Dissertationen zum Thema „Barbers – Fiction“

Descriptions of food are very prominent in Barbara Pym's twelve novels. They are used on one hand for purely comic purposes. But more significantly, they evolve into a language with a structure and set of rules. To expose the language of food inherent in Pym's fiction, I have employed a combination of social history, structural anthropology and semiology. Roland Barthes' application of structural linguistics to food, and his concern with its' symbolic nature hold particular bearing to this study. The language of food functions on three interrelated levels in Pym: a social level where groups are defined and hierarchised; a gendered level where the sexes are defined and differentiated; and a more personal level where an individual either communes or alienates him/herself from a given group. Identity, whether national, social, sexual or individual, is confirmed in relation to eating habits and roles surrounding food preparation and consumption. With the help of complex strategies of irony, Pym uses the language of food to signal an interest in social and gender reform by presenting the artificiality of social constructs and gender stereotypes.

Despite Barbara Kingsolver's ability to create unique characters and storylines, two factors remain constant throughout each of her novels: strong female protagonists and conflict resolution. Though conflict exists in almost all fiction, the way that Kingsolver's characters deal with their situations often speaks louder than any other aspect of her writing. Moreover, though her characters often vary wildly from story to story, their methods of conflict resolution seem to undoubtedly connect them. Through her continuing desire to emphasize "the question of individualism and communal identity," {Reading Group Guides) Kingsolver often promotes the ideas of cosmopolitanism, which have recently been articulated by Kwame Anthony Appiah in his book Cosmopolitanism: Ethics in a World of Strangers. Appiah argues that cosmopolitanism can be represented by two main ideas: "One is the idea that we have obligations to others, obligations that stretch beyond those to whom we are related by the ties of kith and kind, or even the more formal ties of a shared citizenship," while the other is "that we take seriously the value not just of human life but of particular human lives, which means taking an interest in the practices and beliefs that lend them significance" {Cosmopolitanism xv). Though Appiah presents a compelling rationale for cosmopolitanism in postcolonial international relations, Kingsolver applies the same theories not only to global relationships but to personal conflict as well. While each of Kingsolver's novels could be explored for the theories of cosmopolitanism they demonstrate, The Poisonwood Bible and Prodigal Summer provide the best foundation for an examination of their broad applications of cosmopolitanism. Within The Poisonwood Bible, Orleanna, Leah, Rachel, and Adah Price are forced to deal with the international issues concerning the United States and the Congo, which directly affect their lives, as well as personal conflicts that range from quarrelling sisters to death and divorce. Throughout each struggle they face, they regularly apply at least one aspect of cosmopolitanism. Moreover, their most effective moments of conflict resolution come when they more precisely adhere to the tenets of cosmopolitanism. In Prodigal Summer, however, Kingsolver is primarily exploring the use of cosmopolitanism in more personal matters through the story of Lusa Landowski Widener. Though Lusa is not involved with any kind of international politics, it is the ideologies behind cosmopolitanism that allows her to reclaim her life after the loss of her husband while taking responsibility for her choices and becoming more accepting of those she does not understand. Appiah argues that, "A tenable global ethics has to temper a respect for difference with a respect for the freedom of actual human beings to make their own choices" ("Case" 30). Though Kingsolver would agree, she would further contend that such an idea should be more than a doctrine of "global ethics." Instead, cosmopolitanism should be applied to common, every day decisions in order to make greater change in the world. In The Poisonwood Bible and Prodigal Summer, Kingsolver demonstrates the efficacy of such an application of cosmopolitanism.

