Teses / dissertações sobre o tema "Mages – Fiction"

Thesis (M.A.)--Boise State University, 2002.
Web site. Master's project includes an explanatory text and CD-ROM entitled: Historical fiction : a web site supporting secondary U.S. history courses of study-Idaho Department of Education. Includes bibliographical references.

Ce travail a pour objet de montrer comment, dans la fiction eliotienne, l'ecriture du regard contribue a ebranler les fondations de la representation realiste, remettant ainsi en cause les ambitions de stabilite, de permanence et d'ordre universel affichees par cette ideologie. Certes le regard descripteur encadrant est bien present dans cette oeuvre fortement ancree dans un systeme referentiel essentiellement mimetique. Le regard instaure cependant au sein du texte, veritable "machine a faire voir", un dynamisme qui l'entraine vers des espaces limites ou de l'entre-deux de la representation. Decentre, desoriente, le regard glisse le long de lignes de fuite vers des territoires fictifs et artistiques multiples. L'ecriture se fait visuelle, picturale, transgressant les codes et oscillant entre divers systemes de representation. Une etude des modalites de la vision permet de percevoir tout ce que le projet realiste comporte d'irrealisable dans ses marges. L'opacification du regard, organiquement defaillant ou occulte par des masques, dit la difficulte a bien voir, constat a valeur eminemment morale qui menace sa fonction representative et met en peril l'unite du sujet. A l'inverse, trop de regard tue le regard. Aveugle de lumiere, surdetermine, il fait obstacle a la connaissance dont il est pourtant traditionnellement la clef. Petrifie par le desir medusant, hallucine par des transes pathologiques ou mystiques, il s'abime dans une non-vision qui s'apparente au vide de la mort. La representation, aux marges du regard, est menacee dans son integrite par les premices du seisme moderniste a venir, mais non encore advenu. Si l'ecriture eliotienne explore les limites de la representation visuelle, elle reste attachee a ce systeme et affirme finalement sa foi dans le regard, qu'elle pose comme principe unificateur et heuristique, comme l'instrument de la vision lucide et eclairee qui doit mener a l'unite supreme.

Récusant à la fois les déterminismes naturels et les représentations d’un ordre politique ou moral, l’œuvre de Gary est marquée par une aspiration au dépassement des limites et par une posture de résistance. Face à la haine ou à la barbarie, elle défend les vertus de la dérision et le pouvoir de l’imaginaire et s’engage dans une double démarche de mise à distance et de réenchantement du monde. Nourrie par le traumatisme de la seconde Guerre Mondiale, elle soutient l’idée que l’humain est à réinventer, qu’il n’est pas une donnée préalable mais un fiction à construire, un idéal à atteindre. Artistes et créateurs se doivent donc de contribuer à l’invention d’une nouvelle mythologie de l’homme qui vienne réaffirmer un principe inaliénable de dignité et qui instille dans l’esprit de chacun la force de ne pas désespérer. Mais l’humanisme n’est pas seulement une valeur abstraite ou un horizon à conquérir : il met aussi en question une façon d’être au monde dans le présent. Il s’agit de se prémunir de ce que la réalité peut avoir d’envahissant et de dogmatique en privilégiant des « marges » où l’humain se trouve reconnu dans ses paradoxes et sa fragilité. Loin de l’idéalisme prophétique, ces refuges deviennent un espace propice à l’expression de l’intime et permettent à la fois de se dérober au regard de l’autre et d’échapper à l’injonction des discours de vérité. Façonnés autour des valeurs de l’affectif, ils incitent chacun à se rendre sensible à l’humanité latente du monde. Ils viennent rappeler que, face aux certitudes inflexibles et au principe aliénant de transparence, l’approximation et le mystère ouvrent des espaces de liberté et conditionnent bien souvent la possibilité d’être heureux
Challenging both apparent determinism and political or moral representations, Gary's work is defined by its predilection for off limit situations and contentious attitudes. Confronted with hatred or barbarism, it will always stand for irony and the power of creativity, involved both in the process of getting detached as well as enrapturing the world anew. Fed on the World War II trauma, it sustains the concept of humanness needing reinvention, not being a set notion but a fiction to be built, an ideal to achieve. Artists and creators owe their contribution to such foundation of a new human mythology upholding the unalienable principle of dignity, thus implanting everyone's spirit with the strength to resist despair. However, humanism cannot be seen just as an abstracted value or some shore to reach, it also implies the actual manner of living in the world. One has to keep clear from whatever overwhelming dogmas reality can impose, by favoring “margins” that will accept human contradictions and frailty. Away from any prophetic idealism, these dedicated spaces become shelters for intimate expression, allowing one to avoid onlookers and escape compelling truth assessments. Shaped around affective values, they bring one to become sensitive to a potential world humanity. Against rigid certitudes and the alienating principle of transparency, they help remember that approximation and mystery can give access to freedom and oftentimes condition the possibility of happiness

