Academic literature on the topic '1901-1974 Criticism and interpretation'

Pavle Stefanovic (1901-1985) is one of the most prominent Serbian music critics and essayists. He created extensive musicographic work, largely scattered in periodicals. A philosopher by education, he had an excellent knowledge of music and its history. His style was marked by eloquence, associativity and plasticity of expression. Between 1938 and 1940 he published eighteen music reviews in The Music Herald, the longest-running Belgrade music magazine in the interwar period (1928-1941, with interruption from 1934 to 1938). Stefanovic wrote about concerts, opera and ballet performances in Belgrade, performances by local and eminent foreign artists. His reviews include Magda Tagliaferro, Nathan Milstein, Jacques Thibaud, Enrico Mainardi, Bronis?aw Huberman, Alexander Uninsky, Alexaner Borovsky, Ignaz Friedman, Nikita Magaloff and many other eminent musicians. Th is study is devoted to the analysis of the Stefanovic?s procedure. Pavle Stefanovic was an anti-fascist and left ist. He believed that the task of a music critic was not merely to analyze and evaluate musical works and musical interpretations. He argued that the critic should engage in important social issues that concerned music and music life. That is why he wrote articles on the occasion of German artists visiting Belgrade, about the persecution of musicians of Jewish descent and the cultural situation in the Third Reich. On the other hand, Stefanovic was an aesthetic hedonist who expressed a great sense of the beauty of musical works. Th at duality - a socially engaged intellectual and a subtle ?enjoyer? of the art - remained undisturbed. In these articles he did not go into a deterministic interpretation of the structure of musical composition and the history of music. And he did not accept the larpurlartistic views.

AbstractThis paper aims to investigate the dialogue between some postmodern thinkers (mostly Lyotard, Rorty and Vattimo) and Habermas’ criticism in light of a different conception of dialogue itself. Therefore, we shall first give an account of how Habermas establishes his neomodern discourse (1985) in a very close dialogue with the key concepts of postmodernism: the subject and its social role, language and the concept of philosophical truth and the postmodernist view of history (Lyotard, 1979, Vattimo, 1974, 1985, 2009; Rorty, 1989; Bauman, 1993). Secondly, dialogue will be addressed as a structural difference between Habermas’ universal normative ethic of discourse (together with Karl-Otto Apel, 1983) and the postmodern local and linguistic pluralism, emancipated from any metaphysical ratio. In the end, it will be argued that philosophy ought to be dialogical in line with Habermas’ view, within the foundation and normativity of dialogue. Postmodernist dialogue in philosophy and in society displays instead many shortcomings if understood as a pluralist linguistic game of interpretation.

Serbian music criticism became a subject of professional music critics at the beginning of the twentieth century, after being developed by music amateurs throughout the whole previous century. The Serbian Literary Magazine (1901- 1914, 1920-1941), the forum of the Serbian modernist writers in the early 1900s, had a crucial role in shaping the Serbian music criticism and essayistics of the modern era. The Serbian elite musicians wrote for the SLM and therefore it reflects the most important issues of the early twentieth century Serbian music. The SLM undertook the mission of educating its readers. The music culture of the Serbian public was only recently developed. The public needed an introduction into the most important features of the European music, as well as developing its own taste in music. This paper deals with two aspects of the music criticism in the SLM, in view of its educational role: the problem of virtuosity and the method used by music critics in this magazine. The aesthetic canon of the SLM was marked by decisively negative attitude towards the virtuosity. Mainly concerned by educating the Serbian music public in the spirit of the highest music achievements in Europe, the music writers of the SLM criticized both domestic and foreign performers who favoured virtuosity over the 'essence' of music. Therefore, Niccol? Paganini, Franz Liszt, and even Peter Tchaikowsky with his Violin concerto became the subject of the magazine's criticism. However their attitude towards the interpreters with both musicality and virtuoso technique was always positive. That was evident in the writings on Jan Kubel?k. This educational mission also had its effect on the structure of critique writings in the SLM. In their wish to inform the Serbian public on the European music (which they did very professionally), the critics gave much more information on biographies, bibliographies and style of the European composers, than they valued the interpretation itself. That was by far the weakest aspect of music criticism in the SLM. Although the music criticism in the SLM was professional and analytic one, it often used the literary style and sometimes even profane expressions in describing the artistic value and performance, more than it was necessary for the genre of music criticism. The music critics of the SLM set high aesthetic standards before the Serbian music public, and therefore the virtuosity was rejected by them. At the same time, these highly professional critics did not possess a certain level of introspection that would allow them to abstain from using sometimes empty and unconvincing phrases instead of exact formulations suitable for the professional music criticism. In that respect, music critics in the SLM did not match the standards they themselves set before both the performers and the public in Serbia.

