Scholarship of the anonymous Old English prose Life of St. Mary of Egypt ranges from source studies and linguistic analyses to explorations of Anglo-Saxon female sexuality and comparisons to saints' lives translated by the monk Ælfric, but all of these studies have been based on either the text extant in BL MS Cotton Julius E. vii or on W. W. Skeat's edition of the Julius manuscript, Ælfric's Lives of Saints (1881-1900). There is, however, an as yet unedited fragmentary copy of the Old English Mary of Egypt in BL MS Cotton Otho B. x, a manuscript severely damaged by fire in 1731. Digital imaging of damaged manuscripts in concert with ultraviolet fluorescence and other special lighting techniques has been shown to be effective for restoring the legibility of previously inaccessible texts. By means of such digital facsimiles I have transcribed the text of Mary of Egypt in Otho B. x, have collated this text with Skeat's edition, and have discovered that Otho B. x contains textual evidence not found in Julius E. vii. In this thesis, I present my findings and discuss the significance of this new textual evidence for the Old English Life of St. Mary of Egypt.

My Interdisciplinary dissertation examines illustrations in manuscripts and early print sources and reveals their participation in the transmission and reception of Old Norse mythology. My approach encompasses Material Philology and Media Specific Analysis. The reception history of illustrations of Old Norse Mythology affects our understanding of related Interdisciplinary fields such as Book History, Visual Studies, Literary Studies and Cultural Studies. Part One of my dissertation begins with a discussion of the tradition of Old Norse oral poetry in pagan Scandinavia and the highly visual nature of the poems. The oral tradition died out in Scandinavia but survived in Iceland and was preserved in vernacular manuscripts in the thirteenth century. The discovery of these manuscripts in the seventeenth century initiated a cycle of illustration that largely occurred outside of Iceland. Part One concludes with an analytical survey of illustrations of Old Norse mythology in print sources from 1554 to 1915 revealing important patterns of transmission. Part Two traces the technological history of production of digital editions and manuscript facsimiles back to the seventeenth century when manuscripts were hand-copied and published by means of copperplate engravings. Part Two also discusses the scholarly and cultural prejudices towards images that are only now slowly fading. Part Two concludes with a description of my prototype for a digital image repository named MyNDIR (My Norse Digital Image Repository). MyNDIR will facilitate the emergence of images of Old Norse Studies from the current informal crowd sourcing of material on the web to a digital image repository supporting the dissemination of accurate scholarly knowledge in a widely accessible form. Part Three presents two thematic case studies that demonstrate the value of applying the skills of visual literacy to illustrations of Old Norse mythology. The first study examines Jakob Sigurðsson’s illustrations of Norse gods in hand-copied paper manuscripts from eighteenth-century Iceland. The second study examines illustrations by prominent Norwegian artists in the editions of Snorre Sturlason: Kongesagaer published in 1899 and 1900 respectively. What emerged from these studies is an understanding that illustrations offer insights for the study of Old Norse texts that the words of the texts alone cannot provide. / Graduate / 0362 / 0377 / 0279 / pabaer@uvic.ca

Para comenzar quisiera dar una breve idea de cómo entiendo a Borges –al respecto me he manifestado en un buen número de publicaciones desde 1989, pero no sobre los motivos o puntos de arranque – y describir así cómo llegué a mi interpretación sobre Borges y a considerarlo como uno de los fundadores de la teoría de "muchos mundos" ("Many Worlds Theory"), de mundos virtuales y de medios virtuales/digitales y de los "New Media". Su escritura representa un acto de percepción, comprensión, implosión y expansión, ésta es una "encicopledia navegante", Borges es así el primer navegador o "user in the web".

Fernando Ortiz, en su grandioso trabajo Contrapunteo cubano del tabaco y el azúcar del año 1940, realiza una radiografía de la cultura cubana que incluye todos los aspectos más arriba mencionados —que son parte fundamental de las discusiones actuales— y conecta diversos campos del saber y de la vida que luego reunirá en el termino de "transculturación".