The purpose of this thesis was to explore the boundary between human and other created by virtual worlds in contemporary science fiction novels. After a close reading of the three novels: Surface Detail, Existence, and Lady of Mazes, and the application of contemporary literary theories, the boundary presented itself and led to the discovery of where the human becomes other. The human becomes other when it becomes lost to the virtual world and no longer exists or interacts with material reality. Each of the primary texts exhibits both virtual reality and humanity in different ways, and each is explored to find where humanity falls apart. Overall, when these theories are applied to real life there is no real way to avoid the potential for fully immersive virtual worlds, but there are ways to avoid their alienating effects.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of California, Riverside, 2009.
Includes abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 262-274). Issued in print and online. Available via ProQuest Digital Dissertations.

Les textes de Maria Velho da Costa et de Teolinda Gersão sont habités par des paysages, des archétypes et des autoréflexivités configurés dans des marges, lieux périphériques, qui révèlent simultanément la place centrale occupée par le sujet féminin. La notion de paysage, matière de la première partie de cette étude, s’articule avec celle d’archétype (de relation archétypique) et d’autoréflexivité, notions traitées respectivement dans la deuxième et troisième parties, à travers - une coordonnée commune - l’espace envisagé sous les trois aspects suivants : le physique, le social et le mental. Les paysages apparaissent dans une marge physique par rapport au centre occupé par le sujet qui les construit. Les archétypes de l’Amazone, de la Sorcière et de la Folle, dans lesquels les personnages féminins se retrouvent, actualisent leur exclusion du cercle social en les renvoyant vers les marges périphériques que peuvent être la nature sauvage ou l’asile psychiatrique. L’autoréflexivité à la marge du texte, « à côté » de ce qui serait censé être le contenu de l’œuvre, s’avère un lieu marginal par rapport au centre traditionnellement occupé par la diégèse. L’intention sous-jacente à cette étude est d’analyser les configurations de paysages, d’archétypes, de relations archétypiques et de réflexions sur l’écriture au sein des récits fictionnels, qui manifestent une dimension marginale périphérique et paradoxalement contribuent à l’actualisation des subjectivités et des quêtes identitaires « au féminin » recherchées par les Auteurs, les narratrices et les personnages femmes dont la vitalité centrale déstabilise dichotomies et dualismes
The texts of Maria Velho da Costa and Teolinda Gersão are inhabited by landscapes, archetypes and self-reflexivity configured in margins, peripheral zones, that simultaneously unveil the central place occupied by the female subject. The matter of the first section of this work, the concept of landscape hinges on the ones of archetype [the archetypal relation] and of self-reflexivity - both being respectively dealt with in the second and in the third sections of this work - through a co-ordinate they share: space considered in these three aspects, the physical, the social and the mental. Landscapes appear in a physical margin in relation to the centre inhabited by the subject that builds them. Embodied by female characters, the archetypes of the Amazon, the Witch and the Madwoman emblematize these characters’ being excluded from the social circle as they are being pushed off to the periphery, whether it be the wilderness or the lunatic asy! lum. Situated in the margins of the text, “beside” the would-be content of the work, self-reflexivity turns out to be a marginal place with regard to the centre, traditionally held by the diegesis. This study aims at analysing configurations of landscapes, archetypes, archetypal relations and reflections on writing within fictions that, while possessing a peripheral and marginal dimension, still manage to paradoxically contribute to rendering female subjectivities and identity quests sought by the Authors and the female narrators and characters whose central vitality unsteadies dichotomies and binary oppositions

