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Lavenda, Daniel. "Disenchanted engagement : the philosophy and political praxis of Massimo Cacciari." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2015. https://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:b322a1d4-2ec9-4d24-a847-4388832f5ba9.
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Several commentators have argued that the focus within political theory in recent decades on abstraction rather than 'reality' has left it with has nothing to say to political actors. On these grounds, some have even expressed concern regarding the discipline's future. As a reply to these concerns, I introduce in this thesis the scholarship and political career of the Italian philosopher Massimo Cacciari. Cacciari shares many goals with Anglophone political theorists, but neither his scholarship nor his practice have engaged in the kind of intellectual abstraction which they now find so troubling. Drawing from Cacciari's philosophy, political career, and interventions as a public intellectual, I show how his understanding of real-world conflicts and contradictions begins with a commitment to what I call his 'geophilosophy of the archipelago', which regards the foundations of human knowledge to be irreducibly plural. A commitment to irreducibly plural foundations means that philosophers and political actors must discard what Cacciari views as 'enchantment' with the possibility of ultimate or absolute resolution of all political discord. In return, however, he argues that hopeful political engagement is still possible, because political actors remain able to cope in material and semiotic terms with the complex realities they face. I suggest that serious consideration of Cacciari's example of recognising irreducible plurality, coupled with a disenchanted engagement with both the material and the semiotic dimensions of political life, offers a compelling alternative orientation to the world that may suggest new ways forward in political theory.
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Bedon, Elettra. "La poesia in lingua veneta dalla fine della Prima Guerra Mondiale a oggi." Thesis, McGill University, 1994. http://digitool.Library.McGill.CA:80/R/?func=dbin-jump-full&object_id=26252.
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Writers and poets who wrote in the "language of Venice" are far more numerous than is commonly reported in the history of Italian literature. It is the purpose of this dissertation to present and highlight their works.Since here we mainly deal with writers and poets of the second half of the twentieth century, for which there is no roll call, we deemed it appropriate to research and introduce them, supplying for each of them detailed biobibliographical data.
In the course of our work we tried to sketch a subdivision of the matter which keeps in mind what has been previously done, but which is also new if one takes into account the whole scope and breadth of this literature.
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MARKATOS, Kimon. "Historicizing postmodernism through the prism of cultural transfers : the case of Greece (1974-2010)." Doctoral thesis, European University Institute, 2019. http://hdl.handle.net/1814/60855.
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Defence date: 25 January 2019Examining Board: Prof. Ann Thomson, European University institute; Prof. Pavel Kolár, European University institute; Prof. Dimitris Tziovas, University of Birmingham; Prof. Matthias Middel, Universität Leipzig
Historicizing Postmodernism through the prism of cultural transfers: The case of Greece (1974-2010), examines the various transformations of the concept of postmodernism in the Greek intellectual framework, between 1970 and 2010, and situates them in a wider transnational context. It is focused mainly on the academic fields of history, literary criticism/Philology, and social theory and it is deployed around three interrelated questions; two preliminary questions concerning the postmodern debates in the Greek context, and the central research question, which seeks to bring the debates into a transnational context: Firstly, a) what were the Greek perceptions of postmodernism? More particularly, what did the concept of postmodernism mean for the intellectuals who entered the debates around its definition and features, depending on their field of expertise, and on the particular moments they attempted to define it in the period under examination? Secondly, b) how has the debate on postmodernism affected the aforementioned subject areas, in such a way that it radically changed the terms of discussion on their regulatory epistemological foundations; and how have the changes in the social, economic and political context of the past 40 years shaped and reshaped the various different arguments regarding postmodernism in the level of ideas. Finally, c) How did the debate around postmodernism in the Greek intellectual circles relate with intellectuals of other national frameworks?
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Baird, Catherine 1966. "The "third way" : Russia's religious philosophers in the West, 1917-1996." Thesis, McGill University, 1997. http://digitool.Library.McGill.CA:80/R/?func=dbin-jump-full&object_id=34695.
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In 1922, the Bolshevik government expelled some 160 prominent intellectuals from Russia. Numbered among these were many of the leaders of the Religious Renaissance which had flourished since the turn of the century. They advocated a "third way": neither for the Tsarist regime nor the Bolsheviks; neither for Capitalism nor Communism; neither for Materialism nor Idealism; rather, they promoted personalist, spiritual development (Godmanhood ), Christian economic ethics (Sobornost'), and a path to knowledge informed by reason, but guided by faith (Religious-Philosophy ). Forced to join the Russian diaspora, these religious philosophers continued to advance their movement with the help of the Young Men's Christian Association. Largely at the initiative of Nikolai Berdyaev (1874--1948), they also began to interact with the French intellectual milieu in Paris in order to develop inter-confessional and cultural understandings. Although Russian religious-philosophy suffered a certain decline following World War Two, many of their writings had returned to the USSR. As Soviet intellectuals discovered these works, they gradually began to revolt against dialectical materialism, and aspire to recover the religious-philosophical tradition. In 1988, this Return was at last made possible, and religious-philosophy has been enjoying a second renaissance which continues unabated today.
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Kitzinger, Denis. "Dietrich von Hildebrand : a Catholic intellectual in the Weimar Republic." Thesis, University of St Andrews, 2017. http://hdl.handle.net/10023/15908.
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This thesis examines the intellectual activity of the German Catholic philosopher Dietrich von Hildebrand (1889-1977) during the Weimar Republic (1918-1933). It fills a gap both in the Hildebrand scholarship and the history of Weimar Catholicism. It examines Hildebrand as an intellectual (following Stefan Collini's analytical concept), and argues that he can most adequately be described as a neo-conservative Catholic intellectual. Hildebrand was a profoundly religious person whose principal goal was the personal sanctification of educated Catholics through the renewal of the Catholic ethos. To this end he presented the Catholic worldview not in the form of neo-scholasticism as recently initiated by Pope Leo XIII, but in a new form. At the center of his novel presentation stood his Catholic personalism and his phenomenological value ethics. After an introductory chapter that outlines Hildebrand's upbringing, formation, and education with an eye to his conversion to the Catholic faith in 1914, the thesis situates and analyzes Hildebrand in the context of the four main discourses that he participated in during the Weimar Republic: Chapter two examines Hildebrand's contribution to the discourse on Siegkatholizismus, the confidence of Catholics to re- Christianize German and European culture after the First World War; chapter three examines Hildebrand's novel justification of Catholic teaching in the discourse on the crisis of marriage and sexuality during the middle years of the Republic; chapter four engages his social thought and his views on the relation between person and community during the final period of Weimar Germany; and chapter five explores Hildebrand's transnational activity against the background of a growing transformation of Catholic supranational identity through nationalism shortly before the Nazi takeover of power in 1933.
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Willems, Nadine. "The agrarian foundations of early twentieth-century Japanese anarchism : Ishikawa Sanshirō's revolutionary practices of everyday life, 1903-1945." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2015. https://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:25f7fd44-e2c2-4a71-a9f6-b922b0bc3936.
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This dissertation examines the link between anarchism and agrarian thought in modern Japan through the investigation of the life and ideas of radical intellectual Ishikawa Sanshiro (1876-1956). I track its emergence from the time of Ishikawa's involvement in the socialist movement in the early 1900s to its development during his exile years in Europe between 1913 and 1920 and then after his return home through to the end of the Pacific War. I show how concern for the traditions and condition of farming communities informed a certain strand of non-violent anarchism premised on environmental awareness and cooperative principles fostered through the practices of everyday life. By rescuing from near historiographical oblivion a major dissenting figure of modern Japan, this study gives prominence to a distinctive anarchist intellectual contribution. I examine both the theoretical premises and related socio-political applications, highlighting Ishikawa's role for over five decades as a creative force of social change and a bulwark against authoritarianism. Thus, this work puts forward a more nuanced understanding of the movement of popular agrarianism that marked the interwar period, often pigeon-holed by historians as an adjunct of radical nationalism. I also probe the ecological critique embedded in Ishikawa's vision of the man-nature interaction, which remained vital over the decades and has direct relevance to presentday concerns. The tracing of Ishikawa's connections, both transnational and within Japan, provides the main methodological axis of this study. It appraises dissenting politics through the lens of actual praxis rather than categorization of ideological differences. Likewise, transnational connections are given agency as a mutually creative process rather than as a unidirectional transmission of ideas and values from West to East.
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Heckerl, David K. "From Emerson's 'Great guest' to Strauss's Machiavelli : innocence, responsibility, and the renewal of American studies." Thesis, McGill University, 1998. http://digitool.Library.McGill.CA:80/R/?func=dbin-jump-full&object_id=35708.
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My dissertation explores the intense crisis of sensibility experienced by liberal intellectuals in cold war America, with special emphasis on the desire to renew liberal democratic culture by moving, in mind and spirit, from innocence to responsibility. The latter term, however, expresses sentiments of civic virtue or republicanism very much at odds with liberalism; hence the ultimate failure of liberals to consummate their own sense of what is most needful or necessary. Although liberals clearly desire the sensational execution of innocence, their inability to be "altogether evil" (Machiavelli) consigns them to the equivocating limbo of what R. W. B. Lewis called the "new stoicism." The liberal desire for renewal does find its consummation, however, in Leo Strauss's Thoughts on Machiavelli (1958), which instructs liberals in the salutary benefits of a philosophical republicanism. As embodied in Machiavelli himself, this mode of republicanism promises to emancipate liberals (if only they would listen) from the tyranny of innocence, thereby effecting the desired regenerative movement to civic responsibility.
