Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'Raymond Criticism and interpretation'
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Das, Gupta Kalyan. "Christopher Caudwell, Raymond Williams and Terry Eagleton." Thesis, University of British Columbia, 1985. http://hdl.handle.net/2429/25578.
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This dissertation politically analyses the principles of literary evaluation (here called "axiology") argued and applied by the English critics Christopher Caudwell, Raymond Williams, and Terry Eagleton. The paradoxical fact that all three claim to be working within a Marxist framework while producing mutually divergent rationales for literary evaluation prompts a detailed examination of Marx and Engels. Moreover, since Caudwell and Eagleton acknowledge Leninism to be Marxism, and, further, since Eagleton and I both in our own ways argue that Trotskyism--as opposed to Stalinism--is the continuator of Leninism, the evaluative methods of Lenin and Trotsky also become relevant.
Examined in light of that revolutionary tradition, however, and in view of the (English) critics' high political self-consciousness, the latter's principles of "literary" evaluation reveal definitive political differences between each other and with Marxism itself, centrally over the question of organised action. Thus, each of the chapters on the English critics begins with an examination of the chosen critic's purely political profile and its relationship to his general theory of literature. Next, I show how the contradictions of his "axiology" express those of his politics. Finally, with Hardy as a focus, I show the influence of each critic's political logic on his particular "literary" assessment of individual authors and texts.
The heterogeneity of these critics' evaluations of Hardy, the close correspondence of each critic's general evaluative principles to his political beliefs, and the non-Marxist nature of those beliefs themselves all concretely suggest that none of the three English critics is strictly a Marxist. I do not know whether a genuinely Marxist axiology is inevitable; however, I do admit such a phenomenon as a logical possibility. In any case, I argue, this possibility will never be realised unless aspiring Marxist axiologists seek to match their usually extensive knowledge of literature with an active interest in making international proletarian revolution happen. And, since it can only happen if it is organised, the "Marxist" axiologist without such an orientation will be merely an axiologist without Marxism.Arts, Faculty of
English, Department of
Graduate
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Bélisle, Mathieu. "Le drôle de roman : rire et imaginaire dans les oeuvres de Marcel Aymé, Albert Cohen et Raymond Queneau." Thesis, McGill University, 2008. http://digitool.Library.McGill.CA:80/R/?func=dbin-jump-full&object_id=115637.
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The drole de roman gathers works by Marcel Ayme, Albert Cohen and Raymond Queneau, French novelists who belong to the same generation, share common readers and inspiration and, most of all, a specific vision: the nonserious. Their novels draw from the most obvious manifestations of the comical tradition (farce, burlesque) to its most subtle (irony, parody). In their works, laughter does not occupy a secondary position nor does it simply provide some reading impressions. In fact, laughter is often expressed by the characters and narrators themselves, whose sense of mischeviousness demonstrates the Rabelaisian joy of body and soul.Besides, the drole is not restricted to its usual comical characteristics. In the prospect of literary history, it also refers to what stands apart from the realistic conventions inherited from Balzac and Zola. In other words, the drole is made of antirealism, merveilleux and fantasy. Thus, Ayme, Cohen and Queneau put forward their own response to the mimetic function of the 19th century realistic novel. Instead of renouncing the power of fiction, as Gide and Valery will often suggest, instead of denouncing its falseness, the three novelists give fiction even greater powers.
Based on the conclusions of the history of the novel and on studies concerning various aspects of its construction (the relation between reality and fiction, the conception of character and of its place in the community, the forms of the plot), this thesis wishes to shed light on the role and value of laughter through the study of three major themes: comedy, community and enchantment.
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Ezroura, Mohammed. "Criticism between scientificity and ideology : theoretical impasses in F.R. Leavis and P. Macherey." Thesis, University of British Columbia, 1990. http://hdl.handle.net/2429/30697.
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While focussing on the metaphor of scientificity in Leavis's and Macherey's writings, this dissertation addresses other questions central to criticism, cultural theory, and the philosophy of science. Whereas Leavis opposes scientificity, Macherey proposes "scientific criticism" as imperative to theoretical practice. Between the two critics, scientificity reveals its major metamorphoses.
This study is divided into four major parts. Part One situates the concept of scientificity in the modern debate between critics and philosophers of science. I compare their problematization of scientificity to the way this notion has been represented in literary criticism. The debate blurs the boundary between scientific and literary knowledge, and brings the question of ideology in scientific discourse to the fore. Scientificity is thus bound with ideology as an epistemological practice.
Part two focusses on Leavis's rejection of scientificity. In three chapters here I investigate the significance of Leavis's definition of "organic culture," "civilization," "science," and "criticism." These are all
rooted in Arnold's cultural paradigm, which privileges a traditional order. Leavis's opposition to "theory," "science," and "philosophy" problematizes his principles of "precision," "analysis," and "standards." His controversies with CP. Snow's scientism and with Marxism reveal his concern with theory and scientific epistemology. His defence of "ambiguity," and "impossibility of definition" also makes his framework confront a theoretical impasse that is revealed by a desire to theorize criticism—Leavis's duty towards society— and a fear of theory and science, perceived as destructive.
Part Three, comprising three chapter, considers Macherey's scientific criticism. His notions of the "structure of absence" and "symptomatic reading" are central to his theorization of criticism, science, and ideology. These are formulated through Freud's categories of dream analysis, Saussure's notion of difference, and Althusser's conception of ideology. For Macherey, scientific criticism negates ideology. But his emphasis on "absence" as constitutive of scientificity brings his epistemology to a theoretical impasse that resembles Leavis's. Macherey's anchoring of meaning in economic structures, in ideology, and in Marxism as "science," problematizes his scientific project because it abandons "absence."
Part Four concludes the dissertation by investigating ways in which Leavis and Macherey illustrate the importance of an epistemological phenomenon in literary studies: criticism's struggle with scientificity. Whether opposed or defended, scientificity has helped criticism to emulate the hegemonic discourse of science and to combat rival critical strategies. However, to dispel "scientific" delusions, criticism must scrutinize its affiliation with ideology both in scientific method and in theory.Arts, Faculty of
English, Department of
Graduate
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Balland, Mireille J. "L'être et le Paraître à travers cinq romans de Raymond Queneau." PDXScholar, 1992. https://pdxscholar.library.pdx.edu/open_access_etds/4220.
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The writings of Raymond Queneau span a period of more than forty years and reflect the multiplicity of his approaches: essays, songs, poems, scenarios for the cinema, translations (from English to French), journal, and novels.
My study focuses mainly on five novels: Le Chiendent (The Bark Tree), Les Fleurs bleues (Between Blue and Blue), Le Dimanche de la vie (The Sunday of Life), Pierrot mon ami (Pierrot) and Zazie dans le métro (Zazie in the Metro), the one that made him known to a wide reading audience. Queneau contributed to the very rich philosophical and literary scene in France sandwiched between twentieth century surrealism and existentialism, drawing much of his inspiration from the popular characters of the everyday Parisian life.
My thesis mainly focuses on Queneau's dichotomy between "what is" and "what appears to be". Because of Queneau's extreme versatility, I do not attempt to analyze every aspect of his writing but limit it to examining his concept of appearance and reality, an approach which cuts across various aspects of his writing.
The first chapter outlines the interplay between the sciences, literature and the concept of humor interpreted in the light of a notion of a participatory rather than a passive reading.
The second chapter, entitled "Le Défi du Langage" (The Challenge of Language), elaborates upon Queneau's "fantasy" world with a concentration on the linguistic elements and play-on-words.
The third chapter, entitled "La Valeur Structurelle" (The Structural Value), deals with the way in which Queneau structures his novels and the different forms taken by his fiction: examination of the symbolic aspect of numbers and forms; echos and symmetry; dream and reality; repetitions and play on the "I/ eye".
The fourth chapter, entitled "L'Etre et le Paraître" (Being and Appearing), answers the main question of appearance and reality while dealing with the philosophy of "being or not being" as well as the resulting corollary of realizing anguish and death. Queneau's characters answer to these eternal questions through a growing awareness and consciousness which drive them to espousing anonymity or popular wisdom. In so doing, Queneau's humor enlarges upon the parody of philosophers such as Parmenides, Plato, Descartes, Camus or Sartre.
In the conclusion, entitled "Au-delà de l'humour" (Beyond Humor), Queneau's laughter which is omnipresent, expresses the underlying condition through his observation of particular individuals in their very individualities. In the final analysis, Queneau's humanism shines forth with great empathy, comprehension, and humility.
