Nineteenth-century British fiction is often dismissed as necrophillic or obsessed with death. While the label of necrophilia is an apt description of the fetishistic representations of dead women prevalent at the end of the century, it is too narrow to fit literature produced earlier in the century. This is not to say that abnormal attitudes toward death are only a feature of the late nineteenth century. In fact, pathological attitudes toward death abound in the literature, but the relationship between the deceased and the survivor is not always sexual in nature. Rather, there is a clear shift in attitudes, from the chaste death fantasy, or attraction to the idea of death, prevalent in Gothic works, to the destructive, stagnant mourning visible in mid-century texts, and culminating in the perverse sexualization of dead women at the turn of the century. This literary shift is most likely attributable to the concurrent changes in attitudes toward sex and death. As sex became more acceptable, more public, via the channels of scientific discourse, death became a less acceptable idea. This “denial of death” is a direct reaction to the religious uncertainties brought about by industrialization. As scientists and industrialists uncovered increasing evidence against a literal interpretation of the Bible, more people began to doubt the nature of God and the existence of an afterlife. If there was no God, then there was no heaven, which raised questions about what happened to the soul after death. With the certainty of an afterlife gone, death became mysterious, something to fear, and the passing of loved ones was doubly-mourned as their fate was now uncertain.

Adaptations of works have the potential to bring their subject matter to a new audience. This thesis explores the adaptation of Russian fairy tales into novels by authors Orson Scott Card and Joy Preble by looking at how they present Russian fairy tales, folkloric figures, and fairy tale structure to an American audience.

The thesis focuses on modern translations of the classic American novel The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald within the Czech cultural setting. Initially, in accordance with Gideon Toury's (2012) descriptive model, two Czech translations will be compared in light of their functionality within the target literary canon, their dominating stylistic features will be determined and they will be assessed in terms of their acceptability or adequacy. Subsequently selected excerpts will be compared with the source text to reveal how each of the translations treats Fitzgerald's text, and in relation to these findings their shifts between acceptability and adequacy will be specified. The central goal of the thesis is to evaluate the transfer of Fitzgerald's very specific writing style, with special focus on its poetic character, lyricism and imagery. Therefore individual translation strategies will be identified and the invariant core of both of the translations will be determined. For an even more detailed explanation of the translation strategies the thesis employs the preceding translation by Lubomír Dorůžka (1960) which helps clarify the relationship between the studied translations. In conclusion all of the findings are summarized and characteristics of each of the Czech versions of Fitzgerald's The...

The thesis provides a comparative analysis of the American Dream's concept in the two essential pieces of American literature: Francis Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby and Norman Mailer's An American Dream. The theoretical part of the text focuses on the general definition of the American Dream and its development throughout the history of the United States. It aims at exposing the close relationship of the idea of the American Dream and the American national consciousness in terms of self-reliance, individualism and freedom. The analytical part concentrates on isolating the individual literary motifs of each novel that can be regarded as related to the notion of the American Dream. It discusses the central characters as well as dramatic aspects of The Great Gatsby and An American Dream in order to prove the American Dream to represent an essential theme in their literary frameworks. As a conclusion the thesis presents the opinion that each author elaborates this theme differently. Both novels, however, expose the individual version of the American Dream as being defeated in a struggle against the collective nature of the 20th century American society restricting the efforts of an individual for his or her self-realization. Keywords: Norman Mailer, An American Dream, Francis Scott Fitzgerald,...

Master of Arts / Department of History / Bonnie Lynn-Sherow / This thesis recreates the relationship between humans and their physical environment in Fort Scott, Kansas between 1850 and 1920 and uses the poetry of J.S. Penny, a contemporary amateur poet living and writing in Fort Scott, as an essential primary resource. Settlers came to this area in southeastern Kansas in the 19th century for its timber-lined streams, high precipitation, and rich soil. The Missouri River, Fort Scott, and Gulf Railroad was extended through Fort Scott in December of 1869. The arrival of the railroad transformed the town. The natural resources which had been a mark of identity for the people of Fort Scott became commodities to be sold in national markets. Manufacturing and industry boomed, but population would eventually plateau in the early 20th century, creating a small industrial city that had maintained a strongly rural sense of community. Penny’s poetry provides a personal, emotional response to the rapid changes to the landscape around him. Some of his poems on the local landscape directly note specific changes in the local ecology, while some demonstrate Penny’s religious connection the natural world—a common perspective during his time. Other pieces show us Penny’s observations of how his neighbors reacted to the weather and environment in Fort Scott. Penny, like many Americans in the early 20th century, saw the history of his home as one of agrarian development and westward expansion over an empty landscape; the Jeffersonian and Turnerian roots of his perspective are evident in his poetry. With Penny’s poetry, we can create a more complete environmental history of Fort Scott by understanding how Fort Scott residents related to the land around them.

