Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'Hermeneutics. Criticism. Literature'

Certain approaches in the discipline Psychology, use the term narrative to describe how they work. Upon investigation one finds that the term narrative is seldom informed from Literary Theory, the background from which it originated. Instead, other disciplines that were also influenced by Literary Theory are invariably used as a means of cross fertilisation, e.g. the work of Geertz from an anthropologist background. Therapists make use of techniques described in the theories in an attempt to come to an understanding of the interactions in the therapy session. Some of the later theories emanating from Literary Theory appear to very useful for opening new ways of research in psychology, especially because some of them already come from an interdisciplinary background. This research attempts to identify useful theories and then apply them within a hermeneutical background in a therapeutical session. Theoretical work on ambiguity, recent research on foregrounding and defamiliarization and also the research in psychonarratology appear to be eminently useful for coming to a deeper understanding of the processes that take place in a therapeutic environment. It is thought that these theories could be of use because they have been 'tested' against the experiences of real readers reading texts. As novels differ from reports and washing lists, therapeutic settings differ from discussions. A novel is a cultivated variant of a report, and a therapeutic conversation is a cultivated version of a chat. These theories then, were applied to a real therapeutic session. The therapists who participated were interviewed on the session and on their reactions to certain 'readings' made by them during the session. The purpose of the interview was to obtain an understanding of their interpretation of what had happened during that session. The questions, reactions, observations and reflections of the session constitute the text of this research. The generated text was then reread from the perspective of each of the theories. The data was collected and interpreted. The interpretation focusses on the therapists 'reading' or understanding of the session and in the process, leads the therapists and researcher to further levels of understanding. In conclusion, it was found that the theories were indeed useful as they were able to point out how certain stylistics of language and situation in the therapeutic session had led to hermeneutic or interpretive processes and also how these processes were perceived or experienced on reflection by the therapists.

Este estudo é, no essencial, uma reflexão acerca da produção, do método e da construção da linguagem crítica de Benedito Nunes. Tal crítica é entendida como uma leitura hermenêutica perpassada por um discurso em confrontação filosófica e literária, em que outras vozes, em vários momentos, misturam-se à sua identidade escritural, como as de Nietzsche, de Heidegger, de Ricoeur... O que se pretende, antes de tudo, é acompanhar os passos da sua hermenêutica, realçar a problemática que ele imprime ao seu texto; qual seja, o repensar crítico das questões do Homem, do Mundo, em um ato de interpretação que, como lembra Foucault, enreda o próprio intérprete e o faz interpretar-se a si mesmo. Assim, no primeiro capítulo, denominado \"Uma incursão à obra e ao pensamento de Benedito Nunes\", a intenção foi a de ressaltar seus principais escritos, a recepção crítica à sua obra e a linha interpretativa em que se move. O segundo, intitulado \"A crítica crítico-reflexiva de Benedito Nunes\", foi dividido em quatro momentos representativos das preponderantes características do seu corpus ensaístico: 1. a crítica definida como tensão entre a escrita dos escritores e a leitura dos críticos; 2. o confronto de idéias estéticas e poéticas; 3. as raízes filosóficas como marcas do discurso teórico-crítico; e 4. o traço da historicização e o uso do ensaio. Por fim, em \"A opacidade crítica: a linguagem na divisa entre o conceitual e a criação de imagens\", a preocupação foi a de pôr em relevo a sua prática de leitura hermenêutica, o modo como tece a sua linguagem crítica, em que se sobressai inscrito, por vezes, o metafórico.
This study is essentially a reflection about the critical work of Benedito Nunes, in what regards its language and its method. Its language is regarded as a hermeneutical reading where the voices of other literary and philosophical authors as Nietzsche, Heidegger, Ricoeur etc. are heard and whose speeches intermingle with the author`s speech. In what concerns its method, we tried to accompany the steps of Nunes` hermeneutics in order to stress what he aims at with his texts: the critical interpretations of the questions of Man and World which - as Foucault puts it - results in the author making his own interpretation. In the first chapter , \" An incursion into the work and the thought of Benedito Nunes\" we first tried to consider his main texts in accordance with his critical interpretation and to make an exaustive review of his critical reception. The second chapter \" Benedito Nunes` critical-reflexive criticism\" was divided into what we consider the four main characteristics of his essays:1. criticism as a tension between the writing of the authors and the reading of the critics; 2. the confrontation between aesthetic and poetic ideas; 3. the philosophical roots of his theorethical-critical speech; 4. the way historicism and essaysm are being used in his work; And finally, in our last chapter \" Critical opacity: language between concept and image\" we wanted to evidentiate the kind of Benedito Nunes` hermeneutical reading and the construction of his critical language where metaphore sometimes emerges in its relevant role.

