European Languages and Societies Commons^™

The Faustian Deal: What Is Good And Evil?, Jaclyn Elmquist

English Honors Theses

How is the “deal with the devil” is portrayed in contemporary films? This essay compares how the original Faustian deal informs modern-day portrayals. Thus, I examine how devils were first represented in early works such as The Faustbuch, Mary of Nijmegen, and Goethe’s Faustus. These depictions and their historical context provide the basis for my research. I compare these works to the films, Rosemary’s Baby, Wall Street, and Sweet Smell of Sucess. In the mentioned films, the main characters make deals with a devil or demon for wealth, success, or fame. I explore how the Faustian character of each film …

Songs For High Voice: An Annotated Guide To African Romances, Op. 17 By Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, Makeda Danielle Hampton

Theses and Dissertations--Music

African Romances, Op. 17, composed in 1897 by African-British composer Samuel Coleridge-Taylor (1875-1912), is a collection of seven songs for high voice that is uniquely both African and American. The lyrics of this song cycle were first published in the book Majors and Minors, a collection of poems published in 1895 by Paul Laurence Dunbar (1872-1906).

An analysis of resources supports that academic discourse in Black vocal music has been underrepresented due to the absence of centralized information, such as published scores, recorded materials, catalogs, and guides for study and performance. While in depth research focusing on the art …

Maidens In Maizes: Johnson, Grimms, D'Aulnoy, Hannah M. Johnson

Senior Projects Spring 2019

Senior Project submitted to The Division of Languages and Literature of Bard College. A German Studies and Written Arts joint project, with a collection of original fairy tales as well as an in-depth analysis of female agency, female mutilation, religious influence, and language within the fairy tales of Grimms and Madame d'Aulnoy.

Unread: The (Un)Published Texts Of Romanticism, Marc D. Mazur

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This dissertation reads the unpublished texts of Romanticism not as fragments on the road to publication but as psychoanalytic “partial objects” that re-figure our understanding of the relationship between Romantic authors and publication. Against positivist interpretations of literary production that limit writing to the professionalization of the author and to a sociology of texts, Unread develops the concept of the (un)published whose parenthetical bracketing signals an unstable suspension of textual instability that is at once prior to and yet persistently remains a part of the writing of the published text. I argue that non-publication also arises from the author’s relation …

Das Deutsche Lied: Eine Songwriting-Tradition Für Das Volk, Ethan Watson

Honors Theses

This thesis focuses on the analysis of two prominent German Lieder. Through the works of Goethe, Schubert, and Wolf Biermann, I have attempted to show the progression of the songwriting genre and how it has transitioned from universally-understood emotion to specific political protest through the intimate monologues contained in song.

“Ewig ‘Schön’”: Politics And Poetics In The Work And Correspondence Of Sarah Kirsch And Helga Novak, Sophia J. Logan

Senior Projects Fall 2018

Senior Project submitted to The Division of Languages and Literature of Bard College.

Saturnine Constellations: Melancholy In Literary History And In The Works Of Baudelaire And Benjamin, Kevin Godbout

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Aristotle famously asked the question: why are extraordinary people so often melancholics? “Problem XXX,” written by Aristotle or one of his disciples, speculates that black bile, the humour once believed to cause melancholy, can promote a form of genius, a profound intellectual power. Walter Benjamin and Charles Baudelaire are two writers for whom this theory was true: though they suffered from gloominess and despondency, they also recognized that in the interior of sadness, and even madness, is a kernel of aesthetic, artistic, and philosophical truth. Melencolia illa heroica – whose theory was authoritatively formulated by Ficino, taking after Aristotle’s Problems …

Literarische Zensur Als Meinungsbildung: Zensur In Der Bundesrepublik Und Die Entwicklung Einer Neuen Wahrnehmung Der Ehemaligen Ddr, Lauren M. Davidson

Senior Theses and Projects

Germany has a long history of literary censorship. Following the Second World War and the division of Germany into the Federal Republic of Germany in the West and the German Democratic Republic in the East, both states simultaneously decried censorship in their constitutions and proceeded to unofficially censor literature. A vast amount of research and attention has focused on the censorship program of the East German Ministry for Culture. Little attention, however, has been given to censorship in West Germany, despite its critical role in the development of a new cultural identity and perception of the former East Germany. This …

Theory And Practice Of Translation: An Original Translation Of Regina E. G. Schymiczek’S Die Weide Der Seepferde (The Pasture Of The Seahorses), Bradley J. Davey, Ralph W. Buechler

Honors College Theses

This study outlines the original translation of the recently published Die Weide der Seepferde (2013) from Regina E. G. Schymizcek. We employ known translation techniques by following Hervey’s (2006) suggested gradients of degrees of translation and cultural transposition. While translating the work we discovered a unique aspect of German-English translation which we believe fundamentally adds to knowledge of translation theory.

The Cultural Memory Of German Victimhood In Post-1990 Popular German Literature And Television, Pauline Ebert

Wayne State University Dissertations

My dissertation analyzes the representation of Germans as victims of the Third Reich and the Second World War in post-1990 German memory. After unification, there no longer were two states that could each blame the other as the heir of National Socialism and this past had to be renegotiated. The claim that many Germans had been victims became central as evidenced by the vast number of popular literature, commercial cinema and television programs of this subject. I argue with Wulf Kansteiner (2006) that to understand collective memory, we should explore mass media representations. As the majority of highbrow artifacts do …

A Musical Poet: Themes In The Lieder Of Robert Schumann’S Year Of Song, Mary H. Harkrader

Undergraduate Theses and Capstone Projects

My thesis will research themes of solitude, love, nature, mood or emotional states, and the duality of joy and pain in the Robert Schumann’s Lieder composed around the year 1840. This year was the year of Schumann’s marriage to his music teacher’s daughter Clara Wieck and is, consequently, the year when Robert Schumann turned to writing Lieder or songs. Lieder were a unique lyric genre created in Germany during Romantic era. These songs combined the works of great German poets of the time with the artistic expression of emotions captured by the composer. Tracing the themes in Robert Schumann’s Lieder …