Dans cette thèse, nous étudions des problèmes de transversaux d'un point de vue tant algorithmique que combinatoire. Etant donné un hypergraphe, un transversal est un ensemble de sommets qui touche toutes les hyperarêtes. Un packing est un ensemble d'hyperarêtes deux à deux disjointes. Alors que la taille minimale d'un transversal est au moins égale à la taille maximale d'un packing on ne peut pas dans le cas général borner la taille minimale d'un transversal par une fonction du packing maximal. Dans un premier temps, un état de l'art rappelle les différentes conditions qui assurent l'existence de bornes supérieures sur la taille des transversaux, en particulier en fonction de la taille d'un packing. La plupart d'entre elles sont valables lorsque la VC-dimension de Vapnik-Chervonenkis de l'hypergraphe, est bornée. L'originalité de la thèse consiste à utiliser ces outils d'hypergraphes pour obtenir des résultats sur des problèmes de graphes. Nous prouvons notamment une conjecture de coloration de Scott dans le cas des graphes sans-triangle maximaux; ensuite, nous généralisons un résultat de Chepoi, Estellon et Vaxès traitant de domination à grande distance; enfin nous nous attaquons à une conjecture de Yannakakis sur la séparation des cliques et des stables d'un graphe.Dans un second temps, nous étudions les transversaux d'un point de vue algorithmique. On se concentre plus particulièrement sur les problèmes de séparation de graphe où on cherche des transversaux à un ensemble de chemin. En combinant des outils de connexité, les séparateurs importants et le théorème de Dilworth, nous obtenons un algorithme FPT pour le problème Multicut paramétré par la taille de la solution. / In this manuscript we study hitting sets both from a combinatorial and from an algorithmic point of view. A hitting set is a subset of vertices of a hypergraph which intersects all the hyperedges. A packing is a subset of pairwise disjoint hyperedges. In the general case, there is no function linking the minimum size of a hitting set and a maximum size of a packing.The first part of this thesis is devoted to present upper bounds on the size of hitting sets, in particular this upper bounds are expressed in the size of the maximum packing. Most of them are satisfied when the dimension of Vapnik-Chervonenkis of the hypergraph is bounded. The originality of this thesis consists in using these hypergraph tools in order to obtain several results on graph problems. First we prove that a conjecture of Scott holds for maximal triangle-free graphs. Then we generalize a result of Chepoi, Estellon and Vaxès on dominating sets at large distance. We finally study a conjecture of Yannakakis and prove that it holds for several graph subclasses using VC-dimension.The second part of this thesis explores algorithmic aspects of hitting sets. More precisely we focus on parameterized complexity of graph separation problems where we are looking for hitting sets of a set of paths. Combining connectivity tools, important separator technique and Dilworth's theorem, we design an FPT algorithm for the Multicut problem parameterized by the size of the solution.

