Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Tragic Fate And History In Thomas Hardy's "The Return Of The Native", Tristan Pageze

Foreign Languages & Literatures ETDs

This thesis explores the operation of the tragic in Thomas Hardy’s The Return of the Native by taking as a starting point the formalist approach to the genre of tragedy, before extending its definition to encompass the key concept of tragic conflict. This thesis argues that Hardy’s tragic vision takes for object human history, and especially the effects of new, unveiled knowledge on the human psyche, thus locating the root cause of tragedy in these contingencies. This continuum between individual action and the larger historical causes that shape it is expressed via the narrator’s discourse, and the discrepancy between his …

Was Ist (Nicht) Deutsch? Historische Und Aktuelle Versuche "Deutsch" Ex Negativo Zu Definieren, Mark Mckinney Smith

Foreign Languages & Literatures ETDs

In this thesis I explore the question of how a xenophobic ideology could find a receptive audience in 21st Century Germany. Given extensive postwar efforts in Germany to address the Nazi Period, this question is of particular interest. I analyze and compare racist and xenophobic ideologies in four time periods: the Napoleonic Period, the Wilhelmine Period, the National Socialist Period and the contemporary period. Historically, xenophobic ideology is deeply tied to particular social and economic conditions which leads to the following questions: What are the similarities and differences between contemporary xenophobic messaging and that of the three other time periods …

Zur Ästhetik Des Widerstands Im Afrodeutschen Theater: Am Beispiel Von Olumide Popoolas Also By Mail, Bertrand Collins Ngong M.A.

Foreign Languages & Literatures ETDs

This research is titled On the Aesthetics of Resistance in Afro-German Theater: A Case Study of Olumide Popoola's Also by mail. The main purpose of this research is to show how Afro-German theater resists through creative processes on a symbolic and aesthetic level to address crucial challenges faced by the black minority in Germany. The play Also by mail by Nigerian-German playwright Olumide Popoola is an interesting example of this, as it is situated at the intersection of gender, race, and identity. Popoola’s engagement with the aesthetics of resistance provides a way to understand how Afro-German activism today uses …

Nelly Arcan, Langage De La Honte, Jordon B. Mcconnell

Foreign Languages & Literatures ETDs

The aim of this thesis is to investigate the role that shame plays as a subversive tool in the works of Québécoise author Nelly Arcan. Dealing with themes such as sexuality, gender, suicide, and resentment, Arcan’s works deal with that which can be deemed “shameful,” and she deliberately speaks the unspeakable. First in constructing an understanding in how a shame-based vocabulary is employed throughout her works, we then study how this shame subverts expectations and adds weight to political questions relevant to the widespread use of electronic media. How does intentionally occupying a role that is shamed within society function …

Intolerable Histories And Imperfect Narratives: Nationhood, Identity, And The Integrity Of Law In Post-Vichy France And Beyond, Kaela S. Holmen

Foreign Languages & Literatures ETDs

The principal aim of this thesis project is to examine the socio-legal context of the Vichy regime in World War II France, and to provide an understanding of how that context informed, and continues to inform, the integrity of French nationhood. With Ernest Renan’s oubli serving as a framework for the solidification of nationhood, I will demonstrate that the betrayals to French law and custom that were committed in an attempt to right the wrongs of the Vichy resulted in an imperfect forgetting, and ultimately, a more fragmented national sense of self. I contend that this imperfect oubli resulting from …

Good Bye, Socialist Paradise: Representations Of Postreunification Nostalgia In Sonnenallee And Good Bye, Lenin!, Hannah L. Garver

Foreign Languages & Literatures ETDs

This thesis analyzes the experiences constituting the protagonists’ adolescence in the German Democratic Republic (GDR) as portrayed in Thomas Brussig’s book Am kürzeren Ende der Sonnenallee, Leander Haußmann’s film Sonnenallee, and Wolfgang Becker’s film Good Bye, Lenin!. These narratives challenge assumptions that the phenomenon Ostalgie indicates a desire to return to the actual conditions of life in the former East. Using Svetlana Boym’s work on post-communist nostalgia as a theoretical framework, I argue that the representations of life in the East as presented in these texts are the protagonists’ reinterpretations of the past. The protagonists develop nostalgia for their youth …