During 1935, 1936. and 1938, in Belgrade was published a monthly magazine The Southslavic Choral Union Herald [Vesnik Juznoslovenskog pevackog saveza]. Three years represent 16 issues or 119 articles, or 216 pages. The first editor was Milenko Zivkovic (1901-1964), a Serbian composer of the younger generation, the chief secretary of the Southslavic Choral Union. The magazine was conceived as a newsletter. Choral societies, members of the South Slavic Choral Association, were given the opportunity to stay informed about the work of the Union and the activities of choral societies throughout the Kingdom of Yugoslavia. Therefore, Herald published numerous news, informative articles, speeches and obituaries. However, the Herald got physiognomy of a music magazine thanks to essays on the significant figures of Serbian music (Davorin Jenko, Stevan Mokranjac), texts about the problems of choral technique and interpretation, critical reviews of sheet music, and musical criticism. These texts were written by the leading Serbian musicians of the time: Milenko Zivkovic, Branko Dragutinovic, Petar Krstic, Mihailo Vukdragovic, Miloje Milojevic and Richard Schwartz. The Herald represented the ideology of integral Yugoslavism. The assassination of Yugoslav king Alexander Karadjordjevic during his visit to Marseilles in 1934 strongly affected the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, which has long been in the political crisis. However, the Herald and the Southslavic Choral Union have remained faithful to the ideology of Yugoslavism and to King Alexander as its symbol.

Abstract Background: A famous literary critic and writer, representative of the “Moloda Muza” group, B. Lepky was published in numerous Ukrainian and foreign journals in the early twentieth century. Today, his cooperation with Polish and German editions has been partially explored, but the Czech direction remains almost unclear. There are only individual references to B. Lepky's cultural publications in the “Slovanský přehled” journal in the works of V. Doroshenko, V. Lev, B. Rubchak. Purpose: The purpose of the study is to analyze the interpretative bases of B. Lepky's publications in “Slovanský přehled”, namely, five annual reviews of Ukrainian literature (1901, 1902, 1903, 1905, 1906) and three cultural pieces of knowledge: about the composer M. Lysenko, about the translation of short stories by M. Kotsiubynsky into Polish, and the scientific works of M. Hrushevsky, B. Barvinsky and V. Shchurat. Results: B. Lepky followed I. Franko in editing “Slovanský přehled” journal. I. Franko prepared the ground for the Czechs to familiarize them with Ukrainian literature. In a series of annual reviews, B. Lepky considered Ukrainian literature in the pan-European context, translating the realities of national culture into the language of universal cultural concepts. Not contradicting realism and modernism, the critic appraised the high artistic value of the works by Lesya Ukrainka, V. Stefanyk, M. Kotsyubynsky, O. Kobylyanska, which were marked by modern stylistic trends. Trying to convey the original content to the foreign reader, B. Lepky approached his critical speech to the poetic one, painting it with impressionistic strokes and symbolic imagery. The author concluded that the importance of B. Lepky’s Czech publications was important for understanding the ways in which Ukrainian writing was modernized and contextualized in Slavic and pan-European culture in the early twentieth century. Key words: Modernism period, literary process, critical writing, literary review, review, contextualization, impressionism, symbolism.

