Imitative and monologic presentations do little to render the stylistic nature of language itself. They efface atonal poetic works by superimposing an economic, uniform, and fixed order of ...representation. Yet these resolved and stable interpretations are tied to a flux within signifying language. How might one show these “forms” of the formless—he smothered words, swollen intervals, and distended cadences that interrupt linguistic reference? My dissertation introduces “poetic suspense” as a pragmatic engagement with ruptures in symbolic figuration. Chapters one, three, and five are a sustained critique of mimesis that work through theories of masochism. They take up poetic suspense as a critical refrain beside pre-established rules for “getting on top of” a text. The dissertation is a step into subversions that provisionally halt communicative reference. The theory chapters situate poetic suspense in relation to psychoanalytic and philosophical traditions. The first one opens with a discussion of what Freud reductively calls “primary masochism” and works through logocentric myths. Instead of being any essential pathological or feminine position, masochism is a practice of poetic invention. Drawing from the adages—“A rose is a rose is a rose is a rose” and “A sentences is not emotional a paragraph is”—chapter two works through Gertrude Stein's performative “theories,” which demonstrate poetic suspense. Lectures in America and How to Write are perverse primers that play off uniform discourse and poetically digress from symbolic rules. Imposing their own agrammatical limits, theses elementary works make an eccentric way of presenting. Chapter four of my dissertation on Gertrude Stein examines her student writings in the Radcliffe Manuscripts. These semi-autobiographical entries depart from predetermined forms through an anxious relation to death. The dissertation focuses on two entries called “In the Red Deeps” (October 10, 1894) and “In the Library” (March 22, 1895). They show Stein engaged in masochist and musical exposures to work around determinative limits. Poetic suspense is not limited to the masochist acts exemplified in Gertrude Stein's oeuvre. It is any engagement that interrupts symbolic figuration by presenting a poetic resonance beside mimetic order and reference.
Ontological and metaphysical issues are rarely associated with theatre because theatre emphasizes performance while questions of Being have been addressed primarily by philosophical inquiry. But ...philosophy and literature have traditionally intersected, because the meaning of existence, the relationship between self and other, and the purpose of human life, have often been implicit in great drama, and have become a dominant preoccupation for modern dramatists. This comparative study analyzes the representation of ontological and existential issues in British and Egyptian drama in order to show that theatre can serve as a bridge between esthetic and philosophical inquiry and sociopolitical realities, as it can also serve as a laboratory for cross-cultural understanding. A cross-cultural comparison between British and Egyptian societies, during the 1950s and 1960s respectively, shows that these two societies experienced a similar malaise. The frustration of the young British people with the elitist class system and with the psychologically deflating effect accompanying the collapse of the British empire was similar to the frustration of the Egyptians at the failure of nationalism to achieve its promised goals. The study sheds new light on cultures that have been largely ignored or misconceived in the West. The research examines the role of theatre as an agent of cultural transformation in the dramatization of both metaphysical and social concerns, by analyzing the works of four playwrights: Pinter and Stoppard represent the British situation; while Farag and Derbalah represent Egyptian drama. In four chapters, each of the various ontological concerns is analyzed in selected plays, with particular focus on: meta-drama, ritual, time, and language. These aspects are viewed by means of an eclectic methodology that issues directly from the ontological debate. Hermeneutic analysis, taawil in Arabic, is combined together with phenomenology, and reader-response theories. In short, ontological concerns lurk as undercurrents in many sociopolitical issues in much contemporary British and Egyptian drama. A careful analysis of the plays reveals the palimpsestic nature of interpretation whereby sociopolitical concerns act as masks for ontological anxieties present in two disparate cultures, which none the less experience similar malaise due to historic changes in societal values and political conditions.
The purpose of this study is to examine the image of the dictator in the literature of Latin America. The dictator, as he is depicted in the works of Alejo Carpentier, Augusto Roa Bastos, and Gabriel ...Garcia Márquez, is a central archetypal icon who embodies the tragic history of anti-democratic rule in the Latin American republics. The dictator, however, also personifies the complexities and contradictions that come with military rule. The 3 authors seek to examine the dynamics of dictatorial power, but they also explore deeper psychological, aesthetic, historical, and philosophical problems surrounding the novel of the dictator.