Narrating Refugee Lives: Political Asylum In 21st Century France, Susmitha Udayan

Foreign Languages & Literatures ETDs

This dissertation examines representations of refugees in legal and aesthetic texts. Using the notion of chronotope as a conceptual framework, it studies the use of time and space in various refugee narratives to argue that aesthetic texts about refugees foreground the concept of spatiality to materialize and historicize the refugee condition. These texts, I contend, provide a necessary counternarrative to the depersonalized, dehistoricized representations of refugees encountered in legal texts and media discourses. Comparative analysis of legal and literary texts shows that adventure-time, which dominates legal asylum narratives, contributes to produce coherent, linear, singularized legal asylum stories. Such a narration …

Camp De Thiaroye Ou La Déconstruction Du Mythe Colonial Par Le Truchement De La Langue Française, Maurice Tetne Mr.

Foreign Languages & Literatures ETDs

The history between France and Africa has been peppered with numerous irregularities and crimes. Senegalese filmmaker Sembene Ousmane’s film Camp de Thiaroye (1988) returned to this painful story of the Thiaroye tragedy. That film chronicles the criminal massacre by the French of returning Senegalese soldiers. The latter, having sacrificed themselves for France during WWII, demanded treatment and compensation equal to their French counterparts. Interestingly, one of the significant details of this film is the multitude of languages and “patois” that the various African soldiers speak. At the same time, the lingua-franca, a kind of “pidgin” called Français-tirailleur, is simultaneously …

Nidus Idearum. Scilogs, Iv: Vinculum Vinculorum, Florentin Smarandache

Branch Mathematics and Statistics Faculty and Staff Publications

Welcome into my scientific lab! My lab[oratory] is a virtual facility with non-controlled conditions in which I mostly perform scientific meditation and chats: a nest of ideas (nidus idearum, in Latin). I called the jottings herein scilogs (truncations of the words scientific, and gr. Λόγος – appealing rather to its original meanings "ground", "opinion", "expectation"), combining the welly of both science and informal (via internet) talks (in English, French, and Romanian). * In this fourth book of scilogs collected from my nest of ideas, one may find new and old questions and solutions, referring mostly to topics on NEUTROSOPHY – …

Plurality Through Film: Subjectivity In Yoko Tawada's Das Nackte Auge, Anna M. Adams

Foreign Languages & Literatures ETDs

This thesis undertakes an examination of the subject formation of the nameless protagonist and first-person narrator of Yoko Tawada’s novel, Das nackte Auge. Situated and framed by poststructuralist theorists such as Judith Butler and Michel Foucault, this thesis argues that the protagonist’s plurality of subject positions is established through her encounters with film, particularly in relation to the French actress Catherine Deneuve, in a process that reveals the overlapping networks of social, historical, and political structures that intersect to express her subjectivity as formed under systemic racism and sexism. Tawada’s novel provides an opportunity to examine how the protagonist …

Drama As Dream: Sophoclean Tragedy And The Cult Of Asclepius, Molly C. Mata

Foreign Languages & Literatures ETDs

This thesis explores tragic drama as a corresponding ritual to the incubation ritual in the cult of Asclepius and theorizes that this ritual is psychologically cathartic and healing. I argue that in Ajax and Philoctetes, Sophocles marks this cathartic ritual through nosological language, setting, and social context. In my first chapter, I explore Sophocles’ use of the language of madness (mania) and illness (nosos) in Ajax to show the exacerbation of the audience’s psychological state. Next, I show that catharsis is achieved through the negotiation and subsequent burial of Ajax. In my second chapter, I argue that Sophocles uses both …

Negotiation And The Construction Of Intimacy In The Letters Between Fronto And Marcus Aurelius, Sarah C. Keith

Foreign Languages & Literatures ETDs

This project analyzes the letters between Marcus Cornelius Fronto and his student Marcus Aurelius as works of literature, rather than merely sites for historical mining. The letters, I argue, contain carefully constructed tropes of rhetoric and feature intentional polish that serve as opportunities for discussion about the virtues of philosophy and rhetoric during the Second Sophistic. Topics of discussions between both parties range between the imagery of sleep, and intimate spaces, like bedrooms, to substantive allusions to Plato’s philosophy and his dialogue Phaedrus. By looking beyond the identification of concrete names and dates to the literary, referential, and personal world …