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Grenier, Marie-Hélène. "Groupes et identité dans les romans autobiographiques de R. Queneau." Thesis, McGill University, 2005. http://digitool.Library.McGill.CA:80/R/?func=dbin-jump-full&object_id=98925.
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This thesis looks at the textual representations of sociability problems in Raymond Queneau's autobiographical novels, which are also the first six novels of his career. Using an eclectic approach that combines elements of autobiographical analysis and social psychology with the numerous studies on the presence of philosophy in Queneau's work, we use the concept of identity to study social attitudes, first the author's own attitudes toward real groups, then the way the characters identify with groups, some having a tendency to share the groups identity, others choosing to distanciate themselves from the groups.Following this path, we try to demonstrate the assumption that the tendency to identify to groups, as well as the distanciation attitudes, are represented in both a positive and a negative way, thus creating, in the novels, an actual "argumentation" between two poles. This assumption runs counter to the preconception, often conveyed by the critics, that distanciation alone is valued in Queneau's writings.
Given the impossibility to develop, within this work, a complete collection of the ways our problematics, i.e. the relation between belonging to groups and the formation of identity, is reflected in Queneau's novels, we choose (after examining the author own's attitudes) to analyse, in a first step, the major lines of thought related to our subject in each novel, and then to highlight some "attitude types" that emerge from the novels as a whole. This approach, we believe, allows us to draw out the key issues arising from this reflection.
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Paquereau, Marine. "Le réalisme social américain à l'ère postmoderne : (Russell Banks, Raymond Carver, Richard Ford)." Thesis, Dijon, 2015. http://www.theses.fr/2015DIJOL017/document.
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Cette étude se penche sur les œuvres de Russell Banks, Raymond Carver et Richard Ford, qui ont débuté leur carrière dans les années 1960-1970. À une époque où les milieux académiques s’intéressent davantage à l’autoréflexivité et aux jeux métafictionnels des écrivains postmodernes, les trois auteurs revendiquent, quant à eux, leur appartenance à la tradition réaliste. Dans « Quelques mots sur le minimalisme », John Barth suggère que le retour du réalisme social à partir des années 1970 peut être vu à la fois comme une réaction à la fiction dite « postmoderne » et comme un symptôme du malaise social et économique de l’époque. En effet, Cathedral, Continental Drift et The Sportswriter décrivent, dans un souci de vraisemblance et d’exactitude, la vie quotidienne d’Américains ordinaires malmenés par la politique de Reagan. Cette étude montre que les trois auteurs s’inscrivent dans la tradition du réalisme social, mais qu’ils sont influencés par le contexte postmoderne dans lequel ils écrivent et tiennent compte des problèmes de représentation typiques de cette période. Leurs œuvres sont donc marquées par une tension entre le respect des conventions littéraires propres à la tradition réaliste et la mise en évidence de l’artificialité de l’illusion mimétique, à une époque où la réalité elle-même est vue comme une construction linguistiqueHis study focuses on the works of Russell Banks, Raymond Carver and Richard Ford. They started writing during the 1960s and 1970s, at a time when the self-reflexivity and metafictional play of postmodernist writers were drawing a lot of critical attention in academic circles. However, they consider themselves to be realist writers. In “A Few Words about Minimalism,” John Barth suggested that the return to realist fiction in the mid-1970s could be both a reaction against so-called “postmodernist” fiction and a symptom of the social and economic unease of the period. Indeed, Cathedral, Continental Drift and The Sportswriter describe in accurate detail the everyday lives of ordinary American men and women during Reagan’s presidency. This study demonstrates that these authors are part of the American realist tradition, but that their strand of social realism also takes into account the postmodern context in which they write, by dealing with problems of representation that are typical of the period. Their works both use and challenge the literary conventions associated with the realist tradition, by underlining the artificiality of mimetic illusion at a time when reality itself is seen as a linguistic construct
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Jalabert, Adeline Marie. "Zazie dans le métro = violência na escrita de Raymond Queneau e nas traduções para o português do Brasil." [s.n.], 2010. http://repositorio.unicamp.br/jspui/handle/REPOSIP/269766.
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Orientador: Maria José Rodrigues Faria CoraciniDissertação (mestrado) - Universidade Estadual de Campinas, Instituto de Estudos da Linguagem
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Resumo: No romance Zazie dans le métro (1959), Raymond Queneau explora a linguagem coloquial, valendo-se da língua que chamou de neo-francês. O autor faz um verdadeiro "exercício de estilo" oral popular, em que mistura registros e faz paródias, imprimindo ao romance, além de um ritmo rápido, redundâncias, ortografia fonética, ausência de concordâncias gramaticais, arcaísmos etc. em franca oposição aos preconceitos em relação à língua oral. O oulipiano questiona a língua, provocando o leitor e obrigando-o a se distanciar da linguagem a que está habituado. Este trabalho propõe uma reflexão sobre a violência observada tanto no texto dito 'original' de Queneau, quanto na tradução e, em particular, na passagem do neo-francês à língua portuguesa do Brasil. Se a própria escrita de Zazie na língua original (o neo-francês) já é um exercício, da tradução espera-se um trabalho que podemos chamar de "trabalho dobrado". Para tanto, admite-se a violência na tradução, o que permite levantar várias questões relativas à língua, à cultura, à identidade, à dicotomia entre língua oral e língua escrita, entre obra original e obra traduzida, além de questionar os limites e as proibições, a criação literária, o trabalho do tradutor, as normas acadêmicas, o desafio da escrita e favorece a divulgação de obras literárias importantes
Abstract: In the novel Zazie dans le métro (1959), Raymond Queneau explores colloquial language, making use of what he called neo-French. The author makes a real popular and oral "exercise in style", mixing registers and parodies, making the novel fast paced and using redundancy, phonetic spelling, grammatically incorrect expressions, archaisms etc. in clear opposition to the prejudices about oral language. The oulipian questions language and culture provoking the reader and forcing him to distance himself from the language he is accustomed to. This work proposes a reflection on violence observed both in Queneau's 'original' text and in its translations, particularly between neo-French and Brazilian Portuguese. If the actual writing of Zazie in the original language (neo-French) was already an exercise, in translation, a kind of "double work" is expected. Admitting violence in translation allows us to raise several issues relating to language, culture, identity, the dichotomy between oral and written language, and between original work and translated work, to limits and prohibitions, literary creation, the work of the translator, academic standards, the challenge of writing and dissemination of important literary works
Mestrado
Teoria, Pratica e Ensino da Tradução
Mestre em Linguística Aplicada
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Mohapatra, Himansu Sekhar. "Raymond Williams and the limits of realist discourse." Thesis, University of East Anglia, 1989. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.328694.
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Kavanagh, Kevin Sean. "Raymond Williams and the limits of cultural materialism." Thesis, University of Warwick, 1997. http://wrap.warwick.ac.uk/50785/.
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Cultural materialism has become an influential discipline in recent years, particularly so in 'Renaissance' studies, but also more generally in 'English', as well as departments defined as practising 'cultural' or 'communications' studies. The phrase is usually linked with the name of Raymond Williams, but a cursory examination of Williams's own work quickly establishes that it is a phrase he rarely uses, and only schematically attempts to define. The thesis therefore takes the form of an investigation into the way cultural materialism has come to be understood, by examining in detail the trajectory of Raymond Williams's theoretical development, and how his own engagement with various theoretical positions has helped to set 'limits' on the meaning of cultural materialism. Chapters 1 and 2 deal with some of Williams's earliest work, particularly Reading and Criticism, as a way of investigating how reasonable it is to tag him as a 'Left-Leavisite', arguing that Leavis's undoubted influence is resisted (though not entirely rejected) from a very early stage. The first chapter considers in detail Leavis's work at Cambridge, the influence of Eliot, and the significance of the 'Organic Community'. Chapter 2, which is based around a comparative analysis of Williams's and Leavis's readings of Dickens, argues that Williams rejects the 'organic community' in favour of his 'knowable community'. Chapters 4 and 5 deal with specific 'theoretical' issues: the first, based around a reading of Terry Eagleton's critique of Williams's use of the Marxist metaphor of 'base and superstructure', shows some of the problems which arise from Williams's cultural model, as well as suggesting refinements; the second deals with the influence of Volosinov's theories on Williams. Chapter 6 comes out of Williams's readings of the 'Country-House' poems in The Country and the City, showing how his practice of literary criticism relies on an acceptance of 'ideology' apparently denied in his more 'theoretical' writings. This analysis is extended as a result of investigations into the 'De L'Isle' manuscripts relating to the Penshurst estate. Chapter 7 argues that it is possible to see the work of Fredric Jameson as developing Williams's cultural materialism into Jameson's debates on postmodernism. In the Introduction and Conclusion, I have taken the opportunity to look briefly at the activity of cultural materialism as it has developed since Raymond Williams's death in 1988. The Introduction emphasizes what I see to be important methodological differences between 'cultural materialism' and 'new historicism'; the Conclusion deals with the continuing debate over the value of a cultural materialist approach by considering the 'appropriation' of Shakespeare.