In my earlier work, ‘First steps towards a rhetorical hermeneutics of literary interpretation’ (2006), I argued that academic reading takes the form of an argument between readers. Four serious weaknesses in that account are its elision of the distinction between reading and discourse on reading, its inattention to non-academic reading, its exclusive focus on ‘interpretation’ as if this constituted the whole of reading or of discourse on reading, and its failure to theorise the object of literary reading, ie. the work of literature. The current work aims to address all of these problems, together with those created by certain other approaches to literary reading, with the overall objective of clearing the ground for more empirical studies. It exemplifies its points with examples drawn primarily from non-academic public discourse on literature (newspapers, magazines, and the internet), though also from other sources (such as reading groups and undergraduate literature seminars). It takes a particular (though not an exclusive) interest in two specific instances of non-academic reception: the widespread reception of Salman Rushdie’s novel The Satanic Verses as an attack on Islam, and the minority reception of Peter Jackson’s film trilogy The Lord of the Rings as a narrative of homosexual desire. The first chapter of this dissertation critically surveys the fields of reception study and discourse analysis, and in particular the crossover between them. It finds more productive engagement with the textuality of response in media reception study than in literary reception study. It argues that the application of discourse analysis to reception data serves to problematise, rather than to facilitate, reception study, but it also emphasises the problematic nature of discourse analysis itself. Each of the three subsequent chapters considers a different complex of problems. The first is the literary work, and its relation to its producers and its consumers: Chapter 2 takes the form of a discourse upon the notions of ‘speech act’ and ‘authorial intention’ in relation to literature, carries out an analysis of early public responses to The Satanic Verses, and puts in a word for non-readers by way of a conclusion. The second is the private experience of reading, and its paradoxical status as an object of public representation: Chapter 3 analyses representations of private responses to The Lord of The Rings film trilogy, and concludes with the argument that, though these representations cannot be identical with private responses, they are cannot be extricated from them, either. The third is the impossibility of distinguishing rhetoric from cognition in the telling of stories about reading: Chapter 4 argues that, though anecdotal or autobiographical accounts of reading cannot be taken at face value, they can be taken both as attempts to persuade and as attempts to understand; it concludes with an analysis of a magazine article that tells a number of stories about reading The Satanic Verses – amongst other things. Each of these chapters focuses on non-academic reading as represented in written text, but broadens this focus through consideration of examples drawn from spoken discourse on reading (including in the liminal academic space of the undergraduate classroom). The last chapter mulls over the relationship between reading and discourse of reading, and hesitates over whether to wrap or tear this dissertation’s arguments up.

