. Demographic and behavioral characteristics were collected from a representative sample of subjects in the Bryan-College Station area of Texas. Subjects submitted baseline preference rankings and bids on six pomegranate products and a control fruit product, all with the same retail price. Most participants had never purchased or tasted a pomegranate product. Additional information on the pomegranate products was provided in three forms: tasting information, health and nutrition information, and anti-cancer information. Subjects had the greatest WTP for the control product, followed by the juice product, followed by the ready-to-eat products; the whole pomegranate fruits had the lowest WTP. The preference rankings indicated the same order of preferences for the baseline round, but the ranking of the juice product dropped and the ranking of the ready-to-eat and Texas whole fruits rose when additional information was provided. Estimations of the WTP were done using random-effects tobit models and mixed linear models on the full bids and individual changes in bids. Unengaged bidders and bid censoring were addressed. Demographic variables were typically not predictors of WTP with the exception of previous purchases of pomegranates and household size. There were differences in WTP across information treatments, with tasting information having a greater effect than either health and nutrition information or anti-cancer information. Providing a reference price also increased WTP. Preference rankings were estimated using a rank-ordered logit and a mixed rank-ordered logit model. There was an interaction effect of each information treatment with the product characteristics, indicating that studies of effects of information treatments on preferences are not generalizable across products. There was divergence in the results for the preference rankings from the results of the experimental auction; preference rankings and bids gave different results for the same products.

In this thesis, we examine theories of reading as they apply to three examples of the French New Novel. We begin with a detailed theoretical expose in which we compare and attempt to reconcile the reading models of Umberto Eco, Wolfgang Iser, Stanley Fish, Bertrand Gervais and Richard Saint-Gelais. The hybrid theory thus obtained is then tested on three works in order to underscore the modalities of reading that are particular to the New Novel, while insisting on these modalities' inherent variability. We focus on the reader's reconstructing of the narrative in L'Emploi du temps , on the impossibility of structuring the plot in La Maison de rendez-vous, and on the paradigmatic mode of reading La Bataille de Pharsale. In so doing, we hope to demonstrate how an analysis of the reading process allows for a heightened appreciation of the essential indeterminacy of the New Novel, of its fundamental otherness. We conclude with tentative remarks on the heuristic function of these texts.