Lucie Cousturier: The Female Voice And Travel Narratives In Colonial West Africa, Ashley Gushulak

Foreign Languages & Literatures ETDs

In this thesis, I analyze Lucie Cousturier’s two major works, Des Inconnus chez eux (1920) and Mes Inconnus chez moi (1925) in which she navigates the discourses of imperialism, viewed as masculine, and of femininity. Through strategies of intimacy, Cousturier establishes her authority as a female travel writer. In her first work, Cousturier sets up an intimate relationship with the tirailleurs sénégalais by teaching them French and becoming a mother-figure to them. At the same time, Cousturier plays a role in France’s colonial agenda by teaching the soldiers French. In her second work, she establishes intimacy by adopting the local …

Widerstandsidentitäten: Identitäts- Und Heimatsuche Der Nachfolgegenerationen Türkischer Migranten In Fatih Akins Gegen Die Wand, Feo Aladağs Die Fremde Und Feridun Zaimoğlus Kanak Sprak, Anja Ruxanda Barr

Foreign Languages & Literatures ETDs

ABSTRACT

This paper examines how Fatih Akin’s film Head-On/Gegen die Wand (2004), Feo Aladağ’s film When We Leave/Die Fremde (2010), and Feridun Zaimoğlu’s text Kanak Spraak construct a new Turkish-German identity that is established through resistance to a homogenously imagined culture. With the current influx of immigrants to Germany, the debate about integration, hybridity, and divergence has become more important than ever. The emergence of hybrid migrant identities that are being problematized in Turkish-German movies and texts has shown that issues of belonging and identity caused by multipositionality have become an integral part of Turkish-German narratives. Over time, representations …

Carian Greeks And Greek Scythians: The Hybridity Of Greek And Barbarian Identity In Herodotus’ Histories, Benjamin D. Leach

Foreign Languages & Literatures ETDs

In my thesis, I discuss how Herodotus characterizes the similarities and differences between Greek and non-Greek identity. Herodotus provides his readers with a plethora of details about both Greek and non-Greek peoples in his Histories, which has offered scholars plenty of material to use in this topic. I argue that Herodotus purposefully highlights certain aspects that are shared by certain Greek and non-Greek peoples in order to provide a commentary on his own times. The first chapter focuses on the characters Phanes and Artemisia and how uses the same vocabulary to describes these two individuals, despite one being a …

Those That Trespass Against Us: Childhood, Violence, And Memory In The White Ribbon, Joseph Kuster

Foreign Languages & Literatures ETDs

This thesis examines aesthetic representations of childhood and violence in Michael Haneke’s The White Ribbon, I argue that Haneke’s film interrogates notions of the idealized child in the context of German history/the history of the Tätergeneration in order to question the possibility of affixing particular objective truth to historical or cultural narrative. First, I examine and deconstruct culturally accepted representations of the child as a symbol of innocence and purity, and explore how Haneke’s film manipulates and subverts these tropes. I then approach the film using three different theoretical structures: the gaze of the monstrous child in the horror …

Mémoire Et Identité Dans Les Réécritures Caribéennes : Wide Sargasso Sea Et La Migration Des Coeurs, Camille Charlery

Foreign Languages & Literatures ETDs

This thesis will study creole identity in Jean Rhys Wide Sargasso Sea (1966), prequel of Jane Eyre, as well as in Maryse Condé's La Migration des Coeurs (1995), a rewriting of Wuthering Heights. I argue that both novels create a new creole identity by conversing with their original texts as well as by going beyond the official definition of creoleness. Using the concepts of obsessive memory and forced forgetfulness, I explore the tension betwee innate and constructed identity. First, I focus on the meaning of creoleness, then, I examine how memory plays a crucial role in the novels through topics …

Vers Une Ecocritique Postcoloniale Africaine: L’Environnement Dans Les Litteratures Africaines De Langue Française, Marie Chantale Mofin Noussi