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Cormier, Jeffrey 1967. "Where have all the Canadians gone? : frame resonance, transformation and institutionalization of the Canadianization movement, 1968-1985." Thesis, McGill University, 2000. http://digitool.Library.McGill.CA:80/R/?func=dbin-jump-full&object_id=36897.
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Social movements are an understudied aspect of Canadian society. This thesis is an attempt to address this general lacuna by examining the social movement efforts of Canadian cultural nationalists during the 1960s and 1970s, as they struggled to build a strong, vibrant Canadian cultural community. Four social movement based questions guide the analysis. First, why did the Canadianization movement begin when it did? Second, how did the movement transform itself for long-term survival? Third, what kinds of mobilizing structures did the movement make use of, and what influence did these structures have on the movement's activities? And finally, how did the movement maintain itself in times when the political and media climate was unreceptive? This thesis addresses these questions with the combined use of data collected from archival sources as well as twenty-two interviews. The case of Canadianization permits us to empirically document the actions that organizational intellectuals take in pushing for social and cultural change, an aspect of the social movements literature that, until now, has been largely only theorized about.
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Tobin, Robert Benjamin. "The minority voice : Hubert Butler, Southern Protestantism and intellectual dissent in Ireland, 1930-72." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2004. http://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:d7206b16-dd27-4a47-b8da-205d23e05290.
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Much has been written about the generation of Southern Irish Protestant intellectuals who played such a prominent role in Ireland's public life from the fall of Charles Stewart Parnell in the early 1890s until the rise of Eamon de Valera in the early 1930s. Very little indeed has been written about the generation of Southern Protestant intellectuals following them, those writers, journalists, academics and churchmen who were born around 1900 and who came of age in the decade following Irish Independence. Though few in number, these people represent an important facet of the young nation's cultural history and serve to refute the blanket assumption that the minority community had neither the will nor the ability to make a contribution to the new dispensation. As a particularly eloquent and stalwart member of this community, the Kilkenny man-of-letters Hubert Butler (1900-91) functions as the touchstone of this thesis, an individual worthy of attention in his own right but also compelling as a commentator on the challenges facing Southern Protestants generally during the period 1930-72. For in these years, Protestants confronted the delicate task of adapting to their changed position within Irish society without in the process forfeiting their distinct identity. As a nationalist eager to participate fully in the country's civic life but also as a Protestant fiercely committed to the rights of spiritual independence and intellectual dissent, Butler often struggled to balance the demands of community with those of autonomy. This thesis explores the various contexts in which he and his contemporaries challenged the normative terms of Irishness so that the criteria for belonging might better accommodate their minority values and experiences. In so doing, Southern Protestant intellectuals of this generation made a valuable contribution to the development of pluralistic values on the island.
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Dawkins, Charlie. "Modernism in mainstream magazines, 1920-37." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2015. https://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:71ef5fb2-9a5a-4277-9b0d-edf307acd1e7.
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This thesis studies five mainstream British weekly magazines: 'Time and Tide', the 'Nation and Athenaeum', the 'Spectator', the 'Listener', and the 'New Statesman'. It explores how these magazines reviewed, discussed and analysed modernist literature over an eighteen-year span, 1920-37. Over this period, and in these magazines, the concept of modernism developed. Drawing on work by philosopher Ian Hacking, this research traces how the idea of modernism emerged into the public realm. It focuses largely on the book reviews printed in these magazines, texts that played an important and underappreciated role in negotiations between modernist texts and the audience of these magazines. Chapter 1, on 'Time and Tide', covers a period from the magazine's inception in 1920 to 1926, and draws particularly on Catherine Clay's work on this magazine. It discusses the genre of 'weekly review' that this new magazine attempted to join, and the cultural place of modernism in the early 1920s. Chapter 2, on the 'Nation and Athenaeum', covers Leonard Woolf's literary editorship (1923-30), under the ownership of J. M. Keynes, and makes use of Keynes's archive at King's College, Cambridge, and Woolf's at the University of Sussex. Chapter 3, on the 'Spectator', covers Evelyn Wrench's editorship (1925-32), and explores the relationship between this magazine, ideologies of conservatism, and modernism. Chapter 4, on the 'Listener', focuses on the magazine's publication of new poetry, including an extraordinary 1933 supplement that printed W. H. Auden's 'The Witnesses'. This work revolves around Janet Adam Smith, literary editor in these years, and draws on Smith's archive at the National Library of Scotland as well as the BBC archives at Caversham. Chapter 5, on the 'New Statesman' in the 1930s under new editor Kingsley Martin, explores a period when modernism was more widely recognized, and pays particular attention to a short text by James Joyce printed in 1932, 'From a Banned Writer to a Banned Singer'.
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Menguc, Murat Cem. "Historiography and nationalism : a study regarding the proceedings of the First Turkish History Congress." Thesis, McGill University, 2002. http://digitool.Library.McGill.CA:80/R/?func=dbin-jump-full&object_id=79796.
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This thesis attempts to establish the First Turkish History Congress (July 2--11, 1932) as an exemplary moment that can help us understand the relationship between nationalism and historiography. The thesis first examines the roots of nationalist historiography in the West and in Ottoman Empire, and then paraphrases the proceedings of the congress in detail. It arrives at the view that during the formation of a nation state in alignment with European standards, Turkish nationalists within the Ottoman Empire often found it necessary to review the methodology and the content of history books. The break with Ottoman historiography was a result of the uniform Western approach to the past, promoted by Western schools of thought. Thus, to become a nationalist meant to re-write history in Western fashion.Available sources on the First Turkish History Congress and the role of religion and language for the Turkish nationalist endeavors are referred throughout the thesis. In its conclusion, this study raises questions about the close relationship between nationalism and historiography, and the influence of nationalism on our view of history today.
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Stone, Villani Nicolas. "The dissolution of constitutions : Aristotle in Italian political thought from Niccolò Machiavelli to Giovanni Botero." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2015. https://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:600663d5-b566-46c0-8a7a-418fca1d635b.
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This thesis studies the reception of Aristotle's political thought in sixteenth-century Italy. It focuses on Aristotle's discussion of the dissolution of constitutions in Book 5 of the Politics and aims to show how Aristotle's political thought remained central to late Renaissance political discourse. No comprehensive study of the topic exists. Modern historiography on Renaissance political thought generally downplays the importance of Aristotle in the history of sixteenth-century Italian political thought and emphasises the Roman tradition over the Greek. This research aims to fill the gap in modern scholarship and revise modern interpretation of Renaissance political theory. This thesis is essentially divided into three parts, each part containing two chapters. Part I is largely introductory. Chapter 1 offers a historiographical review of modern scholarship on the reception of Aristotle in the Renaissance and early-modern political thought. Chapter 2 explores the revival of Greek studies in the fifteenth century and the changing perception of Aristotle's Politics in the Renaissance. Part II focuses on Aristotle and Machiavelli. Chapter 3 examines the similarities between Aristotle's analysis of the means of preserving tyranny and Machiavelli's discussion of how to mantenere lo stato in The Prince. Chapter 4 explores the effects that these similarities between Aristotle and Machiavelli had on the reception of Aristotle in Renaissance political thought. Part III centres on Aristotle in the republican and vernacular traditions. Chapter 5 explains the importance of Aristotle's discussion of the dissolution of constitutions to Renaissance republican political thought. Chapter 6 underlines the continuous relevance of Aristotle's Politics in the second half of the sixteenth century. The conclusion sums up the central argument of each chapter and invites us to explore the influence of Aristotle on reason of state literature.
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Hojdyssek, Gunter Art College of Fine Arts UNSW. "From laughing at the world to living in the world." Awarded by:University of New South Wales. Art, 2007. http://handle.unsw.edu.au/1959.4/43091.
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Born in 1938 in Poland, I epxperienced wartime Berlin and post-war Stalinism. My first job, at sixteen, was with the East Berlin States Opera and the Bertold Brecht's Berliner Ensemble. The play writes Betrtold Brecht and Buechner had the strongest influence on me. Brecht's play 'Mutter Courage and her children' and Georg Buechner's 'Woyzech' encapsulated the harsh realities of post-war Europe, and confirmed my desire for social justice and reform. Yet, the main influence on my work comes from my own life experience. My life in Australia has become a kind of exile-a deprivation of the origin of my culture and my cradle. After nearly forty years in Australia I feel a little displaced. Yet I left Europe voluntarily to escape from the very culture and history I now miss. I am experiencing a common dilemma of migration. I belong neither here nor there-a kind of dislocation. There exists a twilight zone in the in-between time-a discontinuity of my Berliner development. Artists such as Kaethe Kollwitz, John Heartfield, George Grosz, Otto Dix, and Max Beckman influenced my teenage years. Later, Joseph Beuys, Anselm Kiefer and Georg Baselitz. I work with found objects, such as toys crafted by human hand. I am giving them a new meaning, a new being. They are meditations on the conflict of war, where women and children are the primary victims of political fragmentation. My sculptures evoke memories of a childhood stolen. They take on a menacing character reminding the viewer of the effects war has on humanity. But Art is the reflector and searcher; it is our way to enlightenment. Joseph Beuys introduced the concept of an expanded notion of art ("der erweiterte Kunstbegriff???) to surpass the boundaries of modernism with in art, science, spirituality, humanism and economics. He drew attention to the potential of human creativity. Art, against all odds, is poetry to life.
