No description available.

Since Native American Literature has been established, Native American authors have discussed the influence of the western world on Native traditions and Native identity within their work. Christianity is one of those elements of western cultural influences that shaped remarkably the change of Native traditions under the influence of colonialism. In this dissertation it will be discussed how the influence of Christianity is being written into the novels by Native American writers and which functions are attributed to Christianity in respect to the enforcement of colonial interests and in respect to changes within Native traditions. For this dissertation four authors (D'Arcy McNickle, Paula Gunn Allen, N. Scott Momaday, Louise Erdrich) were chosen whose pieces of work mark a difference in approach. Their novels testify to the contradictory fusion of colonial and missionary goals on the one side and to the possible enrichment of Native customs on the other side. The novels can, therefore, be characterized as an assemble that reaches from total rejection of anything that is assumed to be Christian to an affirmative way of incorporating selective aspects of Christianity to the final denial that there is an evaluation of this historical issue possible. In respect to the method applied, all pieces of literary work are discussed in their usage of Christian literary elements and intertextual references to the Bible and other Christian literary sources. An afterword refers to novels and short stories by further 17 Native American authors who are concerned with the Christian influence on Native traditions in their work as well. The results of the research in the dissertation will then be extended by discussing those pieces of fictional work. / Seit der Etablierung des indianischen Romans im Kanon der amerikanischen Gegenwartsliteratur suchen indianische Schriftsteller nach Wegen, die doppelte Prägung der modernen indianischen Identität durch traditionelle Werte einerseits und westlichen Einfluss andererseits fiktional aufzuarbeiten. Ein Element der westlichen Welt, das die Veränderungen der indianischen Kulturen unter der Einwirkung der Kolonisation maßgeblich mitbestimmt hat, ist die christliche Religion. In der Dissertation wird untersucht, wie das Wirken des Christentums auf das indigene Selbstbild in der US-amerikanischen indianischen Romanliteratur thematisiert wird und welche Funktionen ihm für die Durchsetzung kolonialer Interessen und für den Wandel der indianischen Traditionen im Verlauf der letzten 500 Jahre zuerkannt werden. Für die Fragestellung wurden vier Autorinnen und Autoren ausgewählt (D'Arcy McNickle, Paula Gunn Allen, N. Scott Momaday, Louise Erdrich), deren Romanwerke die Gegensätzlichkeit zwischen der Verquickung kolonialer Interessen mit religiösen Motiven einerseits und der Bereicherung der indianischen Kulturen durch christliche Traditionen andererseits widerspiegeln. Die Romane bilden einen Spannungsbogen von strikter Ablehnung alles Christlichen, über die affirmative Aufnahme christlicher Elemente bis hin zur Pluralisierung der Bewertungsmöglichkeiten bei gleichzeitiger Aufgabe der Bewertungsgewissheit hinsichtlich des christlichen Einflusses. Methodisch wird hierbei folgendermaßen vorgegangen. Die Romane werden auf intertextuelle Verweise zu christlichen literarischen Quellen und insbesondere der Bibel untersucht, um daran die Gestaltung des Untersuchungsgegenstandes zu erörtern. Ein ausführlicher Ausblick verweist auf Romane und Erzählungen weiterer 17 indianischer Autorinnen und Autoren der Gegenwart, um hieran die Ergebnisse der Untersuchung zu präzisieren und zu ergänzen.