Ce travail de thèse entend prendre en compte l'analyse d'un groupe humain évoluant dans un cadre géographique trop longtemps délaissé par l'historiographie et pour une période chronologique élargie par rapport à la tradition consacrée. Les Grecs, qui quittent leurs cadres de vie originels sous l'effet de causes variées (exils suite à la conquête ottomane intérêts économiques, humanistes ou religieux) entre le début du XVe siècle et la fin du XVI" siècle, se dirigent e majorité vers la Péninsule italienne. Certains n'y effectuent qu'un passage quand d'autres décident de s'implante durablement. Or, la chaîne montagneuse des Alpes a semble-t-il fait office de barrière infranchissable pour les Grecs aux yeux de nombre d'historiens. Or, les Grecs se déplacent hors d'Italie, quoiqu'en nombre très restreint : comme en Italie certains ne restent pas et d'autres s'installent. Leur étude révèle des logiques et des comportements originaux par rapport à ce qu'on observe plus au sud (comme l'organisation grecque en milieu urbain). La reprise de toute la documentation disponible mène à l'étude de trois axes majeurs : la construction d'une prosopographie grecque au nord des Alpes l'analyse des comportements sociaux des Grecs entre eux et avec les locaux ; une analyse fine des textes occidentaux que cherchent à comprendre, expliquer et verbaliser l'apparition de populations largement mal connues, souvent fantasmée et fréquemment décrites en des termes qui diffèrent de la vision personnelle que les Grecs peuvent avoir d'eux-mêmes. Toute l'analyse mène donc à une nouvelle approche de la fabrique des identités grecques
The aim of this work is about studying mechanisms of identities' creation. Indeed, The Greeks are people who were leaded to leave Greece because of political (the rise of the Turks), economics (some are merchant) or religious reasons (some became Catholics since the council of Florence in 1439). For these reasons, the Greeks came first to Italy. Few of them decided to follow their path to Northern Europe, towards England, Burgundian States and France. Of course, they were only a handful of them, but we tried to understand who were they and what was their purpose. First we determined what were their number their qualities, their activities and their intentions. Secondly, we tried to evaluate the Greeks as strangers or as members diasporic groups like the historiography traditionally qualify the m. We brought to light that the Greeks couldn't be understood as rigid societies which were never changing: sometimes they were received as strangers and excluded from western societies sometimes not. A Greek could change during his life : he could be a poor and foreigner migrant during a certain period an then become a rich merchant integrated to a western society few years later. The third part of our work was to understand t meaning of the word 'Greek' which is often applied in documents: did the word 'Greek' get the same meaning in England in France, during the early fifteenth century or the end of the sixteenth century? Of course, not. We explained the documentation built a stereotypical speech about the Greeks, about what they were supposed to be, to eat, to wear, to spear or to pray . This is the Greek Identities' Laboratory

A partir d'un corpus de 43 romans francais des dix-neuvieme et vigntieme siecles, il s'agit de decrire et d'interpreter le fonctionnement de ces marges du texte que sont l'incipit, le desinit et le paratexte, considerees separement d'abord, dans leurs rapports ensuite, en utilisant l'appareil methodologique structuraliste et l7analyse socio-historique, ceci dans le but de voir dans quelle mesure ces marges appartiennent a la zone d'un contrat de lecture, ou sont uniquement le respect des conventions d'un genre, ou revelent une operation de mise en sens. Il apparait alors que si les procedures utilisees se depassent mutuellement et sont parfois le lieu de leur propre contestation, dans leurs effets, elles impliquent la legalite du code qu'elles enfreignent, de meme qu'elles portent les traces de traits anciens, fondateurs du recit. Il y a donc a la fois ecart et persistance. Cette derniere releve du recit comme phenomene transculturel et transhistorique, dont les fondements resistent aux mouvements du roman. Et l'ecart traduit les transformations du roman, necessairement lie a l'evolution de l'histoire et de la societe
Taking as a base a corpus of forty three french novels of the 19th and 20th centuries, our aim is the description and interpretation of the functioning of these margins, the "incipit", the "desinit" and the paratext, considered separately and in their relations to each other. The structuralist methodology and the socio-historical analysis are the instruments used to see if these margins belong to an agreed on contract of reading, or if they are ximply the respect of the conventions of a genre, or they reveal an operation of meaning. It appears then that if the procedures used are no longer valid (operating) and are sometimes the object of their own contestation, their effects may therefore involve the legality of the code they transgress. They may also contain signs of ancient characteristics that underlie the narrative account. The matter that calls at the same time distance and persistence. This latter belongs to the narrative account as a transcultural and transhistorical phenomenon which the bases resist the mouvements of the novel. Also the distance, necessarily linked to the evolution of history and society, expresses the novel transformations

