In this paper I have studied the two new religious phenomena, Temple of the Jedi Order and Whovianism, based on the cognitive concept of man dominated by schemas that characterize the outcome of adequate response to new situations. This principle is about how man faces new situations through old knowledge and experience of similar events. For this study, I analyzed selected stories in which individuals describe their religious interest and involvement in the Star Wars movies, and the related religious community Temple of the Jedi Order, as well as the television series Doctor Who, with the associated religious community Whovianism. This study was inspired by phenomenographic method by which researchers focus on the perceived and how it is conveyed in the respective story. The results of this study show that new religious phenomena, such as the Temple of the Jedi Order and Whovianism, can be explained using the theory of cognitive schemas.  The study shows that the individuals, whose stories have been examined, use ancient knowledge and experiences on the different aspects conveyed by Star Wars and Doctor Who and through this a new religious community is born.

Le Cycle de Kraven de Xavier Mauméjean met en place un réseau référentiel qui repose sur le recyclage systématique d’éléments historiques et littéraires. Afin de bien saisir le fonctionnement de ce cycle narratif, il importe de se pencher sur cette dynamique référentielle exacerbée relevant d’une poétique du recyclage (au sens de réutilisation) qui se manifeste par l’emprunt de nombreux référents historiques et littéraires, que le récit modifie à divers degrés. Au moyen de la notion de recyclage, des travaux sur la récupération de l’Histoire par l’uchronie et d’études sur le steampunk, esthétique dont relève le Cycle de Kraven, ce mémoire examine les effets de ce recyclage sur le fonctionnement du récit, mais aussi sur le lecteur. En effet, par un imposant mélange de références authentiques et fictives, le Cycle de Kraven cherche à mystifier le lecteur qui se trouve au centre d’un fourmillement intertextuel brouillant les frontières entre Histoire et fiction. Une réflexion sur le paratexte vient compléter l’analyse du Cycle de Kraven, puisque préface, notes en bas de page, liste de livres et bon de commande contribuent grandement à la création d’un effet de mystification. / Cycle de Kraven, from French author Xavier Mauméjean, establishes a referential network based on a systematic recycling of historical and literary elements. In order to fully understand how this narrative cycle works, one needs to look into these exacerbated referential dynamics which depends on a poetics of recycling. This manifests itself through the borrowing of multiple historical and literary referents, modified at various levels throughout the story. Through the notion of recycling, works on the recovery of history through uchrony and studies on the steampunk genre – being Kraven's primary aesthetic – this dissertation looks into the effects this recycling has on the story's working, as well as on the reader himself. Indeed, through its impressive blending of genuine and fictional references, Cycle de Kraven bemuses the reader who finds himself or herself exploring a intertextual universe where history and fiction may hardly be differed from one another. A study on the paratext concludes this analysis of Cycle de Kraven since elements such as the preface, the footnotes and the purchase order form contribute to the befuddlement of readers.

Frihet är ett viktigt tema under nittonhundratalet, kanske särskilt decennierna omkring 1970 med allt vad den tiden innehåller av frigörelsekamp, uppror mot gamla traditioner, individualism och kollektivism. Den här avhandlingen spårar det temat genom tre genrer i den svenska litteraturen, från sextiotalet och framåt: den självbiografiska barndomsskildringen, reseskildringen och science fiction-romanen. De olika genrerna erbjuder olika möjligheter för en författare att diskutera och gestalta frihetstemat, explicit och implicit. Skilda narratologiska utgångspunkter skapar skilda förutsättningar. Genomgående frågeställningar är vilka hinder som finns för att friheten ska kunna uppnås, vilka utvägar mot friheten som ändå existerar och vilka innebörder frihetsbegreppet ges. Avslutningsvis diskuteras resultaten i förhållande till de skilda genrevillkoren men även till det som texterna har gemensamt, exempelvis utopiska drag, mötet med det obekanta och främmande, sökandet efter en subjektiv sanning eller 1968-årens tidsanda. På så sätt kan något sägas om den sköna litteraturens särart jämfört med andra slags texter. / Freedom is an important theme of the twentieth century, perhaps particularly during the decades around 1970, that time of struggle for liberation, the rebellion against the old ways, of individualism and collectivism. This thesis traces that theme through three genres of Swedish literature, from the sixties onwards: the autobiographical childhood novel, the travelogue and the science fiction novel. The different genres offer different possibilities for an author to discuss and depict the theme of freedom, explicitly and implicitly. Different narratological starting points create different conditions. Some returning issues are which restrictions on, opportunities for and meanings of freedom are visible in the texts. Finally, the results are discussed in relation to the different conventions of genre but also in relation to what the texts have in common, such as features of utopia, the encounter with the unfamiliar and strange, the search for a subjective truth or the zeitgeist of the year 1968. In that way, something can be said about the specific nature of fictive or partly fictive texts compared to other kinds of prose.

No description available.