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Allen, Elizabeth. "The dislocated mind : the fiction of Raymond Williams." Thesis, Liverpool John Moores University, 2007. http://researchonline.ljmu.ac.uk/5857/.
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Paz, Liber Eugenio. "Tecnologia e cultura nos quadrinhos independentes brasileiros." Universidade Tecnológica Federal do Paraná, 2017. http://repositorio.utfpr.edu.br/jspui/handle/1/2946.
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Esse estudo busca realizar reflexões sobre os significados, sentidos, tensões e contradições relacionados ao termo “independente” e sua contraparte, o termo “mainstream”, ligados ao processo de desenvolvimento das histórias em quadrinhos enquanto formação cultural. Essas reflexões são orientadas pelo conjunto de ideias de Raymond Williams, especialmente os conceitos de tecnologia, hegemonia e culturas alternativas, opositoras, residuais e emergentes. O trabalho está estruturado em cinco momentos. Primeiro as histórias em quadrinhos são abordadas como forma cultural e observamos as relações entre cultura e tecnologia no seu processo de formação. A seguir observamos particularidades desse processo dentro do contexto brasileiro. O terceiro momento apresenta os conceitos de Williams sobre culturas alternativas e antecipa a parte voltada para as intensas manifestações culturais da década de 1960 e seus desdobramentos. Finalmente, busca-se traçar uma visão geral do cenário de mudanças que se desenvolve a partir da década de 1980, enfatizando as histórias em quadrinhos publicadas no Brasil. A partir da observação do surgimento e consolidação de eventos como o Troféu HQ Mix e as feiras e bienais de quadrinhos, relacionados a novos processos de publicação e distribuição, buscamos analisar as obras e perfis de quatro autores contemporâneos de quadrinhos e compreender melhor os significados de termos como “independente”, “autoral”, “comercial”, “mainstream”, “alternativo” e outros, de uso comum nas diversas práticas das histórias em quadrinhos. Entre os resultados obtidos, notamos que: muitas das produções “independentes” contemporâneas apresentam características temáticas, estilísticas e materiais praticamente indistinguíveis das produções “mainstream”; algumas produções “mainstream” incorporam temas e propostas de culturas alternativas à hegemonia; o uso termo “independente” muitas vezes encobre as condições desfavoráveis de produção e sustento de diversos profissionais; considerando rigorosamente as culturas opositoras como um conjunto de ações de dimensão revolucionária, é difícil encontrar obras que efetivamente atendam a essa condição.This study seeks to reflect on the meanings, senses, tensions and contradictions related to the term “independent” and its counterpart, the term “mainstream”, connected to the process of development of comics as a cultural formation. These reflections are guided by Raymond William’s set of ideas, especially the concepts of technology, hegemony and alternative, oppositional, residual, and emerging cultures. We structured the work in five moments. First, we approach comics as a cultural form and observe the relations between culture and technology in its process of formation. Next, we observe particularities of this process within the Brazilian context. In a third moment, we present Williams’ concepts on alternative cultures and anticipate the part devoted to the intense cultural manifestations of the 1960s and their unfolding. Finally, we attempt to give an overview of the scenario of changes that develops from the 1980s, emphasizing the comics published in Brazil. From the observation of the emergence and consolidation of events such as the HQ Mix Trophy and the comics fairs and biennials related to new publication and distribution processes, we sought to analyze the works and profiles of four contemporary comic authors and to better understand the meanings of terms such as "independent", "authorial", "commercial", "mainstream", "alternative" and others, commonly used in various comic book practices. Among the results obtained, we noticed that: many contemporary "independent" productions present thematic, stylistic and material characteristics practically indistinguishable from "mainstream" productions; some "mainstream" productions incorporate themes and proposals of cultures that are alternatives to hegemony; the use of the term “independent” often covers the unfavorable conditions of production and livelihood of several professionals; rigorously considering the opposing cultures as a set of actions of a revolutionary dimension, it is difficult to find works that effectively meet this condition.
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Hoyer, Steven. "Intention and interpretation." Thesis, McGill University, 1993. http://digitool.Library.McGill.CA:80/R/?func=dbin-jump-full&object_id=68104.
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This thesis is in two chapters. Chapter one is about intentions. Literary theorists have, by and large, dismissed their relevance to interpretation, so it will be useful to consider what exactly is being ignored. Therefore, I devote chapter one to a clarification of the nature and role(s) of intention within the interlocking network of basic propositional attitudes. I argue that intentions incorporate both a functional and a representational dimension, triggering actional mechanisms and structuring the process of practical reasoning.Chapter two is about interpretation. I open the chapter with an examination of extreme conventionalist theses, arguing that their success depends on an unjustifiably strict demarcation between intentionality and textuality. Appropriating aspects of Donald Davidson's work in the philosophy of language, I argue for the recognition of linguistic communication as a form of intentional action. I then defend this thesis against more moderate conventionalist theories to offer a viable approach to the interpretation of literary works.
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Rivetti, Ugo Urbano Casares. "Crítica e modernidade em Raymond Williams." Universidade de São Paulo, 2015. http://www.teses.usp.br/teses/disponiveis/8/8132/tde-27012016-123033/.
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Esta dissertação tem como objetivo examinar a obra do crítico Raymond Williams a partir do ponto de vista da crítica da modernidade levada a cabo pelo autor em um período específico de sua trajetória: entre Cultura e sociedade (1958) e O campo e a cidade (1973). Para tanto, parte-se da reconstrução da forma assumida por essa crítica nos esquemas interpretativos daquelas que foram as duas grandes influências formativas do pensamento de Williams, e que figuraram como as duas grandes correntes teóricas no cenário intelectual inglês do século XX: a crítica literária e o marxismo. Pretende-se oferecer, com isso, uma leitura alternativa da obra do autor, repensando o peso de cada um de seus principais textos, as linhas de continuidade e as rupturas atravessando-a e, por fim, o próprio sentido do desenvolvimento teórico percorrido por Williams no período considerado, notadamente, destacando-se o impacto que o marxismo exerceu na conformação do seu projeto teórico.This dissertation aims to analyze Raymond Williams work from the point of view of the critique of modernity undertaken by him in a specific period of his trajectory: from Culture and Society (1958) to The Country and the City (1973). Therefore, we begin by reconstructing the forms assumed by this critique in the interpretative schemes of the two greatest formative influences in Williams thought, and which became the two greatest theoretical currents in the English intellectual scenario in the 20th century: literary criticism and Marxism. Hence, we plan to offer an alternative interpretation of his oeuvre, reconsidering the importance of each of his main texts, the continuities and ruptures crossing it and, finally, the sense of the theoretical development covered by Williams in the period here considered, notably, focusing the impact that Marxism produced in the shaping of his theoretical project.
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Anger, Suzy. "Victorian hermeneutics and literary interpretation /." Thesis, Connect to this title online; UW restricted, 1994. http://hdl.handle.net/1773/9374.
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Milligan, Don. "The aesthetic of emancipation : a study of the relation between Raymond William's socialism and his literary criticism, cultural analysis and theoretical writings." Thesis, Open University, 2003. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.272968.
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Shashidhar, R. "From literary criticism to Marxism : an analysis of the holistic writings of Raymond Williams." Thesis, University of Manchester, 1989. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.686243.
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Powers, Michael A. "Double Visions--Separating Gordon Lish's Edits from Raymond Carver's Original Authorship in Three Stories." Thesis, Connect to resource online, 2008. http://hdl.handle.net/1805/1856.
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Thesis (M.A.)--Indiana University, 2008.Title from screen (viewed on August 28, 2009). Department of English, Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI). Advisor(s): Robert Rebein. Includes vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 84-85).
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Meir, Amira. "Medieval Jewish interpretation of pentateuchal poetry." Thesis, McGill University, 1994. http://digitool.Library.McGill.CA:80/R/?func=dbin-jump-full&object_id=28842.