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Hickmott, Sarah. "(En) Corps Sonore : towards a feminist ethics of the 'idea' of music in recent French thought." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2017. https://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:eb562d0f-e9be-40f4-b0a3-9fa6da0a3136.
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This thesis explores the way music is characterized, used, or accounted for in recent (post-1968) French thought, focusing in particular on the work of Jean-Luc Nancy, Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe, and Alain Badiou. In spite of the differences in their philosophical-theoretical positions, all of these writers invoke music - both directly and indirectly - to negotiate their relationship to ontological, political, ethical and aesthetic concerns, particularly in terms of how it relates to the (im)possibility of a subject, the condition of truth, and the role of philosophical thought itself. The thesis situates these texts in a longer genealogy of musico-philosophical interactions and also brings them into dialogue with recent musicological approaches, thus showing how an inherited idea of what music 'is' is often assumed rather than critically re-evaluated. In short, by tracing the musical-transcendental baggage of an inherited metaphysical conception of music - one which often understands music in close relation to the feminine, (sexual) excess, and the beyond of language and/or the symbolic - the thesis shows that though music is instrumentalized by progressive thinkers as a way of shifting theoretical/philosophical paradigms, it nonetheless does so in a way that has a strong sense of continuity with previous thinking on music. Secondly, the thesis highlights the way in which music in its metaphysical-ontological guise is often conceived as synonymous with Western high art classical music (which is itself constructed as absolute and transcendent, and ontologically independent of its means of (re)production or context) whilst non-literate, popular, folk and world musics - on the occasions that they are considered and not simply ignored or denigrated - are notably considered almost exclusively in terms of their social-cultural or technological contexts. Finally, the thesis demonstrates that much of this takes place through a simultaneous instrumentalization of gender as an organisational category for philosophy, and one which all too often has the consequence of sending women - along with music - to the beyond of pre-, inter-, or post-signification.
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Lloyd, Johannah M. "The province of art : the aesthetic in the advent of modernism to London, 1910-1914." Thesis, McGill University, 1987. http://digitool.Library.McGill.CA:80/R/?func=dbin-jump-full&object_id=63769.
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Harmsworth, Thomas. "Gary Snyder's green Dharma." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2015. https://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:e4c2e123-0b71-45c9-8535-eb09ac8cfa15.
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Twentieth-century environmentalist discourse often laid the blame for environmental degradation on Western civilization, and presented the religious traditions of the East as offering an ecocentric antidote to Western dualism and anthropocentrism. Gary Snyder has looked to Chinese and Japanese Buddhism to inform his environmentalist poetry and prose. While Snyder often writes in terms of a dualism of East and West, he synthesizes traditional forms of Buddhism with various Western traditions, and his green Buddhism ultimately undermines more simplistic oppositions of East and West. The first chapter reads Snyder's writing of the mid-1950s alongside several of his West Coast contemporaries - Kenneth Rexroth, Allen Ginsberg, Michael McClure, Philip Whalen and Jack Kerouac - showing that these writers evoked the natural world together with Buddhist themes before the advent of the modern environmental movement in order to mount a critique of Cold War American culture. Snyder's early interest in Buddhism was motivated largely by translations of Chinese poetry and Chapter Two examines his own translations of the Tang Dynasty poet Hanshan. In Snyder's translations and contemporaneous original poetry, Buddhist poetics mingle with American conceptions of wilderness. Chapter Three shows how Snyder's Buddhism was influenced by Anglophone writers such as D.T. Suzuki and Alan Watts, and argues that from the late 1960s Snyder aimed to Americanize Buddhism as ideas of localism became more central to his environmentalism. Chapter Four examines Snyder's synthesis of Hua-yen Buddhism and Western scientific ecology in the 1970s and 1980s. Chapter Five examines 'The Hokkaido Book,' an unfinished prose work on environmental attitudes in the Far East in which Snyder considers the relationship between the civilized and the primitive. Chapter Six examines the influence of Chinese landscape painting and Japanese No drama, two forms steeped in Buddhist ideas, on the poems of 'Mountains' and 'Rivers Without End'.
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Ondaatje, Michael L. "Neither counterfeit heroes nor colour-blind visionaries : black conservative intellectuals in modern America." University of Western Australia. History Discipline Group, 2008. http://theses.library.uwa.edu.au/adt-WU2008.0029.
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This thesis focuses on the rise to prominence, during the 1980s and 1990s, of a coterie of African American intellectuals associated with the powerful networks and institutions of the New Right. It situates the relatively marginalised phenomenon of contemporary black conservatism within its historical context; explores the nature and significance of the racial discourse it has generated; and probes the intellectual character of the individuals whose contributions to this strand of black thought have stood out over the past three decades. Engaging the writings of the major black conservative figures and the literature of their supporters and critics, I then evaluate their ideas in relation to the key debates concerning race and class in American life debates that have centred, for the most part, on the vexed issues of affirmative action, poverty and public education. In illuminating this complex, still largely misunderstood phenomenon, this thesis reveals the black conservatives as more than a group but as individuals with their own distinctive arguments.
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Ferris, Natalie. "'Ludic passage' : abstraction in post-war British literature, 1945-1980." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2016. https://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:5b3034e6-3a32-4684-b8a0-eb91cfc756c6.
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This thesis traces a line of literary experimentation in post-war British literature that was prompted by the aesthetic, philosophical and theoretical demands of abstraction. Spanning the period 1945 to 1980, it observes the ways in which certain aesthetic advancements initiated new forms of literary expression to posit a new genealogy of interdisciplinary practice in Britain. It is the first sustained chronological study to consider the ways in which a select number of British poets, authors and critics challenged the received views of their post-war moment in the discovery of the imaginative and idealizing potential of abstraction. At a time in which Britain became conscious of its evolving identity within an increasingly globalised context, this study accounts for the range of Continental and Transatlantic influences in order to more accurately locate the networks at play. Exploring the contributions made by individuals, such as Herbert Read, Ian Hamilton Finlay and Christine Brooke-Rose, as well as by groups of practitioners, such as the British concrete poetry movement, small press initiatives and Art & Language, this thesis offers a comprehensive account of the evolving status of abstraction across cultural, institutional and literary contexts. The discussions build a vision of an era that increasingly jettisons the predetermined critical lexicon of abstraction to generate works of a more pragmatic abstract inspiration: the spatial demands of concrete poetry, language as medium in the conceptual artwork, the absence of linear plot in the new novel.
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Mueller, Marieke. "Subjectivity in Sartre's 'L'idiot de la famille' : biography as a space for the development of theory." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2015. https://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:54f60363-e148-4481-b710-c7e68a908bd5.
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In the context of a renascent interest in the thought of Jean-Paul Sartre, this thesis proposes a close examination of one of his less studied texts, the study of Gustave Flaubert, L'Idiot de la famille (1971-72). The analysis focuses on theoretical developments that emerge from Sartre's biographical enquiry, pursuing an interdisciplinary approach combining a consideration of literary theory and literary history with the perspective of Sartre's philosophy of subjectivity. L'Idiot is situated amongst a wide variety of texts by Sartre, from Qu'est-ce que la littérature? (1948) to the Critique de la raison dialectique (1960), identifying theoretical innovations within Sartre's understanding of the subject (ch. 1), his social theory (ch. 2), his theory of the imaginary (ch. 3), of literary production (ch. 4) and of reading (ch. 5). Additionally, hitherto largely unexplored passages highlight Sartre's reflections on the situation of the late 1960s. Previous analyses of the philosophical innovations presented in L'Idiot have often focused on the strictly theoretical passages in the biography. The present thesis also concentrates on the 'imagined' scenes presented throughout the text. Read as an integral part of Sartre's method, it is suggested that the dramatization facilitated by the biographical format is an integral part of the theoretical enquiry. Despite the lack of explicit referencing provided by Sartre, the biography is explored in its open character, identifying a series of resonances and similarities with a diverse range of authors. The different chapters consider thinkers whose relationship with Sartre has received little or no attention (such as Pierre Bourdieu and Walter Benjamin), or whose work resonates with Sartre in ways that have so far gone unnoticed (Roland Barthes, Maurice Merleau-Ponty and Maurice Blanchot).
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Byers, Mark. "After the new failure of nerve : Charles Olson and American modernism, 1946-1951." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2014. http://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:02478ea1-832a-4ecc-9c47-a264ba746c49.
