Novelist, satirist, poet, photographer, painter, alchemist, and hellraiser-August Strindberg was all these, and yet he is principally known, in Arthur Miller's words, as "the mad inventor of modern ...theater" who led playwriting out of the polite drawing room into the snakepit of psychological warfare. This biography, supported by extensive new research, describes the eventful and complicated life of one of the great literary figures in world literature. Sue Prideaux organizes Strindberg's story into a gripping and highly readable narrative that both illuminates his work and restores humor and humanity to a man often shrugged off as too difficult.
Best known for his playMiss Julie,Strindberg wrote sixty other plays, three books of poetry, eighteen novels, and nine autobiographies. Even more than most, Strindberg is a writer whose life sheds invaluable light on his work. Prideaux explores Strindberg's many art-life connections, revealing for the first time the originals who inspired the characters of Miss Julie and her servant Jean, the bizarre circumstances in which the play was written, and the real suicide that inspired the shattering ending of the play. Recounting the playwright's journey through the "real" world as well as the world of belief and ideas, Prideaux marks the centenary of Strindberg's death in 1912 with a biography worthy of the man who laid the foundation for Western drama through the twentieth century and even into the twenty-first.
The research work described in this master thesis has been based on an exploratory empirical study put through with 9th-grade students of a public school in the state of Minas Gerais. We investigated ...the implications of developing activities prepared with Corpus Linguistics resources in order to improve those students accuracy. Starting from genre-based teaching, the decision was to focus on biographies and jokes. Therefore, corpora of small dimensions were compiled with 100 texts from biographies and jokes, amounting to 19.850 words. Starting with these corpora and the frequency of the words in them, the focus of the study was on the several uses of to and for. The primary objective of this research work came out to be how linguistic awareness provided by the examination of concordance lines generated from the corpora could collaborate to the appropriate use of the structures with to and for. The participants in the research, 36 students, were divided into the following groups: treatment (TG) and control (CG). Firstly, they performed text comprehension activities, together, and later, they produced one text of each genre, as a pre-test. From this moment on, the groups worked separately with exercises on to and for. The TG performed exercises which followed the principles of data-driven-learning (JOHNS, 1994), based on concordance lines and the CG performed traditional exercises based on dictionary definitions. By the end of this empirical study, the groups rewrote their productions, as a post-test. The productions of all the participants were typed and treated by WordSmith Tools 5.0 (SCOTT, 2008), in order to generate the concordance lines to be analyzed quantitatively and qualitatively. During the qualitative analysis we tried to assess the degree of accuracy shown by the participants. With the results of this analysis, it was possible to confirm the hypothesis that the participants in the TG, being exposed to a linguistic awareness based on corpora evidences, were able to produce more combinations within the patterns studied, when compared to the CG. It was concluded by this research work that second language learners can develop their linguistic accuracy when observing patterns in concordance lines, even when these items are complex and present different usages.
A pesquisa descrita nesta dissertação de mestrado teve por base um experimento realizado com alunos do 9º ano do ensino fundamental de uma escola pública do Estado de Minas Gerais. Foram investigadas as implicações da aplicação de atividades preparadas com recursos da Linguística de Corpus na melhoria da acuidade desses alunos. Partindo do ensino baseado em gêneros, decidiu-se focar no gênero piada e biografia. Sendo assim, foram montados corpora de pequenas dimensões com 100 textos de piadas e biografias, no total de 19.850 palavras. A partir desses corpora e da frequência das palavras contidas neles, o foco do estudo recaiu sobre os diversos usos dos itens to e for. O objetivo específico da pesquisa passou a ser a investigação de como a conscientização linguística através de linhas de concordância geradas pelos corpora poderia colaborar para o uso apropriado de construções com to e for. Os participantes da pesquisa, 36 alunos, foram divididos nos seguintes grupos: tratamento (GT) e controle (GC). Primeiramente, eles realizaram atividades de compreensão de texto, conjuntamente, e, posteriormente, produziram um texto de cada gênero textual (pré-teste). A partir desse momento, os grupos trabalharam, separadamente, com exercícios com to e for. O GT fez atividades que seguiam os princípios da abordagem movida a dados (JOHNS, 1994), baseadas em linhas de concordância; e o GC fez exercícios tradicionais baseados em definições de dicionário. Ao final do experimento, os grupos reescreveram suas produções (pós-teste). As produções de todos os participantes da pesquisa foram digitalizadas e tratadas pela ferramenta WordSmith Tools 5.0 (SCOTT, 2008), para a geração de linhas de concordância, que foram analisadas de modo quantitativo e qualitativo. Na análise qualitativa, procurou-se examinar os tipos de padrões utilizados pelos participantes de modo a avaliar o grau de acuidade mostrado por eles. A partir dessa análise, foi possível confirmar a hipótese de que os participantes do GT, tendo sido expostos a uma conscientização linguística baseada em evidências de corpora, conseguiram produzir mais combinações dentro dos padrões estudados em comparação ao GC. Concluiu-se, com esta pesquisa, que aprendizes de segunda língua podem desenvolver sua acuidade linguística na observância de padrões a partir de linhas de concordância, mesmo quando esses itens são complexos e apresentam usos variados.
