My thesis considers wonder (meraviglia) as a path towards poetic knowledge as it appears in Dante’s Commedia and Ariosto’s Orlando furioso. In my textual analyses, I pursue manifestations of wonder as indicative of a specific moment of intellectual and philosophical inquiry that fills the gap between the dimension of the subject and that of the object, namely man and his world. Before embarking on close readings, in chapter one I disentangle the different components of wonder, tracing wonder’s earliest formulations back to Plato and Aristotle, and I re-define the fields of meraviglia’s neighbouring terms (stupore and ammirazione). My research aims to reassess the areas of wonder and of the marvellous, which literary critics have for too long confused, as active parts of the speculative discourses underlying both the Commedia and the Orlando furioso. As a result, in chapters two and three, I offer a picture of wonder which, in the Commedia, leads to experience of the divine dimension, bridging the human and the divine, but, in the Furioso, opens up a new interpretation of the earthly dimension, bridging the distances between men on earth and revealing the gnoseological bearing of its contradictions. This analysis demonstrates how differently the two authors relate to tradition: while Dante offers the first formulation of a redemptive Christian marvellous, linking pagan marvels to divine truth, Ariosto’s marvellous is to be seen as a climax to the liberation of wonder from medieval theological tenets, a process that gives birth to modern wonder. Through a diachronic and comparative investigation, I illuminate nuances of wonder that one could not discern by focussing on just one author or just one cultural period. The comparison between the two texts in light of wonder allows us to discover new paths within the poems, which show the connections between their marvellous features and their speculative drives.

L'objet de cette recherche est de découvrir le vrai sens de la fameuse « main invisible » d'Adam Smith à travers la nature humaine en insistant surtout sur le rôle de l'imagination humaine. Afin d'éclairer le plus grand mythe de toute l'histoire de l'économie moderne, on va faire référence aux différents concepts du maître écossais comme la philosophie, la sympathie, le spectateur impartial, la surprise, l'étonnement, l'admiration ou encore les vertus. Dans cette démarche, il sera sans doute essentiel d'insister sur les caractéristiques de l'homme à savoir son amour pour des systèmes cohérents, réguliers, harmonieux et simples, pour améliorer sa condition, sa recherche pour plus de commodités, son désir d'approbation ou encore son aversion pour une désapprobation de la part d'autrui. L'objet de ses différentes références est de prouver une cohérence évidente et intelligible non seulement en ce qui concerne l'unicité de la philosophie smithienne mais aussi en ce qui concerne le vrai sens de la main invisible du père fondateur de l'économie moderne. / The purpose of this research is to discover the true meaning of the famous "invisible hand" of Adam Smith through human nature with particular emphasis on the role of human imagination. To inform the biggest myth in the history of the modern economy, we will refer to different concepts of the Scottish master as the philosophy, sympathy, impartial spectator, surprise, wonder, admiration or virtues. In this approach, it may be essential to emphasize the characteristics of man namely his love for coherent, regular, harmonious and simple systems, to improve his condition, his search for convenience, his desire to approval or his aversion for disapproval from others. The purpose of its various references is to prove an evident and intelligible consistency not only regarding to the uniqueness of the Smithian philosophy but also regarding to the true meaning of the invisible hand of the founding father of the modern economics.

Made available in DSpace on 2016-04-28T18:22:59Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Eduardo de Carvalho Cassimiro.pdf: 21483325 bytes, checksum: 91a5b7094d9685eaf8f389489794b204 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2014-12-16 / Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior / The author of this empirical language study aims at offering evidence of the linguistic characterization of some Wonder Woman comic book characters by finding which keywords from specific reference corpora have been incorporated to the aforementioned characters vocabulary, and to what extent. In order to achieve such an aim, the researcher, first, brings to light the 100 relevant keywords from each of his six specific natural language samples by comparing their vocabularies to that of a generic reference corpus (such as the BNC); then, the incorporated keywords are found. Only the texts (not the drawings) from 24 issues of the WONDER WOMAN comic book (published in the late 1980s) have served him as his study corpus. All the stories in that selected corpus were both written and drawn by George Pérez. The researcher s methodological and theoretical basis is from the Corpus Linguistics field (or the corpus-based approach). The results seem to warrant the conclusion that, based on the study of those characters vocabulary, which is a manifestation of the writer s stylistic choices, both the method developed for this research and the theoretical basis selected by the researcher have been proven valuable not only to make the linguistic characterization (of comic book characters) evident, but also to analyze it / O objetivo do autor deste estudo de linguagem empírico é evidenciar a caracterização linguística de personagens de histórias em quadrinhos da Mulher-Maravilha mediante a descoberta de quais palavras-chave de córpora de referência específicos estão incorporadas ao vocabulário de tais personagens, e em qual proporção. Para atingir esse objetivo, o pesquisador, primeiro, descobre as 100 palavras-chave relevantes de seis amostras de linguagem específica por meio da comparação do léxico delas ao dum córpus de referência formado por linguagem genérica (como o BNC); depois, as palavras-chave incorporadas. Apenas os textos de 24 edições da revista WONDER WOMAN do fim da década de 1980, roteirizadas e desenhadas por George Pérez compõem o córpus de estudo. A fundamentação teórico-metodológica do pesquisador é de Linguística de Córpus (ou da abordagem baseada em córpus). À luz dos resultados obtidos, o autor considera admissível afirmar que tanto o método desenvolvido para esta pesquisa quanto o referencial teórico são adequados para a descoberta e para a análise da caracterização linguística de personagens de histórias em quadrinhos com base no vocabulário destes, que é decorrente de escolhas estilísticas do seu roteirista