Les romans de John Fowles s'inscrivent dans une démarche d'expérimentation avec la forme en même temps qu'ils affirment un attachement à la tradition réaliste, et nous disent quelque chose de la déchirure au cœur du vingtième siècle. Un mouvement contradictoire se dessine où le sujet moderne, divisé et incomplet, tend vers une complétude illusoire, perdue et irrécupérable, et en même temps anticipe la manière de faire consoner la faille de sa propre structure avec le vide indicible et informe dont les signifiants tracent le bord et qui ne devient perceptible que lorsque le sens se délite sous l'effet du travail de la lettre. L'incomplétude est de structure et Fowles s'interroge pour savoir comment l'écrire dans un texte qui, par définition, est complet. La fiction lui fournit le cadrage narratif de son désir de retrouver ce qui le meut. Quête impossible car le signifiant premier recouvre le manque qui est sa raison d'être. Une écriture qui se soutient d'une position symbolique masculine qui vise la maîtrise par l'imposition d'un sens qui voile le réel se trouve en échec. Une nouvelle écriture se fait jour sur les décombres da la première, fondée sur la position symbolique féminine qui, n'étant pas toute dans le langage, permet de faire percevoir le manque sur lequel la langage se fonde. Ce qui ne peut se dire relève de ce que nous nommons le réel et se différencie de la réalité qui est constituée du discours. Comment la réalité s'articule-t-elle au réel par le discours spécifique de la fiction ? Les romans de Fowles mettent en jeu deux discours inséparables mais antinomiques, l'un basé sur le désir qui est métonymique et linéaire, relevant du vouloir-dire de l'auteur, et l'autre qui travaille à défaire le premier en laissant parler dans les interstices qu'il ouvre quelque chose d'une jouissance perdue. Afin de laisser transpercer ce deuxième discours basé sur le vouloir-jouir inconscient, sous-jacent dans toute écriture, Fowles élabore une esthétique de l'inachevé
John Fowles's novels develop formal experimentation while attaching great value to the realistic tradition and express to some extent the rift at the heart of the century. There is a contradictory movement in his novels where the divided and therefore incomplete subject strives to achieve fulfilment in a unity that has been lost and cannot be recovered, simultaneously anticipating how to harmonize the fracture inherent in his position as subject with the unspeakable void outlined by the signifier and which is only perceptible when meaning crumbles through the work the letter. Lack of fulfilment is structural and Fowles is searching a means to write this into a text which is necessarily whole. Fiction provides the narrative framework for his desire to find what sets it in motion. He embarks on an impossible quest as the first signifier covers the original lack on which language is constituted. Writing from a symbolic masculine position whose aim is to control and impose a meaning in order to conceal “the real” is doomed to fail. A new form of writing must emerge on the ruins of the former based on a symbolic feminine position which cannot be totally framed in language and is thus able to reveal the lack on which language is founded. What cannot be said is what we call “the real” and differs from reality which is constructed by discourse. How can we articulate reality and the real through the specific discourse of fiction? Fowles's novels bring into play two forms of discourse that are both unseparable yet antinomical; one is based on desire whose nature is metonymical and linear, depending on the author's intention whereas the other endeavours to undo the first and create an opening through which the voice of the lost “jouissance” may be heard. In order to make way for the operation of this other discourse in which the unconscious desire for the form of jouissance which language permits is inherent, Fowles has elaborated an ethical response which we call his aesthetics of the impossible ending

