This dissertation represents an interpretation of the different forms of negativity in the modernist work that can be understood in terms of that which is unsaid, unsayable, or any other means of refusing to give an affirmative proposition regarding the world the work describes. It explores this negativity as both a representation of that which cannot be represented, and as an operational negativity, or negation, that takes part in the unmaking of the work's figures. The function of this negativity, as interpreted in Marcel Proust's Remembrance of Things Past (1913-1927), James Joyce's Ulysses (1922) and Krapp's Last Tape (1959) by Samuel Beckett, is to rewrite the representations of the work. Negativity is then also understood as a transformation and conditioning of elements already present in the literary work, that lead to ambivalent and problematic representations in the work. In this sense, negativity can be understood as a form of rewriting of the work's representations. The interpretations of the works of Proust, Joyce and Beckett are guided by this understanding, as given in the introduction, of negativity. In the analysis of Proust's novel, in "The Unmaking of Proust: Negation and Errors in Remembrance of Things Past", this form of negativity is situated in relation to Proust's handling of epistemological questions and mimetic references to reality in his work. The analysis of Joyce's work in "The Wandering of Language in James Joyce's Ulysses" discusses his treatment of language and the origins of language as being characterized by a negation that increases the difficulty of the language, and attempts to negate its origins. Finally, in the analysis of Beckett's "Krapp's Last Tape", in "Beckett, Proust, and the End of Literature", it is shown that negativity conditions both the reception of the influence of Proust by Beckett, and the play's attempt to suggest the end of writing. In conclusion the dissertation returns to the idea of negativity as a form of rewriting, and briefly indicates that the function of negativity in these novels can be understood as a form of invention. / Thesis (M.A.)--Potchefstroom University for Christian Higher Education, 2000.

La thèse a pour objectif l’étude comparative des avatars de trois figures mythiques – Don Juan, Ulysse et Jason – dans le roman contemporain francophone. La première partie « Art donjuanesque et art romanesque. Le libertinage kundérien » aborde la genèse du paradigme donjuanesque kundérien réactualisant les gestes du burlador baroque ainsi que les métamorphoses et expériences romantiques, modernes et postmodernes du patron mythique évoluant vers une posture distanciée et critique. Dans la deuxième partie « Variations romanesques sur héritage mythique. Avatars et aventures de Don Juan et d’Ulysse » nous nous focalisons sur les stratégies intertextuelles participant de l’élaboration de la typologie libertine contemporaine dans l’œuvre kundérienne et dans trois cas de donjuanisme morbide dépeints par Pierre-Jean Remy, par Denis Tillinac et par Béatrix Beck pour les confronter aux techniques de réinvention de l’aventure odysséenne revisitée par Maurice Audebert et par Eric-Emmanuel Schmitt. La troisième partie « Figures mythiques de voyageurs – Ulysse et Jason. Expériences du retour et de la quête » étudie les procédés de démythologisation utilisés par Milan Kundera, l’enchevêtrement des intertextes homérique et joycien dans le cycle de Cyrtha de Salim Bachi et les transformations du syntagme de base du mythe de Jason dans trois œuvres de Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clézio. Les résultats de nos analyses sont systématisés en vue de circonscrire les traits dominants des écritures mythologiques et de les situer par rapport aux tendances du roman contemporain francophone. / The purpose of this thesis is the comparative study of the resurgences of three mythical figures – Don Juan, Ulysses and Jason – in the contemporary francophone novel. “Part One : The Art of Don Juanism and the Art of the Novel: Milan Kundera’s libertinage” discusses the genesis of the Kunderian donjuanesque paradigm reviving the gestures of the baroque burlador and the romantic, modern and postmodern metamorphoses and experiences of the mythical pattern moving towards a distanced and critical posture. “Part Two: Novelistic variations on the Mythical heritage: Avatars and Adventures of Don Juan and Ulysses” focuses on the intertextual strategies involved in the development of the contemporary libertine typology in Kundera's oeuvre and in three cases of morbid Don Juanism portrayed by Pierre-Jean Remy, Denis Tillinac and Béatrix Beck in order to compare them to the techniques of reinvention of the Odyssean adventure revisited by Maurice Audebert and Eric-Emmanuel Schmitt. “Part Three: Mythical travellers – Ulysses and Jason. Experiences of the return and the quest” studies the devices of demythologisation used by Milan Kundera, the entanglement of Homeric and Joycean intertexts in the Cycle of Cyrtha by Salim Bachi and the transformations of the basic syntagm of the myth of Jason in three works by Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clézio. The results of the analyses are systematized in order to identify the main features of the mythological writings and to relate them to the trends in the contemporary francophone novel.