Understanding transmedial storytelling is particularly important to fairy-tale studies. Monomedial views have long been unable to account for all of fairy tale tradition. Although the form originated in oral culture, it has long been a liminal, hybrid form that retains aspects of orality even while its principal mode of transference for some time has been something other than face-to-face communication. Transformations and adaptations across different media and contexts has resulted in a system of fairy-tale tradition that is massively intertextual and transmedial. No one medium can claim primary control over the fairy-tale tradition. Throughout time, oral tellings have inspired literary adaptations; literary renditions have influenced oral and theater performances; oral, print, and theater performances have spawned any number of retellings and adaptations within audiovisual media. This case study, investigates one example of adaptation to social media and integration across media: Tim Manley's satirical blog Fairy Tales for Twenty-somethings and his book Alice in Tumblr-land. In Manley's fairy tale creations, we see an instance of what Henry Jenkins calls convergence culture. This convergence should be of particular interest to folklorists because corporate and mass-media systems continue to influence and integrate with existing forms of interaction. Manley's overall narrative approach integrates two media, which permits him to use fairy tales to express a broader range of narrative impulses than would a project tied to only one medium. Media integration is an important concept to recognize and investigate because so many individuals see different media as inherently combative rather than mutually beneficial systems. Just as intertextuality has become a foundational concept in many humanistic studies, intermediality needs to enter the folklorist's discussions as well. With only some media under consideration, we only get some of the message.

There is little research on the young child's experience of the natural environment. Due to the increase in urbanisation, indoor recreation and indoor schooling many young children have become isolated from the natural environment. A love for nature and a sense of wonder in nature is being lost in the hurried childhood. This loss of access to nature impacts on the child's health and wellbeing, sense of connection and environmental literacy. This research study explores how Melbourne preschool children experience and use nature through the environments provided to them in the preschool program. The main environment is naturally the preschool play yard; however, as excursions also form part of the curriculum, the child's visit to the Royal Botanic Gardens and the Ian Potter Foundation Children's Garden forms part of this experience. Six case studies of Melburnian preschool children have been developed as a means to capture and communicate the interactions of individual children. Each of the six case studies present a child or pair of children 'in the moment,' as a snap shot of ecological learning and play behaviour and are presented as six stories, which allow the child's individual character and unique experience of nature to be expressed. Issues and behaviours evident in the children's interactions are then discussed through a framework of the seven ways of interacting in nature, which emerges from the demonstrations of these children. This information was collected using research techniques in observation; structured observations using time sampling and behaviour mapping; participating in conversations with children and collecting anecdotal observations and children's artwork. The case studies provide insight into childhood interactions with the natural environment and the levels of engagement experienced by children, with nature. The six stories, alongside topical literature, form the basis for deep discussion on the observed ways of interacting with nature.

From the eighth to the fourteenth century, places of wonder and dread appear in a wide variety of genres in Old and Middle English: epics, lays, romances, saints’ lives, travel narratives, marvel collections, visions of the afterlife. These places appear in narratives of the other world, a term which in Old and Middle English texts refers to the Christian afterlife: Hell, Purgatory, even Paradise can be fraught with wonder, danger, and the possibility of harm. But in addition to the other world, there are places that are not theologically separate from the human world, but that are nevertheless both marvellous and horrifying: the monster-mere in Beowulf, the Faerie kingdom of Sir Orfeo, the demon-ridden Vale Perilous in Mandeville’s Travels, or the fearful landscape of the Green Chapel in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. Fraught with horror or the possibility of harm, these places are profoundly different from the presented or implied home world of the text. My dissertation investigates how Old and Middle English narratives create places of wonder and dread; how they situate these places metaphysically between the world of living mortals and the world of the afterlife; how they furnish these places with dangerous topography and monstrous inhabitants, as well as with motifs, with tropes, and with thematic concerns that signal their marvellous and fearful nature. I argue that the heart of this poetics of marvellous spaces is displacement. Their wonder and dread comes from boundaries that these places blur and cross, from the resistance of these places to being known or mapped, and from the deliberate distancing between these places and the home of their texts. This overarching concern with displacement encourages the migration of iconographic motifs, tropes, and themes across genre boundaries and theological categories.