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This dissertation studies parts of six medieval Jewish Torah commentaries in order to examine how they related to what we call Pentateuchal poetry. It examines their general approaches to Bible interpretation and their treatments of all Pentateuchal poems. It focusses on qualities we associate with poetry--parallelism, structure, metaphor, and syntax--and explores the extent to which they treated poems differently from prose.The effort begins by defining Pentateuchal poetry and discussing a range of its presentations by various ancient writers. Subsequent chapters examine its treatment by Rabbi Saadia Gaon of Baghdad (882-942), Abraham Ibn Ezra of Spain (1089-1164), Samuel Ben Meir (1080-1160) and Joseph Bekhor Shor (12th century) of Northern France, David Kimhi of Provence (1160-1235), and Obadiah Sforno of Italy (1470-1550).
While all of these commentators wrote on the poetic passages, none differentiated systematically between Pentateuchal prose and poetry or treated them in substantially different ways. Samuel Ben Meir, Ibn Ezra, Bekhor Shor, and Kimhi did discuss some poetic features of these texts. The other two men were far less inclined to do so, but occasionally recognized some differences between prose and poetry and some phenomena unique to the latter.
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Turner, Seth. "Revelation 11:1-13 : history of interpretation." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2005. http://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:57efe3b3-7c61-412f-9001-5269860a896d.
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The thesis provides a descriptive survey of the history of interpretation of Revelation 11:1-13. Prior to 1000 AD it aims to be comprehensive, but after this date concentrates on Western interpretation. Ch. 1 - Prior to 1000 AD. Rev 11:1-13 is examined in relation to the wider complex of traditions concerning Antichrist and the return of Enoch and Elijah. The commentary tradition on Revelation is examined, including an extensive reconstruction of Tyconius. The passage is applied in two ways: 1. to two eschatological figures, usually Enoch and Elijah. 2. to the Church from the time of Christ's first advent until his return. Ch. 2 -1000-1516 Exegesis similar to that of chapter 1 is found. There is new exegesis from Joachim of Fiore, who believes that the two witnesses will be two religious orders, and Alexander Minorita, who reads the entirety of the Apocalypse as a sequential narrative of Church history, arriving at the sixth century for 11:1-13. Ch. 3 -1516-1700 Protestants interpret the beast as the papacy/Roman Church, and the two witnesses as proto-Protestants prior to the Reformation, often interpreting their 1260 day ministry as 1260 years. Catholics respond by applying the passage either to the eschatological future or the distant past. Ch. 4 -1701-2004 Protestants continue to see the 1260 days as 1260 years, although this interpretation declines markedly in the nineteenth century. Both Catholics and Protestants apply the passage to the distant past of the early Church. Historical critical exegesis introduces a new exegesis, where John is regarded as having incorrectly predicted the return of two individuals shortly after his time of writing. Applications to the entirety of the time of the time of the Church increase in popularity in the twentieth century.
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Nicol, George Grey. "Studies in the interpretation of Genesis 26.1-33." Thesis, University of Oxford, 1987. http://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:8fff7ce7-9a50-4011-9f54-5776c84aa36a.
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These Studies in the interpretation of Genesis 26.1-33 are concerned with a relatively brief and well defined section of biblical Hebrew narrative, and following an Introduction are divided into two parts reflecting literary and historical interests respectively. The Introduction takes note of the current interest among Old Testament scholars in the literary interpretation of the biblical materials and, after opting for an approach which will take account of both literary and historical-critical enquiry, outlines the procedure which will be followed. No logical priority is claimed for literary analysis, although it is considered appropriate that it should be pursued prior to any historical enquiry. In this way, it has been possible to avoid any suspicion that literary analysis of the type pursued here is a further development of the historical-critical method. Part One (Chapters One - Four) is concerned to construct a literary interpretation of the text of Gen 26.1-33. The interpretation consists of three main studies of the Isaac narrative which are followed by a brief discussion of certain aspects of the method involved. This interpretation has developed in the main from a reflection upon the relationship which appears to exist between the promise made to the patriarch by the deity and the surrounding narrative material. Beginning from a literary-structural analysis of the Isaac narrative, it has been possible to observe that a number of relationships of a literary and structural nature exist between the promise and the surrounding narrative materials. The exploration of these relationships discloses a series of tensions between the promise and the narrated events which in one way or another seem designed to bring the fulfilment of different aspects of the promise under threat, and each of these tensions are resolved in turn in the narrative. Thus, even even if the events narrated appear to run counter to the direction of the promise, it is in the exploration of this dialectic which is set up between promise and those narrative events which tend to threaten the fulfilment of the promise that the beginnings of a satisfactory literary interpretation of Gen 26.1-33 is to be found. The literary interpretation of the Isaac narrative is carried out in three stages. In the first stage (Chapter One), the extent of the material under consideration is narrowed down to Gen 26.1-33, and other material (notably Gen 25.19-26) is excluded. Once the narrative structure has been analyzed in terms of divine promise, threat, and (partial) resolution, a further brief examination of the narrative context of the other divine promise sections in Genesis 12-36 shows that the literary technique of juxtaposing these same three elements has in fact been applied more widely, even if it is most clearly evident in Gen 26.1-33. An analysis of the role Rebekah plays in the wife-sister episode shows that she is clearly a subsidiary character, and that in the narrative Abimelech the Philistine king of Gerar and Isaac's antagonist throughout is the character closest in importance to Isaac. Indeed, in many respects the narrative appears to explore the relationship which exists between Isaac and the Philistine king. A number of literary features which enhance the impression of unity which has already been gained from the structural analysis are examined. In particular, a number of narrative transformations are seen to take place between the beginning and the end of the narrative. These are largely concerned with the situation of Isaac in relation to Abimelech. At the beginning of the narrative Isaac comes to Abimelech at Gerar and is dependent on the latter's good will for his wellbeing. But at the end of the narrative, Abimelech comes to Isaac at Beersheba, in order to participate in the blessing enjoyed by the Patriarch. In the second stage (Chapter Two), the structure of each of the episodes which combine to form the Isaac narrative is examined, using a form of structural analysis used by Bremond in relation to the fairy tale, but which is also appropriate to the analysis of other simple forms of narrative. This examination, which I have used to determine whether the individual episodes maintain a comic or tragic function within the Isaac narrative, is carried out without prejudice to the assumption that the narrative is a unity at some level. One of the impressive features of the Isaac narrative is that the Patriarch does not achieve his good fortune at the expense of Abimelech and his people, but the Philistines also prosper, and it is seen that this effect has been achieved by means of paradox. The discussion of the individual episodes leads to the conclusion that the ability of the narrative as a whole to generate meaning is greater than the sum of its parts. In the third stage (Chapter Three), I have attempted to construct an appropriate 'narrative background' against which the text may be understood. This exercise involves the careful observation of such signals as are raised in the text and appear to direct one's attention to materials elsewhere in the tradition, and particularly among the narratives of Genesis 12-25, which may combine to serve as a background against which the Isaac narrative may be understood, and which might properly enrich one's understanding of the text. This undertaking begins from the point that no text may be properly understood from within a vacuum, and that while it is proper to begin such a literary-structural investigation as has been undertaken in this Thesis from a detailed study of the text itself, it has been considered necessary to go on from there and to provide a richer understanding of the text. The formation of a 'narrative background' is to be distinguished from the method of 'narrative analogy' (Miscall, Alter) so far as it takes the canonical ordering of the narratives more seriously. Part One is concluded with the discussion of a number of methodological issues in Chapter Four which forms an attempt to say something about the aims and validity of the analyses set out in Chapters One-Three. There is no concern, however, to resume systematically issues which have already been raised in the earlier chapters. In Part Two, I have addressed some of the more usual historical concerns of biblical studies. The first main part of Chapter Five is concerned with the form-critical discussion of the Isaac narrative. An examination of the form-critical studies of Lutz. and Coats is followed by an analysis of the structure and content of Gen 26.1-33. The analysis is then filled out by a broad discussion which is informed to some extent by the earlier discussion of Chapter One, particularly by the degree to which the various episodes were there seen to be related to each other. The fact that, apart from vv 1-6, the episodes all required assumption of information provided by one or another of the preceding episodes in order to appear coherent suggests that the unity of Gen 26.1-33 is perhaps more than the result of a collector stringing them together in terms of the common theme "Isaac and the people of Gerar". This observation sets an obvious limit against the usual formcritical criterion which holds that the most original units were concered to narrate only single episodes. Throughout this discussion the results of current studies in folklore which have led to much uncertainty concerning the stability of oral transmission so that it is no longer possible to be so confident in the antiquity of the pentateuchal tradition were taken for granted. The traditio-historical question of priority is examined, and it is concluded that Abraham is in fact prior to Isaac.
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Bennett, Richard. "Variations : influence intertextuality, and Milan Kundera, Jean Rhys, and Tom Stoppard." Thesis, McGill University, 1994. http://digitool.Library.McGill.CA:80/R/?func=dbin-jump-full&object_id=26254.