Fils de ceux qui ont vu la revolution francaise, barbey d'aurevilly dans sa vie d'homme jeune essaie de s'adaper a son epoque pour se preparer a j0uer un role. Il eprouve un relatif enthousiasme en fevrier 1848, mais de le mois suivant acheve sa breve experience politique, investit dans l'ecriture son besoin d'agir et reve l'histoire dans ses oeuvres de fiction. Il est possible d'y saisir une image de la revolution francaise (vue du cote chouan) que barbey construit grace a son heritage familial et a la tradition orale experimentee dans son enfance. Par un procede de ricochet dans les structures des oeuvres et un jeu de narrateurs, il recree, pour son lecteur, sa propre experience d'une relation privilegiee et unique a l'histoire. Dans ce dessein, l'ensorcelee occupe une place de choix parce qu'elle est la seule oeuvre de barbey dont la structure interne s'orgaise a partir de l'histoire en prenant comme temps fondateur la revolution francaise. Par ce biais, le roman prend une dimension mythique et par l'intermediaire de ses hors-textes : de marie hecquet a louis tainnebouy, il montre l'evolution de ma paysannerie dans la premiere partie du xixe siecle. La comparaison avec les romans chouans de balzac et de hugo permet de mieux cerner l'originalite de barbey et de comprendre que l'oeuvre aurevillienne ne chante pas le regret d'un monde passe, mais s'inscrit dans les combats du xixe siecle. En particulier, les differentes revolutions de 1830, mais surtout de 1848 et la commune de 1871 provoquent cette ecriture de l'image de la grande revolution de 1789
The heir of a generation that witnessed the french revolution, barbey d'aurevilly, as a young man, makes an effort to adapt to the times, to be able to play a role. He is relatively enthusiastic in february 1848, but his brief political career only lasts one month. He thereafter puts all his energy into his writing and dreams history in his works of fiction, where it is possible to find a picture of the french revolution (as seen from the chouan or anti-revolutionary side). Barbey draws this picture from his family heritage and the oral tradition he remembers from his childhood. By means of a crossreference structural system used in his different novels, barbey re-creates for the reader his own personal experience of a special and unique relationship with history. In this scheme, the novel entitled "l'ensorcelee" occupies a special because it is the only book by barbey in which the internal structure is organized around history, taking the french revolution as its time-setting. In this fashion, the novel takes on a mythical dimension, and using other documents, the author sketches the evolution of the french peasantry in the first half of the 19th century. Comparison with the chouan novels of balzac and hugo allows us to better indicate the originality of barbey and to understand that his work is not a nostalgic song of the past, but is definitely involved in the struggles of the nineteenth century. The revolution of 1830 and specially that of 1848 and the commune of 1871 were particularly responsible for this pictorial writing of the great revolution of 1789

This thesis examines Barbara Pym's treatment of a critically-documented theme, food, as it intersects with gender within her oeuvre. By mapping the subversive quality that her fiction achieves through the ironic exposition of cultural myths relating to food and its gender implications, it offers an alternative critical perspective on Pym, formulated in opposition to the traditionalist hegemony that seeks to 'protect' her from feminists. The study begins by exploring the historical and material conditions of Pym's rejection and 're-discovery', and the invention of her reputation by her literary guardians, in order to identify the subtleties of Pym's political sensibility and to provide a feminist-cultural theoretical reading of it. As Pym's life had an immediate and constitutive effect on the form and content of her work, Chapter 2 examines archival material which forms the basis of a psycho-sexual reading of her personal relationship to food, particularly as it symbolises or substitutes for desire. Chapters 3 and 4 provide close readings of her novels, examining the relationship ofPym's women and men to food, revealing how the dialogue between women and food figures as a metonym of desire, and is often the source of abjection, while for men food acts as both sexual metaphor and a metonymic site of power. These chapters are developed through a feminist socio-anthropological filter, offering an overview of foodway rules as they encode gender conventions and their supporting mythologies. This informs an analysis of Pym's fiction that considers how she chronicles English middle-class 'tribal customs' contemporary with her fifty years of writing, based upon the evidence of her familiarity with anthropological theory and technique. The inquiry into the thematic importance of food in Pym's fiction reveals how she ironises the cultural myths which mark gender difference and support a gender hierarchy. Since it engages with contemporary critical debate about and within feminist literary theory and gender studies, it offers both a much-needed re-evaluation of Pym's texts and a critical revision of what does and should comprise a feminist canon.