Foreign Languages & Literatures ETDs

This work was motivated by two major facts: the African environment is at the heart of the continents relationships with colonialism, neocolonialism and globalization; but there is not enough literary emphasis on this environmental centrality. This work contributes in bridging the gap between African Francophone Literatures and the environmental discourses. This dissertation is the literary analysis of the representation, the transformation, and the exploitation of the African environment in the operating policies of colonial, neocolonial and global power structures. These environmental policies in the colonial and current global world tend to mold the African environment in a way that the …

Le Rôle Du Hammam Féminin Dans La Construction Et La Consolidation Des Identités Sexuées En Algérie Et Au Maroc, Nina Bauwens

Foreign Languages & Literatures ETDs

The traditional women's hammam, or public bath, is a key space in the Arabo-Muslim societies of Algeria and Morocco. In those two countries, the division between men and women, still important today, is also noticeable inside the public bath, since men and women do not mingle. The question of gendered identity appears. More than a distinction between sexes, it is a social distinction between a man's identity and a woman's identity that is relevant here. It is essential to be able to distinguish to which 'group' each person belongs. Thus, the notions of individual identity, and then of gendered identity …

The Representation Of The Darker Faustian Elements Of The Walpurgisnacht And Mephistopheles In Heavy Metal And Rock Music, Edgar Dan Hornback

Foreign Languages & Literatures ETDs

There has been an association between the Faust drama and music which has endured for centuries. It is a tradition which is also influential during the present in rock music. The main characteristic of rock music and heavy metal is to reflect life in a realistic and an unapologetic manner in its lyrical content. Therefore, the combining of the drama with rock music is a natural and logical progression. The Walpurgisnacht and the character of Mephistopheles from the drama have been the vehicles to reflect the difficulties of modern life. The entire drama has also been adapted and set in …

Die Erscheinungsformen Der Ostjüdischen Kultur In Berlin 1919-1925, Glenn Scott Levine

Foreign Languages & Literatures ETDs

This paper presents a detailed portrait of the sudden flowering and subsequent decline of the Eastern European Jewish cultural scene in Berlin in the years following the First World War. Particular attention is focused on the period between 1922 and 1924, during which almost all manifestations of Yiddish culture thrived in the German capital.

The paper is introduced with a brief description of the large Eastern European Jewish migration to and through Berlin in the early twenties. The demographic information summarized in this section supplies a background for the cultural analysis. A survey of the main reasons for this influx …

Photonuclear Activation At The Pantex Plant, Gilbert L. Rendon

Foreign Languages & Literatures ETDs

This is a structuralist reading of the theatrical works of Henry de Monther­lant. The genera I approach incorporates the theories of Claude Levi-Strauss, Ro land Barth es, Jean Piaget, Jean Rousset, and Leo Spitzer. Two major types of structure are examined: the interrelationship of characters and the interrelationship of ideas. Two theoretical mode Is are constructed. The first is a triadic mode I of the relationships among characters in tightly-knit communities, based upon the sociological theories of Georg Simmel and Theodore Cap low. The second is a semiotic model of the relationships between opposing ideas, based upon the carré sémiotique …

Le Motif De L'Etoile Dans Les Oeuvres De GéRard De Nerval., Shelley Gregory Crowe

Foreign Languages & Literatures ETDs

A study of the star motif in the works of Gérard de Nerval brings out stylistic diversity and stylistic development in the works of the period 1841 through 1854. Before this time the star is hardly mentioned in the work of Nerval.

During the period between 1841 and 1843, Nerval underwent two important experiences. The first such experience is the mental crisis of 1841 during which he was hospitalized for the first time for such an illness. The second experience is the voyage to the Orient, a trip lasting the entire year of 1843. These two events can be seen …

Pascal's Concept Of Christianity., Audrey Vivien Bull

Foreign Languages & Literatures ETDs

This thesis explains Pascal's concept of Christian­ity, showing how it developed during the course of his life until it attained the conviction expressed in the Pensees.