Since Native American Literature has been established, Native American authors have discussed the influence of the western world on Native traditions and Native identity within their work. Christianity is one of those elements of western cultural influences that shaped remarkably the change of Native traditions under the influence of colonialism. In this dissertation it will be discussed how the influence of Christianity is being written into the novels by Native American writers and which functions are attributed to Christianity in respect to the enforcement of colonial interests and in respect to changes within Native traditions. For this dissertation four authors (D'Arcy McNickle, Paula Gunn Allen, N. Scott Momaday, Louise Erdrich) were chosen whose pieces of work mark a difference in approach. Their novels testify to the contradictory fusion of colonial and missionary goals on the one side and to the possible enrichment of Native customs on the other side. The novels can, therefore, be characterized as an assemble that reaches from total rejection of anything that is assumed to be Christian to an affirmative way of incorporating selective aspects of Christianity to the final denial that there is an evaluation of this historical issue possible. In respect to the method applied, all pieces of literary work are discussed in their usage of Christian literary elements and intertextual references to the Bible and other Christian literary sources. An afterword refers to novels and short stories by further 17 Native American authors who are concerned with the Christian influence on Native traditions in their work as well. The results of the research in the dissertation will then be extended by discussing those pieces of fictional work. / Seit der Etablierung des indianischen Romans im Kanon der amerikanischen Gegenwartsliteratur suchen indianische Schriftsteller nach Wegen, die doppelte Prägung der modernen indianischen Identität durch traditionelle Werte einerseits und westlichen Einfluss andererseits fiktional aufzuarbeiten. Ein Element der westlichen Welt, das die Veränderungen der indianischen Kulturen unter der Einwirkung der Kolonisation maßgeblich mitbestimmt hat, ist die christliche Religion. In der Dissertation wird untersucht, wie das Wirken des Christentums auf das indigene Selbstbild in der US-amerikanischen indianischen Romanliteratur thematisiert wird und welche Funktionen ihm für die Durchsetzung kolonialer Interessen und für den Wandel der indianischen Traditionen im Verlauf der letzten 500 Jahre zuerkannt werden. Für die Fragestellung wurden vier Autorinnen und Autoren ausgewählt (D'Arcy McNickle, Paula Gunn Allen, N. Scott Momaday, Louise Erdrich), deren Romanwerke die Gegensätzlichkeit zwischen der Verquickung kolonialer Interessen mit religiösen Motiven einerseits und der Bereicherung der indianischen Kulturen durch christliche Traditionen andererseits widerspiegeln. Die Romane bilden einen Spannungsbogen von strikter Ablehnung alles Christlichen, über die affirmative Aufnahme christlicher Elemente bis hin zur Pluralisierung der Bewertungsmöglichkeiten bei gleichzeitiger Aufgabe der Bewertungsgewissheit hinsichtlich des christlichen Einflusses. Methodisch wird hierbei folgendermaßen vorgegangen. Die Romane werden auf intertextuelle Verweise zu christlichen literarischen Quellen und insbesondere der Bibel untersucht, um daran die Gestaltung des Untersuchungsgegenstandes zu erörtern. Ein ausführlicher Ausblick verweist auf Romane und Erzählungen weiterer 17 indianischer Autorinnen und Autoren der Gegenwart, um hieran die Ergebnisse der Untersuchung zu präzisieren und zu ergänzen.

America has adopted as its own the Eden myth, which has provided the mythology of the American dream. This New Garden of America, consequently, has been a masculine garden because of its dependence on the myth of the Fall. Implied in the American dream is the idea of a garden without Eve, or at least without Eve's sin, traditionally associated with sexuality. Our canonical literature has reflected these attitudes of devaluing feminine power or making it a negative force: The Scarlet Letter, Moby-Dick, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, The Great Gatsby, and The Sound and the Fury. To recreate the Garden myth, Americans have had to reimagine Eve as the idealized virgin, earth mother and life-giver, or as Adam's loyal helpmeet, the silent figurehead. But Eve resists her new roles: Hester Prynne embellishes her scarlet letter and does not leave Boston; the feminine forces in Moby-Dick defeat the monomaniacal masculinity of Ahab; Miss Watson, the Widow Douglas, and Aunt Sally's threat of civilization chase Huck off to the territory despite the beckoning of the feminine river; Daisy retreats unscathed into her "white palace" after Gatsby's death; and Caddy tours Europe on the arm of a Nazi officer long after Quentin's suicide, Benjy's betrayal, and Jason's condemnation. Each of these male writers--Hawthorne, Melville, Twain, Fitzgerald, and Faulkner--deals with the American dream differently; however, in each case the dream fails because Eve will not go away, refusing to be the Other, the scapegoat, or the muse to man's dreams. These works all deal in some way with the notion of the masculine American dream of perfection in the Garden at the expense of a fully realized feminine presence. This failure of the American dream accounts for the decidedly tragic tone of these culturally significant American novels.

