Theses (M.A.)--Marshall University, 2007. / Title from document title page. Includes abstract. Document formatted into pages: contains 50 pages. Bibliography: p. 44-48.

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This composition portfolio comprises nine original compositions: Erebos (solo violin and chamber ensemble, 2014), Sisyphus Syndrome (clarinet in Bb and percussion, 2014), Aether (solo accordion, 2014), Aether II (brass band, 2014), Boreas (s.a.t.b chorus with soprano and tenor soloists, 2014), Eremos (flute choir and percussion, 2014), Helen (solo mezzo-soprano, solo cello, double chorus (s.a.t.b, s.a.t.b), 4 horns in F and timpani, 2015), Aphrodite Anadyomene (clarinet in Bb, violin, cello and piano, 2015) and Teotihuacan (symphony orchestra, 2016). This accompanying commentary discusses compositional concerns explored within the compositions. This includes an approach to creating binary oppositions, which is based upon a combination of Elliott Carters stratification techniques in combination with Lutoslawskis interval partitioning techniques. Additionally, approaches to creating musical drama and structural trajectory are explored. This includes drawing upon the structure of Greek tragedy by using Birtwistles Tragoedia as a starting point, juxtaposing and superimposing binary oppositions and using Stravinskian block structures. I also describe how my instrumental compositions have been influenced by electroacoustic music and describe a method of implementing Thoresens typology to plan and trigger textures and timbral ideas.

The fundamental role that tragedy has played in the development of European philosophy and, by extension, psychology, has in part been due to its inextricability from an understanding of human life, facilitating its many transformations alongside major shifts in the political and social landscapes where it plays out. This dissertation draws a thread from the traditions of tragedy and German Trauerspiel through the nineteenth century and into the twentieth, focusing on the legacy of the tragic as it lived on in Nietzsche's psychological philosophy and was taken up by Hermann Hesse in his literary explorations of spiritual development and the fate of the German soul. Affirmative fatalism is the conceptual name for a tendency that I observe specifically in German literature from the eighteenth, nineteenth, and twentieth centuries, finding its clearest articulations in Goethe’s Faust and Nietzsche’s amor fati, and then becoming thematized itself in Hesse’s Glasperlenspiel. This study illustrates how ultimately in Hesse’s texts the sharp distinction is drawn between affirmative fatalism in its authentic sense – a love of and dynamic engagement with fate – and the passive fatalism of authoritarianism – a prostration before a prescribed fate, the obsequiousness of which is veiled in the language and pageantry of patriotic heroism.

Orientador: Wilma Patricia Marzari Dinardo Maas / Banca: Natália Corrêa Porto Fadel Barcellos / Banca: Tércio Loureiro Redondo / Resumo: É inegável que a sociedade com o passar dos anos tenha sofrido constantes transformações de ordem tanto social quanto econômica, o que não só promoveu uma mudança no homem moderno, como também passou a se refletir nas artes, possibilitando assim o surgimento do drama moderno como forma de representação desse homem em transformação e suas inquietações. Com o advento do drama moderno não se pode mais pensar em uma única maneira de se conceber o teatro, mas passa-se a considerar a existência do drama em sua pluralidade, na qual suas diversas manifestações buscam ora refletir o homem moderno tal qual ele se apresenta, submetido a um sistema cada vez mais desumano e mesquinho, ora propor um teatro engajado, cujo objetivo seria despertar o homem para que, saindo da inércia em que se encontra, comece a agir contra as injustiças veladas que se tornam cada vez mais frequentes. Friedrich Dürrenmatt, dramaturgo suíço, viveu em um período marcado pela guerra e suas consequências. Tal atmosfera somada a uma tendência de composição híbrida própria ao drama moderno resultaria em uma série de peças que refletem de forma crítica e irônica o homem de seu tempo. O dramaturgo em sua visão sobre a sociedade moderna defendia que nenhum gênero seria mais adequado para representá-la do que a comédia. Ainda que não excluísse a possibilidade do trágico, entendia que esse só seria possível em sua forma híbrida, a tragicomédia. Tomando uma de suas obras mais expressivas, o presente trabalho tem por objeto sua peça tragicômica A visita da velha senhora, publicada pela primeira vez em 1956, buscando analisar de que forma o trágico e o cômico manifestam-se dentro da peça, bem como a maneira como tais aspectos interagem entre si e com as demais características da peça, como, por exemplo, o grotesco. Ademais, se observou também o diálogo estabelecido entre... / Abstract: It is undeniable that the society over the years has undergone constant changes in both social and economic aspects, which not only promoted a change in modern man, but was also reflected in the arts, allowing the emergence of modern drama as a way of representation of the man in transformation and their concerns. With the advent of modern drama it is not possible to think of a single way of conceiving the theater, since now we can consider the existence of the drama in its plurality, in which its various manifestations now seek to reflect the modern man as it is. Therefore, some now propose a committed theater, whose goal would be to awaken the people out of the inertia that they are, urging them to begin to act against the veiled injustices that become more frequent. Friedrich Dürrenmatt, Swiss playwright, lived in a period marked by war and its consequences. This atmosphere coupled with a tendency to a hybrid composition in modern drama would result in a series of plays that reflect critically and ironically the man of his time. The playwright in his vision of modern society argued that no genre would be more appropriate to represent it than comedy. Although he does not exclude the possibility of the tragic, he understood that this would only be possible in a hybrid form, the tragicomedy. Taking one of his most significant plays, this work is focused on his tragicomic play The visit of the old lady, first published in 1956, seeking to examine how the tragic and the comic are manifested within the play, as well as how such features interact with themself and with the other features, such as, for example, the grotesque. Furthermore, it also noted the dialogue between Dürrenmatt and the epic theater of Brecht, his contemporary. / Mestre

