Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'Other (Philosophy) in literature'
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1
Antonova, Antonia Ivo. "Finding Truth in Literature." Scholarship @ Claremont, 2015. http://scholarship.claremont.edu/cmc_theses/992.
Abstract:
This thesis uses Amy Kind’s defense of epistemic relevance in imagination to examine how and when true beliefs imparted in literary imaginings are justified as knowledge. I will show that readers’ literary imaginings must pass a test of epistemic relevance, as well as be paired with a strong affirming emotional response in order to justify the truth behind the beliefs they impart. I believe the justificatory affective response is a kind of non-propositional emotional imagining, distinct from the type of literary imaginings that initially imparted the beliefs. Due to this thesis’ focus on the justificatory power of literary imaginings related to emotion, my work shows how literature can provide new knowledge to the philosophical realms of ethics and emotion. Literary implications in other types of philosophical inquiry still remain unexplored.
2
Avalon, Jillian. "Life and Death: Spiritual Philosophy in Anna Karenina." Scholarship @ Claremont, 2013. http://scholarship.claremont.edu/cmc_theses/772.
Abstract:
This paper examines the structure, title, epigraph, and spiritual philosophy of Leo Tolstoy’s great novel, Anna Karenina. The intricate structure of the novel can leave more questions than it answers, and as the novel was written at such a critical, complex time of Tolstoy’s life, the ideas the characters struggle with in Anna Karenina are of both daily and cosmic importance. Considering influences and criticism of the novel, the method of Tolstoy’s vision of living well as shown in Anna Karenina leads to a very specific and intricate spiritual philosophy. It is also found that the novel’s structure and title are in conflict.
3
Spanfelner, Deborah L. Calabro. "Hélène Cixous, a space for the other in between forgetting, remembering and rewriting /." Diss., Online access via UMI:, 2007.
4
Ashok, Kumar Kuldeep. "Clairvoyance in Jainism: Avadhijñāna in Philosophy, Epistemology and Literature." FIU Digital Commons, 2018. https://digitalcommons.fiu.edu/etd/3700.
Abstract:
This thesis is an analytical study of the place of clairvoyance (avadhijñāna) in Jain epistemology and soteriology. It argues that avadhijñāna occupies an ambivalent position regarding both, since it is not solely attained by means of spiritual progression but may also spontaneously arise regardless of a being’s righteousness (samyaktva). Beginning with a survey of descriptions of avadhijñāna in the canons of each sect, including a translation of Nandisūtra 12-28, it examines how commentaries, philosophy and narrative literature developed and elaborated upon avadhijñāna as part of its epistemological system. Further, it examines the nexus of avadhijñāna and karma theory to understand the role of clairvoyance in the cultivation of the three jewels—correct perception, knowledge, and conduct—that lead to liberation (mokṣa). Finally, several examples of clairvoyants from Jain narratives show how clairvoyance reamined an ambivalent tool for virtuous transformation in popular literature.
5
Robson, Julia Caroline. "The dialectic of self and other in Montaigne, Proust and Woolf." Thesis, University of Warwick, 2000. http://wrap.warwick.ac.uk/4372/.
Abstract:
This thesis investigates the construction of identity in relation to an other. It considers three writers who, working at moments when the nature of selfhood was an urgent issue, conduct profound and original enquiries into the question of self- construction, and seeks both to reassess their contributions to this debate, and, in bringing their preoccupations and methods to bear upon each other, to open up new ways of approaching and reading their work. Considering a range of socio-cultural and religious forms of otherness -- the cannibal, the witch, the Jew, the aristocrat, the woman, the divine -- it embraces material from a number of important modem critical fields, and suggests how these topics might be combined to offer a coherent statement about the enduring issue of s elf- fashioning. The thesis seeks to map out a trajectory of decreasing investment in external communities, and an increasing perception of the self as a source and agent in the construction of identity. Looking in turn at the work of Montaigne, Proust and Woolf, it argues that where the Essais construct complex orders which appropriate the other to reinforce the identity of the self, Proust and Woolf increasingly, although gradually, and by no means always successfully, attempt to negotiate a less precisely- engaged relationship between other and self, and to assign the other a less constitutive role in the realization and expression of identity. The thesis also considers more briefly contexts in which this trajectory is reversed. To the extent that they examine modernist subjectivity, Proust and Woolf articulate an anxiety about the separation of self and world which leads to an attempted recuperation of the integrated orders depicted by Montaigne.
6
Flaherty, Patricia. ""Poor girl!" feminism, disability and the other in Ulysses /." Diss., Connect to the thesis, 2006. http://hdl.handle.net/10066/634.
7
Palmer, Helen. "A manifesto for nonsense : the futurist drive in Deleuze's poetics." Thesis, Goldsmiths College (University of London), 2012. http://eprints.gold.ac.uk/8021/.
Abstract:
This thesis presents a critical analysis of Deleuze’s philosophy of language, using and examining Russian and Italian futurist manifestos to draw out the ‘futurist’ aspects of Deleuze’s language and thought. These aspects constitute a poetics of Deleuze as well as a poetics of the avant-garde, presenting in both areas the celebrated, utopian state of language as dynamic, performative matter. The way in which futurist manifestos often attempt to perform and demand their aims simultaneously, and the temporal problems which arise due to this, is an operation which can be perceived in Deleuze’s writing. The difference between writing which describes a linguistic practice and writing which performs this linguistic practice is a temporal gap requiring a double operation of description and enactment, which the performative manifesto purports to fulfil. In both Deleuzian and futurist poetics, however, the fulfilment of this double operation can lead to problematic territory. Deleuze presents several linguistic practices in The Logic of Sense which can also be located in the writings of both Russian and Italian futurists, despite the differing political and aesthetic programmes of these variants of the movement. The common element identified and examined in this thesis is an accelerative drive to eliminate the temporal gap between items in an analogical equation so that synonymy is no longer an inexact science; the conjunction and the copula are truncated and cleave together, resulting in radical linguistic becoming. My argument is that minute technical linguistic modifications such as these operate synecdochically within futurist and Deleuze’s poetics, standing for their creators’ entire conceptual systems. Ultimately, the paradoxes inherent in the relationship between the radical fluidity of futurist nonsense and the radical fixity of its ensuing formalism provide a new way of thinking about Deleuze’s approach to language.