The thesis will examine the influence of Biblical literature on some of the novels of George Eliot. In doing so it will consider the following aspects of Eliot criticism: current theoretical debate about the use of midrash; modes of discourse and narrative style; prophetic language and vision; the influence of Judaism and Jewish exegetical methods on Adam Bede, "The Lifted Veil", The Mill on the Floss, Felix Holt, and Daniel Deronda. Literary critics have, for a long time, been interested in the influence of the Bible and Biblical hermeneutics on literature and the extent to which Biblical narratives and themes are used typologically and allegorically in fiction has been well researched. In this regard, the concept of midrash is not a new one in literary theory. It refers both to a genre of writing and to an ancient Rabbinic method of exegesis. It has, however, been given new meaning by literary critics and theoriticians such as Frank Kermode, Harold Bloom, and Jacques Derrida. In The Genesis of Secrecy, Kermode gives a new nuance to the word and demonstrates how it may be used to read not only Biblical stories but secular literature as well. It is an innovative, self-reflexive, and intricate hermeneutic processs which has been used by scholars such as Geoffrey Hartman and Sanford Budick, editors of Midrash and Literature, a seminal work in this thesis. Eliot's interest in Judaism and her fascination with religion, religious writing, and religious characters are closely connected to her understanding of the novelist's role as an interpreter of stories. In this regard, the prophetic figure as poet, seer, and interpreter of the past, present, and future of society is of special significance. The thesis will investigate Eliot's reinterpretation of this important Biblical type as well as her retelling of Biblical stories. It will attempt to establish the extent to which Eliot's work may be called midrash, and enter the current debate on how and why literary works have been and can be interpreted. It will address the questions of why Eliot, who abjures normative religious faith, has such a profound interest in the Bible, how the Bible serves her creative purposes, why she is interested in Judaism, and to what extent the latter informs and permeates her novels.

This thesis examines a specific type of instance that bridges the divide between seeing sacred texts as merely vehicles for content and as objects themselves: self-reference. Doing so yielded a heuristic system of categories of self-reference in sacred texts based on the way the text self-describes: Inlibration, Necessity, and Untranslatability. I provide examples of these self-referential features as found in various sacred texts: the Vedas, Āgamas, Papyrus of Ani, Torah, Quran, Sri Guru Granth Sahib, and the Book of Mormon. I then examine how different theories of sacredness interact with them. What do Durkheim, Otto, Freud, or Levinas say about these? How are their theories changed when confronted with sacred texts as objects as well as containers for content? I conclude by asserting that these self-referential features can be seen as ‘self-sacralizing’ in that they: match understandings of sacredness, speak for themselves, and do not occur in mundane texts.

Orientador: Márcio Scheel
Banca: Arnaldo Franco Júnior
Banca: Fabio Lucas Pierini
Resumo: A análise crítica dos contos de Famílias terrivelmente felizes (2003), de Marçal Aquino, tem por objetivo identificar o uso que o autor faz de uma linguagem da violência que perpassa a articulação de temas e motivos, a constituição dos narradores, a caracterização das personagens e a materialidade dos textos. Quanto ao conteúdo, essa violência está ajustada às imagens da morte, seja de modo predominante ou incidental, física, psicológica, social e simbólica, traços de uma sociedade brasileira autoritária e matéria-prima da linha de produção do novo realismo que se faz presente na ficção brasileira contemporânea. Assim, a função dessa linguagem é ambígua, graças ao acontecimento irônico, sendo que sua ação é marcada pela sutileza, mas também totalmente perversa, se instalando na vida íntima dos intérpretes da ironia que experimentaram o esvaziamento do espaço público no período social e político brasileiro pós-regime militar. Nestes termos, símbolos nacionais relacionados à metáfora da família são questionados pelos contos de Aquino, tais como àquele representado pela família supra-nacional, o Estado-nação, e o representado pelo modelo ideal de família burguesa
Abstract:The critical analysis of Famílias terrivelmente felizes (2003) short stories, by Marçal Aquino, aims at identifying the use that the author makes of a violence language that pervades the articulation of themes and motifs, the constitution of narrators, the characterization of characters, and the materiality of texts. In regard to content, this violence is adjusted, either predominantly or incidentally, to images of physical, psychological, social, and symbolical death, features of an authoritarian Brazilian society and raw material for the production line of a new realism present in contemporary Brazilian fiction. Therefore, the role of this language is ambiguous, thanks to the ironic happening, with its action marked by subtlety, but also being completely perverse, installing itself in the intimate life of irony interpreters that experience the emptying of public space in the Brazilian social and political post-military regime period. In these terms, national symbols related to family metaphor are questioned by Aquino's short stories, such as to that represented by the supranational family, the Nation-state, and the one represented by the ideal model of bourgeois family
Mestre