When I first proposed founding a journal in 1973, while teaching at the Centre of West African Studies of the University of Birmingham, I had four broad, if also vague, ends in mind: archival reports, text criticism, historiography, and comparative studies.1 I first floated the idea with Philip Curtin, and certainly had no reason to be particularly sanguine that anything concrete would eventuate. Timing must have been everything, because James Duffy, the Executive Director of the African Studies Association, soon wrote me saying that Phil had mentioned the idea to him and, since the Association was then in a mood to foster publications, well, maybe something could come of the notion.Matters progressed, fitfully and no doubt very slowly for the anguished editor-in-waiting. In a letter dated 26 February 1974, Jim Duffy wrote that “[w]e would expect the first editor to be responsible for the first three years of the annual.” In my reply of 7 March I wrote that “my own feeling is that I would like to remain editor more or less ad infinitum—it is a job I would like both in its mechanics and from my commitment to the utility of such a journal.”In a further letter dated 17 May 1974 I promised to “see that every mistake is corrected and every ambiguity resolved for the typist's sake,” going so far as to commit myself that I would be “disappointed if there were so much as a single cryptic footnote citation,” at least in volume 1¡ For the first several years / was that typist, retyping every contribution to ensure a clean copy for the printers, but gave this unwelcome chore up in favor of dealing with local typists to produce camera-ready copy. Eventually word-processing and then e-mail found me, and all was well. Of course I needed to rely on those more skilled in page formatting than I was and have been lucky indeed to have had Jeff Kaufmann doing this reliably and intelligently for the past many years.Having a publisher meant coming up with a product, and I was fortunate that enough contributors could be persuaded to audition for the new journal that the maiden issue appeared not much more than a year later, after some toing and froing regarding length, name, mailing lists, and a potpourri of minor issues. On 27 September 1974 I sent off the typescript for volume 1, but kept adding dribs and drabs for another month. No doubt this contributed to HA 191A appearing only in April of 1975, far outside our target date of late October 1974 in time for the Annual Meeting in Chicago that year. At 182 pages this proved to be considerably longer than the 128-page sized number that had originally somehow surfaced as a norm.But enough prehistory. While editors and publishers are necessary, they are no more than the curators of the body of work created over time by a journal's contributors, and there, I think, History in Africa has been fortunate. Like a plane taking off, the size of HA continued gradually but inexorably to rise, from 182 pages to over 500 pages in many later issues. It is worth noting that among the contributors to the first few issues were Robin Law and Jan Vansina, whose work is also represented in this number, 35 years on, and others have contributed over spans of twenty years or more. Along the way, about 800 articles have appeared by authors residing in some 30 countries. How many of these would have otherwise appeared, in more traditional venues is anyone's guess—mine is that only a small minority would have found their way, or even have been written.While little has fallen short of my modest initial hopes, I must admit to disappointment that controversial points of view—or even those less controversial, but not therefore necessarily right—have only seldom been challenged. I had envisaged—apparently under the influence of some latter-day ambrosia—numerous and contentious conversations about evidence and interpretation that would in sum advance our knowledge—or if necessary our ignorance—about various issues, for all history, perhaps especially African history, teems with uncertainties. This simply failed to happen very often, or at least often enough—a pity. On the other hand, the onset of the internet has allowed controversy to flourish in the atmosphere of an all but immediate comment-and-response cycle.Perhaps even more disappointing has been the paucity of comparative approaches. In my foreword noted above, I wrote that “History in Africa hopes in time to become very broadly comparative and to encourage useful colloquy among the various discrete units of the discipline [of history].” This goal must be written off as largely unachieved, although a few papers dealing with non-African topics have appeared. In aid of this, from 1974 through 1984 History in Africa included a “comparative bibliography” that eventually ran to nearly fifty pages annually, but I gave this up when I could no longer convince myself that it was serving any purpose—that body of water was simply not being drunk.As of this writing, it is uncertain what will happen to History in Africa, so I will close by saying that it is (naturally) my hope that it can carry as it has for so long, and that its contributor base will become increasingly larger, more diversified, and more engaged. I am hopeful in this because, it seems to me, African historiography has come farther faster than is true for most new fields of history. The natural optimism of the beginning became tempered sooner than might have been expected, and intramural rumination has not been wanting (despite my comment above), while new sources have been discovered and put to use with encouraging frequency. It is true that to some degree the study of Africa's past has followed the various siren songs of new departures that have characterized not only history but most other disciplines as well, but throughout—and in contrast to the limited half life of most of these new ‘paradigms'—a core cadre of truth-seekers has continued to practice, opening up new vistas by dint of mining for new evidence rather than being content to adopt new theories.[DH]