8
Smit, Helena. "Postkoloniale terugskrywing : verset teen of verbond met kolonialisme ; Tweespoor (Kortprosa)." Thesis, Link to the online version, 2006. http://hdl.handle.net/10019/239.
9
Brunner, Kathleen Marie. "The hermeneutic of the look and the face of the other in the philosophy and literature of Jean-Pal Sartre /." Thesis, Connect to this title online; UW restricted, 1997. http://hdl.handle.net/1773/6618.
10
Tipton, Keny Elizabeth Garcia-Corales Guillermo. "El nuevo historicismo y la otredad en la narrativa contemporánea nicaragúense : el caso de Sergio Ramírez = New Historicism and Otherness in contemporary Nicaraguan narrative: the case of Sergio Ramírez. /." Waco, Tex. : Baylor University, 2006. http://hdl.handle.net/2104/4192.
11
Baillon, Florence. "Altérité pour les romancières latino-americaines (1950-1990)." Lille : Atelier national de reproduction des thèses, 1997. http://catalog.hathitrust.org/api/volumes/oclc/68945326.html.
12
Levin, Katie. "More things than dreamt of in our philosophy tutoring, administration, and other peculiarities of writing center work /." [Bloomington, Ind.] : Indiana University, 2007. http://gateway.proquest.com/openurl?url_ver=Z39.88-2004&rft_val_fmt=info:ofi/fmt:kev:mtx:dissertation&res_dat=xri:pqdiss&rft_dat=xri:pqdiss:3243798.
Abstract:
Thesis (Ph.D.)--Indiana University, Dept. of English, 2007.Title from PDF t.p. (viewed Nov. 18, 2008). Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 67-12, Section: A, page: 4530. Advisers: W. Raymond Smith; Christine R. Farris.
13
Hurst, Rebecca Eldridge Hurst. "Spiritual Quest as Poetic Sequence: Theodore Roethke's "North American Sequence" and its Relation to T S Eliot's "Four Quartets"." W&M ScholarWorks, 1997. https://scholarworks.wm.edu/etd/1539626121.
14
Choi, Inhwan. "Otherness and identity in eighteenth-century colonial discourses /." view abstract or download file of text, 2002. http://wwwlib.umi.com/cr/uoregon/fullcit?p3072577.
Abstract:
Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Oregon, 2002.Typescript. Includes vita and abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 173-180). Also available for download via the World Wide Web; free to University of Oregon users.
15
Steinbrecher, Stephanie A. "The Philosophy of Ecology in John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath." Scholarship @ Claremont, 2016. http://scholarship.claremont.edu/scripps_theses/866.
Abstract:
This thesis explores the possibilities for ecocritical study in fiction through John Steinbeck’s 1939 novel The Grapes of Wrath. Major ecocritical interpretation has yet to gain much traction in novels; by focusing on human nature, this form’s “anthropocentric” posture seems itself to be antithetical to ecocritical efforts, which aim to unseat humans as the center of the moral universe. However, by analyzing The Grapes of Wrath’s formal, narratorial, and thematic valences, I argue that principles of social justice concurrently imply environmental justice in the philosophical currents of the text. Tenets of deep ecology and Aldo Leopold’s “land ethic” inform the novel’s overall environmental outlook. The key to my interpretation is the value of community at the center of Steinbeck’s world. To expand principles of the collectivism and compassion in the social community to include the broader ecological community, I focus on the narrative’s unique Judeo-Christian spirituality and humanistic discourse. Ultimately I identify cohesion in The Grapes of Wrath’s composition that makes a single narrative of both the natural and the human worlds, and that creates a moral universe that guides ethical behavior towards others, both human and non-human; in doing so, I argue Steinbeck’s novel both enacts and represents an ecologically minded ethic.
16
Adkins, Roger A. 1973. "The 'monstrous Other' speaks: Postsubjectivity and the queering of the normal." Thesis, University of Oregon, 2010. http://hdl.handle.net/1794/10875.
Abstract:
x, 197 p. A print copy of this thesis is available through the UO Libraries. Search the library catalog for the location and call number.This dissertation investigates the cultural importance of the "monstrous Other" in postmodern literature, including novels from Sweden, Finland, and the United States. While the theoretical concept of "the Other" is in wide circulation in the humanities and social sciences, the concept has only recently been modified with the adjective "monstrous" to highlight a special case of the Other that plays an important role in the formation of human subjectivity. In order to better understand the representational legacy of the monstrous Other, I explore some of the principal venues in which it has appeared in western literature, philosophy, folklore, and politics. Using a Foucauldian archaeological approach in my literature survey allows me to trace the tradition of the monstrous Other in such sources as medieval bestiaries, the wild man motif in folklore and popular culture, and the medicalization of intersexual embodiment. In all cases, the monstrous Other is a complex phenomenon with broad implications for the politics of subjectivity and the future of social and political justice. Moreover, the monstrous Other poses significant challenges for the ongoing tenability of normative notions of the human, including such primary human traits as sexuality and a gendered, "natural" embodiment. Given the complexities of the monstrous Other and the ways in which it both upholds and intervenes in normative human identities, no single theoretical approach is adequate to the task of examining its functioning. Instead, the project calls for an approach that blends the methodologies of (post)psychoanalytic and queer theory while retaining a critical awareness of both the representational nature of subjectivity and its material effects. By employing both strains of theory, I am able to "read" the monstrous Other as both a necessary condition of subjectivity and a model of intersubjectivity that could provide an alternative to the positivism and binarism of normative subjectivity. The texts that I examine here reveal the ways in which postmodern reconfigurations of the monstrous Other challenge the (hetero)normativity of human subjectivity and its hierarchical forms of differentiation. My reading of these texts locates the possibilities for a hybridized, cyborgian existence beyond the outermost limits of positivistic, western subjectivity.