Scholars and storytellers alike have deemed George MacDonald a great mythopoeic writer, an exemplar of the art. Examination of this accolade by those who first applied it to him proves it profoundly theological: for them a mythopoeic tale was a relational medium through which transformation might occur, transcending boundaries of time and space. The implications challenge much contemporary critical study of MacDonald, for they demand that his literary life and his theological life cannot be divorced if either is to be adequately assessed. Yet they prove consistent with the critical methodology MacDonald himself models and promotes. Utilizing MacDonald’s relational methodology evinces his intentional facilitating of Mythopoesis. It also reveals how oversights have impeded critical readings both of MacDonald’s writing and of his character. It evokes a redressing of MacDonald’s relationship with his Scottish cultural, theological, and familial environment – of how his writing is a response that rises out of these, rather than, as has so often been asserted, a mere reaction against them. Consequently it becomes evident that key relationships, both literary and personal, have been neglected in MacDonald scholarship – relationships that confirm MacDonald’s convictions and inform his writing, and the examination of which restores his identity as a literature scholar. Of particular relational import in this reassessment is A.J. Scott, a Scottish visionary intentionally chosen by MacDonald to mentor him in a holistic Weltanschauung. Little has been written on Scott, yet not only was he MacDonald’s prime influence in adulthood, but he forged the literary vocation that became MacDonald’s own. Previously unexamined personal and textual engagement with John Ruskin enables entirely new readings of standard MacDonald texts, as does the textual engagement with Matthew Arnold and F.D. Maurice. These close readings, informed by the established context, demonstrate MacDonald’s emergence, practice, and intent as a mythopoeic writer.

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A análise crítica dos contos de Famílias terrivelmente felizes (2003), de Marçal Aquino, tem por objetivo identificar o uso que o autor faz de uma linguagem da violência que perpassa a articulação de temas e motivos, a constituição dos narradores, a caracterização das personagens e a materialidade dos textos. Quanto ao conteúdo, essa violência está ajustada às imagens da morte, seja de modo predominante ou incidental, física, psicológica, social e simbólica, traços de uma sociedade brasileira autoritária e matéria-prima da linha de produção do novo realismo que se faz presente na ficção brasileira contemporânea. Assim, a função dessa linguagem é ambígua, graças ao acontecimento irônico, sendo que sua ação é marcada pela sutileza, mas também totalmente perversa, se instalando na vida íntima dos intérpretes da ironia que experimentaram o esvaziamento do espaço público no período social e político brasileiro pós-regime militar. Nestes termos, símbolos nacionais relacionados à metáfora da família são questionados pelos contos de Aquino, tais como àquele representado pela família supra-nacional, o Estado-nação, e o representado pelo modelo ideal de família burguesa
The critical analysis of Famílias terrivelmente felizes (2003) short stories, by Marçal Aquino, aims at identifying the use that the author makes of a violence language that pervades the articulation of themes and motifs, the constitution of narrators, the characterization of characters, and the materiality of texts. In regard to content, this violence is adjusted, either predominantly or incidentally, to images of physical, psychological, social, and symbolical death, features of an authoritarian Brazilian society and raw material for the production line of a new realism present in contemporary Brazilian fiction. Therefore, the role of this language is ambiguous, thanks to the ironic happening, with its action marked by subtlety, but also being completely perverse, installing itself in the intimate life of irony interpreters that experience the emptying of public space in the Brazilian social and political post-military regime period. In these terms, national symbols related to family metaphor are questioned by Aquino’s short stories, such as to that represented by the supranational family, the Nation-state, and the one represented by the ideal model of bourgeois family