American philosophy has been accessible to poets as a set of ideas that fluctuates in significance from generation to generation, yet recent literary historiography has articulated pragmatism as a ...limited philosophical movement that affected a small circle of American moderns. My project demonstrates that pragmatism operates in much wider trajectories than this traditional narrative suggests, and in quite different ways as well: not as a direct echo of pragmatist tenets, but as a complementary cultural effort engaged in the same problems that gave rise to pragmatist writings. Chapter One (“The Beautiful Changes: Aesthetic Philosophy and Pragmatist Poetics”) reveals how the American pragmatism of William James, John Dewey, G. H. Mead, and Richard Rorty deploys traditionally private forms of aesthetic experience to serve communal ends. Chapter Two (“Something Added, Beyond: The Pragmatist Poetics of Walt Whitman”) argues that Walt Whitman initiates the aesthetics of pragmatism combining, through a hermeneutic of “addition,” different discursive procedures, as well as helps to shape James's own attitudes in fundamental ways. Chapter Three (“A Fit Haven: Marianne Moore and the Aesthetics of Community”), the first of two chapters exploring pragmatism and modernism, examines the work of Marianne Moore as participating in the radical development of aesthetic understanding during the late 1910s through early 1930s by attempting to realign what was perceived as an ailing American culture by Deweyan aesthetic experience. Chapter Four (“William Carlos Williams and American Propaganda”) contends that Williams's work during the 1930s and 1940s simultaneously courts and deflects strategies of propaganda to engage with the darker side of aesthetic instrumentalism: its potential exploitation by forces of political power. Chapter Five (“A Surprising Violence: The Reactionary Pragmatism of Frank O'Hara”) maintains that O'Hara's poetry evokes a pragmatist creed of experiential immediacy and loss of representation that eventually resurfaces as a form of de-humanization and control. Chapter Six (“Genealogical Economies: Pragmatist Criticism and the Problem of Inheritance, Including Notes on A. R. Ammons”) declaims the trope of the genealogy in pragmatist historiography and attempts to rearticulate pragmatism as an “economy,” a related but more liberated metaphorical framework provided by the pragmatist texts themselves.
The present study focuses on the theatrical works by Marguerite Yourcenar, a corpus of six plays first written at the beginning of her career. Seldom played on stage, these works merit to be studied ...for their stylistic as well as hermeneutic qualities. We are proposing that a structural and stylistic reading of Yourcenar's plays unveils the building blocks of her literary œuvre as developed in genres other than the theater. The object of the analysis is to articulate the emergence of a coherent poetic, which we consider to be the foundation of her literary voice. We will pursue a double reading of the plays. Our structural and stylistic reading, guided by the theoretical works of Leo Spitzer, Roland Barthes and Gérard Genette, will lead us to consider the formal representations of discourse, to note the recurring textual constructs and extract the main thematic functions. We will then examine an element specific to her theater—the writing of the feminine. The study is organized into eight chapters. In the introduction, we explore the relationship between Yourcenar and the theater and give a brief biographical sketch of the author. The critic's responses to her theater and our theoretical approach are discussed in chapter I. The following six chapters are focused on the analysis of the plays grouped as: Théâtre I-Rendre à César, La petite sirène and Le dialogue dans le marécage, and Théâtre II-Électre ou la chute des masques , Le mystère d'Alceste and Qui n'a pas son Minotaure? Chapter VIII explores the problematic of the feminine. In the conclusion, we bring together the various elements of a unique world view which places Yourcenar in the avant-garde of her century.
This dissertation concerns the Contemporary Spanish Theater, specifically the youngest generation of playwrights, viewed through the prism of Postmodernism. These playwrights belong to the ...“Generación Bradomín,” named after the theater prize “Marqués de Bradomín” that every year, since 1985, has been conferred on writers under the age of thirty. The first author to receive this award (1985) was the now well-known Sergi Belbel. A productive list of dramatists followed him: Alfonso Plou, Maxi Rodriguez, Iñigo Reyzábal, Yolanda Pallín, Itziar Pascual and others. All of their works share concerns that literary critics and philosophers call postmodern: search of identity, fragmentation, rupture of traditional discourse, incommunication, etc. Although this perception of reality is not new in the Spanish Theater or in Spanish Literature, Postmodernism in Spanish Theater is an area that has yet to be studied in depth. Spanish Narrative, in fact, is the only genre that has received important attention in this respect. Post-Civil War (1939– ) and post-Franco theater (1975– ), contrast in that works by authors of the former group are more focused on the individual and his/her conflicts rather than on the nation. When the vertically structured society—with Franco at the top—disappears and democracy arrives, Spanish life becomes more “horizontal” and egalitarian. In the new era, marginal voices are heard and traditional concepts are questioned. In my thesis, I show how Postmodernism is expressed in Spanish theater and I document the evolution of Spanish Theater from the arrival of the new democracy (1975– ) to the present. I concentrate on the plays that received the “Marqués de Bradomín” award, establish a working profile for this group, and demonstrate how the postmodern phenomenon broadens understanding of their works.