This paper focuses on studying the origin and evolution of the programmed learning in Spain. For this, an interpretation about the influence exerted by the international governmental organization for its implantation is emphasizes. First, the paper explains its beginnings in relation to the educational framework opened by UNESCO. The article continues with the explanation of the first criticisms that were established on this curricular policy. Finally, an attempt is made to give an explanation about its rapid decline. It concludes by indicating the importance of international and local social factors in understanding the historical construction of the curriculum in the Development Spain.

It is considered that the Puritans that populated New England in the 17th century left a distinctive mark on the American culture. The article explores some projections of Puritan legacy in two American novels of different periods – Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter (1850) and Stephen King’s Carrie (1974). After establishing a connection between the Puritan writings and gothic literature, the two novels are analyzed in terms of some Puritan projections, among which are the problem of guilt and the acceptance of an individual in the society. Some references regarding the idea of the witch and the interpretations it bears, especially in terms of the female identity, are also identified. Despite the different approach of the authors in terms of building their characters, those references are mostly used in a negative way, as an instrument of criticism and exposing inconvenient truths.

Vološinov ([1929]1973) is one of the most frequently cited works in studies on reported speech, but its interpretation varies considerably between authors. Within the linguistic anthropological tradition, its central message is often conflated with Erving Goffman’s ‘speaker roles’, and in a recent publication, Goddard and Wierzbicka (2018) marry ideas they attribute to Vološinov (1973) and Mikhail M. Bakhtin to those by the formal semanticist Donald Davidson. Responding to Goddard and Wierzbicka (2018) (and a shorter version of a similar argument in Goddard and Wierzbicka (2019), this paper seeks to explore the philosophical foundations of reported speech research, particularly in relation to Vološinov/Bakhtin. It suggests that reported speech research is motivated by two fundamentally distinct goals, one here labelled ‘Fregean’ and the other ‘Bakhtinian’. Questions and methods used in both of these research traditions lead to two radically different understandings of reported speech. This affects the applicability of the definition of direct/indirect speech Goddard and Wierzbicka (2018) propose. It also motivates an alternative approach to reported speech advocated by the current author and others that is criticised by Goddard and Wierzbicka (2018). The article further seeks to rehabilitate the analysis of Wierzbicka (1974), which Goddard and Wierzbicka (2018) partially reject. Whereas Wierzbicka (1974) treats direct and indirect speech as constructions of English, Goddard and Wierzbicka (2018) elevate the opposition to a universal, which belies the cultural sensitivity to semantic variation the authors display in other work. The paper concludes with a brief note about the semantic status of ‘say’ in Australian languages and states that the relevance of Vološinov ([1929]1973) is undiminished, also in the light of recent developments in language description. It remains a highly original study whose implications are yet to fully impact research on reported speech.