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One medium has dominated accounts of American art in the years following the Second World War. The period witnessed, in the words of one critic, a 'Triumph of American Painting', with advances in the easel picture far surpassing those in other media. Whilst more recent accounts have nuanced this view, drawing attention to developments in music and sculpture, literary contributions to the new American modernism have gone almost without assessment. Were there advances in literature comparable to those of Mark Rothko and Barnett Newman, David Smith and John Cage? Drawing extensively on his unpublished writings, After the New Failure of Nerve reveals the poet Charles Olson to have been the keenest literary advocate of the new American avant-garde and one of the most astute observers of its conditions and possibilities. Paying special attention to unpublished notes, lectures, and correspondence, the thesis utilises Olson's early writings in order to examine the momentum given early postwar modernism by a potent contemporary reaction against abstract rationality, a reaction identified at the time as a 'New Failure of Nerve'. Born of recent disillusionment with 'scientific' Marxism and New Deal progressivism, the thesis demonstrates the several ways in which this 'New Failure of Nerve' fuelled vanguard American art from the middle of the Second World War to the end of the decade. It argues that the new critique of abstract rationality - which was also reflected in the contemporary American work of the Frankfurt School - defined the way American artists understood the function of postwar modernism, the posture of the postwar modernist artist, and the status of the postwar modernist artwork. This pivotal moment in the history of modernism was shaped, I contend, by a philosophical critique explored most ambitiously by an American poet.
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Herman, Dana. "Hashavat Avedah : a history of Jewish Cultural Reconstruction, Inc." Thesis, McGill University, 2008. http://digitool.Library.McGill.CA:80/R/?func=dbin-jump-full&object_id=99925.
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This thesis is an institutional history of Jewish Cultural Reconstruction, Inc. (JCR), an organization mandated by the Office of Military Government, United States (OMGUS) to assume trusteeship over heirless Jewish cultural property that had been plundered by the Nazis and later centralized in depots in the American Zone of Germany in the wake of the Second World War. Formally established in 1947, until 1951 JCR functioned as the cultural arm of the Jewish Restitution Successor Organization (JRSO) and distributed hundreds of thousands of books, thousands of ceremonial objects, and Torah scrolls to Jewish communities around the world including the United States, Israel, West Germany, Britain, and Canada. Looking beyond its mandated mission, JCR was also involved in searching for caches of Jewish property in the Allied zones, microfilming manuscripts and archives in German public institutions, and negotiating the enactment of West German legislation to safeguard future discoveries of Jewish property.Salo Baron, professor of Jewish history at Columbia University, was JCR's founder and president; many of the foremost Jewish intellectuals of the day, including Hannah Arendt, Gershom Scholem, and Leo Baeck were associated with it. This study of JCR sheds light on numerous topics, not the least of which is the political activities of Jewish academics in the aftermath of the Holocaust. Further, the internecine struggles among Jewish organizations over which group best represented world Jewry as trustee of this property is highlighted along with the development of JCR from a research commission to a U.S.-recognized supervisory body. JCR's interactions with the State and War departments as well as with the American military government in Germany add to the discussion of Jewish influence during this period. The examination of JCR's activities in the American zone between 1948 and 1951 serves to underscore the diligent work that was carried out, but also the less than ideal conditions in which this work was done. The distribution process undertaken by JCR and its member organizations emphasizes the debate surrounding what it meant to culturally reconstruct the Jewish world after the Holocaust. Finally, a discussion of JCR's very limited activities, from 1952 to 1977 when it was finally dissolved, underscores the difficulties inherent in maintaining a relevant rationale and function in an ever-changing political landscape.Cette these presente l'histoire institutionnelle de la Jewish CulturalReconstruction, Inc. (JCR), une organisation mandatee par le bureau dugouvernement militaire des Etats Unis (OMGUS) pour assumer la tutelle desbiens juifs culturels sans heritier, qui ont ete pilles par les nazis et plus tardcentralises dans les depots de la zone americaine en Allemagne apres la DeuxiemeGuerre mondiale. De sa creation officielle en 1947 a 1951, la JCR a fonctionnecomme l'antenne culturelle de la Jewish Restitution Successor Organization(JRSO). Elle a distribue des centaines de milliers de livres, des milliers d'objetsrituels et des rouleaux de Torah aux communautes juives dans le monde,notamment aux Etats-Unis, en Israel, en Allemagne de l'Ouest, en Grande-Bretagne et au Canada. Outre sa mission originelle, la JCR a egalement participea la recherche des caches de biens juifs dans les zones alliees, a enregistre surmicrofilms des archives et des manuscrits appartenant aux institutions publiquesallemandes et est egalement intervenue pour encourager une legislation ouestallemandeafin de sauvegarder les decouvertes a venir des biens juifs.
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Jebari, Idriss. "The production of critical thought in the Maghrib : Abdallah Laroui and Hichem Djaït (1965-1978)." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2015. https://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:c206441c-84cc-4332-a223-954a3c485976.
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The critical essay gained immense popularity in the sixties and seventies in the Maghrib as a way to depict national realities that had failed to live up to nationalist ideals. Their authors often shared similar attributes: young highly educated intellectuals, committed toward modernity and who steered clear of politics. Such was the case of Abdallah Laroui (born 1933) and Hichem Djaït (born 1935), two celebrated Maghribi thinkers of the post-1967 generation in Arab thought. Despite their different ideological positions, they share a similar trajectory and both wrote about the need for another Arab renaissance, in Laroui's La crise des intellectuels arabes (1974) and Djaït's La personnalité arabo-islamique (1974). The turn to critical writing is routinely dismissed for being secondary, for having a restricted audience and little political impact, yet it highlights well the Maghribi postcolonial intellectual's competing demands: to conform to an ideal representation of intellectual "commitment" through critical speech, and to secure national recognition and integration. As such, this thesis confronts the often-neglected impact of nationalism on intellectual conducts after independence around the impact of their disillusionment, and forces us to rethink critically notions of engagement, the role of intellectuals and postcolonial cultural productions that are current in Middle East studies, and problematically envisaged by postcolonial studies. These texts have been approached as dynamic objects responding to a set of questions in their time, to account for the materiality of thought production, mobilising David Scott's concept of the "problem-space of intellectual production" (1999). This thesis looks at Abdallah Laroui and Hichem Djaït's intellectual projects from 1965 to 1978, to study the genesis and aftermaths of their critical moment, focusing on their published writings (critical essays and academic studies), press and journal articles, interviews, and fictional texts from a later period, in Arabic and French. Their writings will be read alongside several cultural journals, newspapers and memoirs dealing with this period of the Maghrib's history to account for the processes of circulation and reception by relevant audiences.
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Williams, Alwyn. "The color of sound : jazz and the American intelligentsia, 1919-1939 / Alwyn Williams." Thesis, The University of Sydney, 2004. https://hdl.handle.net/2123/27982.
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The Color of Sound is a history of the American intelligentsia’s response to jazz in the 20 years between the World Wars, containing analysis of the writings of both white and black thinkers, highlighting the way beliefs about jazz have changed during this period. This history demonstrates that our popular understanding—that jazz is an improvised music, based on the musical practices of African Americans— originated in the late 1920s and early 19305, when a small number of writers challenged the orthodoxy of the first decade of jazz criticism. In the 1920s, American intellectuals (both black and white), while divided over the musical significance of jazz, believed that orchestrated music, using syncopation, novel instrumentation and (sometimes) a blues tonality, was jazz in its highest form. The premier jazz artist, they argued, was an obese, white American named Paul Whiteman. Jazz’s finest composer was George Gershwin, and the most important composition of the 1920s was Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue.
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Maglaque, Erin. "Venetian humanism in the Mediterranean world : writing empire from the margins." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2014. http://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:4d671b0d-6917-4a1f-bcfb-2045128a11e0.
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My dissertation examines the cultural history of the Renaissance Venetian maritime empire. In this project I bring into conversation two historiographical subfields, the intellectual history of Venetian Renaissance humanism and the colonial history of the early modern Mediterranean, which have previously developed separately. In doing so, I examine the relationship between power and knowledge as it unfolded in the early modern Mediterranean. The ways in which Venetian Renaissance intellectual culture was shaped by its imperial engagements - and, conversely, how Venetian approaches to governance were inflected by humanist practices - are the central axes of my dissertation. In the first part of the dissertation, I examine the ways in which writing and textual collecting were used by elite Venetian readers to represent the geopolitical dimensions of their empire. I consider a group of manuscripts and printed books which contain technical, navigational, and cartographic writing and images about Venetian mercantile and imperial activity in the Mediterranean. In the second part, I undertake two case-studies of Venetian patrician governors who were trained in the humanist schools of Venice, before being posted to colonial offices in Dalmatia and the Aegean, respectively. I examine how their education in Venice as humanists influenced their experience and practice of governance in the stato da mar. Their personal texts offer an alternative intellectual history of empire, one which demonstrates the formation of political thought amongst the men actually practicing and experiencing imperial governance. Overall, I aim to build a picture of the ways in which literary culture, the physical world of the stato da mar, and political thought came to be entwined in the Venetian Renaissance; and then to describe how these dense relationships worked for the Venetian administrators who experienced them in the Mediterranean.
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Heath, Karen Patricia. "Conservatives and the politics of art, 1950-88." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2014. https://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:d62a078b-4009-40a8-8765-1a4f5e0fbcbc.
