No description available.

No description available.

The purpose of this thesis is to understand the origins of the enduring differences between the Eastern and Western interpretations of free will and determinism. In my piece, I work to determine the roots of these differences and to what degree these differences have been challenged and disrupted in the 20th century. In this pursuit, I analyze the different philosophies of free will in the East and West and then apply these philosophies to the literature of both regions. For the eastern scholarship, I am using Yukio Mishima's The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea and Motojirō Kajii's "Lemon." For the Western works, I am analyzing Kurt Vonnegut's The Sirens of Titan and Ursula K. Le Guin's "The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas." After thoroughly analyzing the pieces, I discuss the possible dialogues between the East and the West to help fully realize the legitimacy of the claim that the two regions continue to harbor distinct interpretations of free will and determinism.

En termes historiques, une recherche sur l'impact de la science et la technologie n'a rien de nouveau dans le champ des études littéraires. De telles études ont été réalisées depuis des siècles. Cependant, cet essai est actuel dans sa tentative de comprendre quelles sont les implications de l'influence, majeure dans le monde postmodeme, de la théorie "scientifique" de l'évolution en tant que cosmologie. Dans notre société postmodeme, on se réfère donc à cette théorie afin d'expliquer pourquoi le monde est tel qu'il est, pourquoi les choses se produisent comme elles le font, pour fournir une justification pour des coutumes et des observances sociales et pour établir les sanctions pour les règles par lesquelles les gens dirigent leurs vies. Puisque l'objectif de cette thèse portera sur l'image changeante de l'humanité telle qu'on la retrouve dans la fiction de Kurt Vonnegut et le lien entre celle-ci et la mythologie dérivée de l'évolutionnisme, mon approche théorique sera basée d'abord sur des critiques du mythe et des traités sur l'évolution et le darwinisme social. Par darwinisme social, nous entendons la théorie de Darwin, appliquée à un contexte social et donc applicable aux êtres humains. Au premier chapitre et deuxième chapitre, le concept d'une mythologie dérivée de l'évolution est discuté à la lumière de à la fois de principes de la mythologie et de la théorie de l'évolution de Darwin. Cette étude est supportée d'exemples tirés du livre Galápagos (Vonnegut 1985). Le troisième chapitre examine le lien entre la nouvelle physique et la mythologie dérivée de l'évolution. Les livres The Sirens of Titan (Vonnegut 1959) et Slaughterhouse-Five (Vonnegut 1969) sont les principales sources documentaires. Le quatrième chapitre explore Mother Night (Vonnegut 1962) en rapport avec le darwinisme social, la mythologie nazie et la mythologie dérivée de l'évolution. Le cinquième chapitre aborde le matérialisme scientifique dans Breakfast of Champions (Vonnegut 1973). Cette thèse conclut que les écrits de Vonnegut dépeignent la théorie darwinienne de l'évolution comme ayant des propriétés mythiques.

No description available.

His Story takes the form of a fictive but autobiographically based investigation into the child and young adult I used to be, and follows that protagonist into early adulthood. It tries to show the damage done to that character and the way in which he damaged others in turn. As Hemingway said, We are all bitched from the start and you especially have to hurt like hell before you can write seriously. More importantly, the main protagonist is somebody who became concerned with, and cognizant of the main political and social events of his day. His life is set in its social context, and reaches out to the larger issues. That is to say, the personal events of the protagonist's life are recorded alongside and set in the context of the major events taking place on the world stage. The manuscript is some sort of hybrid of novel, autobiography, and historical and social document. As Isaac Bashevis Singer said, The serious writer of our time must be deeply concerned about the problems of his generation. In order to make His Story effective in sharing my ideas and beliefs, and, of course, in order to protect the innocent and more particularly, the guilty, it is created in the colourful area that is the overlap between memory and fiction. When we tell the stories of our lives to others, and indeed, to ourselves, we prise them out of memory's fingers and transform them into fiction. To write autobiography well, as E.L. Doctorow said, you have to invent everything, even memory.

To be presented as the author's Thesis (doctoral)--Åbo Akademi University on Feb. 3, 1995. / Includes bibliographical references (p. [379]-396) and index.

To be presented as the author's Thesis (doctoral)--Åbo Akademi University on Feb. 3, 1995. / Includes bibliographical references (p. [379]-396) and index.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Delaware, 2005. / Principal faculty advisor: J.A. Leo Lemay, Dept. of English. Includes bibliographical references.

Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) / This thesis applies the ontological turn to the war fiction of veteran authors, Kurt Vonnegut and Tim O’Brien. It argues that some veteran authors desire to communicate truth through fiction. Choosing to communicate truth through fiction hints at a new perspective on reality and existence that may not be readily accepted or understood by those who lack combat experience. The non-veteran understanding of war can be more informed by entertaining the idea that a multiplicity of realities exists. Affirming the combat veteran reality—the post-war ontology—and acknowledging the non-veteran reality—rooted in what I label “pre-war” or “civilian” ontology—helps enhance the reader’s understanding of what veteran authors attempt to communicate through fiction. This approach reframes the dialogic interaction between the reader and the perspectives presented in veteran author’s fiction through an emphasis on “radical alterity” to the point that telling and reading such stories represent distinct ontological journeys. Both Kurt Vonnegut and Tim O’Brien provide intriguing perspectives on reality through their fiction, particularly in the way their characters perceive and express morality, guilt, time, mortality, and even existence. Vonnegut and O’Brien’s war experiences inform these perspectives. This does not imply that the authors hold an identical perspective on the world or that combat experience yields an ontological understanding of the world common to every veteran. It simply asserts that applying the ontological turn to these writings, and the writings of other combat veterans, reveals that those who experience combat first-hand often walk away from those experiences with a changed ontological perspective.