Amyas Connell (1901-80) was a New Zealand architect and a leading figure in British modernism. His first commission, High and Over (1929-31) for the archaeologist and classical scholar Bernard Ashmole was described as the first fully worked out modernist house built in England. The project drew attention from a wide range of architectural critics including Howard Robertson and the Country Life writer Christopher Hussey. A short film entitled The House of a Dream made by British Pathé ensured the house was seen by the large cinema audience in 1931. High and Over became more contentious over time when Connell's intention to combine classical and modern design tendencies was criticised by more doctrinaire modernists. High and Over occupies a place where the traditions of classicism and the emergent features of modernism intersect. Connell's path, if taken, may have produced a distinctively British form of classical modernism. [NEW PARAGRAPH] This paper seeks to establish the context for High and Over from a New Zealand perspective and through comparison with other projects by colonial architects in Britain. Connell's critical profile has been shaped by the notion that British modernism was in the hands of "Wild Colonial Boys," a soubriquet used to frame Connell's work in the 1930s by the British writer Dennis Sharp. In this interpretation, the depth of Connell's experience prior to High and Over is overlooked. Connell's partnership with the Australian-born Stewart Lloyd Thomson (1902-90) has not been covered in any previous study of the Connell, Ward and Lucas practice. The High and Over project included a number of related structures set in a landscape plan not usually included in analysis of the complex whole. The relationship between the garden plan and the designs of the Armenian architect Gabriel Guévrékian seen at the Paris Exposition and the Villa Noailles at Hyéres (1927) has also not been traversed.

This dissertation seeks to explore the nature of the self/other, subject/object dialectic that can be found in Jacques Lacan's theory of the Minor Stage and his notion of Imaginary mastery, and how this relationship can be re-read in terms of a beholder/image relationship. What I seek to demonstrate in exploring the relationship between the beholder and the image is the staging of two opposing emotions, aggression and desire and the consequential tussle for mastery that arises from the self/other, and hence the beholder/image, dichotomy. I seek to explore the reasons why such a beholder/image relationship becomes ambivalent, due to veiled, obscured and fragmented images.
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By using rigorous conventional structure in her early work Anne Sexton was able to successfully contain some of her severe psychological instabilities stemming from childhood in poetic form. Sexton's artistic direction underwent a sharp change midway into her poetic career after she wrote the volume Transformations, a collection of story-poems based on narratives from the Grimm fairy tales. In this collection, Sexton took on the external persona of a witch, and with her new voice, she was boldly able to re-tell her version of the Grimm tales. The new persona enabled Sexton to shed her previous voice of passivity, and instead criticize humanity by using satire and humor. Unfortunately, this movement in her work was an exercise in self-exploitation as the larger, cultural arena of Grimm put off any chance of working out her private problems. After Transformations Sexton had come to the realization of her self-exploitation and decided to even further separate herself from humanity by continuing to work with even more generalized, cultural forms--a movement that ultimately led her to mythologize her own death.

This thesis offers a re-evaluation of the fiction of George MacDonald (1824-1905), both fantasy and non-fantasy. The general trend in MacDonald studies is to focus primarily on his works of fantasy, either ignoring the rest (which includes non-fantasy fiction, sermons, poetry, and criticism) or using them to illuminate the fantasies. The overall critical consensus is that these works, particularly MacDonald’s non-fantasy fiction, possess little inherent value. Though many critics acknowledge similarities between MacDonald’s fantasy fiction and his non-fantasy fiction, MacDonald has been the victim of a critical double standard that treats fantasy and realism as completely irreconcilable, and allows certain features to be acceptable, even desirable, in one form that are completely unacceptable in the other. The thesis begins by looking at MacDonald’s writings about the imagination and about literature, from which a clear theory of literature emerges, one with strong opinions about the function and purpose of literature, as well as about what makes good literature. By re-examining MacDonald’s fiction, its plots, characterization and narration, in the light of his own theories, the reasons underlying the artistic choices made throughout his fiction take on a more deliberate and calculated appearance. Furthermore, by placing MacDonald in his proper context, and looking at the diversity of generic options available to the Victorian writer, the critical double standard underlying much MacDonald scholarship, based on a strict fantasy/realism separation, crumbles. What emerges from this analysis is a different MacDonald—a careful craftsman who consciously and skillfully uses the tools of his trade to produce a unique and specific reading experience.