Committee in charge: Ellen Rees, Chairperson, German and Scandinavian; Daniel Wojcik, Member, English; Jenifer Presto, Member, Comparative Literature; Aletta Biersack, Outside Member, Anthropology
17
Akisik, Aslihan. "Self and Other in the Renaissance: Laonikos Chalkokondyles and Late Byzantine Intellectuals." Thesis, Harvard University, 2013. http://dissertations.umi.com/gsas.harvard:10884.
Abstract:
The capture of Constantinople by the Ottoman armies of Mehmed II in 1453 was a cataclysmic event that reverberated throughout Renaissance Europe. This event intensified the exodus of Byzantines to Italy and beyond and they brought along with them the heritage of Greek antiquity. Laonikos Chalkokondyles contributed to the Renaissance with his detailed application of Herodotos to the fifteenth century, Apodeixis Historion, and made sense of the rise of the Ottomans with the lens of ancient history. The Apodeixis was printed in Latin, French, and Greek and was widely successful. The historian restored Herodotean categories of ethnicity, political rule, language, and geography to make sense of contemporary events and peoples. This was a thorough study of ancient historiography and Laonikos thus parted ways with previous Byzantine historians. I refer to Laonikos' method as "revolutionary classicizing", to describe the ways in which he abandoned the ideal of lawful imperium and restored the model of oriental tyranny when he described the nascent Ottoman state. What appears to be emulation of the ancient classics was radical revival of political concepts such as city-states as ethnic units, freedom defined as independence from foreign rule, law-giving as fundamental aspect of Hellenic tradition which did not encompass the Christian period. Laonikos has often been studied in the context of proto-nationalist historiography as he had composed a universal history, wherein he had related extensive information on various ethnic and political units in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. However, such proto-nationalist application does not fully capture Laonikos’ classicizing interests. Laonikos referred to his contemporaries as Hellenes, not because he was a nationalist who defined political identity only by recourse to language and common history. Rather, Laonikos believed that Hellenic identity, both referring to paganism as well as ethnicity, was relevant and not bankrupt. Importantly, we introduce manuscripts that have not yet been utilized to argue that Hellenism as paganism was living reality for Laonikos, his Platonist teacher Plethon, and their circle of intellectuals in the fifteenth century.
18
Bakara, Nathalie. "La construction de l'altérité dans deux romans de Madeleine Monette." Thesis, National Library of Canada = Bibliothèque nationale du Canada, 2001. http://www.collectionscanada.ca/obj/s4/f2/dsk3/ftp04/MQ58439.pdf.
19
Caron, Geneviève. "Écho ironique et altérité chez Flora Balzano : l'autre est un je, suivi de, Y'a pus d'eau dans piscine (récit)." Thesis, McGill University, 2008. http://digitool.Library.McGill.CA:80/R/?func=dbin-jump-full&object_id=111609.
Abstract:
In Soigne ta chute, a novel by Neo-Quebecer writer Flora Balzano, immigration stereotypes are challenged by the irony of the narrator. The critique section of this thesis describes how the irony of a marginalised character can yield an identity statement. This essay studies how Quebec realities are echoed in an ironic manner by the narrator, illustrating her cultural identity within Quebec society yet all the while affirming her complex subjectivity. The observation of the ironic mechanisms will allow for a better understanding of the exploited strategies depicted in the creative writing section of this thesis, the novel Y'a pus d'eau dans piscine . The character portrayed in this novella is unsatisfied with traditional identity categories and makes use of irony and digression to create new identity configurations. Those strategies then allow this character to gain perspective on the consequences of her gender hybridization.
20
Wu, Jian. "Translating identity English language travel discourse on China, 1976-present /." Diss., Connect to online resource - MSU authorized users, 2008.
21
Wardle, Nancy E. "Representations of African identity in nineteenth and twentieth century Francophone literature." Columbus, Ohio : Ohio State University, 2007. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc%5Fnum=osu1180554301.
22
Ellery, Margaret. "Making the frontier manifest : the representation of American politics in new age literature /." Connect to this title, 2007. http://theses.library.uwa.edu.au/adt-WU2008.0043.
23
Boyle, Kirk. "The Catastrophic Real: Late Capitalism and Other Naturalized Disasters." University of Cincinnati / OhioLINK, 2009. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=ucin1250625590.
24
Skarlinsky, Solsiree Lynn. "Turn Me On or Off: A Study On Epigenetics and Merleau-Ponty in Angela Carter’s “The Lady of the House of Love”." FIU Digital Commons, 2016. http://digitalcommons.fiu.edu/etd/2465.
Abstract:
This study aims to trace points of intersection between the too often divorced disciplines of literature, continental philosophy, and the hard sciences in Angela Carter’s “The Lady of the House of Love.” In short, this thesis will not only explore how such conversations surface within the short story, but will also serve as an explication of Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s philosophy of body and space, and the theory of epigenetics. Through these explications, the thesis itself will also gear one discipline towards the other as both theories intimately bind the environment with the body, and the body with the environment. Thus, the body and the environment are not separate and passive, but active and intertwined in a manner much like the aforementioned disciplines I posit are. Therefore, the goal of this thesis is to first postulate that such conversations between literature, philosophy, and science are already occurring, and as such, stress that such conversations need further discussion and exploration.
25
Paludan, Kajsa. "Lisbeth Salander Lost In Translation - An Exploration of the English Version of The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo." ScholarWorks@UNO, 2014. http://scholarworks.uno.edu/td/1935.