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This thesis is in three chapters. Chapter one is about Harold Bloom's theory of the Anxiety of Influence. Bloom's argument is that literary history is shaped by the anxiety of "strong" poets at their belatedness. I show that he depends upon a subjective interpretation of literary production in order to defend a rigidly traditional canon.Chapter two deals with theories of intertextuality, principally those of Julia Kristeva and Michael Riffaterre. As alternatives to theories of influence, neither proves satisfactory. Both founder on the contradictory goal to explain all literature, at the expense of recognizing literary diversity.
Chapter three concerns literary variations. These are texts which are deliberately premised on pre-existing texts. I focus on three examples from this class of literary texts which is not satisfactorily dealt with by any of the theories I consider. I pursue a less wide-ranging approach in order to unearth important features of literary variations.
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Kilian, Monica. "The exile's experience : an examination of the poetry of Hilde Domin and Waclaw Iwaniuk." Thesis, University of British Columbia, 1987. http://hdl.handle.net/2429/26855.
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This thesis examines the effect of the experience of exile on the German poet Hilde Domin and the Polish poet Waclaw Iwaniuk. Their involuntary exile, their departure from their respective native cultures and languages has affected them profoundly, both as individuals and as poets. The exiled poet lives in the conflicting world of the exile: on the one hand, he attempts to maintain his close ties to his native language and culture, while on the other hand, he is constantly assailed by the demands of his new and alien environment. He is thus plunged into a crisis of identity. This thesis examines this crisis by concentrating on the aspect of language as a reference point of the poet's identity.
Through a close examination of a selection of the poetry of Domin and Iwaniuk, I have attempted to discover how they express their personal experiences of exile, which problems they are most concerned with, and, finally, how they attempt to solve these problems. Their poetry expresses similar concerns, such as feelings of insecurity, instability and loss, as well as a wish to recover a sense of security. Both Domin and Iwaniuk are aware of the danger of becoming poetic nonentities in their exile, because their link with their native language is threatened. Recognizing the poet's power to find security in his language (which in turn enables him to reassert his identity through his poetry), they both attempt, in different ways, to preserve their identities as poets by writing. Domin is on the whole more successful than Iwaniuk in defining herself through her language. She believes that language is an inseparable part of her, which naturally finds its expression through her writings. Iwaniuk, on the other hand, is more self-conscious about his language; the preservation of his native language as his poetic tool takes the form of struggle. This fact is not only reflected in the content of the two poets' poetry, but also in its form and style: Domin's language and poetry seem generally more spontaneous and harmonious, whereas Iwaniuk's language and poetry appear to be chiselled intellectually, as if it resisted the author's efforts.Arts, Faculty of
English, Department of
Graduate
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Graham, Catherine (Catherine Elizabeth). "Standpoints : the dramaturgy of Margaretta D'Arcy and John Arden." Thesis, McGill University, 1991. http://digitool.Library.McGill.CA:80/R/?func=dbin-jump-full&object_id=60621.
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The political popular theatre which has developed in the West since the 1960s challenges the current hegemony in Western cultures by attacking its basic models of knowledge, yet little critical attention has been paid to the dramaturgies particular to this form. An application of the Possible Worlds theory, the concept of ludic framing, and feminist "standpoint" theory to the Irish stage plays written by Margaretta D'Arcy and John Arden after they left the "legitimate" stage, shows how the dramaturgy of this theater is a critical part of its strategic challenge to the status quo. This analysis shows how D'Arcy and Arden foreground the encompassing Theatre Possible World, within which the performance takes place, in order to cast doubt on the natural character of generally accepted meanings, and to induce the audience to consciously choose the frames within which it makes sense of action.
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Petersen, Jeffrey J. 1981. "Playful Conversations: A Study of Shared Dynamics Between the Plays of Paula Vogel and Sarah Ruhl." Thesis, University of Oregon, 2009. http://hdl.handle.net/1794/10155.
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vii, 130 p. A print copy of this thesis is available through the UO Libraries. Search the library catalog for the location and call number.Pulitzer Prize winning playwright Paula Vogel, playwright and educator, has blazed a trail in American theatre, opening new avenues for female playwrights. In 2005 Vogel's student Sarah Ruhl burst onto the scene with her play The Clean House. As one of the most produced playwrights of 2005, Ruhl has been celebrated as the new voice of American theatre. There are similarities, as might be expected between teacher and former student, but some of the similarities suggest something more: a dynamic shared between Vogel's and Ruhl's plays which suggests an ongoing theatrical conversation and may suggest directions for future American drama.
Committee in Charge: Dr. John Schmor, Chair; Dr. Jennifer Schlueter
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Murray, Jessica. ""Notes for the Manual Assembly"." Thesis, University of North Texas, 2018. https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc1157616/.
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A collection of poems that seeks the balance between imagination and reality that Wallace Stevens calls for in art, with a preface exploring Elaine Scarry's On Beauty and Being Just through the work of two contemporary poets.
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Bailey, Catherine Diana Alison. "Mending the web : a thematic study of Xu Dishan’s fiction." Thesis, University of British Columbia, 1985. http://hdl.handle.net/2429/25343.
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This thesis is a thematic study of the work of the early Twentieth Century Chinese writer Xu Dishan (Luo Huasheng) (1894-1941). The title, "Mending the Web," is at once a reference to a specific story by Xu and an indication of the importance he placed on spiritual values in a changing world. His work represents a modest search for a solution to the dislocation of his society - his own attempt to mend the broken web of modern China. In his work Xu promoted personal solutions and individual salvation rather than the whole scale transformation of society. He stressed the importance of working for change within a given framework - he was a reformer, not a revolutionary, a moderator searching for a synthesis based on universal values rooted in both the Chinese and Western traditions. The values upheld in his fiction are uncompromising - one must follow one' s conscience, accept duty and responsibility calmly, show charity and forgiveness
and, above all be true to oneself.
Xu1s stress on personal and spiritual solutions marks him out from the majority of his iconoclastic contemporaries who advocated wholesale social change. In Chapter One, I try to provide an historical and ideological context for Xu, a comparative background from which to examine him in relation to his contemporary writers and the times in which he lived.
The value Xu placed on a unifying framework, or a sense of order to replace chaos, is made apparent in Chapter Two, where I discuss his quest for values and the romance and mythopoeic modes which inform much of his work. In particular I look at the quest themes which influence the structure and message of his stories, concentrating primarily on an analysis of "Yuguan" and "A Daughter's Heart" based on an extrapolation of the "monomyths" of Joseph Campbell and Northrop Frye. I examine the influence of Christianity on Xu's work, his emphasis on a strongly moral vision and his search for an affirmation of life and the individual's potentiality for goodness.
In Chapter Three I analyse Xu's attitude to life and fate in relation to his use of the coincidence motif which acts in his stories as a catalyst and test for action. The coincidence makes the world small, and thus provides a testing ground for characters' actions. A vital element in this is the concept of baoying or requital, whereby an individual is responsible for his or her actions and is judged accordingly. Xu believed an individual has a responsibility to make the best of an unknown fate, but still to work within given limits to have an influence for the good. A strong moral grammar informs Xu's work, providing a framework for judging the acts of his characters.
In Chapter Four I look at Xu's use of female protagonists to embody his philosophy of life. Women like Yuguan and Chuntao represent Xu's ideals in their most specific form, embodying that sense of affirmation and hope so central to Xu' s work and offering models of human potentiality, an optomistic vision of life as it could be.
In the conclusion I touch on the role of morality in Xu's fiction. His work is deeply moral in orientation and offers an interesting contrast to that of his contemporaries equally engaged in writing fiction for a purpose. Xu's concern for spiritual values was almost unique among writers of that period. His fiction is primarily a fiction of ideas and his themes and messages dominate. He was searching for a solution to the dislocation of his society, as were his contemporaries,
but he did not suggest a radical social transformation
but rather to work within the existing framework. He looked for personal solutions, believing in the innate capacity of the human being to change for the better. He advocated change, but stressed that it must first come individually,
through the development of self-knowledge, on a modest scale, before the world can be transformed. His solution was modest yet profound, and filled with hope.Arts, Faculty of
Asian Studies, Department of
Graduate
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Loevlie, Elisabeth M. "Literary silences : saying the unsayable: an exploration of literary silence in the works of Pascal, Rousseau and Beckett." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2001. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.365530.
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Marais, Susan Jacqueline. "(Re-)inventing our selves/ourselves : identity and community in contemporary South African short fiction cycles." Thesis, Rhodes University, 2014. http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1016357.