In James Joyce’s Ulysses, I believe that Stephen Dedalus enacts a heteroglossic discourse in episode 15, “Circe,” that critiques both English imperialism and the nationalist bourgeois of Ireland. Moreover, Stephen engages not only in an aesthetic and political rebellion through the style of his discourse, but he also engages in the only anticolonial violence in Ulysses against the British soldier Private Carr. Thus, I believe that Stephen separates himself from the ideology of the colonizer and from the bourgeois nationalists through aesthetic, political, and violent means. I will conduct my examination of Stephen as a revolutionary colonial intellectual in three parts using the work of three respective theorists: Mikhail Bakhtin, Frantz Fanon, and Benedict Anderson. Ultimately, I intend to show that Stephen can be read as a gateway through which Joyce represents a new heterogeneous, anticolonial, and antinational community in Ireland. / Department of English

This thesis argues that the popular characterization of high modernist fiction as esoteric, elitist, uncommunicative, and far too difficult for the common reader obscures the democratic principles at the heart of modernist experimentation and its poetics of difficulty. Recent theories of embodied cognition when applied to representative examples of high modernist novels help dispel the myth of inaccessibility and reveal the many ways in which these works actually accommodate the common reader. Once the stigma of inaccessibility is removed from the study of modernist novels, it becomes possible to see how their formal experiments with language as well as the themes and issues they contain operate for readers and writers alike as a means of exploring everyday cognitive activities and responses. To this end, the concept of cognitive dissonance provides a heuristic device for understanding what lies behind the motivations of writers who aestheticise experiences of dissonance in their texts and the responses of readers who confront these texts. This cognitive approach to modern literature challenges assumptions about high modernism's "uncompromising intellectuality" and replaces them with a view of modernism that is more accessible and inclusive without diminishing its radical difficulty. It also paves the way for new readings of highly canonical modernist fiction. For instance, I examine how James Joyce places "inscribed" readers into Ulysses to guide actual readers through some of the difficulties of the novel. I then read William Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury as a novel that both thematises and formally resists the modern threat of behaviouristic human conditioning. Finally, I look at how the theme and form of Virginia Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway reinforce the embodied equation of dissonance with illness and incompletion.

No description available.

No description available.

