As an MFA candidate at the Florida Atlantic University, I began in figurative painting and ended with abstract ink and pencil drawings in my thesis work. In between was a progression of artistic experimentation in theme, technique and medium to explore issues of female identity and childhood sexual abuse. From a girl trapped in a dark fairytale to a pregnant woman followed by a pedophile to a new mother frustrated that her own ambitions have been usurped, the final transformation of female identity into fierce protector came after confronting memories of child abuse. Using India ink and pencil drawings, my thesis work recreates scenes of a struggle between the same attacker and a powerful mother. She spins her own hair into a delicate, but powerful, barrier that keeps her daughter safe. / Includes bibliography. / Thesis (M.F.A.)--Florida Atlantic University, 2014.. / FAU Electronic Theses and Dissertations Collection

In 1834, Belinsky melodramatically proclaimed, “We have no literature”. He was far from alone; similar sentiments are echoed in numerous critical essays and articles of the 1820s and 30s. These dire assessments of the state of Russian literature reflect the urgent concern the question of national identity had become to intellectuals of the period in the first few decades of the nineteenth century. In the wake of its victory in the Napoleonic War, Russia had won considerable military and political power in Europe. Culturally, however, there was a palpable sense of insecurity vis-a-vis Western Europe. Critics and writers bemoaned the derivative nature of Russian literature, calling for the creation of a national literature that would reflect the unique essence of the Russian national character. The means by which a sense of Russianness or “narodnost’” could be created in literature would become a central concern and topic of debate for writers and critics of the first four decades of the nineteenth century. Folklore was thought to be one way of producing the desired narodnost’. Based on German Romantic theories of nationalism, particularly those of Herder, it was argued that the “folk poetry” of the simple people retained a pure form of the national spirit untainted by foreign influence. It was to this folk poetry that many writers turned in their attempts to create a national literature. There were attempts to create works that imitated folk ballads, songs, and fairy tales as well as incorporating folkloric elements in larger literary works. This period also saw the early efforts to collect authentic examples of folklore from among the people - Pushkin ranks among these early collectors as well as Kireevsky. The practice of introducing elements of folklore into high literature was more complicated, however, than the theory would have one believe. Rather than being the unadulterated voice of the Russian nation taken directly from the people, the “folklore” that appeared in literary texts during this period was more often than not an amalgamation of many influences from both high and low literature and both foreign and native sources. Indeed, it would probably be more productive to think of the folkloric elements of literary texts in this period as being more representations of folklore than as “authentic” folklore. In this dissertation I will examine how writers, through the figure of their various narrators, interact with the folk material of their narratives. My analysis will focus on Alexander Pushkin, Nikolai Gogol and Vladimir Dal. My emphasis will be on analyzing how narrators situate themselves in relation to the folk elements of the text and how their attitudes dramatize the various issues and problems that arise from the gentry writer’s encounter with the cultural other represented by the folk. In my exploration of folklore in Pushkin’s works, I trace the development of his relationship with folklore from one of the earliest of his works, Ruslan and Liudmila, through the middle years of his career, represented by Eugene Onegin, where he makes his most explicit statement about Russian national identity. I conclude with a consideration of his fairytales, which were written towards the end of his artistic career. Through these works, I trace the shift of Pushkin’s narrator’s stance from a position of relative distance from the folkloric elements of his narrative toward a greater sense of identification with his folkloric material. The chapter on Gogol is devoted to the first volume of his Evenings on a Farm Near Dikan’ka. My focus will be on how the figure of the author is splintered and diluted as editor Rudy Panko presents the reader with stories he heard from storytellers in his village, who in turn, heard their stories from still other storytellers, leading to series of nested storytellers. I will also examine how these various storytellers display an array of attitudes toward their folk narratives and how these relationships are enacted in the text. My final chapter is devoted to Vladimir Dahl and his First Five collection of folk tales. I will consider the significance of Dahl’s ideas about the centrality of the language of the common Russian people for the construction of a national identity and how these ideas found expression in his folk tales. As with the other chapters, my focus will be on the figure of the narrator and how his attitudes toward the folkloric elements of his tales form an image of Russian national identity. I hope to show through these explorations how the writer’s engagement with folklore contributed to the image of the Russia and the construction of Russian national identity in nineteenth century literature.

The sentimental novel Cárcel de Amor by Diego de San Pedro was hugely popular in its time both in Spain and in other parts of Europe, spawning at least twenty editions in Spanish, nine bilingual versions, and eighteen translations between 1492 and 1675. The purpose of this study is to examine the seemingly, and oft criticized, varied nature of the sentimental and political discourse in the novel to demonstrate how San Pedro used them to create unity of structure and theme. In addition I analyze the effects of the author's implementation of metanarrative strategies on the relationship between structure and theme. Cárcel was written during a period of great social and political turmoil in Castile, and San Pedro uses the sentimental and political material of the work to paint a reflection of the society in which he lived. He demonstrates that the chivalric ideals of courtly love and honor based on virtue, values upon which the nobility based their collective identity, are no longer viable in his culture because they have come to be devoid of the beauty they originally embodied. In their place one finds a growing obsession with honor that is a construction of appearances with little regard for virtue. As the protagonist Leriano, who represents the perfection of these ideals, comes into conflict with the king and other courtiers, the reader realizes that the old ideals and the new reality are completely incompatible. San Pedro also uses several metanarrative strategies to draw the reader into the fictional world in order to force him to confront the same crisis that Leriano and the Auctor character face as they determine that their value system cannot survive in the false, double-dealing society in which they live. He uses these same techniques to underscore the fictional quality of the "reality" that members of that society create for themselves. San Pedro effectively uses both the sentimental and political discourse of the work to create a realistic picture of Castilian society's moral decay in the fifteenth century.