Thesis (MPhil)--University of Stellenbosch, 2003.
ENGLISH ABSTRACT: In this thesis, 'shadow' is investigated as an object of thought and (analogically connected to this) of perception. This dialectical process is structured through means of a series of experiments and Plato's allegory of the cave, which is interpreted as a process directed towards selfconciousness. This process is further explained through thinkers such as, Blumenberg, Heidegger, Levinas en Voegelin. The purpose of this study is to break with the self-evident way in which 'shadow' is 'normally' treated and to bring back about a sense of astonishment for it.
AFRIKAANSE OPSOMMING: In hierdie tesis word die 'skaduwee' as waarnemingsobjek en (analogies verwant daaraan) as denkobjek ondersoek. Hierdie dialektiese proses word gestruktureerd met behulp van 'n aantal eksperimente en Plato se grotgelykenis, wat geinterpreteer word as programmaties van die proses van selfbewuswording. Hierdie proses word verder toegelig aan die hand van denkers soos Blumenberg, Heidegger, Levinas en Voegelin. Die doel van die ondersoek is om die vanselfsprekendheid waarmee daar met die fenomeen van die skaduwee omgegaan word te deurbreek en weer verwondering daarvoor op te roep.
NEDERLANDSTALIGE SAMENVATTING: In deze thesis wordt de 'schaduw' als waarnemingsobject en (analogisch verwant daaraan) als denkobject onderzocht. Dit dialectische proces wordt gestructureerd met behulp van een aantal experimenten en Plato's grotvergelijking, die geïnterpreteerd worden als een proces gericht op zeltbewustwording. Dit proces wordt verder toegelicht aan de hand van denkers zoals, Blumenberg, Heidegger, Levinas en Voegelin. Het doel van het onderzoek is om de vanzelfsprekendheid waarmee met het fenomeen van de 'schaduw' omgegaan wordt, te doorbreken en er opnieuw verwondering voor op te roepen.

The ideas of Hideo Saito regarding conducting and conducting pedagogy are a valuable addition to the field, an addition that English-speaking people are likely to be unfamiliar with. Besides devising a unique collection of terms for talking about conducting, and assembling a set of exercises designed to facilitate the practice of a variety of gestures, Saito develops and operates from a framework which allows for the description and evaluation of almost any conceivable rhythmic gesture. While he pays attention to time, space, direction, size, and expectations, he often explores the ways velocity and changes in velocity can be employed to elicit desired sounds from players and singers. He is certainly not the first teacher to focus on the role of velocity in conducting gestures. However, the level of sophistication and thoroughness of his examination of velocity, and changes in velocity, is unique. His diagrams are noteworthy as well.Saito's conducting method is very popular in Japan. Seiji Ozawa, the Music Director/Conductor of the Boston Symphony Orchestra for more than 25 years, is just one of Saito's students who have had very successful conducting careers.This dissertation, in combination with accompanying videotaped examples of Morihiro Okabe teaching in the authentic Saito tradition, will provide the reader with an introduction to and an evaluation of the Saito conducting method. The reader will learn how to interpret Saito's diagrams of conducting motions, discover who the key people are, and view a Saito teacher instructing students. The reader will be introduced to the core teachings of Professor Saito, see what Saito's primary musical exercises are, and see how these exercises are used to promote musical and technical competence in conducting. This dissertation seeks to give the reader a foundation for further investigation of Saito's ideas and practices.This dissertation proposes, and employs English names for many gestures Saito labeled in Japanese. The Japanese terms are very descriptive of the motions. Providing equally descriptive English terms should be helpful to readers who are not fluent in Japanese.
School of Music