Tragedy and comedy are, in Conrad's phrase, "but a matter of the visual angle." Tragedy focusses on the individual, comedy on the human community, but each must partake of the other for completion. The aesthetic form of a work of literature represents an order which prevails against the chaos of events, producing in the reader a tension between aloofness and involvement. Conrad's failure to find a technique capable of fully achieving this tension caused his early works to fall short of rendering a tragic vision, but his discovery of the possibilities inherent in the use of a narrator allowed his fiction from The Nigger of the "Narcissus" to Lord Jim to transcend his earlier limitations. By the time he wrote Under Western Eyes, Conrad no longer needed a narrator such as Marlow to achieve distance and was able to utilize his narrator in other ways. In doing so, he was able to create a more traditional tragedy. Almayer's Folly, the most successful of the "Maylayan" novels, presents Almayer’s tragedy as ironic comedy, and only occasionally falls into the cynicism to which its pessimistic philosophy is prey. An Outcast of the Islands. however, despite advances in characterization and plot development, is too overtly and discursively philosophical to succeed. And The Rescue, with its romantically tragic philosophy and tone, proved to be a cul-de-sac. Breaking off from work on The Rescue. Conrad found, in his experience as a seaman and in the employment of a narrator, means of liberation that allowed him to write an almost wholly positive work, a comedy of salvation through communal effort. The somewhat inconsistently used narrator allows the reader to comprehend both the decadent influence of Wait, the "nigger", and the benign influence of Singleton, who "steered with care," without losing sight of the tale as aesthetic work. Marlow, narrator of "Heart of Darkness" and Lord Jim, performs somewhat the same function, but is technically consistent and stands in a much more complex relation to the story. "Heart of Darkness" provides the tragic point of view to complement The Nigger's comedy. Lord Jim represents Conrad's first achievement of a sustained tragic vision, yet it is not a tragedy; its center is divided between Jim's tragic experience and Marlow's tragic awareness. The complex narrative method allows the reader to participate in Marlow's search for understanding through recognition of Jim as "one of us. " An image is created which has the sculptural quality of lacking inherent point of view, but which is never completely sharpened. Jim is important to Marlow for the romantic illusion to which he is true and which seems to offer a possibility of finding dignity. Stein's butterflies symbolize this dream, while his beetles symbolize the counter-illusion of the realists like Brown. Marlow, aware of the illusory nature of both, seeks an integrated vision. The language teacher of Under Western Eyes is used differently from Marlow. He is ironically presented as an impartial recorder of events, helping to clarify the political differences but human similarities between Russia and the West. Razumov is unlike Jim in that he starts from a "realistic" illusion of worldly success and is brought by circumstances to a vision of human contact, a radical transformation, and one of which he is fully aware. The novel is a tragedy in the conventional sense and is a profound treatment of the relation between a man and his society, yet, despite such effective techniques as the use of Christian allusions to establish a shared set of values, it lacks the richness of Lord Jim. / Arts, Faculty of / English, Department of / Graduate

No abstract included. / Arts, Faculty of / French, Hispanic, and Italian Studies, Department of / Graduate

Reuse of historic buildings has become commonplace, but what should be done when a building has a history related to death and tragedy? Society has to determine its psychological approach to dealing with the past. This is commonly achieved through remembrance, converting the site into a museum or memorial, or denial, demolishing it. These actions unnecessarily allow the past to dictate the future. This thesis will look at an alternative solution through which adaptive reuse promotes a different approach to society's psychological understanding of collective memory. Adaptive reuse can honor the past while moving forward into a better future, encouraging society to come to terms with a difficult part of their collective history, but understanding that it should not define them. In recent years there has been a drastic increase in the popularity of 'dark tourism', the visitation to sites associated with death and tragedy. There is a spectrum of darkness that classifies the darkest places, such as Auschwitz-Birkenau, as sites where death and suffering physically occurred and the lightest places, like the United States Holocaust Museum, that are only associated. The most challenging sites are those that lie somewhere in between these two extremes. Communities should embrace the value of 'dark tourism' while maintaining an identity outside of the event and the architecture of the site should reflect this. Architecture can inspire the limitation and prevention of future sordid events if new program is introduced that is directly in response to the event through which the past can be remembered, but a better future embraced. / 0 / SPK / specialcollections@tulane.edu