This study is an examination of three novels written by the Chilean novelist, performance artist, and cultural critic Diamela Eltit (1949) as they respond to the social repression in Chile during the ...years of the military dictatorship (1973–1990) headed by General Augusto Pinochet Ugarte. My thesis is that Eltit conveys a critique of the Pinochet regime, and of authoritarianism and patriarchy generally, through the three novels under scrutiny. In this study I identify the strategies she utilizes into her narratives in an attempt to achieve this political and social commentary. The three novels I analyze are Lumpérica (1983), Por la patria (1986), and El cuarto mundo (1988). Eltit published these novels in Chile during the dictatorship, which is why they were chosen for this study. The author incorporates subversive narrative and thematic elements in these works that help encode her commentary. She combines and blends genres and media in the novels, one strategy of heterogeneity that contests the univocality of the dictatorship. Playing with words and meanings, using the spaces on the page, and creating neologisms are other recurrent features in these novels. Finally, highlighting poor and disenfranchised women who engage in aberrant acts is an additional common characteristic in her narratives. In this study I show how Eltit reorganizes, transforms, and redefines certain universal topics such as self, systems, and spaces through the inclusion of subversive narrative tactics and themes. Her overall goal in these texts, I argue, is to offer alternatives to the mainstream options, which is an indirect attempt to subvert patriarchy as exemplified by the Pinochet regime.
The book itself is an important contribution, going to some length to discuss the casting of Albert Dieudonné; the technical, financial, and strategic problems encountered; the failure of Gance's ...dream to produce a six-part epic; the original dismissal of Napoleon in the United States. Among the scenes are more detailed delineations of Marat (played by Antonin Artaud - one of Gance's greatest coups) and other leaders of the Convention, and a particularly poetic image where Napoleon returns to his home in Corsica to be surrounded by a halo of bees. Napoleon obviously had to be made a salable commodity reasonably safe with the American authence; the hoopla and almost religious fervor surrounding the Radio City showings (which Brownlow describes down to the tear-filled telephone call to Gance from the theatre stage on the evening of the première) submerges the fact that the "complete" Napoleon has not yet appeared, and that additional work might still be done - one positive step would be to change the musical score.
Countering the notion that Don DeLillo is a paradigmatic postmodernist, this essay argues that DeLillo's cynicism about communication is undercut by his architectural esthetics and that his ..."postmodernism" is rooted in a modernism that recalls that of Antonin Artaud. Architecture, for both, plays a pivotal role in the construction of meaning.
Virgilio Pinera is one of the most important Cuban writers of the XX century. He cultivated all the principal literary genres: novels, short stories, plays, essays and poetry. To date his literary ...work has not been sufficiently studied and researched in theses. Most of the essays and doctoral dissertations concerning him concentrate on his short stories or plays; and the ones in which Pinera's plays are analyzed basically emphasize the influence of the French authors of the Theatre of the Absurd. The purpose of this thesis is to analyze his work from a different perspective. Based on an exploration of the discursive act, the approach to be used in the thesis intends to view Pinera's literary work as a dialogue with a reader and discover the techniques used by the author in order to communicate messages. The primary intention of Pinera's discourse is self-concealment. This attitude of the writer involves all his literary production and reflects a number of personal and philosophical fears. His vision of the world he observed, an irrational world, made his discourse unique; yet he discovered a way to say his message in spite of the violent and convulsive political situation in which he found himself. He did this by criticizing the political system surreptitiously. Virgilio Pinera found a method of saying his truth using irrationality as a mask for self-concealment. Latin-American literature has been characterized by social criticism; the intentional absence of a point of view and an attitude of self-concealment in Pinera's literary work distinguish his work from the vast majority of the writers in XXth century Cuban literature. I intend to search out and analyze, therefore, this basic factor that is so distinctive in his writing in order to demonstrate the singularity of his highly personalized style. To accomplish this task I will study all his production written in prose, with emphasis on his creative works rather than on his essays. I have read and have available to me all the items in his literary production necessary for the successful carrying out of this project. I am also aware of the bibliography and studies made on his creative work and have them in my possession.