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In this study I focus on a number of collections of short fiction by the South African writers Joël Matlou, Sindiwe Magona, Zoë Wicomb and Ivan Vladislavić, all of which evince certain of the characteristics of short story cycles or sequences. In other words, they display what Forrest L. Ingram describes as “a double tendency of asserting the individuality of [their] components on the one hand and of highlighting, on the other, the bonds of unity which make the many into a single whole”. The cycle form, thus defined, is characterised by a paradoxical yet productive and frequently unresolved tension between “the individuality of each of the stories and the necessities of the larger unit”, between “the one and the many”, and between cohesion and fragmentation. It is this “dynamic structure of connection and disconnection” which singularly equips the genre to represent the interrelationship of singular and collective identities, or the “coherent multiplicity of community”. Ingram, for example, asserts that “Numerous and varied connective strands draw the co-protagonists of any story cycle into a single community. … However this community may be achieved, it usually can be said to constitute the central character of a cycle”. Not unsurprisingly, then, in its dominant manifestations over much of the twentieth century the short story cycle demonstrated a marked inclination towards regionalism and the depiction of localised enclaves, and this tendency towards “place-based short story cycles” in which topographical unity is a conspicuous feature was as pronounced in South Africa as elsewhere. However, the specific collections which are my concern here increasingly employ innovative and self-reflexive narrative strategies that unsettle generic expectations and interrogate the notions of regionalism and community conventionally associated with the short story cycle. My investigation seeks to explain this shift in emphasis, and its particular significance within the South African context.
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King, Noel. "Anxieties of commentary : interpretation in recent literary, film and cultural criticism /." Title page, table of contents and abstact only, 1994. http://web4.library.adelaide.edu.au/theses/09PH/09phk532.pdf.
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HSIAO, CHING-SONG GENE. "SEMIOTIC INTERPRETATION OF CHINESE POETRY: TU MU'S POETRY AS EXAMPLE (CRITICISM)." Diss., The University of Arizona, 1985. http://hdl.handle.net/10150/188120.
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To interpret a poem is to comprehend a complete act of written communication. And to comprehend such an act, the reader must break the codes in which the communication is framed. Thus, poetic interpretation becomes the study of codes--or semiotics. Poetic codes exist at pragmatic, semantic, syntactic, and phonic levels. The decoding requires the reader's linguistic skills, literary competence, and personal experience. It involves an initial reading and a retroactive reading. At the first step, the reader attempts to supply elements missing in the text. Yet trying to interpret the text literally, he encounters problems in pragmatics, semantics, syntactics, or phonics, and is unable to grasp a coherent sense of the poem. Those problems give rise to a retroactive reading. At this step, the reader looks for a higher level of understanding where a unity of meaning can be identified. And by explaining the clues in the text according to his linguistic and literary competence, and revising his understanding on the basis of his new findings, he finally discovers a kernel concept, on which the whole text can be seen as a single unit, and every element, which first appeared to be puzzling, has a significative purpose. This semiotic model of interpretation has proven to be very fruitful in the explication of Tu Mu's poetry. It also enables the reader to appreciate the poetic discourse more thoroughly. Some of the ideas advocated by the model may also serve as principles for the translation of poetry. For example, in reading a poem, the model requires a search for unified pragmatic, semantic, syntactic, and phonic patterns, which convey the kernel concept. Thus, in translating a poem, the translator should also try to re-produce in the target language such unified patterns so that the reader may grasp the same kernel concept as contained in the original discourse. The model stresses implicities of poetry. Hence the rendition of a poem should preserve the implicities of the original text in order to invoke from the reader a response similar to what would be induced by the original poem.
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Wetzel, Rebecca L. "ADAPTATION AND INTERPRETATION: A STUDY OF THEATRICAL BANDE DESSINEE." Miami University / OhioLINK, 2019. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=miami1563987098560659.
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Greenlee, Christine Lund Koch. "The Constantian orations : a contextual analysis of self-presentation in Libanius' 'Orr.' 59, 11, 61 and 31." Thesis, University of St Andrews, 2017. http://hdl.handle.net/10023/15923.
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A total of sixty-four orations survive from the hand of Libanius. Four of these speeches were delivered under the reign of Constantius II (AD 337-361) and thus form a distinct chronological cluster in the Libanian corpus. The Constantian orations include Or. 59 To Constantius II and Constans (AD 346-9), Or. 11 The Antiochikos (AD 356), Or. 61 Monody on Nicomedia (AD 358), and Or. 61 For the teachers (AD 360-1). This study adopts a diachronic approach and analyses the historical and literary context of each Constantian oration with a particular focus on Libanius' self- presentation. The study suggests that Libanius' self-presentation was characterised by adaptability and versatility; it shows Libanius exploring a range of different genres and communicating with attentiveness to context and audience. The thesis also argues that Libanius' attitude to and engagement with Constantius' court fluctuated significantly from the delivery of Libanius' panegyric in the mid- to late 340s where Libanius supported Constantius after his defeat in the battle of Singara, over Libanius' encomium to Antioch in 356 where Libanius emphasised the strong connection between the Emperor and the city following the devastating reign of Gallus Caesar, to the delivery of For the teachers in 360-361, where Libanius publically voiced his criticism of the Emperor's cultural and religious policies after Libanius himself had lost imperial funding. Furthermore, the study displays the continued importance of oratory in Late Antiquity and emphasises the central role of sophists both as commentators and mediators in society.
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Phillips, Malcolm. "Experiment and representation : the domestic surreal in contemporary British and American poetry." Thesis, University of St Andrews, 2004. http://hdl.handle.net/10023/14707.
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In order to counter what I regard as premature and reductive formulations of a 'native' British postmodernism, I identify a specific tendency in contemporary writing which I name the domestic surreal, and which I trace through the poetry of John Ashbery, Frank O'Hara, Roy Fisher, Christopher Middleton, John Ash, Peter Didsbury and Ian McMillan. Through close reading and a comparative approach, I uncover key preoccupations with idiosyncratic perception, shared experience, urban space and poetic play. I also describe a network of allegiances and influence among these writers which reveals the domestic surreal to be one of the contemporary manifestations of an imaginative tradition which stretches back through the Surrealist and Cubist movements to Baudelaire and Rimbaud. For the poets of the domestic surreal, engagement with an aesthetic tradition is inextricably linked with their response to contemporary conditions. Drawing on dialectical and poststructuralist perspectives, I propose that the domestic surreal attempts to resist the constraints of social and aesthetic consensus in Britain and America in the period following the Second World War.
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Pryor, Caitlin. "Vanishing Act." Thesis, University of North Texas, 2015. https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc801936/.
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This dissertation is comprised of a collection of poems preceded by a critical preface. The preface reconsiders the value of discontinuous poetic forms and advocates a return to lyric as an antidote to the toxic aspects of what Tony Hoagland terms “the skittery poem of our moment.” I consider poems by Wendy Xu, Kevin Prufer, Sharon Olds, and Stephen Dunn in depth to facilitate a discussion about the value of a more centrist position between the poles of supreme discontinuity and totalizing continuity. Though poets working in discontinuous forms are rightly skeptical of the hierarchies that govern narrative and linear forms, as Czesław Miłosz notes in The Witness of Poetry, “a poet discovers a secret, namely that he can be faithful to real things only by arranging them hierarchically.” In my own poems, I make use of the hierarchies of ordered perception in lyric and narrative forms to faithfully illuminate the collapsed structures of my own family history in the shadow of Detroit. I practice the principles I advocate in the preface, using a continuous form to address fractured realities in a busy, disordered age when poets often seek forms as fragmented as their perceptions. These poems are distinctly American, but because there is no true royalty in America, our great cultural and economic institutions—television, music, film, magazines, and big business—take the place of the castle (the book’s emblem) while Michael Jackson ultimately rises as the commanding dead king whose passing prompts contemplation of the viability of popular culture, family, history, and geography. The fallen structures that litter the work are many: the twin towers, chess rooks, bounce castles, nuclear families, the auto industry. However, the sole structure cohering the whole is that of a lyric voice whose authority is derived through lived experience and presented in rich, continuous poetic forms.
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Ingham, David Keith. "Mediation and the indirect metafiction of Randolph Stow, M. K. Joseph, and Timothy Findley." Thesis, University of British Columbia, 1985. http://hdl.handle.net/2429/25819.
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In order to explore the range of indirect metafiction as presented in three exemplary novels, this dissertation begins by examining how the assumptions of "realism" on the one hand and "postmodernism" on the other relate to the paradigmatic triad of story-teller, story, and audience. From this context emerges the view that the range of metafiction is determined by how it reveals the processes and nature of fiction according to a spectrum of mediation: that of the writer between his "raw materials" and the text, that of the text between writer and reader, and that of the reader between the text and his interpretation.