This is the first full-length scholarly work dedicated to the fiction of Kentucky-raised feminist activist and trained biologist Barbara Kingsolver. Interrogating the political efficacy of the work of an author who proclaims that art “should be political” and that “literature should inform as well as enlighten”, this thesis explores the ways in which Kingsolver positions herself variously as an environmentalist, liberal, communitarian, feminist and agrarian. It unpacks the author’s issues-based approach to writing fiction and its effect on her commercial popularity and through close readings of her fiction provides an assessment of this popular and critically acclaimed contemporary American writer. This study maps the oeuvre of a writer who has achieved critical success in the form of Pulitzer nominations, American Booksellers Book of the Year awards, a National Medal for Arts, and commercial success in the form of bestselling novels and even non-fiction works – not to mention the populist accolade of being selected as an Oprah’s Book Club author. It analyses tropes, techniques and tensions in Kingsolver’s novels and short stories published between 1988 and 2001, namely The Bean Trees (1988), Homeland and Other Stories (1989), Animal Dreams (1990), Pigs in Heaven (1993), The Poisonwood Bible (1998), and Prodigal Summer (2001). Rather than act as an introductory survey, this assessment posits that there exists a difficult but fruitful tension between writing fiction for readers and writing to a political agenda. Kingsolver promotes both of these through her narrative strategies and preoccupations. In the end, I argue that Kingsolver’s pursuit of popular appeal, far from compromising her politics, is a political strategy in itself.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--West Virginia University, 1998.
Title from document title page. Document formatted into pages; contains v, 183 p. Vita. Includes abstract. Includes bibliographical references (p. 174-182).

Cette thèse se propose d’étudier comment, dans un contexte postrévolutionnaire de déchristianisation et de recul des pratiques religieuses, des écrivains catholiques, s’affranchissant de la tutelle de l’Église, s’octroient le magistère ecclésial et confient à la littérature – en tant qu’œuvre de fiction et d’imagination – la mission de renouveler le discours apologétique. Barbey d’Aurevilly, Bloy et Bernanos s’inscrivent ainsi dans le sillage de Chateaubriand, qui opéra le premier, avec le Génie du Christianisme, ce renversement fondateur. Les trois écrivains réinvestissent alors une forme rhétorique ancienne : celle de l’exemplum. La première partie de ce travail s’attache à en retracer les évolutions, en prêtant attention aux transformations qu’il subit au moment de sa christianisation, mais aussi à la continuité qui permet, de l’exemplum aristotélicien à l’histoire tragique, de mettre au jour sa structure constante. Les parties suivantes s’intéressent à la manière dont Barbey, Bloy et Bernanos construisent le récit pour obtenir la conversion du lecteur : la seconde partie s’intéresse aux procédures d’authentification de la fiction ; la troisième partie a pour objet la mise en place du dispositif figural permettant aux écrivains de relever le défi de l’indicible divin. La quatrième et dernière partie étudie les moyens mis en œuvre pour agir sur le lecteur, et modifier effectivement son attitude en le poussant à la pénitence
This thesis aims to study how, in a post-revolutionary context of dechristianization, some Catholic writers set free from the Church authority and enable literature itself (as a work of fiction and imagination) to renew the apologetic discourse. Barbey d’Aurevilly, Bloy and Bernanos continue the founding shift in perspective that Chateaubriand started with the Génie du christianisme. These three writers use an ancient rhetoric narrative form called the exemplum. The first part of this work focuses on the evolutions of this form, and more specifically on the metamorphosis caused by its Christianization; but it also highlights its constant structure, from its theorization by Aristotle, until its latest use by the authors of “histoires tragiques”. The next three parts of the thesis deal with the way Barbey, Bloy and Bernanos conceive their narrative in order to obtain the religious conversion of their reader. The second part shows how the writers authenticate fiction; the third part focuses on the way they react to the difficulty of naming the divine: the authors resort to the figuration of this inexpressible object. Finally, the fourth part studies the means these narratives use to produce an effect on their readers, and make them actually change their moral behavior