A partir da versão para a língua inglesa de dez contos da obra Ainda Orangotangos do autor gaúcho Paulo Scott (2003), este trabalho tem como objetivo realizar uma análise parcial do processo tradutório no que tange elementos culturais e narratológicos. Para realizar tal análise, foram contempladas três áreas de estudo: a Literatura Comparada, os Estudos da Tradução e a Narratologia. A Literatura Comparada abre as portas para a interdisciplinaridade aqui proposta e valida a tradução literária como seu objeto de estudo, visto que, de acordo com Carvalhal (2003), uma tradução literária pode ser considerada material criativo, na medida em que também constitui em um esforço criativo. O primeiro capítulo trata das questões culturais muito exploradas nos Estudos da Tradução. Martínez (2001), Newmark (1988) e Aixelá (1996) propõem algumas definições e classificações de elementos culturais úteis para reflexão, enquanto os dois últimos, além de Venuti (1992) e Sun (2012), apontam possíveis abordagens para a tradução destes elementos. Apesar de simpatizarmos com as propostas de Aixelá (1996) e Venuti (1992) de propagar o estranhamento em detrimento da domesticação, a proposta de Sun (2012) de equilibrar momentos de precisão e aceitabilidade foi considerada mais próxima de uma tradução realista. Por fim, Aixelá (1996) concebe um conjunto de técnicas de tradução que serão utilizadas aqui a fim de alcançar tal equilíbrio nas versões. O segundo capítulo trata das questões narratológicas e propõe um diálogo entre Narratologia e Estudos da Tradução. Autores como O'Sullivan (2003), Cavagnoli (2008), Nunes (2012) e Boase-Beier (2014) afirmam que o tradutor é leitor e (re)escritor do texto a ser traduzido, e que tal leitura precisa ser diferenciada, visto que questões de narrativa são tão importantes quanto as culturais para conceber o texto literário como um todo. Para fazer essa leitura, propomos a utilização de conceitos da Narratologia de Genette (1980) e Bal (2007). Traduzir é, portanto, uma tarefa interpretativa e transpõe não só o sentido, mas também a forma desse sentido. / Based on the translation of ten short stories from the book Ainda Orangotangos by Paulo Scott (2003) into English, this research aims at carrying out a partial analysis of the translation process regarding cultural and narratological elements. In order to carry out this analysis, three fields of study were contemplated: Comparative Literature, Translation Studies and Narratology. Comparative Literature makes such interdisciplinarity possible and validates literary translation as its object of study since, according to Carvalhal (2003), a literary translation can be considered creative material to the extent that it also constitutes creative effort. The first chapter addresses the cultural issues much explored by Translation Studies. Martínez (2001), Newmark (1988) and Aixelá (1996) propose some definitions and classifications of cultural elements useful for reflection, while the latter two, Venuti (1992) and Sun (2012), indicate possible approaches for translating these elements. Even though we appreciate the proposition by Aixelá (1996) and Venuti (1992) that foreignization should be propagated at the expense of domestication, the proposition by Sun (2012) of balancing accuracy and acceptability was considered better aligned with a realistic translation. Finally, Aixelá (1996) develops a set of translation techniques that are going to be employed to achieve such balance. The second chapter discusses the narratological issues and proposes a dialogue between Narratology and Translation Studies. Authors such as O'Sullivan (2003), Cavagnoli (2008), Nunes (2012) e Boase-Beier (2014) state that the translator is both reader and (re)writer of the text to be translated, and that such reading has to be deeper since narrative issues are as important as the cultural ones to conceive a literary text as a whole. In order to perform such special reading, we propose employing the narratological concepts by Genette (1980) and Bal (2007). Translating is therefore an interpretative task and transposes not only meaning, but also the form of that meaning.

"Minstrels in the Drawing Room" is an investigation of the representation of musical listening in the nineteenth-century novel. Theoretical accounts of the novel have tended to see it as a universal form, one that opportunistically subsumes all others as its represented content; descriptions of the novel's implied audience often interpret novel-reading as an essentially absorptive activity linking private reading to public belonging through an act of identification. For the writers I discuss here, however, musical listening is interesting because it is a rival mode of shared aesthetic experience that, before the advent of sound recording, was necessarily social. This dissertation draws on recent developments in the history of reading and media theory to describe how novels by three central figures of the European novelistic canon - Goethe, Scott, and Eliot - turn to musical listening to reflect upon the ways in which the absolutely open nature of the novel's mode of address is nevertheless prone to limitation. The dissertation thus complicates often all-or-nothing theories of novel-reading, offering instead a description of how novels model a distanced identification between reader and text.

In a narrative the narrator tells the story, and the focalizer is a character through whose eyes the story is seen. The narrator is thus the one who speaks, whilst the focalizer is silent. The identification of these two narratological features is made with the help of verbal cues such as personal pronouns for instance. Determining the narrator and the focalizer can sometimes be challenging due to ambiguous cues in the analyzed text, as well as narratological aspects which at times can be difficult to distinguish from each other. Determining the narrator and the focalizer in graphic narratives (comics) with no narrative voice, or which completely lack words, must be done with the help of pictorial cues instead. In this thesis, Shaun Tan’s wordless graphic narrative The Arrival is used in order to show how the narrator and the focalizer can be determined by combining pictorial cues with the reader’s general knowledge of storytelling as well as his or her experiences from real life scenarios. To analyze narratological features in The Arrival, I employ terminology from comics studies, literary and film narratology. My analysis shows that determining the narrator and the focalizer in narratives lacking explicit narrative voice is possible by using only pictorial cues.

The phenomenon of phantom limb pain has been well documented for centuries, but little clinical work has been done to alleviate it. Physician and neuroscientist Vilayanur S. Ramachandran began researching this condition nearly two decades ago, and has discovered a promising alternative treatment: mirror-box therapy. This therapy is not yet widely accepted by the scientific and medical communities because there is insufficient data explaining how and why it works. This study analyzes Ramachandran's rhetoric promoting the therapy. Scott Stroud's melioristic method is applied to Ramachandran's scientific and popular publications. The purpose is to determine whether or not his rhetoric is melioristic in that it promotes positive, and thus, pragmatic changes. This thesis indicates the important insights pragmatism can yield when utilized in acts of rhetorical criticism. / Graduation date: 2012