Abstract:
Abstract
This thesis sets out to explore the cultural differences between Sweden and the United States by examining the substantial changes made to Men Who Hate Women, including the change in the book’s title in English to The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo. My thesis focuses in particular on changes in the depiction of the female protagonist: Lisbeth Salander. Unfortunately we do not have access to translator Steven T. Murray’s original translation, though we know that the English publisher and rights holder Christopher MacLehose chose to enhance Larsson’s work in order to make the novel more interesting for English-speaking readers, which resulted in Murray translating under the pseudonym Reg Keeland as he did not agree to the translation made by MacLehose and Knopf. Furthermore, this thesis touches on the ethics of translation, and will likewise argue the importance of facilitating a dialog concerning misogyny and rape culture.
26
Acosta-Lewis, Zachary L. "Narrative and the Reconfiguration of the Humanist Subject in Robbe-Grillet, Ballard, and Ligotti." VCU Scholars Compass, 2016. http://scholarscompass.vcu.edu/etd/4223.
Abstract:
This thesis examines the utility of the novels, short stories, critical writing, and generically indistinct work of Alain Robbe-Grillet, J.G. Ballard, and Thomas Ligotti in developing a critique of the contemporary manifestations of liberal humanist social, economic, and political subjectivities. To this end, the concurrence of formal fragmentation and sublime aesthetics in early Gothic fiction models the manner in which narrative structures can appropriate structural tropes of dominant institutions, critically reflecting ideological fracture. Read according to the assemblative approach outlined by Deleuze and Guattari, these authors serve as a productive and incisive response to the hegemony of capitalist territorialization with ontologically provocative critique.
27
Ejsmund, Arnika Nora. ""Light is the left hand of darkness" : breaking away from invalid dichotomies in science fiction." Diss., Pretoria : [s.n.], 2002. http://upetd.up.ac.za/thesis/available/etd-06172005-111926.
28
Brice, Dusty A. "The Lawrentian Woman: Monsters in the Margins of 20th-Century British Literature." Digital Commons @ East Tennessee State University, 2015. https://dc.etsu.edu/etd/2612.
Abstract:
Despite his own conservative values, D.H. Lawrence writes sexually liberated female characters. The most subversive female characters in Lawrence’s oeuvre are the Brangwens of The Rainbow. The Brangwens are prototypical models of a form of femininity that connects women to Nature while distancing them from society; his women are cast as monsters, but are strengthened from their link with Nature. They represent what I am calling the Lawrentian-Woman.
The Lawrentian-Woman has proven influential for contemporary British authors. I examine the Lawrentian-Woman’s adoption by later writers and her evolution from modernist frame to postmodern appropriation. First, I look at the Brangwens. They establish the tropes of the Lawrentian-Woman and provide the base from which to compare the model’s subsequent mutations. Next, I examine modern British writers and their appropriation of the Lawrentian-Woman. The Lawrentian-Woman’s attributes remain intact, but are deconstructed in ways that explore women’s continued liminality in patriarchal society.
29
Fajardo, Tiffany L. "The World in Singing Made: David Markson's "Wittgenstein's Mistress"." FIU Digital Commons, 2015. http://digitalcommons.fiu.edu/etd/1861.
Abstract:
In line with Wittgenstein's axiom that "what the solipsist means is quite correct; only it cannot be said, but makes itself manifest," this thesis aims to demonstrate how the gulf between analytic and continental philosophy can best be bridged through the mediation of art. The present thesis brings attention to Markson's work, lauded in the tradition of Faulkner, Joyce, and Lowry, as exemplary of the shift from modernity to postmodernity, wherein the human heart is not only in conflict with itself, but with the language out of which it is necessarily constituted. Markson limns the paradoxical condition of the subject severed from intersubjectivity, and affected not only by the grief of bereavement, which can be defined in Heideggarian terms as anxiety for the ontic negation of a being (i.e., death), but by loss, which I assert is the ontological ground for how Dasein encounters the nothing in anxiety proper.
30
De, Santa Jessica E. "Accounting for taste : the poetics of food and flavour in Virginia Woolf’s novels." Thesis, University of St Andrews, 2015. http://hdl.handle.net/10023/11825.
Abstract:
This thesis argues that tasting appears as an act of creative empathy and of knowledge acquisition in Virginia Woolf's writing. First contextualising my discussion within Woolf's own reading of the aesthetic and literary history of ‘taste', I then use Cixous' essay ‘Extreme Fidelity' (renamed ‘The Author in Truth') as a theoretical entryway to passages from The Voyage Out, Jacob's Room, A Room of One's Own, Mrs Dalloway, To the Lighthouse, The Waves, and Orlando which centralise the role of gustatory pleasure in creativity and epistemology. Cixous elaborates an oral, ‘poetic' and feminine ontology rooted in a receptivity to sensual pleasure, a concept that assists my reading of Woolf in several aspects. I suggest that in Woolf, both literal and figurative experiences of taste contribute to physical and psychic repletion, consequently eliciting empathy with the other (Cixous' term). This empathy which originates in the body constitutes an epistemological source distinct from intellectual or emotional intelligences, but one equally integral to the creative process. I assert that empathy features in Woolf as an extension or enlargement of the imagination through which a subject incorporates knowledge of alterity, but without consuming the other - as in the act of tasting. This ideation differs from notions of empathy as an analogical mapping or projection of self onto other. I discuss the ways in which a ‘gustatory epistemology' informs Woolf's approach to her craft, shapes the interrelationships of her characters, and materialises stylistically in her development of a ‘poetic' prose language.
31
Ellery, Margaret. "Making the frontier manifest : the representation of American politics in new age literature." University of Western Australia. School of Social and Cultural Studies, 2008. http://theses.library.uwa.edu.au/adt-WU2008.0043.