Barbe-bleue parcourt depuis les confins du moyen-âge un espace immense que ne parviennent à borner ni la géographie ni la chronologie. Du funeste roi breton qu'il fut à l'origine au mari secrètement blessé des opéras du XXème siècle, il endosse différents costumes dont le plus solide est sans doute celui que lui confectionna Perrault. Nous nous proposons, en une sorte de monographie, de visiter la galerie des portraits anciens et modernes de cet homme "si laid et si terrible", et de sa femme "parfaitement belle". Notre plan comprend trois parties : I légende de Barbe-bleue lorsqu'il n'est encore question ni de barbe, ni de couleur bleue (Ballade d'Halewijn ; légende de sainte-Tryphime ; Gilles de Rais ) ; II la véritable Barbe-bleue étude du conte de Perrault, suivie de celle des versions de Delarue, Calvino, Grimm, Pourrat ; III vers le mythe littéraire : Barbe-bleue sur scène inventaire commenté des adaptations théâtrales, lyriques et romancées, complété d'une filmographie ; étude, en particulier, des œuvres de Grétry, Offenbach, Dukas, Bartók : le second volume, une anthologie, comprend notamment le texte des pièces de ces deux derniers compositeurs
Bluebeard runs to us from the medieval times, in a space which neither geography nor chronology cannot mark: but if he wears very different costumes, the most becoming is the Charles Perrault’s one. We invite you to follow us in the gallery of his ancient and modern portraits. I Barbe-bleue's legend, when the blue color or the beard are not really the point (ballad of sir Halewijn ; saint-tryphime's legend ; Gilles de Rais); II the true bluebeard : an extensive study of the Perrault’s tale, followed by the Delarue's, Calvino's, Grimms and Pourrat's ones ; III the literary myth : bluebeard on stage ; a comprehensive inventory of the stage works, including a study of Gretry's, Offenbach's, Dukas's and Bartok's lyrical works

The research seeks to create an innovative hyper femme vision of enchantment within contemporary installation art by exploiting the magical and vicarious pleasure of perfume bottles. The study proposes that hedonistic and ‘conspicuous’ feminine content acts to incite prevailing socio-cultural ideas concerning appropriate expressions of sexuality. Through the creation of an explicitly feminine mode of enchantment the aim is to progress pluralistic perceptions of gender and tolerance of diversiform modes of sexualised expression. Parameters for the research were established through review of the practice of Jeff Koons, Sylvie Fleury, Mariko Mori and Pierre et Gilles. Surveyed as a collective, the work of these artists represents celebration of intimate concepts of desire predicated upon sexuality and identity. Consequently, they express a contemporary polemical aesthetic model for enchantment that builds upon a legacy of sybaritic practitioners within the arts. This is demonstrated through examination of the modes of rococo, pre-raphaelite, symbolist, aesthete and decadents, art nouveau and psychedelia, which explicate exuberant content and style. The research hypothesises is that the history of enchantment within art articulates sustained, occasionally cohesive and non-didactic counter- cultural activity. The research contends that the emergence of secular enchantments within contemporary art segues with current salient philosophical discourse, which likewise seeks to re-enchant a disenchanted world. An analysis of the genus of fantasy within fiction resulted in the contention of fantasy as desire incarnate, and therefore an apposite visceral mechanism for enchantment within art. The researched is conveyed in the installation La Galaxie de Joy, comprising a suite of feminised sculptures inset within a celestial milieu. Derived from perfume bottle designs and sampled from creative styles and relevant practitioners researched during the project, an aesthetic methodology called superstyle was developed. This articulates a commitment to camp tenets of excess, glamour, exaggeration and spectacle and manifests formally in sinuous curves, dramatic posturing, playful ornamentation and glittering or strikingly coloured surfaces. A heavenly milieu for enchantment was created incorporating decor elements such as a cloud-floor, stars, swathes of fabric, deep blue walls that melt into the floor, a luminous bubble-web centrepiece, antechamber, specialised theatrical lighting and pink blush colouring. The research project outcome is the exhibition installation that explicates an innovative and experiential paradigm for feminised enchantment within contemporary art. This has been achieved through employing the synaesthetic and affective power of perfume bottles in the practice to explore concepts of excess, intimacy, pleasure and desire in relation to gender and aesthetics. This research project contributes to the existing field of knowledge in three ways. First, through identification, analysis and documentation of a specific mode of enchantment that has emerged within contemporary art. I describe this phenomenon as a fiction of intimacy. Second, the project proposes an innovative thesis with reference to fantasy in the history of art. The tracing of a historical context revealed a continuum of artists whose practices flourished in opposition to prevailing academic and western cultural values and established that enchantment within art articulates a provocative and sustained counter culture. Third, and most significantly, this research contributes new knowledge through development of an innovative paradigm for enchantment in contemporary art, aimed at increasing diversity of sexual expression through installation practice.