The female characters in James Joyce's fiction have received considerable critical attention since the publication of his writings and are often denigrated as misogynist portrayals of women. However, a textual and historical analysis of the female characters in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Dubliners, Ulysses, and Finnegans Wake shows them in a more constructive light. Such an analysis reveals them to be sympathetic portrayals of the situation of Irish women at the turn of the twentieth century. An historical contextualization of the characters is essential in any reading of Joyce, but is particularly important for his female characters. An historical and textual analysis also reveals a noticeable shift in the characterization of women from his early novel to his later novels. Additionally, approaching Joyce's fiction from this angle highlights the significant influence of Nora Barnacle, whom he eventually married, on Joyce's characterizations of women. Joyce started writing A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man as a very young man, before he met Nora, and this fact coupled with the choice of an adolescent boy as the narrator explains some of the criticism leveled at the novel. The subject of the novel, an artist as a young man, requires that the narrator be a self-centered youth. Consequently, the aesthetics of the novel are not focused on the female characters, but this is a result of the somewhat narcissistic adolescence of the narrator, not Joyce's purported misogyny. A close textual reading reveals the female characters as somewhat fleeting as a result of the age of the narrator, but not misogynist creations. The discussion of Portrait serves as an introduction to the larger subject of the admirable aspects of his female characters in Dubliners, Ulysses, and Finnegans Wake. Numerous parallels can be found between the female characters in "Araby," one of the first short stories in Dubliners, and the female characters in Portrait. However, throughout the progression of the collection of short stories, the female characters become more detailed, in part because the narrator is no longer an adolescent and has become more socially aware. This textual analysis of the female characters in "Araby," "Clay," "Eveline," and "The Dead" is enhanced by an historical analysis that clarifies the similarities between the women in the stories and the situation of Irish women as Joyce observed them, as discussed by Joyce in some of his published letters. An awareness of these close parallels between the characters and the historical setting reveals the characters as sympathetically drawn, eliciting a reader's pity rather than judgments of misogyny. A similar textual and historical analysis, when applied to Molly Bloom in Ulysses, reveals the mosaic-like quality of her characterization. Although she speaks only in the "Penelope" episode, Molly Bloom's characterization is established from the beginning of the novel through frequent references to her by her husband Leopold Bloom, and other characters throughout the novel. The layered or mosaic-like approach to her characterization is a departure from Joyce's earlier style, but the resultant character is engaging and intricately detailed. An historical and textual analysis accounts for the stylistic aspect of her character and allows for a more engaging perspective of Molly. Always innovative, Joyce transforms the mosaic style of characterization used for Molly in the characterization of Anna Livia Plurabelle and Issy in Finnegans Wake and, instead, creates the characters on an entirely differentscale, that of myth. Ulysses is a daytime walk through Dublin that could also function as a founding myth for Ireland; Finnegans Wake is the nighttime counterpart to a walk through Dublin. Joyce chose to stylistically obscure the language in the novel in order to create the nighttime setting for his dream-like comment on Dublin's founding myths. The characters of Finnegans Wake are rooted in mythic tradition also, which serves this aesthetic choice well. An historical and textual analysis of ALP and Issy reveals the universalized and nuanced characterization inherent in their creation and execution. From A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man to Dubliners, Joyce's early female characters are notable in their own right, and function as important precursors to Joyce's visionary approach to characterization which culminated in Ulysses and Finnegans Wake with Anna Livia Plurabelle.

No description available.

No description available.

Made available in DSpace on 2014-07-29T16:27:51Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Dissertacao Mario Mendes Cavalcante.pdf: 7330965 bytes, checksum: 80b52a94c3060ca4d545aa882a897f61 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2011-09-13 / The aim of this research is to investigate the possible relationships between visual arts and literature from the study of works produced by the Brazilian artists José Roberto Aguilar (1941-) and Lenir de Miranda (1945-). Both have appropriated the character Ulysses from Homer's Odyssey and produced works using painting. Based on a literature review focused on the history of art, contemporary art theory and intersemiotic translation studies, we focus our study around the concepts of appropriation and expanded field. We conclude that the literary signs are appropriated for the artists in the field expanded of contemporary art as a poetic possibility. / O objetivo dessa pesquisa é investigar as possíveis relações entre artes visuais e literatura a partir do estudo de obras produzidas pelos artistas brasileiros José Roberto Aguilar (1941-) e Lenir de Miranda (1945-). Ambos se apropriaram do personagem Ulisses, da Odisseia de Homero, e produziram séries de pinturas. Com base em uma revisão bibliográfica centrada na história da arte, na teoria da arte contemporânea e nos estudos de tradução intersemiótica, centramos nosso estudo em torno dos conceitos de apropriação e de campo ampliado. Concluímos que os signos literários são apropriados pelas artes visuais dentro do campo ampliado como uma possibilidade poética.