L’œuvre de Helli Alexiou (1894-1988) est indissociable de sa vie, axée sur ses idées politiques de gauche et son métier de pédagogue. La thèse constitue une contribution à la littérature réaliste. Elle cherche à montrer, en quatre parties, la présence active de l’humanisme d’Alexiou dans l’évolution de son œuvre, et plus spécialement à travers la prise de conscience des souffrances humaines. La première partie aborde la vie de l’auteur et tente de la situer dans son milieu familial et son contexte historique en décrivant aussi son parcours pro¬fessionnel. La deuxième partie traite du statut de ses écrits littéraires en mettant l’accent sur ses aspects réalistes et huma¬nistes. La troisième partie est consacrée à sa mission et sa vocation éducatives. La quatrième partie analyse son roman Troisième lycée de jeunes filles, qui rassemble la plus grande partie de ces thèmes. / The work of Helli Alexiou cannot be dissociated from her life which was largely influenced by her left-wing political ideas and her pedagogic work. The thesis tries to show, in four sections, the active presence of humanism in the evolution of Alexiou’s work, focusing especially on human suffering. The first section deals with the author’s life, the family and historical environment and describes her professional itinerary. The second section takes into account her literary writings, emphasizing the realistic and humanistic aspects. The third section focuses on her teaching mission and teaching vocation. The fourth section analyses her book « Troisième Lycée de jeunes filles » which groups most of these topics.
Doctorat en Langues et lettres
info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished

“The Poetry of Interpretation” writes a pre-history of the twentieth-century phenomenon of close reading by interpreting the devotional poetry of the English Renaissance in the context of the period’s exegetical literatures. The chapters explore a range of hermeneutic methods that allowed preachers and commentators, writing in the wake of the Reformation’s turn to the “literal sense” of scripture, to grapple with and clarify the bible’s “darke texts.” I argue that early modern religious poets—principally Anne Lock, John Donne, George Herbert, William Alabaster, and John Milton—absorbed these same methods into their compositional practices, merging the arts of poesis and exegesis. Consistently skeptical about the very project they undertake, however, these poets became not just practitioners but theorists of interpretive method. Situated at the intersection of religious history, hermeneutics, and poetics, this study develops a new understanding of lyric’s formal operations while intimating an alternative history of the discipline of literary criticism.

The narratives about the postexilic Judean community are an ancient biblical account of the socio-economic and political experiences of the Judeans when they were finally restored back to Judah from Babylonian captivity. Although the Judean restoration was celebrated when they were restored by King Cyrus’ decree, real freedom did not prevail in the Persian province of Yehud; corruption, usury, greed, oppression, enslavement and loss of property impacted negatively on the poor. The leadership expropriated from poor citizens land, vineyards, and houses in exchange for food. In addition, the governors also charged heavy interest on money borrowed by poor members of society. Parents and their children were subjected to enslavement. In response to these corrupt practices, Nehemiah challenged the leadership to stop oppressing the poor. Nehemiah went further to provide food to the starving Judeans and other people from surrounding nations which served as a stimulus to strive towards alleviating poverty and starvation among communities. By employing an approach known as hermeneutics of appropriation, this thesis appropriates the experience of the postexilic Judean community to the post-independence Zimbabwean context. Between the years 1999 and 2008 many people lost their lives due to unemployment and lack of income, shelter, nutrition, and access to health-care facilities because of the economic meltdown following the controversial fast-track land reform programme in Zimbabwe. The majority of people are still experiencing the negative impact of the land reform as people strive to make a living in the absence of jobs and income scarcity. Corruption by the leadership has continued to further exacerbate starvation among the poor until today.This study attempts to employ the biblical Nehemiah’s social justice reforms (Neh 5) to challenge the Zimbabwean leadership to focus on rebuilding the country which was ravaged by a decade of both political and socio-economic crises. Lessons drawn from Nehemiah would be used to stimulate the leadership in the Zimbabwean government and members of society at large, to strive towards helping the poor and alleviating poverty.
Old Testament & Ancient Near Eastern Studies
D. Litt. et Phil. (Biblical Studies)