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This thesis offers a new policy history of the National Endowment for the Arts, the federal agency responsible for providing grants to artists and arts organisations in the United States. It focuses in particular on the development of conservative perspectives on federal arts funding from the 1950s to the 1980s, and hence, illuminates the broader evolution of conservative political power, especially its limits. The most familiar narrative holds that the Endowment found itself caught up in the Culture Wars of the late 1980s when Christian right groups objected to certain federal grants, particularly to Andres Serrano's Piss Christ and Robert Mapplethorpe's Self-Portrait with Whip. This thesis, however, uncovers the older origins of conservative opposition to state support for the arts, analyses conservative conceptions of art, and illuminates the limited federal role the right sought to secure in the arts in the post-war period. Numerous studies have analysed the meanings and origins of the Culture Wars, but until now, scholars had not examined conservative approaches to federal arts politics in a historical sense. Historians have generally been too interested in explaining change to the detriment of examining continuity, but this approach under-emphasises the long-term tensions that underlie seemingly sudden political eruptions. This work also offers a deep account of the conservative movement and the arts world, an area that has so far been almost completely ignored by scholars, even though a focus on marginalised players is essential to understanding the limits of conservatism. In a general sense then, this thesis evaluates the range and diversity of the conservative movement and illuminates the overall odyssey of the right in modern America. In so doing, it provides a new insight into the ways we periodise political history and also invites a broader view of how we understand politics itself.
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Daly, Robert. "The scholar as scientist : Iurii Tynianov and the OPOiaZ." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2016. https://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:9a362e24-fc5b-447c-a740-8284a66c2a35.
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The present work deals with the literary-theoretical work of the Petrograd Formalists - those who participated in the OPOiaZ in the 1910s and early 1920s - with a focus on that oflurii Tynianov. It attempts to unpack the representation of their literary-theoretical work as 'science' [nauka] by exploring how that category was constructed in dialogue with their evolving conception of literature. It is argued in the first chapter that, for the duration of their project, they conceptualized the 'language of nauka' - and their own prose by association - in accordance with the laws of their theory of language. It is argued in the second chapter that, as the Formalists developed a theory of literary history as an endless succession of 'revolutions' in the period 1919- 24, they tried to make their theorization of that process take a correspondingly revolutionary form, one in which the sciences of nature and those of history would become one. It is argued in the third chapter that, as the Formalists came to theorize the connection between literature and life in the period 1924-30, they practised a new 'type' of nauka in the form of the authorial collection of articles, one in which their own work was historicized in a 'literary' manner. It is concluded that, for the OPOiaZ, nauka came into being as a function of its object: as the Formalists transformed their conception of literature, their realization of nauka was correspondingly transformed. The conclusion then problematizes the categorization of Formalism as a purely 'scientific', extra-'literary' movement, since emphasis is placed on their authorship of that categorization, and raises broader questions about the origin of modem 'literary theory'.
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Bennett, Sarah. "The American contexts of Irish poetry, 1950-present." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2011. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.669957.
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Doustdar, Haghighi Mohammad. "The religious thought of Aḥmad Kasravī Tabrīzī /." Thesis, McGill University, 1998. http://digitool.Library.McGill.CA:80/R/?func=dbin-jump-full&object_id=28265.
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The advent of Ahmad Kasravi (1890--1946) and his Pakdini movement represents one of the most important developments in the history of socio-religious thought in Iran in the Pahlavi era (1925--1979). It was one of the greatest home-grown ideological challenges to Shi'ism and Shi'i clergy in the twentieth century.The present thesis aims to analyze Kasravi's religious ideology. It examines first the historical factors that played a significant role in the development of Kasravi's socio-religious consciousness and his keen interest in religion. Secondly, it explores the intellectual contexts of his religious thought---its origins, the controversial nature of it, the original aspects of it, the reaction of the clergy and intellectuals of the time to it, and its significance and impact on the coming generations. Finally, the key concepts of Kasravi's socio-religious ideology and some major current misunderstandings of them are examined. (Abstract shortened by UMI.)
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Mead, Henry. "T.E. Hulme and the ideological politics of early modernism : some contexts." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2012. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.669917.
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O'Gorman, Aoife Siobhán. "Wissenschaft at war : British and German academic propaganda and the Great War." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2016. https://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:0fd95e59-568d-48e4-8b72-302757436f84.
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This thesis explores academic propaganda in the first two years of the First World War, examining the activity of the university men in Britain and Germany who were left behind when their students went to the Front. Using pamphlets and manifestoes, it seeks to highlight the way the War split the international academic community and the creation of a debate which examined not only the causes of the War, but the reasons for which the nations were fighting. By exploring the propaganda organisations of both countries, as well as the academic milieu in which the subjects of this thesis worked, it hopes to provide the context within which this propaganda was created, before turning to an examination of the content of the propaganda - an aspect which has often been overlooked in propaganda studies. The investigation of the content looks first at the outbreak of war and the reaction of the academic community to a shock which shook their community. It then turns to the arguments expounded on culpability for the War, and the ideals for which each side felt they were fighting, illustrating the shift in emphasis from a political war to an ideological conflict between two opposing world views. Finally, the thesis considers perceptions of the War in the early years of the conflict, and the way in which it was seen both as a panacea to overcome social divisions and a catharsis which would lead the way to a new world - ideas which would provide the foundation for later war aims. In taking this comparative approach, the aim is to provide new insights into a fascinating and relatively little-known aspect of the history of the First World War.
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Segura, Mauricio. "Le discours francais sur l'Amerique latine revolutionnaire (1950-1985) /." Thesis, McGill University, 2002. http://digitool.Library.McGill.CA:80/R/?func=dbin-jump-full&object_id=38274.
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This thesis entitled "Le discours francais sur l'Amerique latine revolutionnaire (1950--1985)" proposes to analyze about thirty texts published in France during the mentioned period in order to extract the primary axis around which the hexagonal representations and discourses which examine Latin America articulate themselves. The corpus gathers chiefly novels and political essays, but it also includes anthropological essays, journalistic commentaries and testimonies. This is a study that relies on the theory of social discourse and on imagology.This investigation, which perceives itself as an overview of the images elaborated by the French social discourse on Latin America, examines closely the historical moments when there are determinant discursive mutations. Therefore, from 1950 to 1961, a first manner of apprehending the Latin American other is identified. This period was described as a moment of transition during which the French discourse goes from a discursive frame which emphasizes on the theme of nature to a discursive frame which privileges the power relations between social agents. From 1962 to 1974, Latin America becomes for the French writers a geographical region upon which one pours off revolutionary aspirations. The axioms of third worldism, primary discursive formation enhanced by this period, run through the whole of the texts at various degrees. Also, this thesis aims to reveal the figures and spaces which emerge from this whole of contradictory representations. From 1975 to 1985, one witnesses the decomposition of the discursive formations and representations established during the two previous decades. Indeed, several discursive formations during these ten years question not only third worldism and its revolutionary impulses, but also the function of the intellectual.
On a more general basis, this study examines the history of ideas in France from 1950 to 1985. One of its implicit goals is to describe the rules which diversify, give coherence, integrate, exclude, and legitimate a "new" idea in the French social discourse.
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Ling-yin, Lynn Ang. "A question of 'Chineseness' : the Chinese diaspora in Singapore 1819-1950s." Thesis, University of Stirling, 2001. http://hdl.handle.net/1893/2393.
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This thesis is a study of the Chinese diaspora in Singapore from 1819 to the 1950s. It begins by situating the diasporic subject in a historical context, highlighting some of the key moments in the diaspora's development, such as the advent of colonialism during the nineteenth century, and the formation of an ethnic enclave in the settlement. The discussion then calls into question the construction of the Chinese subject in colonial discourses, and interrogates the ways in which the diasporic population was constituted within the framework of colonialism. The main purpose has been to examine how the diaspora in Singapore has evolved, and to explore the adequacies, or inadequacies, of existing diasporic theories in the ways they relate to the Chinese experience. This is achieved by recapitulating the theoretical implications of existing diaspora frameworks, and questioning the tensions and limitations generated by such discourses. Simultaneously, this study takes into consideration the construction of a "Chinese identity", and does so by presenting possible ways of conceptualisng what it means to be "Chinese" for subjects of the diaspora. In discussing the extent to which the subject's sense of "self" and belonging has been shaped by its immigrant past, this research draws on and studies the writings, both literary and non-literary, that have emerged from the community. A central concern in all this is the identity and subjectivity of the diasporic subject, and the point here is that not every subject experiences diaspora in the same way, but that these alterities are important in the constitution and formation of a Chinese identity. As I note in the introduction, the issue of what it means to be Chinese, and indeed, the issue of home and belonging, is one that is always contested for people in the diasporic community, and the aim of this thesis has been to continually deconstruct the idea of a "single" Chinese diaspora, and to expose it as a heterogeneous, fragmented, and internally differentiated construction.
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Baggioni, Laurent. "La « forteresse de la raison ». Lectures de l’humanisme politique florentin d’après l’Epistolario de Coluccio Salutati (1331-1406)." Thesis, Lyon, École normale supérieure, 2011. http://www.theses.fr/2011ENSL0677.