Call number: LD2668 .T4 1985 S56 / Master of Arts

This thesis examines the potential of the graphic novel as a site for rethinking identity from a postcolonial perspective. I begin with an in-depth analysis of comic theory and breakdown the elements that distinguish the graphic novel from other literary genres. In addition, I highlight the importance of narration in the graphic novel, thus setting a framework for how to analyze the interplay between text and image as it relates to the narrative and vice versa. I use this framework to investigate how notions of masculinity, memory, and historical references are employed in the Brazilian graphic novel, Dois Irmãos, and the French graphic novel, l’Arabe du Futur, thus highlighting postcolonial concepts of identity formation illuminated in the narratives of young Arab boys narratives of their fathers.

Thesis analyses the reception of Augustine of Hippo's (354-430) ontological discourse on the soul in late antiquity and the early middle ages, more specifically in the sixth and the ninth centuries. Since Augustine never wrote a 'De anima', nor always presented his readers with definite answers to questions, there was room for later authors to interpret and improvise. This thesis focuses on 4 texts: Cassiodorus Senator's 'De anima', Eugippius of Lucculanum's massive florilegium the 'Excerpta ex operibus Sancti Augustini', both from the sixth century, Gottschalk of Orbais' letter 'Quaestiones de anima', and John Scottus Eriugena's apologetic 'De divina praedestinatione liber', both from the ninth century. This thesis establishes that, apart from Cassiodorus, the author's main interest in Augustine's ideas on the ontology of the soul rests on the way it impinges on their contemporary predestination debates. Cassiodorus consciously wanted to produce a Christian De anima in a classical vein. Especially the question of the origin of the soul takes the interest of Eugippius and Gottschalk. This is an important question for predestination debates, since it is supposed to explain technically how original sin came to be universal. Augustine never found a satisfactory answer to this thorny question. Eriugena's genius lies in building an original ontology of the soul on Augustine's own foundations which sidesteps this problem of the origin of the soul entirely.

This article traces different forms of the same present throughout several eras in American political and social history. I focus on two texts, John Locke’s Second Treatise of Government, and Chief Justice Roger Brooke Taney’s majority opinion in Dred Scott v. Sandford, in order to examine slavery as a legal institution in the United States, and, in particular, the constitutionality of slavery. Rather than a massive contradiction, the Dred Scott decision is just another iteration of American political and racial philosophy as it was 100, even 200 years earlier. Taney’s opinion is a reflection of what the Lockean social contract came to look like in a racially hierarchized, colonial society. The Dred Scott decision paints one of the most accurate pictures of American political thought but is always written off as nothing but bad law. A close examination of race and social contract theory as they influenced the American Constitution gives insight into more productive ways to talk about race today.

In this thesis, I describe and evaluate two recent accounts of naming. These accounts are motivated by Kripke?s response to Russell?s Description Theory of Names (DTN). Particularly, I consider Kripke?s Modal Argument (MA) and various arguments that have been given against it, as well as Kripke?s responses to these arguments. Further, I outline a version of MA that has recently been presented by Scott Soames, and consider how he responds to the criticisms that the argument faces. In order to evaluate the claim that MA is decisive against all description theories, I outline the Nominal Description Theory (NDT) put forth by Kent Bach and consider whether it constitutes a principled response to MA. I do so by exploring how Bach both responds to Kripke?s arguments against descriptivism and highlights the problems with rigid designation as a purely semantic thesis. Finally, I consider the relative merits of the accounts put forth by Bach and Soames. Upon doing so, I argue that MA is not as decisive against description theories as it has long been thought to be. In fact, NDT seems to provide a better account of our uses of proper names than the rigid designation thesis as presented by Kripke and Soames.

Because of the lack of information concerning the success or failure of Schubert's bilingual edition and concerning the relationship between the English texts and Schubert's settings, most performers take the conservative route of performing both the songs from Lady of the Lake and the rest of Schubert's English song repertoire only with the German translations. Because of the desirability of performing this repertoire in English for English-speaking audiences, this study examines all of the English songs of Schubert to determine whether the original poems can be successfully substituted for the German translations. Editions of the settings that can be effectively performed with the English texts are included in the appendix, in order to make available editions which reflect Schubert's ambition to make his songs easily accessible to non-German-speaking audiences.