Abstract:
This thesis explores the history of the New Age movement through a political analysis of influential New Age books. By drawing upon cultural, religious and American studies, and concepts from literary criticism and political science, a new understanding of the movement becomes possible. This thesis analyses the ideological representations and rhetorical strategies employed in both New Age literature and American presidential discourse. It is argued that their shared imagery and discursive features indicate that New Age writings derive their ideological underpinnings and textual devices from dominant beliefs of American nationalism. This historical examination begins with the Cold War in the late 1940s and ends with the 1990s. Each chapter traces parallels between a particular presidential discourse and New Age texts published in the same decade commencing with Dwight D. Eisenhower and The Doors of Perception and finishing with William J. Clinton and The Celestine Prophecy: An Adventure. It argues that the appropriation of particular spiritualities in New Age texts is closely related to contemporary American geo-political interests and understandings. Major New Age spiritual trends are derived from regions, most often in the third world, which are considered to be under threat from forces such as Communism. New Age writings construct an imaginary possession of these worlds, reconfiguring these sites into frontiers of American influence. In particular, this study examines the influence of the jeremiads and the ensuing Monroe Doctrine and Manifest Destiny ideologies upon post-war national beliefs and the extent to which these understandings of nationalism inform New Age discourse. Representations of time and space, destiny and landscape, and self and other in these literary and political contexts are analysed. From this perspective, the eclecticism that marks the New Age can be historically understood as a shifting cultural expression of Cold War and post-Cold War political responses. Consequently, New Age literature is one of the means by which dominant American identity is reproduced and disseminated in what seems to be an alternative spiritual context.
32
Johnson, Gabrielle R. "No Hope For Rousseau in Tomorrowland: Limits of Civil Religion in E.L. Doctorow’s The Book of Daniel: A Novel (1971)." Digital Commons @ East Tennessee State University, 2020. https://dc.etsu.edu/honors/564.
Abstract:
Current scholarly work on E.L. Doctorow’s (1931-2015) novel The Book of Daniel: A Novel (1971) often ignores the narrator Daniel Isaacson’s implicit critique of Rousseau’s civil religion. This paper will show the importance of civil religion within the novel despite its being overlooked by most scholars. In The Book of Daniel, Daniel frequently examines instances of American civil religion and even goes as far as to describe it as inevitable and intrusive on freedom. Daniel implies throughout the novel that the American government models their civil religion on Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s (1712-1778) conception as described in his treatise The Social Contract (1762). Daniel suggests that Rousseau’s approach to civil religion creates a false dilemma between the ideals of civil religious soldier and enemy. Daniel’s critique shows a limitation within Rousseau’s and possibly America’s understanding of civil religion. Despite there being evidence supporting his critique, Daniel’s extreme intersectional approach to identity makes his critique impossible to implement within societal, political, or legal realms since it allows people to be both soldier and enemy at the same time.
33
Weber, Micah H. "WORK/DEATH, OF EACH IN THEIR OWN." VCU Scholars Compass, 2018. https://scholarscompass.vcu.edu/etd/5446.
34
Hanaway-Oakley, Cleo Alexandra. "'See ourselves as others see us' : a phenomenological study of James Joyce's Ulysses and early cinema." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2012. http://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:80821e26-de35-483a-a37c-7a4c60e138b7.
Abstract:
This thesis examines James Joyce’s Ulysses (1922) and early cinema (c. 1895-1920) through Merleau-Pontian phenomenology. Instead of arguing for lines of direct influence between specific films and particular parts of Ulysses, I show that Joyce’s text and selected early films and film genres exhibit parallel philosophies. Ulysses and early cinema share similar ideas on the embodied nature of perception, the close relationship between mind and body, the intermingling of the human and the mechanical, intersubjectivity, and the subject’s inherence in the world. All of these shared ideas are inherently phenomenological. My phenomenological position on the Joyce-and-cinema relationship is at odds with a popular strain of scholarship which cites impersonality, neutrality, and automatism as the key linking factors between early cinema and modernist literature (including Joyce). ‘Joyce-and-cinema’ studies is a relatively large, and growing, field; as is ‘modernism-and-cinema’ studies. As well as ploughing my own path through an already crowded area, I analyse the different trends present (both historically and currently) in each area of study. I also add to the scholarship on phenomenological film theory by analysing the work of phenomenologically inflected film-philosophers and suggesting some new ways in which Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology might be used in the analysis of films and literature. I provide close analyses of several episodes of Ulysses and pay particular attention to ‘Ithaca’, ‘Circe’, ‘Nausicaa’, and ‘Wandering Rocks’. Several of Charlie Chaplin’s Mutual films are analysed, as are a select number of films by George Méliès. I also look at other trick-films, Irish melodrama, panoramas, ‘phantom rides’, and local actuality films (especially Mitchell and Kenyon’s Living Dublin series). Proto-cinematic devices – the Mutoscope and stereoscope – are also included in my analyses.
35
Roberts, Jamie Quasar Social Sciences & International Studies Faculty of Arts & Social Sciences UNSW. "The stakes involved in Emancipatory Acts." Awarded By:University of New South Wales. Social Sciences & International Studies, 2009. http://handle.unsw.edu.au/1959.4/44523.
Abstract:
The thesis develops a comprehensive account of human political ontology through the discussion of Plato, Rousseau, Lacan, Lyotard, Hugo, Conrad, Tolstoy and Nietzsche. At the heart of this account lies the dialectical struggle between an individual's need to belong and their fidelity to an intuitively recognisable, yet difficult to define good (or set of goods), that has, over the millennia, been conceptualised as, amongst other things, the form of the good, self interest, compassion, love, friendship, the event, conscience, reason and truth. Through the development of this account of human political ontology the thesis will elucidate the stakes involved in emancipatory acts, be they broad social movements or individual transformations. Its most important argument is that people almost always fail to recognise that to which they belong; the consequence of this being that they mistake the acts which function to reaffirm their belonging for acts that are indicative of their sovereign being. This phenomenon becomes particularly troubling once we recognise that the acts which function to reaffirm an individual??s belonging can depend upon the individual sacrificing both themself and others.