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Prenant appui sur une historicisation critique des postulats méthodologiques et idéologiques au fondement des catégories d’humanisme civique et de républicanisme, la thèse entend renoncer à une lecture uniquement théorique de l’œuvre des humanistes florentins et restituer aux textes leur statut d’énoncés historiques. L’enjeu est de redessiner les lignes portantes d’une tradition civile et républicaine propre à la réalité florentine dont les penseurs des guerres d’Italie (Savonarole, Guichardin, Machiavel) seront les dépositaires critiques. Un travail d’interprétation de la correspondance familière de Coluccio Salutati (1331-1406) constitue le socle de la recherche et fait apparaître la dimension juridique de la pensée du chancelier, et ce à double titre : d’une part elle révèle l’omniprésence d’un lexique juridique qui fournit l’essentiel de l’arsenal interprétatif de l’analyse politique, et d’autre part, elle définit un « office d’exhortation » qui constitue la théorie politique de Salutati non pas simplement comme une rhétorique propagandiste mais aussi comme un discours réformateur. L’apport de Leonardo Bruni (1370-1444) est ainsi réévalué dans le sillage de l’humanisme politique de Salutati, et se distingue de ce dernier surtout par la valeur nouvelle accordée à l’histoire dans l’élaboration d’une langue et d’une science de la vie civileStarting from a critical historicization of the methodological and ideological foundations of categories such as civic humanism and republicanism, this thesis investigates the works of the Florentine humanists not only from the point of view of political theory but also in relation to their historical significance. The aim is to redefine the structural lines of a republican tradition characteristic of Florentine history, a tradition which the thinkers of the Italian Wars (Savonarola, Guicciardini, Machiavelli) inherited and criticized. An extensive reading of the private letters by Coluccio Salutati (1331-1406) constitutes the central part of this work and reveals the juridical character of the Chancellor’s thought : on the one hand, the juridical vocabulary is omnipresent in the letters and provides the core of the hermeneutic tools necessary to political analysis ; on the other hand, it helps defining an « office of exhortation » which discloses Salutati’s urge for reform rather than his role of propagandist. New light is then shed on Leonardo Bruni’s contribution to political thought as Bruni is seen following the path of Salutati’s political humanism. Leonardo Bruni (1370-1444), in comparison with his master, stresses the superiority of history, but finds himself equally involved in the formulation of a language and a science of political life
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Doyle, John F. (John Francis). "Humphrey Duke of Gloucester and the Introduction of Italian Humanism in Fifteenth Century England." Thesis, University of North Texas, 1991. https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc501124/.
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Duke Humphrey of Gloucester is often given credit for the renaissance of English learning in the fifteenth century. It is true that the donations of books he made to Oxford, his patronage of English and Italian writers, and his patronage of administrators who had humanist training resulted in the transmittal of humanist values to England. But is it also true that these accomplishments were mainly the by-product of his self-aggrandizing style, rather than a conscious effort on the duke's part to promote learning. The duke, however, does deserve recognition for what he unwittingly may have done.
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Gonshor, Anna 1949. "Kadye Molodowsky in Literarishe bleter, 1925-35 : annotated bibliography." Thesis, McGill University, 1997. http://digitool.Library.McGill.CA:80/R/?func=dbin-jump-full&object_id=28054.
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The rise in feminist consciousness and the growth of Women's Studies has brought Yiddish women writers into sharp focus. Kadye Molodowsky was one of the most prominent of the modern Yiddish women poets.Her biography is a typical summary of the modernization of Eastern European Jewry in the early twentieth century.
Molodowsky was a leading figure in Yiddish cultural life in interbellum Poland. As a writer, her primary affiliation was with the Literarishe bleter (Literary Leaves, 1924--1939). This periodical, founded by prominent Yiddish intellectuals in Warsaw, became the world tribune of secular Yiddish culture. Molodowsky's association with this high-profile publication placed her at the centre of the vibrant Jewish literary, cultural, and social life of the time.
What follows, is an annotated bibliography of her publications and work about her in Literarishe bleter, from her debut there in 1925 until her departure for the US in 1935.
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Foehn, Salomé. "Les philosophes de l'exil républicain espagnol de 1939 : autour de José Bergamín, Juan David García Bacca et María Zambrano (1939-1965)." Thesis, University of St Andrews, 2012. http://hdl.handle.net/10023/2551.
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Spanish Republican philosophers in exile defended the Second Republic, legally proclaimed on April 14, 1931. They embraced the anti-fascist cause rising in the 1920s and the 1930s in Europe. During the Civil War, which lasted three years, they stood among the people. 1939 saw the victory of General Francisco Franco, supported by Nazi Germany and the Italy of Mussolini. Threatened with death, they had no choice but to escape from Spain. Some intellectuals experienced French concentration camps but, for the most part, they found refuge in Latin America, especially in Mexico and Venezuela. In exile, they swore to remain loyal to the Second Republic and to the spirit of the Spanish people. Moved by liberal views and humane ideals, these philosophers belonged to the vanquished, as those everywhere in Europe who rose against Fascist barbarity. As a result, their respective works are still widely unknown today – despite relentless efforts made to promote their thought to a larger audience for over half a century. In addition to the historical context of crisis during the interwar period, the situation of Spanish philosophy itself is suggestive. Indeed, Spanish philosophy was institutionalised at the beginning of the twentieth century only: the Schools of Madrid and Barcelona were created. These politics of cultural and intellectual renovation are first bestowed upon the generation of philosophers I study, born in the 1900s. When the Spanish War erupts, they had become professionals of international recognition. This shows the actual limits of academic philosophy, incapable of acknowledging unorthodox ways of philosophising. The experience of exile itself serves in my opinion as a catalyst: Spanish Republican philosophers in exile seek emancipation from academic conventions to philosophise freely; that is, in Spanish and according to the spirit of the people. No doubt “poetic reason” – the true invention of Spanish Republican exile – stems from this ideal of autonomous thinking.
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Fonsato, Vanna Marisa. "Giudizi letterari di Isabella Teotochi Albrizzi nel carteggio inedito della Raccolta Piancastelli." Thesis, McGill University, 1992. http://digitool.Library.McGill.CA:80/R/?func=dbin-jump-full&object_id=61287.
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The present work examines the literary criticism expressed by Isabella Teotochi Albrizzi in several of her unpublished letters.The first part outlines the cultural and historical tradition of Venice during the Eighteenth Century. Particular attention is subsequently given to the intellectual role of women, their contribution to the literary salons of the time, and the neoclassical tradition. This first part is essential in that it supplies a valuable context to Isabella Teotochi Albrizzi's writings.
In the second part, I examine Isabella Teotochi Albrizzi's literary criticism of major European authors and works. Through these criticisms she exposes her misvision of the literary world to which she aspired, and reveals that although she was influenced by the subtle preromantic tendencies, she remained faithful to the neoclassical school.
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Hauswedell, Tessa C. "The formation of a European identity through a transnational public sphere? : the case of three Western European cultural journals, 1989-2006." Thesis, University of St Andrews, 2009. http://hdl.handle.net/10023/789.
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This thesis analyses processes of discursive European identity formation in three cultural journals: Esprit, from France, the British New Left Review and the German Merkur during the time periods 1989-92, and, a decade later, during 2003-06. The theoretical framework which the thesis brings to bear on this analysis is that of the European Public Sphere. This model builds on Jürgen Habermas’s original model of a “public sphere”, and alleges that a sphere of common debate about issues of European concern can lead to a more defined and integrated sense of a European identity which is widely perceived as vague and inchoate. The relevancy of the public sphere model and its connection to the larger debate about European identity, especially since 1989, are discussed in the first part of the thesis. The second part provides a comparative analysis of the main European debates in the journals during the respective time periods. It outlines the mechanisms by which identity is expressed and assesses when, and to what extent, shared notions of European identity emerge. The analysis finds that identity formation does not occur through a developmental, gradual convergence of views as the European public sphere model envisages. Rather, it is brought about in much more haphazard back-and-forth movements. Moreover, shared notions of European identity between all the journals only arise in moments of perceived crises. Such crises are identified as the most salient factor which galvanizes expressions of a common, shared sense of European identity across national boundaries and ideological cleavages. The thesis concludes that the model of the EPS is too dependent on a partial view of how identity formation occurs and should thus adopt a more nuanced understanding about the complex factors that are at play in these processes. For the principled attempt to circumscribe identity formation as the outcome of communicative processes alone is likely to be thwarted by external events.
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Boykin, Dennis Joseph. "Wartime text and context: Cyril Connolly's Horizon." Thesis, The University of Sydney, 2007. http://hdl.handle.net/2123/1959.
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This thesis examines the literary journal Horizon, its editor Cyril Connolly, and a selection of its editorial articles, poems, short stories and essays in the context of the Second World War, from 1939-45. Analyses of these works, their representation of wartime experience, and their artistic merit, serve as evidence of a shared and sustained literary engagement with the war. Collectively, they demonstrate Horizon’s role as one of the primary outlets for British literature and cultural discourse during the conflict. Previous assessments of the magazine as an apolitical organ with purely aesthetic concerns have led to enduring critical neglect and misappraisal. This thesis shows that, contrary to the commonly held view, Horizon consistently offered space for political debate, innovative criticism, and war-relevant content. It argues that Horizon’s wartime writing is indicative of the many varied types of literary response to a war that was all but incomprehensible for those who experienced it. These poems, stories and essays offer a distinctive and illuminating insight into the war and are proof that a viable literary culture thrived during the war years. This thesis also argues that Horizon, as a periodical, should be considered as a creative entity in and of itself, and is worthy of being studied in this light. The magazine’s constituent parts, interesting enough when considered separately, are shaped, informed, and granted new shades of meaning by their position alongside other works in Horizon. Chapters in the thesis cover editorials and editing, poetry, short stories, political essays, and critical essays respectively. Analyses of individual works are situated in the context of larger concerns in order to demonstrate the coherence of debate and discourse that characterised Horizon’s wartime run. In arguing that Horizon is a singular creative entity worthy of consideration in its own right, this thesis locates itself within the emerging field of periodical studies. Further, by arguing that the magazine demonstrates the value of Second World War literature, it articulates with other recent attempts to reassess the scope and quality of that literature. More specifically, this thesis offers the first focused and in-depth analysis of Horizon’s formative years.