Les textes de Maria Velho da Costa et de Teolinda Gersão sont habités par des paysages, des archétypes et des autoréflexivités configurés dans des marges, lieux périphériques, qui révèlent simultanément la place centrale occupée par le sujet féminin. La notion de paysage, matière de la première partie de cette étude, s'articule avec celle d'archétype (de relation archétypique) et d'autoréflexivité, notions traitées respectivement dans la deuxième et troisième parties, à travers - une coordonnée commune - l'espace envisagé sous les trois aspects suivants : le physique, le social et le mental. Les paysages apparaissent dans une marge physique par rapport au centre occupé par le sujet qui les construit. Les archétypes de l'Amazone, de la Sorcière et de la Folle, dans lesquels les personnages féminins se retrouvent, actualisent leur exclusion du cercle social en les renvoyant vers les marges périphériques que peuvent être la nature sauvage ou l'asile psychiatrique. L'autoréflexivité à la marge du texte, " à côté " de ce qui serait censé être le contenu de l'œuvre, s'avère un lieu marginal par rapport au centre traditionnellement occupé par la diégèse. L'intention sous-jacente à cette étude est d'analyser les configurations de paysages, d'archétypes, de relations archétypiques et de réflexions sur l'écriture au sein des récits fictionnels, qui manifestent une dimension marginale périphérique et paradoxalement contribuent à l'actualisation des subjectivités et des quêtes identitaires " au féminin " recherchées par les Auteurs, les narratrices et les personnages femmes dont la vitalité centrale déstabilise dichotomies et dualismes.

Entre le début des années 2000 et celui des années 2010, quatre artistes contemporains occidentaux Christoph Büchel, Mike Nelson, Jonah Freeman et Justin Lowe construisent en Europe et aux États-Unis de gigantesques et énigmatiques installations multi-pièces. Notre hypothèse initiale était qu’il existait des relations entre les super-productions labyrinthiques de ces artistes, tant du côté de leurs conceptions que de celui de leurs réceptions. Notre étude s’attache à décrire et analyser les spécificités (construction, accueil du public, thèmes et références …) et les enjeux (exploration, élaboration d’un récit, mise en danger et prise de risques du spectateur…) des expériences esthétiques offertes par ces dispositifs aujourd’hui invisibles. La réunion et le dépouillement d’archives inédites concernant dix de ces œuvres et leurs génétiques ainsi qu’une enquête de terrain menée auprès de leurs spectateurs nous ont permis de reconstituer des images mentales de ces œuvres. Les plans et les ekphraseis, récits fictionnels illustrés, que nous présentons dans cette thèse témoignent des dimensions spatiales et temporelles de ces parcours scéniques et mettent au jour un ensemble de mises en scène, matériaux, thématiques analogues. Prenant pour objet les stratégies scénographiques des artistes et les ressentis des spectateurs, notre analyse nous conduit à envisager ces œuvres comme des installations émotionnelles et comme des narrations environnementales dystopiques. La traversée de celles-ci, tel un voyage initiatique, permet à chaque spectateur de déployer son imagination et de se ressaisir comme individu et sujet-agissant
Between the early 2000s and the early 2010s, four contemporary Western artists Christoph Büchel, Mike Nelson, Jonah Freeman and Justin Lowe built gigantic and enigmatic multi-room installations in Europe and the United States. Our initial hypothesis was that there were relationships between the labyrinthine super-productions of these artists, both in terms of their conceptions and their receptions.Our study describes and analyzes the specificities (construction, visitors reception, themes and references ...) and the issues (exploration, elaboration of a story, visitors’ endangerment and risk-taking...) of the aesthetic experiences offered by these works of art, nowadays invisible. The gathering and assessment of unpublished archives concerning ten of these artistic devices and their geneses as well as a field survey carried out among their spectators have enabled us to reconstruct mental images of these works. The plans and ekphrases, illustrated fictions, presented in this thesis reveal the spatial and temporal dimensions of these aesthetic walkthroughs and bring to light a set of similar set ups, materials, and themes. Based upon the scenographic strategies of the artists and the feelings of the spectators, our analysis leads us to consider these works as emotional installations and as dystopian narrative spaces. Walking across these, as if journeying through a voyage of initiation, sparks the spectator’s imagination and makes him fully conscious of his individuality and ability to take action