This dissertation focuses on the nature and manifestation of tragedy within African experience in selected plays written by black South African playwrights. The plays under discussion are We Shall Sing for the Fatherland (1973) by Zakes Mda, The Hungry Earth (1978) by Maishe Maponya, and Sarafina (1985) by Mbongeni Ngema. The many conflicting statements regarding the "death" and existence of tragedy in contemporary drama lead one to ask the following two fundamental questions: Can there be tragedy in contemporary South African drama and what structural devices are there to account for the manifestation of this elusive phenomenon? This dissertation works towards defining the concept of an African vision of tragedy by examining the nature and form in which tragedy manifests itself in South African drama. Secondly, it considers the extent to which this phenomenon is similar or different from conventional elements and structural forms of Western tragic drama. This dissertation argues that there exists a distinct and viable vision of tragedy in black South African drama which can be called African. It contends that dramatic texts do not all have the same degree of profundity of tragic vision because their subject matter, techniques and depth of artistic exploration differ, and vary according to their cultural roots. The basis on which old forms of tragedy are used to interpret the version of contemporary tragedy is therefore called into question, and as a result, the analysis of structural forms and thematic preoccupations of contemporary tragedy needs a set of criteria different from that of Euro-American drama. The portrayal of a tragic hero as a common man whose tragic stature is measured in terms of his ability to feel, to be aware of forces closing down on him in The Hungry Earth, the manifestation of tragedy as generated not only by individual volition, but by an economic structure established by those in power in We Shall Sing for the Fatherland, and, finally, the mingling of tragicomic elements of entertainment and communication to accommodate both tragedy and comic elements without destroying the integrity of either in Sarafina, indicate a definite development and imitation of tragedy from emphasis on form to meaning. By asking a question like: "What constitutes tragedy in black South African drama, and how are such processes represented and modelled in the selected plays?" this dissertation enters into a dialogue of global and local perspectives of tragedy in order to contribute to our understanding of an African, and specifically South African, concept of tragedy firmly rooted in its socio-cultural context. / Thesis (M.A. (English))--Potchefstroom University for Christian Higher Education, 2003.

This dissertation focuses on the nature and manifestation of tragedy within African experience in selected plays written by black South African playwrights. The plays under discussion are We Shall Sing for the Fatherland (1973) by Zakes Mda, The Hungry Earth (1978) by Maishe Maponya, and Sarafina (1985) by Mbongeni Ngema. The many conflicting statements regarding the "death" and existence of tragedy in contemporary drama lead one to ask the following two fundamental questions: Can there be tragedy in contemporary South African drama and what structural devices are there to account for the manifestation of this elusive phenomenon? This dissertation works towards defining the concept of an African vision of tragedy by examining the nature and form in which tragedy manifests itself in South African drama. Secondly, it considers the extent to which this phenomenon is similar or different from conventional elements and structural forms of Western tragic drama. This dissertation argues that there exists a distinct and viable vision of tragedy in black South African drama which can be called African. It contends that dramatic texts do not all have the same degree of profundity of tragic vision because their subject matter, techniques and depth of artistic exploration differ, and vary according to their cultural roots. The basis on which old forms of tragedy are used to interpret the version of contemporary tragedy is therefore called into question, and as a result, the analysis of structural forms and thematic preoccupations of contemporary tragedy needs a set of criteria different from that of Euro-American drama. The portrayal of a tragic hero as a common man whose tragic stature is measured in terms of his ability to feel, to be aware of forces closing down on him in The Hungry Earth, the manifestation of tragedy as generated not only by individual volition, but by an economic structure established by those in power in We Shall Sing for the Fatherland, and, finally, the mingling of tragicomic elements of entertainment and communication to accommodate both tragedy and comic elements without destroying the integrity of either in Sarafina, indicate a definite development and imitation of tragedy from emphasis on form to meaning. By asking a question like: "What constitutes tragedy in black South African drama, and how are such processes represented and modelled in the selected plays?" this dissertation enters into a dialogue of global and local perspectives of tragedy in order to contribute to our understanding of an African, and specifically South African, concept of tragedy firmly rooted in its socio-cultural context. / Thesis (M.A. (English))--Potchefstroom University for Christian Higher Education, 2003.