Indirect metafiction (or "pretend realism") mediates between realism and postmodernism, revealing without breaking the illusions of realism.
Each of the next three chapters, after initially placing the key novel within the context of the author's work as a whole, discusses in detail a novel whose metafictional focus is on one of the three mediations. Accordingly, Chapter II focusses on Randolph Stow's The Girl Green as Elderflower (1980) and on the way it reveals the mediation of the author by presenting a writer's fiction as a synthesis of his personal and literary experiences. Chapter III notes how M. K. Joseph's A Soldier's Tale (1976) reflects the mediation of the reader by depicting a writer's interpretation and literary redaction of an oral tale. And Chapter IV shows how Timothy Findley's Famous Last Words (1981) demonstrates the mediation of the text by presenting a writer whose text "crystallizes" the illusions of fiction, then undercuts and exposes them. The analyses of the key texts employ both postmodern and traditional critical approaches, demonstrating them to be complementary; by noting the interpenetration of metafictional and traditional import and significance, the analyses also highlight the mediary nature of indirect metafiction.
The fifth chapter draws theoretical conclusions from ideas in the practical chapters: from metafictional revelations through the paradigm of mediation comes an "anatomy" of fiction, delineating its elements; from a sense of how the mind "structures" experience through "fictional" representations of both "reality" and fictional texts comes a "physiology," a sense of how fiction works through language. This discussion leads to definitions of realistic, unrealistic, and self-conscious fiction, and of metafiction, both direct and indirect; the dissertation concludes by remarking on the inter-relations of language, "fiction," and "reality."Arts, Faculty of
English, Department of
Graduate
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Scowcroft, Ann. "Escaping the hegemony of the written word : Canadian women writers and the dislocation of narrative." Thesis, McGill University, 1989. http://digitool.Library.McGill.CA:80/R/?func=dbin-jump-full&object_id=61803.
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Léger, Ariane. "Le maître à écrire selon Valéry, Pessoa et Jaccottet /." Thesis, McGill University, 2008. http://digitool.Library.McGill.CA:80/R/?func=dbin-jump-full&object_id=115622.
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The main objective of this study is to understand how Valery, Pessoa and Jaccottet created or recreated the figure of the master. This figure has truly made its entry into the literary scene in the second half of the nineteenth century, and it contributed to impose a profane and more egalitarian vision of writing. In the writing of the three authors studied, the master is still seen as a strategy to develop a concept of creation, since it allows the writers to define their poetic. It is therefore a matter of maitres a penser (literally "thinking masters") or, better yet, maitres a ecrire ("writing masters").For Valery, the desire to make Mallarme his master is best explained by his search for mastery. Even if he is eager to understand what makes Mallarme an exceptional creator, Valery's quest is hindered by Mallarme's refusal to explain his poetic. This resistance seems to encourage Valery to make the creative act a major concern of his work.
By coming up with a "non-existent coterie" made up of imaginary writers, and by recognizing one of them as his own master, Pessoa hopes to fill the gaps in his literary filiation. In the concert of voices that compose his work, it is yet the master himself which undermines the very legitimacy of the master, and that is why Pessoa finally gets rid of his invention.
Finally, Jaccottet creates his masters for the learning they could provide to him: in Jaccottet's unique story, the character of the master fails, allowing the poet to take his distance from assumptions related with the romantic vision of creation; then, a "good master" whose agony is described by poems becomes a model whose wisdom is inseparable from a kind of ignorance.
The presence of the master generates a story elaborated from the writings of these writers: the development of their poetic requires not only the creation of a master figure, but also its removal. Ultimately, the maitre a ecrire is not only one who induces writing in a unique way, but also the one which should be written in order to succeed.
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Davies-Browne, Bankole P. "The significance of parallels between the 'Testament of Solomon' and Jewish literature of late antiquity (between the closing centuries BCE and the Talmudic era) and the New Testament." Thesis, University of St Andrews, 2004. http://hdl.handle.net/10023/2685.
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The TSol is a Christian composition of late antiquity which narrates the story about how King Solomon built the Temple of God with the aid of demons he subjugated. Comparative analysis between the TSol and Jewish literature of late antiquity (between the closing centuries BCE and the Talmudic era), and the New Testament is primarily to establish any literary dependence and explore the nature of contact between the TSol and these materials; and also to isolate Jewish elements in the TSol. The Jewish materials discussed are the Hebrew Bible, the LXX, Tobit, Wisdom of Solomon, Pseudo-Philo, certain Qumran documents (11 PsApa and the Copper scroll), Josephus' Jewish Antiquities, Ecclesiastes, Proverbs, Song of Songs, rabbinic literature, and certain Aramaic incantation texts. My research has shown that parallels do exist between the TSol, the Jewish literature discussed and the New Testament. The parallels between the TSol and the aforementioned literature are twofold: verbal and conceptual. Verbal parallels occur in the form of technical terminology; quotations, allusions and echoes. The second type of parallels appears in the form of motifs, themes, structural elements and ideas. These parallels seem to dominate in my analysis. There is no need to explain the parallels between the TSol and the literature discussed in terms of literary dependence. I have attempted to demonstrate that these parallels in most of the literature are indicative of indirect influence through shared use of the biblical tradition: motifs, stories and themes regarding King Solomon; a common fund of oral tradition(s) regarding Solomon's magical power over demonic world; shared literary language, milieu, and cultural conventions. Moreover, the author of the TSol seems to have recycled Jewish materials pertaining to Solomon and related motifs in his work. Apart from the New Testament, the best case for a direct influence of a Jewish work on the TSol is Tobit.
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Hoedekie, Nelson G. U. (Nelson Gustaaf Urbain). "Naar analogie van schaduwen aan de wand : een wijsgerige interpretatie van 'de schaduw als kunstwerk' aan de hand van Plato's grotvergelijking." Thesis, Stellenbosch : Stellenbosch University, 2003. http://hdl.handle.net/10019.1/53511.
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Thesis (MPhil)--University of Stellenbosch, 2003.ENGLISH ABSTRACT: In this thesis, 'shadow' is investigated as an object of thought and (analogically connected to this) of perception. This dialectical process is structured through means of a series of experiments and Plato's allegory of the cave, which is interpreted as a process directed towards selfconciousness. This process is further explained through thinkers such as, Blumenberg, Heidegger, Levinas en Voegelin. The purpose of this study is to break with the self-evident way in which 'shadow' is 'normally' treated and to bring back about a sense of astonishment for it.
AFRIKAANSE OPSOMMING: In hierdie tesis word die 'skaduwee' as waarnemingsobjek en (analogies verwant daaraan) as denkobjek ondersoek. Hierdie dialektiese proses word gestruktureerd met behulp van 'n aantal eksperimente en Plato se grotgelykenis, wat geinterpreteer word as programmaties van die proses van selfbewuswording. Hierdie proses word verder toegelig aan die hand van denkers soos Blumenberg, Heidegger, Levinas en Voegelin. Die doel van die ondersoek is om die vanselfsprekendheid waarmee daar met die fenomeen van die skaduwee omgegaan word te deurbreek en weer verwondering daarvoor op te roep.
NEDERLANDSTALIGE SAMENVATTING: In deze thesis wordt de 'schaduw' als waarnemingsobject en (analogisch verwant daaraan) als denkobject onderzocht. Dit dialectische proces wordt gestructureerd met behulp van een aantal experimenten en Plato's grotvergelijking, die geïnterpreteerd worden als een proces gericht op zeltbewustwording. Dit proces wordt verder toegelicht aan de hand van denkers zoals, Blumenberg, Heidegger, Levinas en Voegelin. Het doel van het onderzoek is om de vanzelfsprekendheid waarmee met het fenomeen van de 'schaduw' omgegaan wordt, te doorbreken en er opnieuw verwondering voor op te roepen.
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Fisher, Susan Rosa. "A genre for our times: the Menippean satires of Russell Hoban and Murakami Haruki." Thesis, National Library of Canada = Bibliothèque nationale du Canada, 1997. http://www.collectionscanada.ca/obj/s4/f2/dsk3/ftp04/nq25047.pdf.
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Vrba, Marya. "The literary dream in German Central Europe, 1900-1925 : a selective study of the writings of Kafka, Kubin, Meyrink, Musil and Schnitzler." Thesis, Swansea University, 2011. https://cronfa.swan.ac.uk/Record/cronfa42396.