Analyzing novels by Sheri Reynolds, Lee Smith, Barbara Kingsolver, Alice Walker, Gloria Naylor, and Sue Monk Kidd, I argue that these authors challenge religious structures by dramatizing the struggle between love and resentment that brings many women to the point of crisis but also inspires imaginative and generative processes of appropriation and revision, emphasizing not destination but process. Employing first-person narration in coming-of-age stories, Smith, Reynolds, and Kingsolver highlight the various narratives that govern the experiences of children born into religious cultures, including narratives of sexual development, gender identity, and religious conversion, to portray the difficulty of articulating female experience within the limited lexicon of Christian fundamentalism. As they mature into adulthood, the girl characters in these novels break from tradition to develop new consciousness by altering and adapting religious language, understood as open and malleable rather than authoritative and fixed. Smith, Kidd, and Naylor incorporate the Virgin Mary and divine maternal figures from non-Christian traditions to restore the mother-daughter relationship that is eclipsed by the Father and Son in Christian tradition. Identifying the female body as a site of spiritual knowledge, these authors present a metaphorical return to the womb that empowers their characters to embrace divine maternal love that transgresses the masculine symbolic order, displacing (but not necessarily destroying) the authority of God the Father and His human representatives. Reynolds and Walker portray physical pain, central to the Christian image of crucifixion, as destroying the ability of women to speak, denying them subjectivity. Through transgressive sexual relationships infused with religious significance, these authors disrupt the Christian moral paradigm by presenting bodily pleasure as an alternative to the Christian valorization of sacrifice. The replacement of pain with pleasure inspires imaginative work that makes private spirituality shareable through artistic creation. The novels I study present themes that also concern Christian and non-Christian feminist theologians: the development of feminine images of the divine, emphasis on immanence over transcendence, the apprehension of the divine in nature, and the necessity of challenging the reification of religious images and dualisms that undermine female subjectivity. I show the reciprocal relationship between fiction and theology, as theologians treat women's literature as sacred texts and fiction writers give life to abstract religious concepts through narrative.

Tato diplomová práce se zaměřuje na současnou českou literaturu pro ženy psanou ženskými autorkami, a to zejména z hlediska čtenářů jejího dominantního žánru, červené knihovny. Cílem je popsat, jak dané autorky pracují s tradičními schématy žánru, nakolik realizují tradiční narativní schémata a jak tato schémata vnímají čtenářky preferující tento žánr. , Práce je rozdělena na teoretickou a výzkumnou část. V teoretické části jsme popsali stručný vývoj žánru jako součásti populární literatury a jeho charakteristické rysy. Základem výzkumné části je sociologické čtenářské šetření rozdělené na kvantitativní a kvalitativní. V kvantitativní části jsme provedli širší čtenářský průzkum formou dotazníků. Kvalitativní část je založena na analýze děl vybraných autorek, kterou jsme vedli pomocí volného hloubkového rozhovoru s úzkým okruhem respondentek. Tímto způsobem jsme analyzovali knihy Otcomilky od Simony Monyové, u knihy Bestiář od Barbary Nesvadbové a Tajné knihy Ireny Obermannové. Klíčová slova: současná česká literatura, červená knihovna, próza, čtenářský výzkum, Simona Monyová, Barbara Nesvadbová, Irena Obermannová Abstract My Diploma thesis is devoted to contemporary Czech literature for women. This type of literature write czech womens authors. We analyze this literary genre (women's fiction) in...