36
Hanna, Emily Lauren. "'I Am Rooted, But I Flow': Virginia Woolf and 20th Century Thought." Scholarship @ Claremont, 2012. http://scholarship.claremont.edu/scripps_theses/97.
Abstract:
My thesis is about Virginia Woolf’s novels, Mrs. Dalloway, The Waves, and To the Lighthouse. I examine these novels in relation to the theories of Henri Bergson, William James, and Sigmund Freud, and the groundwork of Modernism. I relate Woolf's use of water imagery and stream of consciousness technique to Bergson’s theory of “la durée,” or psychological, subjective time, James’ “stream of consciousness” theory in psychology, and Freud’s theory of the “oceanic” feeling of religious experience.
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Liu, Siyu. "Connecting man and nature : philosophical meanings of Zhu Xi's poetry." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2014. http://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:01e07a0b-c9b1-429e-aea8-c8dd31117944.
Abstract:
My thesis closely analyzes the shi poetry of the Song dynasty philosopher Zhu Xi (1130-1200). I look at its deep structure, especially the tensions embedded therein between literature and philosophy, and between his inner mind and the external world, manifested in ways different from what he taught in his philosophical works. Although his poetry itself is not considered to be aesthetically outstanding, I suggest that it is crucial to a better understanding of the evolution of Zhu’s philosophical project on the relationship between humans and the natural world. Zhu Xi wanted to establish and defend a coherent and practical self-cultivation theory, which would enable people to recognize the dao through daily experiences. Nevertheless, in his poetry production, he was facing a long-entrenched influential poetic tradition with its emphasis on the outer world described by embellished words and spontaneous overflow of emotions, while leaving an open end for the meanings or less discriminatively appealing to the Daoist or Buddhist idea of transcendence, the logic of which fundamentally contradicts that of daoxue construction. This made it impossible to achieve the dao in a this-worldly fashion. The contradiction had to be reconciled by Zhu Xi in his poems, an issue that he actually wrestled with throughout his life. Consequently, the style of Zhu Xi’s poetry was differentiated from both that of other Neo-Confucians and indeed that of any other poets in Chinese history. In his poetic texts, the tension between the outer world, inner emotions and philosophical inclination is more intensified, and the exploration of the relationship between man and nature more focused and conscious. In this thesis, I present an aesthetic world of Zhu Xi beyond all his ambiguous philosophical discussions, unfavorable comments on poetry, and his profoundly contradictory attitudes towards versifying.
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Shalom, Naama. "Ends of the Mahābhārata." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2012. http://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:eef9d82e-859c-40f1-afc5-c0a9041c011b.
Abstract:
The assertion that the Mahābhārata (MBh) narrative is innately incapable of achieving a conclusion has attained the status of a disciplinary truism in the epic’s study. My thesis challenges this prevalent assumption by proposing an un-investigated path of inquiry into the philological, historical, literary and semantic aspects of the epic. The thesis discusses the ending of the MBh, the Svargārohaṇa parvan (SĀ) by exploring several trajectories: the study of the SĀ in epic scholarship; its reception in the later tradition in Sanskrit literature; and finally, the problematic aspects of the SĀ and its relation to the rest of the narrative. It first points out that in comparison to other MBh episodes, the SĀ has been received with significant disregard or suppression in the literature commenting on the epic. Second, it characterizes the nature of the suppression of the SĀ in each of the three literary strands commenting on the MBh (epic scholarship, Sanskrit adaptations and theoretical discourses). It argues that all of these considerations, which are external to the MBh, have tended, in various modes, to suppress, ignore or overlook the importance of the SĀ. The thesis then proceeds to argue that on the most significant and internal level of the text itself, the SĀ is intrinsically consistent with the rest of the MBh narrative, and that this makes it thematically integral to the text as a whole. This argument derives from the importance with which this study addresses the moment of the condemnation of dharma in the SĀ, and is furthered by a philological and semantic study, as well as textual analyses of the multiple occurrences of the Sanskrit verb garh throughout the MBh. The use of this verb by the epic protagonist, Yudhiṣṭhira, in condemning his father, Dharma, at the last scenes of the SĀ comprises a key moment that bears significant and myriad implications upon the understanding of this pivotal concept (dharma), to which the entire epic is devoted.
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Haase, Donald. "Self-Referential Features in Sacred Texts." FIU Digital Commons, 2018. https://digitalcommons.fiu.edu/etd/3726.
Abstract:
This thesis examines a specific type of instance that bridges the divide between seeing sacred texts as merely vehicles for content and as objects themselves: self-reference. Doing so yielded a heuristic system of categories of self-reference in sacred texts based on the way the text self-describes: Inlibration, Necessity, and Untranslatability.
I provide examples of these self-referential features as found in various sacred texts: the Vedas, Āgamas, Papyrus of Ani, Torah, Quran, Sri Guru Granth Sahib, and the Book of Mormon. I then examine how different theories of sacredness interact with them. What do Durkheim, Otto, Freud, or Levinas say about these? How are their theories changed when confronted with sacred texts as objects as well as containers for content? I conclude by asserting that these self-referential features can be seen as ‘self-sacralizing’ in that they: match understandings of sacredness, speak for themselves, and do not occur in mundane texts.
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Pacheco, Katie. "The Buddhist Coleridge: Creating Space for The Rime of the Ancient Mariner within Buddhist Romantic Studies." FIU Digital Commons, 2013. http://digitalcommons.fiu.edu/etd/937.