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This study deals with weather symbolism in DBZ Ntuli's literature. Chapter one describes the aim, biography of DBZ Ntuli, definition of important literary concepts, the scope and the methodology. Chapter two considers the symbolic use of mist, fog, overcast weather and clouds. Each of these aspects is defined and is studied under each genre, i.e. in terms of its use by Ntuli in prose, drama and poetry. Chapter three explores the symbolic usage of rain, thunder and the rainbow in all the genres in which Ntuli writes. Chapter four deals with the imagery of the sun. The sun is shown as exhibiting three distinct levels of heat: mild, hot and extremely hot. Chapter five deals with the symbol of cold weather. Its aspects can be perceived on two levels: cold weather and extremely cold weather. Chapter six is a general conclusion that reveals the outcome of the research, observations and the recommendations. / African Languages / M.A. (African Languages)

The focus of this essay lies on examining the modernistic aesthetics of prose in Thorsten Jonsson’s novel Konvoj (1947). When Walter Benjamin wrote ”The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction” he proved that new technological inventions affected the reception of art. By studying Konvoj in light of Benjamin’s theory, this study indicates that the technology of modernity affects the narrative and the use of metaphors in the novel. In addition I want to investigate how Konvoj can be studied through the theories of Marshall Berman, Theodor W. Adorno and Anthony Giddens, and this by envisioning the modernistic prose as a response to the 19th century modernity. This study illustrates that the style and the narrative aspects of the novel can be understood through modernity, and that the plot (and the characters) are all affected by it. The protagonist of the novel, Antoni Borowski, becomes an object when he is caught in a situation he can’t control, but also a subject when caught in situations he is capable of taking control of. The analysis shows that Konvoj is not only an innovative and an experimental novel in terms of its narrative, but also a novel in which the distinction between nature and culture affects the protagonist Borowski with confusion and alienation.

This dissertation focuses on prose featuring a girl heroine from the beginning of the 1990s and it is aimed at upper primary school pupils. It deals with the quality literature and the pulp fiction of the Czech literature for girls. The literature for girls has themes such as eating disorders, sexual criminality and travelling. The analysis and the collation of the selected books and the most commonly used reading-books are also part of this thesis. The dissertation also captures the historical development of the prose with the girl character, the attribute of the Czech book market and changes in behaviour and in the body. Part of the practical part is a questionnaire focused on the reading experience of girls of the older school age, in particular from the point of view of the pupils and more briefly from the point of view of the teachers.

The thesis deals with the era of the Czech literature in the second half of the 20th century. It focuses on the description of the humorous elements in selected literary works. The works are different in topics and genres too and in the end the works are reflected all together. The main literature sources are the analyzed titles and the book f essays called Silence and laughter by Sylvia Richterová. The first chapter presents an outline of the atmosphere of the 60s, the second chapter defines the topic and genre specifications of the works published in this decade. The third chapter is a methodological guide to comicality. Chapters four to seven analyze individual literary works in several basic points ? composition, language, characters and a description of the nature of the characters as well as the description of the theme.

And the Word Was Made Flesh: Anthropomorphism in the poetry of WH Auden examines the reasons for the neglect of Auden’s prolific deployment of anthropomorphism by examining the poetry’s critical reception with a view to understanding what larger purpose, what ‘strategy of discourse’ (Ricoeur 2003, The Rule of Metaphor: 5-9), Auden may have had in mind when he revived a trope traditionally regarded as retrograde. Anxious not to be mistaken for a Modern, yet unable to find a social rhetoric to suit his purposes, Auden elected upon a new style of poetry which questioned the very foundations of language by placing anthropomorphism, the ascription of agency and sentience to voiceless entities, at its centre. The study explores anthropomorphism from historical and theoretical perspectives in an attempt to explain the reasons for its demise, at least, within the academy. This study emphasises the importance Auden placed on the everyday activity of reading, the principal focus for the poet’s ‘cultural theory’ (Boly 1991 and 2004: 138). Auden, 'eager to create a tradition of its own' (Emig 2000: 1), abjuring propaganda, hoped to educate the reader to resist the different ideologies which were vying for ascendency during the 1930s. This study will demonstrate that anthropomorphism, with its capacity to suggest alternative words to ‘re-describe reality’ (Ricoeur 2003: 5), played a pivotal role in Auden’s project for cultural renewal. This study demonstrates that the lasting benefit of Auden’s use of anthropomorphism is to have recognised with prescience what critics now recognise as a 'revolutionary and potently counter-cultural tactic of cultural appropriation' (Paxson 1994: 173), a trope that 'engenders within its semiotic structure a hidden critique of Western culture' (Paxson: 50). Evidence from recent linguistic theory is marshalled in support of the trope’s rehabilitation. This study examines a selection of Auden’s four hundred published poems, and it also offers a provisional taxonomy to initiate the complex process of classifying instances of personification and its co-ordinate tropes in poetry. / English Studies / M.A. (English)