It starts with the events of his life, taken from the accounts of two people related closely to him. His style is then analyzed, showing how it was influenced by the quarrel of the Jansenist and Jesuit sects to produce the polemic Lettres Provinciales and the reasons for the change of style before the Pensees. The importance of his style is stressed, because he fixed the French lan­guage and is perhaps the greatest stylist …

The Archetype Of Woman In The Theatre Of Jean Giraudoux., Elisabeth Josephine Price

Foreign Languages & Literatures ETDs

I had begun to re-read Giraudoux for pleasure, remembering that when I was first introduced to his works in class, I had been impressed by the quality of the heroines he presented. Upon second reading of his theatre, I was struck by the fact that his heroines did not serve in a complementary role to the hero, as so often is the case, but were presented as entities of their own. Because there is a revolution taking place in our culture over the role of woman, I thought that it would be interesting to investigate Giraudoux's concept of woman. In …

"Realia" Dans Le Perceval De Chretien De Troyes, Claude Jean Fouillade

Foreign Languages & Literatures ETDs

La compréhension de la littérature médiéveale est incomplète lorsqu'on la sépare du contexte vivant dans lequel elle a été écrite. A travers le Perceval nous avons essayé de reconstruire la vie quotidienne aux alentours de l'année 1180. Nous avons étudié les différentes classes sociales présentées; c'est-à-dire, la noblesse, le clergé, les citadins et les paysans, dans les domaines suivants: gens, habitat, vêtements, nourriture, instruments, corps. Nous avons signalé et expliqué la prépondérance accordée à la noblesse et nous essayons de montrer que par delà l'intérêt littéraire que l'peuvre de Chrétien de Troyes présente, c'est le renseignement brut, quelle que soit …

L'Art De La Description Et Du Portrait Chez Manette Salomon Des FrèRes Goncourt., Barbara Joan Goodman

Foreign Languages & Literatures ETDs

The death of Honoré de Balzac in 1850 left a void in the production of masterpieces of the French novel. During the next decade, the lack of a dominant literary school, with precise rules, afforded to a great variety of authors a period of experimentation toward the establishment of a new direction for the novel.

The cooperative creation of Jules and Edmond de Goncourt emerged from this indecisive period. Throughout the ten years, the two brothers dabbled in various media of expression--painting, history, art criticism, drama-but their primary importance resides in their innovations in the novel. Manette Salomon, published in …

Le Monde De Madame De Girardin Vu A Travers Les Lettres Parisiennes., Janina M. Cikotas

Foreign Languages & Literatures ETDs

Between 1836 and 1848 there appeared in La Presse, one of the most important French newspapers, a series of weekly articles entitled Le Courrier de Paris. They were signed by the Vicomte de Launay, a pseudonym for Madame de Girardin, the wife of Emile de Girardin, the owner of this influential publication. These articles generally enjoyed great success.

The author, a young woman of 32, was already well known for her precocious and remarkable poetic talent. Not only had she already been acclaimed for her poems, but she had also manifested her literary talent in some very successful novels and …

Simone Weil's Search For Unity Through The Union Of Contradictories., Barbara J. Brim

Foreign Languages & Literatures ETDs

There is a good deal of modern literature particularly that of the post­ World War II period, which might be best described as “distorted” author deliberately focuses on some negative aspect of life, usually the sordid, and exaggerates it to an unbelievable nightmare. The author makes his point all too well. In fact, some of these works are masterpieces of human understanding. However, when one book after another presents the same negative theme, treated in the same way for a kind of shock effect, we begin to feel as though literature has as its sole aim a kind of psychological …

Pierpont Morgan Manuscript 324: Le Roman De La Rose; A Study In Social Transition, Louise A. Miller

Foreign Languages & Literatures ETDs

Art and literature, significant forms of human expression, serve as two valuable cultural sources for the understanding of a given civilization. The philosophical rationalism of Voltaire and the mythological paintings of Boucher, as contrasted to the concern with self of Chateaubriand and the tragically realistic paintings of Gericault, provide an important expressive background to the understanding of society before and after the French Revolution. These sources provide a broader insight into the societies of the time, their influences upon and their reactions to the immediate historical event. Similarly, the starkness of the paintings of Buffet and the preoccupation with the …