Abstract:
The popularization of academic spaces that combine Buddhist philosophy with the literature of the Romantic period – a discipline I refer to as Buddhist Romantic Studies – have exposed the lack of scholarly attention Samuel Taylor Coleridge and The Rime of the Ancient Mariner have received within such studies. Validating Coleridge’s right to exist within Buddhist Romantic spheres, my thesis argues that Coleridge was cognizant of Buddhism through historical and textual encounters. To create a space for The Rime within Buddhist Romantic Studies, my thesis provides an interpretation of the poem that centers on the concept of prajna, or wisdom, as a vital tool for cultivating the mind. Focusing on prajna, I argue that the Mariner’s didactic story traces his cognitive voyage from ignorance to enlightenment. By examining The Rime within the framework of Buddhism, readers will also be able to grasp the importance of cultivating the mind and transcending ignorance.
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Frisch, David M. "Proceduralizing Privilege: Designing Shakespeare in Virtual Reality and the Problem with the Canon." FIU Digital Commons, 2016. http://digitalcommons.fiu.edu/etd/2491.
Abstract:
This thesis focuses on the development of the first project for FIU’s ICAVE, The Globe Experience, presented as part of the “First Folio! The Book That Gave Us Shakespeare” exhibit during February, 2016. The thesis is divided into two parts. The first part is the project itself: a virtual reality recreation of going to The Globe Theater to see a play by William Shakespeare. The second part examines the digital project and outlines how Walter Benjamin and postcolonial theorists influenced the design of The Globe Experience, resulting in, what I call, a “temporally and spatially disjointed London.” From this examination, the thesis goes on to question the role of canonical literature in the humanities. I go on to make the argument that the design decisions made in recreating The Globe reveals the ways in which canonical literature can reinforce and support hierarchical ideologies which can impede student learning.
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Rees, William J. "Cassius Dio, human nature and the late Roman Republic." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2011. http://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:75230c97-3ac1-460d-861b-5cb3270e481e.
Abstract:
This thesis builds on recent scholarship on Dio’s φύσις model to argue that Dio’s view of the fall of the Republic can be explained in terms of his interest in the relationship between human nature and political constitution. Chapter One examines Dio’s thinking on Classical debates surrounding the issue of φύσις and is dedicated to a detailed discussion of the terms that are important to Dio’s understanding of Republican political life. The second chapter examines the relationship between φύσις and Roman theories of moral decline in the late Republic. Chapter Three examines the influence of Thucydides on Dio. Chapter Four examines Dio’s reliance on Classical theories of democracy and monarchy. These four chapters, grouped into two sections, show how he explains the downfall of the Republic in the face of human ambition. Section Three will be the first of two case studies, exploring the life of Cicero, one of the main protagonists in Dio’s history of the late Republic. In Chapter Five, I examine Dio’s account of Cicero’s career up to the civil war between Pompey and Caesar. Chapter Six explores Cicero’s role in politics in the immediate aftermath of Caesar’s death, first examining the amnesty speech and then the debate between Cicero and Calenus. Chapter Seven examines the dialogue between Cicero and Philiscus, found in Book 38. In Section Four is my other case study, Caesar. Chapter Eight discusses Caesar as a Republican politician. In Chapter Nine, I examine Dio’s version of the mutiny at Vesontio and Caesar’s speech. Chapter Ten examines Dio’s portrayal of Caesar after he becomes dictator and the speech he delivers to the senate. The Epilogue ties together the main conclusions of the thesis and examines how the ideas explored by Dio in his explanation of the fall of the Republic are resolved in his portrait of the reign of Augustus.
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Watson, Ian T. "The Psychology of Theatre and Film: In Theory and Practice." VCU Scholars Compass, 2016. http://scholarscompass.vcu.edu/etd/4202.
Abstract:
This thesis utilizes theories and ideas from the field of psychology to inform intertextual and interdisciplinary readings that compare and contrast theatre and film texts. In Chapter One, I compare Carlos Fuentes' drama Orchids in the Moonlight to Nicolas Winding Refn's film Bronson in order to investigate the extent each oscillates between Carl Jung's notion of the collective unconscious and Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari's schizoanalytic paradigm. I found that while these vacillating aspects helped illuminate different perspectives of each text, Orchids in the Moonlight more closely represents the collective unconscious, while Bronson more robustly embodies schizoanalysis. In Chapter Two, I examine the magnitude to which the play and film version of Jean Cocteau's Orpheus illuminate his self-portrait. By analyzing the similarity and differences between how Cocteau depicts mirrors and the female personification of Death, I discovered the film version to more profoundly evoke and depict Cocteau's self-portrait. Finally, in Chapter Three, I discuss my process of writing a new play with film elements called Flooded—before providing a sample of the text, and later analyzing the advantages and disadvantages of the film contents in the play.
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Shams-Esmaeili, Fatemeh. "Official voices of a revolution : a social history of Islamic republican poetry." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2015. http://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:b6f2561b-fd26-4064-88b8-f365d7abf2e4.
Abstract:
This thesis is primarily concerned with the literary aspects of the Islamic Republic of Iran. Its immediate focus rests on the evolution of the Islamic republican poetic trend, encompassing both the disillusioned and conformist voices that rose to prominence in the course of the 1979 Revolution and their on-going engagement with the ruling political power. In this vein, this thesis investigates the various cultural policies of the state, as well as select political transformations of the past three decades, all of which played a pivotal role in this literary evolution. The thesis shows how the official poets that emerged during the 1979 Revolution, and which proved significantly active throughout the immediate history subsequent to that event (war with Iraq, the death of Ayatollah Khomeini and the rise and fall of the reform movement), evolved over time and thereby either received political support for their commitment to the state ideology or became gradually excluded from official cultural institutions. Finally, this thesis reviews the manner in which state strategies have shaped an institutionalised form of poetry that is monitored and reinforced by the Supreme Leader of the Islamic Republic and official cultural authorities. It demonstrates how an innate linking of the project of Islamic republican literature to underlying ideologically defined notions such as 'religious verse', 'legitimate poetry' and 'commitment' was and continues to be an intrinsic part of the literary foundations of the ideological apparatus of the Islamic Republic.