M.A. University of the Witwatersrand, Faculty of Humanities, 2012
That works of fiction are morally developmental is a commonly accepted claim. However, works of fiction are epistemically dubitable. As such, any account of the morally developmental nature of fiction ought to be one on which moral development is conceived of as occurring indirectly. It is the claim of this dissertation that extant accounts of the morally developmental nature of fiction fail to do so. The positive thesis of this dissertation is that moral development can be brought about through an experience of irony. This dissertation employs Jonathan Lear’s account of irony on which an experience of irony can be occasioned by bringing the subject to recognise the disparity between a concept, understood as a social pretense, and the same concept understood as a human ideal. Subjective concepts, including the moral virtues, are such that exemplifying the ideal consists in being in a constant state of coming to exemplify the ideal. The virtue of mercy is explicated in full. It is shown that mercy involves firstly, paying attention to the particulars of a wrongdoing, secondly, the dissolution of negative affective responses to wrongdoing, and thirdly, a sense of moral humility. Fiction, by virtue of its narrative and mimetic nature, is capable of inducing these three states. Furthermore, by occasioning an experience of irony, fiction succeeds in drawing the reader into a state in which she is constantly striving to exemplify mercy as a human ideal. In doing so, fiction succeeds in making the reader merciful. It does so, without directly asserting any positive claims. The account is thus not susceptible to the epistemic dubitibility objection.

This thesis consists of an excerpt of a novel, Earworm, plus an accompanying exegesis, “Will Bunny Stay Dead?: the Unreconstructed Male in Grinderman and The Death of Bunny Munro.” Earworm is a novel narrated by a pop tune. The fictional love song, “Empty Fairground,” echoes within the consciousnesses of several characters, either skulking in the back of the mind or pushing to the forefront of thought. It connects readily with the memories and fantasies of its “hosts.” The more meaning each person associates with the song, the greater the hold it has within their mind. The novel explores the way that pop culture affects us, fusing inextricably with our reminiscences and giving voice to attitudes and identity. It plays with the relationships between language and music, with the prose often reading like lyrics. Musical terms and imagery abound. Earworm Synopsis: The novel divides into five “tracks.” The first two introduce Nicole, a twenty-two year old student in Hobart who believes she was conceived while the hit “Empty Fairground” was playing. When Nicole discovers her recently deceased father was not her biological parent she undergoes a crisis of identity and begins to hate the tune that she had previously adored. Track Three concerns Spencer, an academic living in Adelaide and Nicole’s unwitting biological father. Lingering in a passionless marriage strained by the grief of a stillborn daughter, Spencer uses the song to revive memories of the affair he had with Nicole’s mother in a distant Tasmanian summer. Spencer is drawn to Marla, one of his students. Track Four draws the two main characters closer as Nicole spies on Spencer in Adelaide while trying to brace herself for an encounter. She hopes that Spencer will provide clues to her own identity. Spencer, meanwhile, is tempted by infidelity. Nicole plans to overdose at a reunion concert by JayJay, the band that wrote and recorded “Empty Fairground.” She will die to the same tune that accompanied her conception. At the same concert, Spencer prepares to end his marriage via a phone call. The narrator yearns to protect Nicole and prevent Spencer’s folly, yet cannot inject direct thoughts into its hosts. Can the song that exists in their heads juggle fantasies and recollections effectively enough to save a marriage – and a life? The final “hidden” track presents an epilogue. The excerpt of Earworm presented for assessment comes from the beginning of Track Three. It introduces Spencer and his wife, Vivienne. Spencer rediscovers “Empty Fairground” and indulges in memories of his youthful fling. He is attracted to Marla, who is trying to conclude a relationship with the unstable Griff. It presents a new side of our storyteller as the narrator is intoxicated by the speed metal cover of itself that roars in Marla’s mind. Please note: in order to maintain consistency with citations within the exegesis, the page numbering of the Earworm excerpt retains the pagination of the novel manuscript. Exegesis: “Will Bunny Stay Dead?: the Unreconstructed Male in Grinderman and The Death of Bunny Munro” In developing the voice of the narrator of Earworm I have attempted to steep the prose in musical allusion. It was therefore instructive to explore connections between literature and music in the accompanying exegesis. I elected to examine two side projects in the artistic trajectory of Nick Cave: the novel The Death of Bunny Munro (2009) and the eponymous debut album by Cave’s offshoot band Grinderman. Cave is primarily a songwriter and musician but has also written novels, short stories, plays and screenplays. He is an intriguing candidate for a study of the ways in which literature and music interrelate. Moreover, Cave considers himself a narrative songwriter (Buck). The two projects chosen share themes, language and a sense of humour that is broader than Cave’s usual mordant wit. Both projects feature manifestations of the “unreconstructed male” and a study of Cave’s attitude to this stereotype provides insight into the ways in which song and story interact. The exegesis also demonstrates how The Death of Bunny Munro was informed by Cave’s longstanding work with his main band, Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds. This in turn shines a light on the musical influences that construct the narrator’s diction and syntax in Earworm. Cave, perhaps to the surprise of many who consider him bleak and menacing, considers himself to be first and foremost a creator of love songs (Cave "Secret" 1). This dovetails neatly with my narrator who is proud to be a love song, and who allows ready identification with the genre to colour its interpretations of the machinations, emotions and complexities of the humans whose minds it inhabits.