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This thesis examines the literary dream in selected works by Kafka, Kubin, Meyrink, Musil and Schnitzler, with a particular focus on the redefinition of subjectivity through dreamlife. The introductory chapter contextualises these case studies in the broader field of oneirocriticism, emphasising the dream's ancient role as fixtional template and its specific significance in the destabilised environment of German Central Europe during the early twentieth century. Alfred Kubin's Die andere Seite (1909), which uses the 'other side' as metaphor for both oneiric and artistic experience, reveals the inherent dualism of the literary dream and its close relationship with creativity. In Robert Musil's Die Verwirrungen des Zdglings Tdrlefi (1906), the protagonist serves as the model for a new type of self-determining subject who draws on the knowledge of dreams and irrationality. Franz Kafka's texts reveal techniques for integrating the dream into fictional worlds that are already dreamlike through the prevalence of (literalised) metaphor and free association. Gustav Meyrink, in Der Golem (1915), shares Kafka's interest in concretised metaphor, but also explores the dream's associations with occult practices, used as a defence against the threatening claims of science. Finally, Arthur Schnitzler's literary dreams offer a direct confrontation with psychoanalysis and a dismantling of nineteenth-century ideals of gender and bourgeois love. Overall, it is argued that the literary dreams by these authors hold varied responses to fragmentation of the Ich in the face of psychological 'vivisection', theories of relativity, and the collapse of old social orders. The dream, as a nightly 'psychosis', crystallised the pervasive fears of self-loss during this period; however, in its perennial role as micro-narrative, it also provided a site for re-construction of the subject. The incorporation of dreams in fictional lives served as a metonymical guide for the integration of un- and subconscious experience overall.
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Selby, Don. "Bridging the gap? : a critical reading of Bhabha, Said and Spivak's postcolonial positions." Thesis, National Library of Canada = Bibliothèque nationale du Canada, 1998. http://www.collectionscanada.ca/obj/s4/f2/dsk1/tape11/PQDD_0001/MQ43947.pdf.
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Ocaña, Karen Isabel. "Synthetic authenticity : the work of Angela Carter, Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari." Thesis, McGill University, 1996. http://digitool.Library.McGill.CA:80/R/?func=dbin-jump-full&object_id=26748.
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This thesis constitutes an investigation into contemporary writing--both fictional and philosophical. More specifically, it is a comparative analysis of the work of British novelist Angela Carter, and French philosophers Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, in the light of the concept of synthetic authenticity. It is divided into three chapters, "Becomings", "Events", and "Machines", and each chapter presents the work of both Carter and Deleuze and Guattari, respectively, in light of one of these topics. Chapter Two, however, focuses closely on Angela Carter's first novel, Shadow Dance, as it relates to the concept 'event'. And Chapter Three focuses on Carter's novel The Infernal Desire Machines of Doctor Hoffman, as it relates to and differs from the schizoanalytic notion of desiring machines.
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Bourgon, Julie. "Création, éthique et vérité : Broch et Blanchot ; suivi de, En trompe-l'oeil." Thesis, National Library of Canada = Bibliothèque nationale du Canada, 1997. http://www.collectionscanada.ca/obj/s4/f2/dsk2/ftp01/MQ37193.pdf.
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Lanthier, Lalita Bharvani. "Two outsiders in Indo-English literature : Ruth Prawer Jhabvala and Salman Rushdie." Thesis, McGill University, 1992. http://digitool.Library.McGill.CA:80/R/?func=dbin-jump-full&object_id=56664.
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This thesis shows the condition of outsidedness in the fiction of two Indo-English authors: Ruth Prawer Jhabvala and Salman Rushdie. Ruth Prawer Jhabvala focuses on the intercultural encounter from the European perspective. Salman Rushdie writes from the expatriate's point of view. Astride the cultural frameworks of India and the West at once they examine the ironic similarities of prejudice and intolerance in both societies. These authors' novels are examined through concepts elaborated by the Russian literary theoretician, Mikhail Bakhtin, such as exotopy or outsidedness, heteroglossia, dialogism, etc. They confirm Bakhtin's contention that cultural confrontation is a potentially enriching source of literary and artistic creation. Jhabvala treats the intercultural encounter within the colonial and post-colonial frameworks and shows the fragile dialogue that does occur between her European characters and India. Rushdie on the other hand centres mainly on contemporary India although he does satirize certain aspects of colonial India. He uses a plethora of historical, literary, cultural and linguistic referents from both eastern and western traditions to subvert the hegemonic discourse of either and to celebrate cultural hybridity.
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Miller, Dane Eric. "Micah and its literary environment: Rhetorical critical case studies." Diss., The University of Arizona, 1991. http://hdl.handle.net/10150/185441.
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I began this investigation with the presupposition that the MT of Micah offered us a valid object upon which to apply the methodology of rhetorical criticism. The examination of the text proceeded along the lines of two emphases: (1) a structural analysis which studied the various blocks of material in order to describe a unity or cohesiveness in Micah, and (2) a thematic approach which identified underlying images which tend to enhance the coherence of the work. I used these two methodologies to address both pericopes and also larger units and even to discuss the book itself. Two other methodological strategies have also guided my analysis of Micah. In Chapter 1, I described two foci of the ellipse that is rhetorical criticism: first, those who emphasize the task of "listening" to the text, which I understand as more of an empathic approach, and second, those who utilize a quantifying style of investigation. Both these focal points are reflected in my structural and thematic analyses. Although no readily recognizable patterns such as A:B:A appears in describing the three parts of the book, there does seem to be a thematic development in Micah 1-7. Thus Part I (Micah 1-3) resounds with the words of witness followed by judgment and concludes with the destruction of Jerusalem. That scene of destruction gives way, however, to the restoration and encouragement of Part II (4:1-5:8), although the threats in 4:9-5:8 remind us that the restoration is not an accomplished fact. Part III (Mic 5:9-7:20) begins with what seems to be an assertion that the judgment will take place, especially with the appearance again of the witness/judgment model in 6:9-7:6. However, the final picture of restoration and covenant fidelity on the part of YHWH affirms that the judgment will be overturned. I have further suggested that echoes from the literary tradition of Israel enhance the movement from judgment to renewal in Micah. The conclusion to the judgment in Part I (Mic 3:1-12) has particular impact, because it is presented in the language of the judgment scene from the garden of Eden (Genesis 3). In fact, we see here again that theme and structure intermix in Micah. I suggest that the book begins with material which mimics and recalls older traditions (the theophany, David, and even Anat) and ends with similarly old recollections (David and Moses). Thus I posit that Micah comes to us wrapped in an envelope of ancient echoes.
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Suzuki-Martinez, Sharon S. 1963. "Tribal Selves: Subversive Identity in Asian American and Native American Literature." Diss., The University of Arizona, 1996. http://hdl.handle.net/10150/565575.
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Walton, Jennifer Lee. "POLITICAL REELISM: A RHETORICAL CRITICISM OF REFLECTION AND INTERPRETATION IN POLITICAL FILMS." Connect to this title online, 2006. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc%5Fnum=bgsu1143492027.
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Levitan, Linda. "The sense of place in Sophocles : a study in the landscape of experience." Thesis, McGill University, 1987. http://digitool.Library.McGill.CA:80/R/?func=dbin-jump-full&object_id=63835.
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Cohen, Andrew Benjamin. "Milton and superfluity." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2005. http://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:f5af5679-609a-4d12-b8cb-498e6735252f.
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This thesis proceeds from the observation that Milton is concerned by the presence of surplus material in the physical world. The blind Pharisee in Samson Agonistes dismisses his 'redundant locks, / Robustious to no purpose clustering down.' In the Ludlow masque, Comus complains that the Lady's 'moral babble' would leave nature 'strangled with her waste fertility.' Creation, in Paradise Lost, requires the expulsion of 'black tartareous cold infernal dregs' and leaves behind an abyss full of matter. Adam and Eve live in a garden where the sun shines with more warmth than they need, where the nighttime sky is bright with a perplexing canopy of lights. Vines and overgrown branches threaten to make their walks unpassable, while fruit, uncollected and uneaten, falls to the ground. An interest in superfluity is a characteristic feature of Milton's imagination. He insists on limits, then turns to what is left out as excess or waste. This habit of mind influences Milton's description of acts of choosing and gives shape to his account of the relationship between creation and God. It complicates his answer to the sort of question Augustine asks of God in the Confessions: 'Do heaven and earth contain you because you have filled them? Or do you fill them and overflow them because they do not contain you?' Milton is troubled by the idea of purposeless divine work. He is bothered by the thought of a creation that is useless or unnecessary. In Paradise Lost, I argue, the reason for the existence for the world is tied to the reason for sin.