Ce travail s’attache à étudier les figures de la posthumanité en s’appuyant sur un corpus transmédial et transnational et à répondre à deux questions principales : Peut-on, au travers de la figure du posthumain, percer à jour les désirs et les angoisses de l'homme de ce millénaire encore naissant ? Comment l'expérience de pensée posthumaine, mise en mouvement par la fiction, questionne-t-elle la notion même d'humanité ? Dans un premier temps, il met en relief les liens existant entre la posthumanité et ce territoire homogène et récurrent dans le corpus, qu’on nommera à la suite d'Antonio Negri et Michael Hardt, l’Empire. Dans un second temps il s’intéresse à la plasticité du corps et de l’esprit posthumains, à la façon dont leurs multiples avatars se déploient à travers le temps ainsi qu’aux raisons qui sous-tendent cette extrême plasticité. Enfin, dans un dernier mouvement, il s’attelle à montrer que, loin de s’inscrire dans un imaginaire radicalement nouveau, le post-humain procède en fait du réagencement ou de la reconfiguration d’un imaginaire anthropologique déjà bien ancré dans l’inconscient collectif. / This work focus on the study of the posthuman figures. It is based on a transmedial and transnational corpus. It seeks to answer two key questions : can we expose, through the posthuman figure, the desires and the anguishes of this still rising millennium’s man ? How the posthuman thought experiment, set into motion by the fiction, challenge the very concept of humanity ? As a first step, this work emphasizes on the links that exist between posthumanity and this homogeneous and reccuring, in our fictions, territory that Antonio Negri and Micharl Hardt call Empire. Then, it’s interested in the plasticity of the posthuman bodies and minds, in the way that their numerous avatars expand through time as well as the reasons that underlie this extreme plasticity. Lastly, he tries to show that the posthuman do not fall into a dramatic new imagination, but that it proceeds, in fact, of the reordering or the reconfiguration of a anthropological imagination already well rooted in the collective unconscious.

Uppsatsen ämnar utforska hur den postapokalyptiska genren brukar historia. Detta görs genom en läsning av Dimitrij Gluchovskijs Metro 2033 (2009), utifrån Espmarks syn på dialogicitet och Aronssons historiebruksteoretiska tankar, där historiskt meningsskapande med olika syften blir till genom berättelser i former som större narrativ, metaforer, metonymier och symboler.Bakhtins kronotop används också, men med Aronssons fokus på dess spatiala sida. Uppsatsen föreslår att figuren kan användas för att visa hur fiktionen kan skapa ett abstrakt rum istället för ett rent konkret eller fysiskt, och därmed få med de känslor och den världssyn som är intimt sammanlänkade med det fysiska rummet. I uppsatsen friläggs hur Metro 2033 återskapar en abstrakt version av det kalla krigets spelplan för att legitimera kärnvapenkrigsmotivet.Förslag ges också på en begreppsapparat för att tala om olika historiska nivåer i den postapokalyptiska fiktionen där vår samtids accepterade historia, förutom att den modifieras fiktivt, också får sällskap av spekulativ pre- och postapokalyptisk historia. Uppsatsen ger flera exempel på hur texten brukar historia, bland annat hur den spekulativa historien kan användas för att kommentera företeelser ur samtidens accepterade historia. Uppsatsen visar också att ett av textens huvudsakliga budskap, uppmaningen till mänskligheten att sluta konstruera och demonisera den andre, medvetet förstärks genom bruket av historia eftersom den historiska dimensionen ger kontinuitet till den framtida visionen. / The aim of this essay is to explore the using of history in post-apocalyptic fiction. This is accom-plished by reading and analyzing Dimitrii Glukhovskii’s Metro 2033. The theoretical basis for the reading is the dialogicity of Espmark and Aronsson’s theory of using of history. It posits that the production of meaning through history is made from narratives of different lengths and shape, such as metaphors, metonymies and symbols. The chronotope of Bakhtin is also applied, but with Aronssons focus on its spatial component. A suggestion is made to apply it in a way that shows how the fiction can refer to, or create, an ab-stract spatial location, rather than a physical, and thereby evoking the feelings and worldviews intimately associated with the location and its time. In the reading of the text this is shown by ar-guing that Glukhovskii recreates the cold war as an abstract chronotope to legitimize his nuclear apocalypse scenario. The essay presents suggestions for definitions of the historical levels in the genre. These are la-beled accepted history of the present, fictive rewriting of the same, and lastly pre- or post-apoca-lyptic speculative history, depending on whether the temporal interest lies prior to or after the im-agined apocalypse. The essay exemplifies a number of ways in which the text uses history, one of which is to use the speculative history to comment on the accepted history of the present. The essay also shows that the intent of the text, the plea to humanity to stop the process of othering, is enhanced by the use of history since the historical perspective offers a retrospective continuity that strengthens the future vision.

No description available.

Zugl.: München, Universiẗat, Diss., 2006 u.d.T.: Seyferth, Peter: Utopie in der Science Fiction von Ursula K. Le Guin.

Thesis (M.A.)--University of Wyoming, 2008. / Title from PDF title page (viewed on Nov. 11, 2009). Includes bibliographical references (p. 89-90).

This dissertation examines the figures of the shaman and the cyborg, arguing that both act as intermediaries between the organic world of bodies and the artificial world of culture and machines. Using the sf of Robert Holdstock, David Zindell and Kathleen Ann Goonan as starting points, new forms of embodiment in the context of the cyborg and the shaman's shared narrative of radical boundary dissolution are critically and imaginatively examined. Throughout this thesis, the works of Deleuze and Guattari, Sadie Plant, Manuel De Landa, Erik Davis, Donna Haraway, Terence McKenna, and other speculative theorists who operate at the nexus of technological culture and the shamanic imagination serve as guidelines. / English Studies / M.A.