碩士
國立高雄第一科技大學
應用英語所
98
This study aims at probing the explicitation-specific stylistic differences in fiction translations by males and by females using the method of corpus-based analysis. Explicitation, identified by Mona Baker (1993) as one of the four universal translational features of the translational language, refers to rendering the implicit message of the source text explicit in the target text. As shown in previous studies (Newman et al. 2008; Argamon et al. 2007; Van Gijsel, et al. 2006; etc.), due to the use of more intensive adverbs and more conjunctions as well as having a lower lexical density, females have demonstrated a more explicit style than males in speaking and writing. Seen in this regard, I hypothesize that female translators similarly present a more explicit style than males do in their fiction translations. To investigate the explicitation-specific variation in the translations by males and by females, I analyze an English-Chinese parallel corpus with two subcorpora: one 338946-word subcorpus consisting of the Chinese fiction translations by males with the English originals, and one 332964-word subcorpus composed of the Chinese fiction translations by females with the English originals. The total number of the two subcorpora reaches nearly 700,000 words. The criteria used for explicitation analysis include added intensive adverbs, added conjunctions, and lexical density. The findings show that female translators exhibit a higher degree of added-intensive-adverb-resulted explicitation but a lower degree of added-conjunction-resulted explicitation than males do. However, the lexical density between the translations by males and by females does not show a considerable difference. It is concluded that explicitation-specific tendencies found in previous studies through a comparison of stylistic differences in speaking and writing by males and by females are not necessarily shown in the translations by males and by females. Gender is not the only factor to govern the translator’s explicitation performance. To find possible reasons for the explicitation differences in the translations by males and by females, other factors, including the translator’s educational background, professional experiences, and particularly personal idiosyncratic preferences, need to be taken into consideration.

This research investigated how males are portrayed in realistic juvenile fiction and how this portrayal has changed over the past twenty years. A deconstructionist approach was taken to analyze the primary male characters in award winning realistic juvenile fiction. The researcher used a three-step approach to analyze the primary male characters in the books. First, templates with identified characteristics were used to categorize various features of all the primary characters. Second, characteristics occurring repeatedly were identified, grouped and labeled. These were defined as "Codes" and are the areas through which primary characters are portrayed in realistic juvenile fiction. The codes identified were: "Conflict Resolution," "Emotions," "Race," "Relationships," and "Success." Third, features specific to primary male characters that were found within the codes were identified and discussed. Results showed that male characters are portrayed in a positive light, but that this portrayal is narrow in its scope. Men are portrayed more narrowly and stereotypically than are boys. The change over the past twenty years has been minimal, but males have become more multidimensional in realistic juvenile fiction during the past ten years.