From the eighth to the fourteenth century, places of wonder and dread appear in a wide variety of genres in Old and Middle English: epics, lays, romances, saints’ lives, travel narratives, marvel collections, visions of the afterlife. These places appear in narratives of the other world, a term which in Old and Middle English texts refers to the Christian afterlife: Hell, Purgatory, even Paradise can be fraught with wonder, danger, and the possibility of harm. But in addition to the other world, there are places that are not theologically separate from the human world, but that are nevertheless both marvellous and horrifying: the monster-mere in Beowulf, the Faerie kingdom of Sir Orfeo, the demon-ridden Vale Perilous in Mandeville’s Travels, or the fearful landscape of the Green Chapel in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. Fraught with horror or the possibility of harm, these places are profoundly different from the presented or implied home world of the text. My dissertation investigates how Old and Middle English narratives create places of wonder and dread; how they situate these places metaphysically between the world of living mortals and the world of the afterlife; how they furnish these places with dangerous topography and monstrous inhabitants, as well as with motifs, with tropes, and with thematic concerns that signal their marvellous and fearful nature. I argue that the heart of this poetics of marvellous spaces is displacement. Their wonder and dread comes from boundaries that these places blur and cross, from the resistance of these places to being known or mapped, and from the deliberate distancing between these places and the home of their texts. This overarching concern with displacement encourages the migration of iconographic motifs, tropes, and themes across genre boundaries and theological categories.

In the process of identity construction, the media and entertainment industry act as tools that contribute to the formation of the individual. These media are responsible for reflecting stereotypes that make up society and often the subjective way exposed by these channels of communication reproduce a unilateral view of society, which on many occasions have privileged the eyes of those who hold the domain of the word. Among the many categories objectified and/or erased by these means are the women. Female stereotypes, though many are not diversified, women are always represented as: the mother, the wife, the damsel in distress, the mistress among others, all those created to establish the place of women in society. The struggle for female visibility is not recent and one of the reasons for this struggle is the way women are represented in the media. The present work aims to analyze and discuss how women are represented in the genre Comics, so we will analyze the character Wonder Woman, who despite being seen as a symbol of female empowerment, carries several marks of the male view upon the woman. The methodology adopted to conduct this work will be through qualitative bibliographical research. The development of the analyzes proposed by this work will follow some theoretical perceptions among which are the Multimodal Theory of Speech by Kress and Van Leewen (2001) and Van Leewen (2005), The performative Theory by Butler (1990) and the Identity Studies by Hall (2000). The reading of the images that compose the genre analyzed will also use the contribution of the Critical Literacy and the Cultural Studies. The need to redefine the female image in the universe of comics is the central aim of this work. / No processo de construção de identidade, os meios de comunicação e entretenimento atuam como ferramentas que contribuem para a formação do indivíduo. Esses meios são responsáveis por refletir estereótipos que compõem a sociedade, e, muitas vezes, a forma subjetiva exposta por esses canais de comunicação reproduz um olhar unilateral acerca da sociedade, o que em muitas ocasiões privilegiou o olhar daqueles que detêm o domínio da palavra. Entre as tantas categorias coisificadas e/ou apagadas por esses meios estão as mulheres. Os estereótipos femininos, apesar de muitos, não são diversificados, visto que as mulheres são sempre representadas como: a mãe, a esposa, a donzela em perigo, a amante, entre outros, todos eles criados para estabelecer o local da mulher na sociedade. A luta por visibilidade feminina não é recente, e uma das motivações dessa luta deve-se à forma como as mulheres são representadas na mídia. Diante disso, o presente trabalho teve por objetivo analisar e discutir a forma como as mulheres são representadas no gênero HQS (Histórias em Quadrinhos), e, para tanto, analisamos a personagem Mulher Maravilha, que, apesar de vista como símbolo de empoderamento feminino, carrega várias marcas estereotipadas sobre a mulher. A metodologia adotada para a condução deste trabalho deu-se por meio de pesquisa qualitativa bibliográfica. Por sua vez, o desenvolvimento das análises propostas pelo estudo seguiu algumas perspectivas teóricas, dentre as quais estão a Teoria Multimodal do Discurso, de Kress e Van Leewen (2001) e Van Leewen (2005), a Teoria performativa do gênero, de Butler (1990), e os estudos sobre construção de identidade, de Hall (2000). A leitura das imagens que compõem o gênero analisado também se fundamentou no aporte do Letramento Crítico e dos Estudos Culturais. Por fim, destacamos que a necessidade de ressignificação da imagem feminina no universo das HQS é a questão central desta pesquisa. / São Cristóvão, SE