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Boykin, Dennis Joseph. "Wartime text and context Cyril Connolly's Horizon /." University of Sydney, 2007. http://hdl.handle.net/2123/1959.
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Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)This thesis examines the literary journal Horizon, its editor Cyril Connolly, and a selection of its editorial articles, poems, short stories and essays in the context of the Second World War, from 1939-45. Analyses of these works, their representation of wartime experience, and their artistic merit, serve as evidence of a shared and sustained literary engagement with the war. Collectively, they demonstrate Horizon’s role as one of the primary outlets for British literature and cultural discourse during the conflict. Previous assessments of the magazine as an apolitical organ with purely aesthetic concerns have led to enduring critical neglect and misappraisal. This thesis shows that, contrary to the commonly held view, Horizon consistently offered space for political debate, innovative criticism, and war-relevant content. It argues that Horizon’s wartime writing is indicative of the many varied types of literary response to a war that was all but incomprehensible for those who experienced it. These poems, stories and essays offer a distinctive and illuminating insight into the war and are proof that a viable literary culture thrived during the war years. This thesis also argues that Horizon, as a periodical, should be considered as a creative entity in and of itself, and is worthy of being studied in this light. The magazine’s constituent parts, interesting enough when considered separately, are shaped, informed, and granted new shades of meaning by their position alongside other works in Horizon. Chapters in the thesis cover editorials and editing, poetry, short stories, political essays, and critical essays respectively. Analyses of individual works are situated in the context of larger concerns in order to demonstrate the coherence of debate and discourse that characterised Horizon’s wartime run. In arguing that Horizon is a singular creative entity worthy of consideration in its own right, this thesis locates itself within the emerging field of periodical studies. Further, by arguing that the magazine demonstrates the value of Second World War literature, it articulates with other recent attempts to reassess the scope and quality of that literature. More specifically, this thesis offers the first focused and in-depth analysis of Horizon’s formative years.
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Frison, Hélène. "La réception des Ballets russes à Madrid et Barcelone (1916-1929)." Thesis, Paris 3, 2014. http://www.theses.fr/2014PA030128.
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La compagnie des Ballets russes, fondée par Diaghilev en 1911, constitue un tournant dans l’histoire de la scène occidentale. Reprenant le principe de l’œuvre d’art totale, la troupe propose des spectacles composés par des peintres, des chorégraphes et des musiciens. Leur succès est fulgurant et leur influence décisive. Cette thèse se propose d’étudier la réception des Ballets russes en Espagne. Alors que l’Europe est en guerre, la Péninsule constitue une terre d’accueil propice aux échanges. Les intellectuels du pays s’interrogent sur les possibilités de rénover la scène théâtrale et sont attentifs aux expériences qui viennent de l’étranger. Les ballets que propose la compagnie entrent en résonnance avec leurs propres préoccupations. Ils posent à la fois la question de la tradition au sein de la modernité, du national et du cosmopolitisme et s’exportent à l’étranger. Ce travail s’attache à confronter les différentes réceptions qui sont simultanément menées dans les deux capitales culturelles de l’Espagne au moment où les régionalismes s’affirment toujours plus. La présentation de l’état des lieux de la scène espagnole constitue le premier moment de cette thèse. La deuxième partie est entièrement consacrée à la première saison (1916) que la compagnie donne en Espagne ainsi qu’aux débats auxquels elle donne lieu. Les troisième et quatrième parties mettent en miroir les lectures qui sont faites à Madrid puis à Barcelone et présentent les singularités de chacune des deux capitales culturelles du paysThe Ballets Russes company was founded by Diaghilev in 1911, and marked a turning point in the history of the Western European stage art. Taking up the Gesamtkunstwerk, the company offered shows composed by painters, choreographers and musicians. Their success was immediate and their influence was decisive. This work will examine how the Ballets Russes were received in Spain. The Spanish peninsula offered a fertile ground for exchange while Europe was at war, with the country's intellectuals wondering about how to renew the theatre scene and being receptive to foreign experiments on the matter. The ballets offered by the company reflected those concerns by addressing the question of the role of tradition within modernity as well as the concepts of nationalism and cosmopolitism while managing to find an audience abroad. This study aims at confronting the simultaneous reception of the Ballets Russes in the two cultural capitals of Spain at a time when regionalism was becoming increasingly strong. The first part will give a description of the Spanish theatre and arts scene. The second part will be entirely dedicated to the company’s first season in Spain (1916) and to the debates it raised. The third and fourth parts will deal with the way the ballets were received and understood in Madrid and Barcelona, through a presentation of the particularities of each of these two cultural capitals
La compañía de los Ballets russes, fundada por Diaghilev en 1911, constituye un momento relevante de la historia de la escena occidental. Inspirándose del principio del Gesamtkunstwerk wagneriano, la compañía presenta espectáculos compuestos por pintores, coreógrafos y compositores. Su éxito es enorme y su influencia decisiva. Esta tesis estudia la recepción de los Ballets russes en España. Durante la Primera Guerra Mundial, la Península aparece como una tierra de acogida propicia a los intercambios. Los intelectuales españoles se interrogan sobre las posibilidades de renovar la escena teatral y están atentos a las experiencias realizadas en el extranjero. Las obras estrenadas por la compañía llaman su atención. Compaginan la tradición y la modernidad, lo nacional y el cosmopolitismo y se exportan al extranjero. Este estudio presenta una comparación entre las diferentes recepciones llevadas a cabo en las dos capitales culturales españolas en un momento en que los regionalismos se afirman cada vez más. Una presentación general de la escena español de aquel entonces constituye el primer momento de esta tesis. La segunda etapa se centra en la primera temporada rusa que la compañía presenta en España (1916) así como en los debates que surgen entonces. Las etapas 3 y 4 estudian las recepciones que tienen lugar en Madrid y en Barcelona comparando las características de cada una de las capitales culturales del país
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Owen, Ceri. "Vaughan Williams, song, and the idea of 'Englishness'." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2014. http://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:117f2c64-3b63-43aa-9dd3-15a7ce2f9339.
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It is now broadly accepted that Vaughan Williams's music betrays a more complex relation to national influences than has traditionally been assumed. It is argued in this thesis that despite the trends towards revisionism that have characterized recent work, Vaughan Williams's interest in and engagement with English folk materials and cultures remains only partially understood. Offering contextual interpretation of materials newly available in the field, my work takes as its point of departure the critical neglect surrounding Vaughan Williams's contradictory compositional debut, in which he denounced the value of folk song in English art music in an article published alongside his song 'Linden Lea', subtitled 'A Dorset Folk Song'. Reconstructing the under-documented years of the composer's early career, it is demonstrated that Vaughan Williams's subsequent 'conversion' and lifelong attachment to folk song emerged as part of a broader concern with the intelligible and participatory quality of song and its performance by the human voice. As such, it is argued that the ways in which this composer theorized an idea of 'song' illuminate a powerful perspective from which to re-consider the propositions of his project for a national music. Locating Vaughan Williams's writings within contemporaneous cultural ideas and practices surrounding 'song', 'voice', and 'Englishness', this work brings such contexts into dialogue with readings of various of the composer's works, composed both before and after the First World War. It is demonstrated in this way that the rehabilitation of Vaughan Williams's music and reputation profitably proceeds by reconstructing a complex dialogue between his writings; between various cultural ideas and practices of English music; between the reception of his works by contemporaneous critics; and crucially, by considering the propositions of his music as explored through analysis. Ultimately, this thesis contends that Vaughan Williams's music often betrays a complex and self-conscious performance of cultural ideas of national identity, negotiating an optimistic or otherwise ambivalent relationship to an English musical tradition that is constructed and referenced through a particular idea of song.
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Bundu, Malela Buata. "L'Homme pareil aux autres: stratégies et postures identitaires de l'écrivain afro-antillais à Paris, 1920-1960." Doctoral thesis, Universite Libre de Bruxelles, 2006. http://hdl.handle.net/2013/ULB-DIPOT:oai:dipot.ulb.ac.be:2013/210803.
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Cette étude porte sur le fait littéraire afro-antillais de l’ère coloniale (1920-1960). Il s’agit d’examiner les stratégies des agents à partir des cas de René Maran, Léopold Sédar Senghor, Aimé Césaire, Édouard Glissant et Mongo Beti et de percevoir comment ils se définissent leur identité littéraire et sociale.Pour ce faire, notre démarche s’articule en deux temps :(1) examiner les conditions de possibilité d’un champ littéraire afro-antillais à Paris (colonisation française et ses effets, configuration d’un champ littéraire pré-institutionnalisé, etc.) ;(2) analyser les processus de consolidation du champ, ainsi que les luttes internes qui opposent deux tendances émergentes représentées d’abord par Senghor et Césaire, ensuite par Beti et Glissant, dont les prises de position littéraires mettent en œuvre des « modèles empiriques » ;ceux-ci régulent et unifient leurs rapports au monde et à l’Afrique.