In the last two decades, in media and political discourses, Italianness has been increasingly represented as a homogeneous and compact entity, which is intruded on and contaminated by immigrants. In this study, the binary opposition between Italians and migrants is investigated from the perspective of writers who inhabit a liminal space, between at least two cultures, with the main intent to problematize the binary itself and to show its nature of fabrication. On the basis of Said's contrapuntal method, the novels by Ghermandi, Scego, Ali Farah and Lakhous are thought to establish a counterpoint with dominant discourses about Italianness. With the firm belief that discourses about postcolonial Italy must address its colonial past, the works analysed are considered as in dialogue with both colonial and postcolonial discourses. A dialogical relation is established, within the study, between Ghermandi's Regina di fiori e di perle and Flaiano's Tempo di uccidere. Written from the perspectives of the colonized and the colonizers respectively, both novels unveil colonial crimes and faults in Ethiopia, thus being counter-narratives about official representations of Italian colonialism. In Scego's Rhoda and Oltre Babilonia and Ali Farah's Madre piccolo, like threads, the individual stories of Somali exiles intertwine to create a fabric, whose pattern reveals the importance of the legacy of colonialism within contemporary Italy. Mainly situated between Italian and Somali cultures, the protagonists experience traumas, suffering and loss but finally attain a contrapuntal awareness between the two cultural poles. They become conscious of how enriching their in-between position is; they affirm the value of their hybrid identity. With a further zoom into postcolonial Italy, Lakhous' Scontro di civiltà per un ascensore a piazza Vittorio and Divorzio all'islamica a viale Marconi analyse the binary ‘us-Italians' versus ‘thosemigrants' in two microcosms in Rome. General polarizations such as Islam and the West emerge as factors which are exploited in order to exacerbate tensions and divisions. In addition, Italianness appears to be an internally fragmented entity, which is imagined as compact and homogeneous, as a reaction to the influx of immigrants. Against any logic of binarism, the novels by Ghermandi, Scego, Ali Farah and Lakhous reveal the constant effort to create a passage between two poles and to uphold a dialogical relation between them; crossings over and hybridity are continuously affirmed. With their highly important affirmation of multiplicity, the works challenge any essentializing notion of identity and any narrow representation of Italianness, within multiethnic contemporary Italy.

This thesis argues that desire is a major theme in Samuel Beckett's dramatic works. Central to our analysis is Jacques Lacan's concept of the Desire for the Other, as the outcome of the human subject's division. We will investigate how desire is expressed at the level of Beckett's characters' utterance. The characters' attempts at and inability to achieve a reconciliation with their speech correlate with the impossibility of reunifying Lacan's split subject. The first part of our discussion focuses upon desire-as-paradox--the lack of will to desire and the continuation of desire--in Not I, Footfalls and Krapp's Last Tape, whereas Rockaby and That Time are indicative of the regression of desire leading toward the characters' death. The second part emphasizes the dramatic presentation of these plays, except for Footfalls. It will become clear that desire affects the performance and the audience, thus preventing them from attaining a unified perception of self and other.

In chapter Two, I examine the thematization of authorial performance in La Divina Mimesis (Divine Mimesis, 1974). Composed over the course of several years, Divine Mimesis is Pasolini’s attempt to rewrite Dante’s Comedy and is comprised of drafts, working notes, tentative paratexts, and photographs. In it, Dante emerges as one of the most persistent and complex Pasolinian authorial personae, a model not only for his early realism, but also for his use of autobiography. Previous criticism of Divine Mimesis considered it a literary failure, or, at best, a metaphor for the shattering of authorial subjectivity. However, I argue that it is a pivotal work within Pasolini’s oeuvre, skillfully reinforcing the idea of an author in control of his work and even its reception. Divine Mimesis introduces us to an interpretative system in which authorship and the performance of an author failing in producing a cohesive text become central and explicit, producing a conception of identity as fluid, unfinished, or in the making.