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Woo, Chimi. "Cross-Cultural Encounter And The Novel: Nation, Identity, And Genre In Nineteenth-Century British Literature." Columbus, Ohio : Ohio State University, 2008. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc%5Fnum=osu1204725332.
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Gorelick, Adam D. "The Enchanter's Spell: J.R.R. Tolkien's Mythopoetic Response to Modernism." FIU Digital Commons, 2013. http://digitalcommons.fiu.edu/etd/1022.
Abstract:
J.R.R. Tolkien was not only an author of fantasy but also a philologist who theorized about myth. Theorists have employed various methods of analyzing myth, and this thesis integrates several analyses, including Tolkien’s. I address the roles of doctrine, ritual, cross-cultural patterns, mythic expressions in literature, the literary effect of myth, evolution of language and consciousness, and individual invention over inheritance and diffusion. Beyond Tolkien’s English and Catholic background, I argue for eclectic influence on Tolkien, including resonance with Buddhism.
Tolkien views mythopoeia, literary mythmaking, in terms of sub-creation, human invention in the image of God as creator. Key mythopoetic tools include eucatastrophe, the happy ending’s sudden turn to poignant joy, and enchantment, the realization of imagined wonder, which is epitomized by the character of Tom Bombadil and contrasted with modernist techno-magic seeking to alter and dominate the world. I conclude by interpreting Tolkien’s mythmaking as a form of mysticism.
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Cox, Jamie Walden. "Dazai's Women: Dazai Osamu and his Female Narrators." PDXScholar, 2012. https://pdxscholar.library.pdx.edu/open_access_etds/132.
Abstract:
Dazai Osamu (born Tsushima Shûji) was a post-WWII writer who wrote a number of works using a female narrator. This thesis research focused on the reasons as to why Dazai may have written using female narratives, taking into consideration the time period and social milieu in which he was writing, as well as his own personal history with women. In addition, the history of male authors utilizing female narratives was explored, as well as the ideas of gender in the Japanese arts. Dazai works were also compared with Tankizaki Junichirô's to see how the roles of women in their works differ. The four main Dazai works analyzed were "Magic Lanterns" ("Tôrô"), "The Schoolgirl" ("Joseito"), "December 8th" ("Jûnigatsu yôka"), and "Villon's Wife" ("Biyon no tsuma"). The conclusion was that Dazai was using female narrators as a different approach to further critiquing himself, with the female narrator being used to critique a Dazai-like persona in the works.
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Ortega, Laura M. "The Commodification of Queer Virgins in Shakespeare, Spenser, and Keats." FIU Digital Commons, 2015. http://digitalcommons.fiu.edu/etd/1905.
Abstract:
The purpose of this thesis was to explore selected works from William Shakespeare, Edmund Spenser, and John Keats, in order to expose textual instances of feminist thought. This analysis was aided with feminist theorists falling under the main strains of queer theory, materialism, and gender performance. Specifically, this thesis focused on the ways in which women, particularly virgin daughters, were viewed as property by their male kin. It also looked at how these women engaged in various symbolic masquerades and/or actual cross-dressing as a response to the aforementioned phenomenon. Finally, the thesis exposed how these masquerades can be construed as a queering of identity—manifested through reversals of power and rejection of patriarchal institutions like marriage.
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Carbonell, Cristina T. "A Deconstruction of Elie Wiesel's The Time of the Uprooted." FIU Digital Commons, 2014. http://digitalcommons.fiu.edu/etd/1246.
Abstract:
This thesis explores the implications of bearing witness as testimony, and the recuperation of community and identity in the wake of exile. Through a close reading of Elie Wiesel’s The Time of the Uprooted, alongside the theories of Jacques Derrida and Jean-Luc Nancy (among others), I argue that a True Testimony cannot exist, and yet despite this fact, there is a necessity to bear witness in the face of the Other. The realization suggests an imperative of a different order—one that steps back from the very notion of truth, to instead accept the impossibility of truth in any act of witnessing. By comparing Wiesel’s metaphysical framework to post-structural philosophies, I am able to blur the lines between an exile’s metaphysical feelings of isolation and strangeness from both others and themselves to the effects of recognizing and accepting that all language is différance.
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Solbrig, Jacob H., and Jacob Hagen Solbrig. "Stasi Brainwashing in the GDR 1957 - 1990." ScholarWorks@UNO, 2017. https://scholarworks.uno.edu/td/2431.
Abstract:
This thesis examines the methods used by the Ministerium für Staatssicherheit (MfS), more commonly known as the Stasi, or East German secret police, for extraction of information from citizens of the German Democratic Republic for the purpose of espionage and covert operations inside East Germany, as it pertains to the deliberate brainwashing of East German citizens. As one of the most efficient intelligence agencies to ever exist, the Stasi’s main purpose was to monitor the population, gather intelligence, and collect or turn informants. They used brainwashing techniques to control the people of the GDR, keeping the populace paralyzed with fear and paranoia. By surrounding themselves with a network of informants they prevented actions against the dictatorial communist regime. Using the video testimonies of former prisoners, and former confidential informants who worked closely with and collaborated with Stasi agents, in combination with periodicals and previous historical studies, this work argues that the East German Police State’s brainwashing techniques had long and lasting consequences both for German citizens, and for the psychiatric health of former GDR citizens. The scope and breadth of the techniques and data compiled for use by the Stasi were exhaustive, and the repercussions of their use are still being felt and discovered twenty five years after the fall of the Berlin Wall. This study aims to show the lasting effects brainwashing had on former informants and the Stasi’s victims.