This study relates to afro-carribean literature in colonial period (1920-1960). We want to examine the strategies of agents like René Maran, Léopold Sédar Senghor, Aimé Césaire, Édouard Glissant and Mongo Beti ;and we want to understand how they invente literary and social identity.
Our approach is structured in two steps: we shall analyse (1) the conditions for an afro-carribean literary field to appear in Paris (french colonialism and its consequences, configuration of literay field.) ;(2) the consolidation of this field and the internal struggles between two tendances represented by Senghor and Césaire, by Glissant and Beti whose literary practice shows the “empirical model” that regularizes and consolidates their relation with the world and Africa.
Doctorat en philosophie et lettres, Orientation langue et littérature
info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished
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DELPHY, Christine. "Modèles italiens et traditions nationales : les artistes belges en Italie (1830-1914)." Doctoral thesis, 2001. http://hdl.handle.net/1814/5748.
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BERTILOTTI, Teresa. "Il palcoscenico della nazione : 1909-1918." Doctoral thesis, 2012. http://hdl.handle.net/1814/25194.
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Examining Board: Professor Heinz-Gerhard Haupt, IUE (Supervisor); Professor Lucy Riall, IUE (Relatore IUE); Professor Martin Baumeister, Ludwig Maximilians Universität, München (Relatore esterno); Professor Catherine Brice, Université Paris-Est Créteil (Relatore esterno).Defence date: 7 November 2012
PDF of thesis uploaded from the Library digital archive of EUI PhD theses
This dissertation examines the forms and spaces of entertainment, such as theatres, cinemas and music halls, in Rome between 1911, when celebrations for the 50th anniversary of Italy’s unification took place, and the First World War. This was a time characterized by the emergence of popular and mass culture and by the spread of a specifically nationalist culture that changed dramatically after the war against Libya in 1911. By adopting a broad definition of "culture,” including both high and low culture, this dissertation explores the ways in which a specific theatrical tradition staged the nation’s history, in particular that of the Risorgimento, after Italian unification. It then broadens the analysis to other forms of entertainment. This dissertation argues that the 1909-1911 celebrations were marked by a renewed attention to the "patriotic” tradition, and spurred the emergence of new theatrical and cinematographic productions, which became particularly relevant in the context of the First World War, thus giving substance to the "culture de guerre”. I argue that theatre shows and movies avoided representing the violence and suffering that characterized the war, partly because of the existence of various forms of censorship. However, the presence of wounded bodies among the audience gave way to a dual representation, and transformed theatres, cinemas and music halls into privileged spaces where the war and the domestic front met. By taking into account the case-study of a girls’ school, I show the gendered dimension of civil society mobilization. Finally, this dissertation analyzes the role entertainment played in "building the enemy,” identified with Kultur, and the emergence of a moral discourse about entertainment, which coincided with the spread of popular culture - especially the cinema - and became even stronger and more complex with the outbreak of the First World War.
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LUNA, GONZALEZ Adriana. "From self-preservation to self-liking in Paolo Mattia Doria : civil philosophy and natural jurisprudence in the early Italian Enlightenment." Doctoral thesis, 2009. http://hdl.handle.net/1814/12705.
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Defence Date: 07/09/2009Examining Board: Prof. Martin van Gelderen (European University Institute) supervisor; Prof. Vittor Ivo Comparato (Università di Perugia); Prof. Sebastian Conrad (European University Institute); Prof. Maurizio Viroli (Princeton University) external supervisor
PDF of thesis uploaded from the Library digital archive of EUI PhD theses
From the outset of his intellectual life Doria had been a civil philosopher interested in reflecting, in a secular manner on the foundations of civil society thereby departing from the more traditional discussions that took as their framework moral philosophy and natural law theories. Unlike other Catholic thinkers, when discussing happiness Doria was not interested in debating religious issues such as salvation, revelation, or the states of beatitude or contemplation and how these might give meaning to ‘ happiness’. For this reason this thesis explores Doria’s varying and evolving conceptions of human nature and happiness, trying to follow their development and their role in shaping Doria’s political thought. A further aim is to ascertain the implications of these developments and to analyse Doria’s discussions of the foundations of the civil life, his understanding of men as individuals, their sociability and the legitimation of human politics. I am interested in elucidating to what extent he believed that men act as moral beings in Doria’s political philosophy, which features of their psychologies he considers decisive in judging men’s rationality and morality, i.e. how he grounds their judgements and acts in order to justify their legitimacy. In short the key question here is: How, in other words, does Doria ground his theory of human agency and men’s freedom to act in politics? Doria is writing at a critical moment in the history of civil and moral philosophy not only in the Neapolitan but also, in the European context.
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ORTOLJA-BAIRD, Alexandra. "Where philosophy meets bureaucracy : Cesare Beccaria's social contract from page to practice." Doctoral thesis, 2017. http://hdl.handle.net/1814/49327.
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Defence date: 14 December 2017Examining Board: Prof. Ann Thomson, European University Institute (Supervisor); Prof. Pavel Kolář, European University Institute; Prof. Clorinda Donato, California State University; Prof. Richard Whatmore University of St. Andrews
Cesare Beccaria, renowned author of the 1764 Enlightenment treatise Dei delitti e delle pene, has long been celebrated as the voice of the abolitionist movement against the death penalty, the founding father of modern criminology, and the go-to source on penal reform. These personalities have been fuelled by the instant global success of Beccaria’s text, however this celebrity trajectory has clouded many of his less sensational identities in its wake: Beccaria, reluctant man of letters, enlightened Habsburg bureaucrat and practical philosopher. This thesis recovers these entangled personas and, in so doing, provides an intellectual history of Cesare Beccaria that emphasises his substantial contribution as a philosopher, not just on the page, but in practice. Beccaria envisioned an ambitious social project. Proposing a vision of society in which the social contract served to protect “the greatest happiness divided between the greater number” and which was based upon a hedonistic calculation of human nature, Beccaria concluded that individuals had the equal right to pursue pleasure and that government was obliged to provide this opportunity. Interpreting this in economic terms, Beccaria presented a case for the removal of all institutionalised obstacles to the pursuit of wealth: while not everyone could achieve riches, all had the equal chance at improving their lot. His philosophy was the product of both a rich reading culture and intellectual network, which were simultaneously patriotic and cosmopolitan. On the one hand, local, specialised and concerned with matters of public utility, on the other, internationally, intellectually and socially diverse. However, the social contract was no utopian vision, but rather a blueprint for the political classes. In the field of public health in particular, Beccaria demonstrated his commitment to providing equal access to the pursuit of pleasure, abiding by the tenets of his contract at all costs. It is this practically inclined philosophy that the thesis argues is Beccaria’s most important contribution to the Enlightenment.
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TERVOORT, Adrianus. "The Iter Italicum and the Northern Netherlands : Dutch students at Italian universities and their role in the Netherlands' society." Doctoral thesis, 2000. http://hdl.handle.net/1814/5995.
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Defence date: 14 October 2000Supervisors: Prof. dr. J. Brewer ; Prof. dr. H. de Ridder-Symoens
PDF of thesis uploaded from the Library digitised archive of EUI PhD theses completed between 2013 and 2017
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Hutt, Jonathan. "Changing minds : intellectual anxiety and the Shanghai style, 1927-1937." Phd thesis, 2003. http://hdl.handle.net/1885/150530.
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MIKOLAJEWSKI, Lukasz. "Disenchanted Europeans : Polish émigré writers from Kultura and the postwar reformulations of the West." Doctoral thesis, 2012. http://hdl.handle.net/1814/24604.
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Examining Board: Professor Philipp Ther (Supervisor); Professor Anthony Molho, European University Institute; Professor Paweł Śpiewak, Warsaw University; Professor Larry Wolff, New York University.Defence date: 27 September 2012
PDF of thesis uploaded from the Library digital archive of EUI PhD theses
What are “Europe” and “the West”? How did the understandings of these notions change after World War II? In what way were they reconsidered and re-evaluated by the exiles from those European countries that, after 1945, found themselves in the Soviet sphere of influence? In the present study I offer answers to these questions by analyzing the literary responses to the political division of the continent made by two exiles associated with the Polish émigré periodical Kultura, Jerzy Stempowski and Andrzej Bobkowski. Analyzing these two writers’ autobiographical works, and placing them in the context of the debates on Europe’s crisis and the future of “Western civilization” that took place on the pages of the periodical in the 1940s and 1950s, I reconstruct the broader dilemmas and uncertainties shared among those Polish exiles who opposed the creation of communist states in Eastern Europe. In the thesis I show that the change of the political situation on the continent led to profound reassessments of the power relations, the cultural distances, and the centrality attributed by these Polish intellectuals to France in their earlier understanding of the notions such as “the West”, “Europe” and “civilization”. I also analyze how the contributors to Kultura from two different generations of the Polish intelligentsia reacted in their works to the new relevance of the United States, and to the Cold War reinventions of “the West”, its classical past, its internal divisions and its major “others”. I trace changes occurring in their émigré texts written over many years and in many places (among them France, Guatemala and Switzerland), finding significant omissions, silences and obliterations in their postwar reconsiderations of European colonialism, nationalism and antisemitism. Finally, I interpret autobiographical texts from Kultura – diaries, travelogues and essays – as literary attempts to counter-map the European space, or to subvert the older cultural images that played a significant role in the postwar division of the continent.