The long tradition in the arts of the Hunt, domestic and exotic, as a surrogate for war in peacetime is reflected in the Amiens Hunting Series (1736-1739) along with influences from the waning years of Louis XIV and early trends in the reign of Louis XV. / Two of Francois Boucher's lesser known works form part of the Amiens canvases executed for Louis XV's private gallery at Versailles. Carle Van Loo, Charles Parrocel, Jean-Francois de Troy, Jean-Baptiste Pater and Nicolas Lancret contributed to the Series, but Boucher's work is unique due probably to his study of the hunts of Peter Paul Rubens and his reference to an older heritage represented by Antonio Tempesta who had already interpreted the natural wonders of the world as described by Pliny and others. / The seventeenth-century concept of the "noble huntsman" endures through the pivotal work of Boucher which constitutes the logical link between Rubens's Baroque expression and the Romantic extension of the theme by Eugene Delacroix.

No description available.

This thesis involved the various discourses around Egyptian novelist Naguib Mahfouz's representation of women in four of his most well-known novels, which were originally written in Arabic. At the one extreme, he is described as a feminist writer who takes up an aggressive anti-patriarchal stance, delivering a multi-faceted critique on Egyptian society. Mahfouz's personal milieu, as well as the broader social context in which he finds himself, was given careful consideration. It was also considered whether the genre in which the four novels have been written has a significant influence on the manner in which Mahfouz has represented his female characters.

No description available.

This thesis involved the various discourses around Egyptian novelist Naguib Mahfouz's representation of women in four of his most well-known novels, which were originally written in Arabic. At the one extreme, he is described as a feminist writer who takes up an aggressive anti-patriarchal stance, delivering a multi-faceted critique on Egyptian society. Mahfouz's personal milieu, as well as the broader social context in which he finds himself, was given careful consideration. It was also considered whether the genre in which the four novels have been written has a significant influence on the manner in which Mahfouz has represented his female characters.

This paper centres in and around words. I have incorporated words into my recent work in a variety of ways including drawing, Letraset, sound and fiction writing. The philosophical questions which arise through any use of language and the various ways of adopting these questions and words within a 'visual art' context is considered in a number of ways. These include The Voyager Interstellar Space Mission which was humankind's first attempt to communicate with other hypothesized populations, conceptual word-incorporating artists, writers of fiction and philosophers within whose work can readily be found an extreme vigilance towards language. Alongside this word exploration I will consider other processes through which I've made and continue to make, works of art. These processes include drawing and film/video. My drawings (which sometimes include words) will be addressed in terms of a crossover between the drawn line and words found in Raymond Carver's story Cathedral. This story made me think about what it means to 'be led' by somebody and how I'm led (by myself or perhaps those mysterious 'populations' the Voyager team of thinkers had in mind) when drawing. It also marks an interesting point in my discussion of a state of being 'without words.' In addition to words an important focus in this paper are the windows through which I've spent a lot of 'my life' looking at 'life pass by' (which are in many ways a physical reality corresponding to the metaphorical 'frame of language'). The time I've spent looking out windows over the past few years has resulted in. several film and video pieces in addition to my latest work (presented as the appendix of this paper) which comprises of a series of short stories. The paper opens with a quote by German philosopher Martin Heidegger: "Language is the house of Being. In its home man dwells." The enigmatic broadness of this statement is appropriate to the apprehensive and cautious attitude towards words found throughout the paper (also it mentions 'house' which immediately brings to my mind 'windows')

The notion of doubledeath, as an idea to generate work, can be seen as both an ironic reflection on the medium of photography and a critical attempt to comment on contemporary culture. In short, the inherent characteristics of the photographic medium and its function within society are combined. Photography embodies both death and the beginning of something autonomous and new in the very moment of the picture-taking process. A photograph is a mere simulation of what was once there, in front of the lens, transformed onto photographic paper. It then opens up a whole range of new possibilities to the viewer. The photograph's almost life-like appearance informs the photographic myth that is the idea that a photograph provides evidence of absolute truth. This characteristic together with the possibility of manipulating and altering a photograph has been continuously exploited by mass media to influence, make and guide our perceptions towards reality. These characteristics of image-making have left the borders between fiction and fact blurred. Living in a world of over-mediation it is hard to escape and find one's way around in this melting pot of the various realities suggested. Reality today is informed by the present trace of an absent original. When this is recorded photographically, it could be described as a doubledeath. Both this research documentation and the studio work are social comments on contemporary life and artmaking. Where photographs record scenes from life informed by visual simulation (the presence of the absent) the notion of doubledeath becomes most obvious. Moreover, they reflect contemporary culture, addressing and investigating concerns fueled by today's omnipresent commodity and life-style culture, and provoking thoughts about illusion and the crises of the real. In the 21st century we interact with, acknowledge, accept or even prefer the surface over the essence of things, and real experience becomes more diluted.