L’eau est chez Terrence Malick une figure emblématique de la nature, ce dans une certaine continuité avec l’ensemble du cinéma américain le plus populaire (Steven Spielberg). Malick, en dépit d’une formation en philosophie, n’apparaît pas comme une figure isolée dans son pays.La nature se cache (Héraclite). Elle présente un visage insouciant à l’enfance avant de revêtir le masque de l’indifférence à l’âge adulte. Mais l’invisible de la nature traduit moins de l’effroi que du mystère (Jacques Tourneur). L’indifférence cède la place au véritable étonnement philosophique, celui de la création du monde (naissance de Vénus). Le voile de la nature peut susciter de la violence (le monde de la technique de Heidegger). Y renoncer au profit de la contemplation est possible (Henry Hathaway et le film Peter Ibbetson). La posture du retrait sera privilégiée à la force (Minnelli au cinéma, Marc Aurèle ou Leibniz en philosophie). La piscine et le pont illustrent le rapport de distance existant entre l'individu et l’eau. S’agissant de l’eau prise comme symbole de l’écoulement temporel, l’écueil est de l’appréhender comme un motif de dislocation entre les âges de la vie. Elle est dans le même ordre d’idées une figure privilégiée de la mort. Cette illusion peut être écartée par une appréhension renouvelée des âges de la vie, qui ne se succèdent pas mais s’unissent en permanence en une union qui rappelle la leçon de Proust et bien avant lui d’Héraclite, avec son enfant qui joue présenté comme symbole du temps. Le pont figure là encore un symbole de ce temps retrouvé capable de soigner des maux souvent rencontrés dans le cinéma américain (syndromes de Carlotta et Lolita). / Water constitutes with Terrence Malick a fundamental figure representative of nature, in the lineage of the most popular American cinema (Spielberg). Malick, despite the importance of his philosophical culture, appears the contrary of an isolated figure in his country.The main characteristic of nature is to hide (Heraclitus). Nature presents a friendly face to the child and becomes indifferent for the adult. The invisibility of nature in water conveys less fright than a sense of mystery (Jacques Tourneur). Indifference gives way to philosophical wonder linked to the creation of the world from water (the birth of Venus).Violence can respond to the veil (the technical world of Heidegger). But contemplation can replace cold reason (Henry Hathaway and his movie Peter Ibbetson). The idea is not to force nature to deliver its message, but to step back in a way announced by philosophers Marcus Aurelius and Leibniz, and movie maker Minnelli. The swimming pool and the bridge represent two space figures which permit to illustrate the distance between the individual and water.As to water as a symbol of time flowing, the mistake is to understand time as fragmented periods of life without any connection. Water is also a symbol of death. The illusion can vanish when apprehending time in a renewed manner. The ages of life do not follow each other but are permanently combined in a union reminiscent of Proust’s teachings. The bridge represents once more this time newly found able to heal psychological diseases often encountered in American cinema (syndromes of Carlotta and Lolita).

This thesis investigates narratives of re-enchantment and disenchantment in three contemporary U.S. novels, Lydia Millet’s Mermaids in Paradise, Karen Tei Yamashita’s Tropic of Orange, and Thomas Pynchon’s Inherent Vice. Drawing on key concepts from ecocritcism and affect theory, I argue that these novels interrogate narratives and affects associated with questions central to the Anthropocene: climate-related dilemmas, questions of environmental justice, and animal ethics. Situating these texts in relation to environmental discourses, I show how affects of wonder and re-enchantment are produced within them through the insertion of anti-mimetic narrative objects into otherwise representationally realistic fictional worlds. These incursions, and the affective shifts they produce, challenge and interrupt in the novels narratives of ecological dread and disenchantment, which I link to the techniques and affects of noir. In each chapter of this study, I show how the dialogical interplay between disenchantment and re-enchantment disrupts preconceptions and assumptions about aspects of ecological crisis, and engenders or reinforces political commitments to environmentally related issues. Chapter One focuses on interspecies politics and animal rights in Mermaids in Paradise, environmental justice is central to the analysis of Tropic of Orange in Chapter Two, and the political dynamics of countercultural environmentalism inform my reading of Inherent Vice in Chapter Three. Throughout, I explore the potential of re-enchantment to suggest an alternative to disenchanted and apocalyptic narratives concerning the environment, and to articulate a productive politics for contemporary ecofiction.