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Botting, David Charles. "Making monstrous : Frankenstein, criticism, theory." Thesis, Cardiff University, 1989. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.238150.
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Behr, Daniel E. "Perspective criticism : an extension of epistemic rhetorical theory to rhetorical criticism /." The Ohio State University, 1998. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1487949836205364.
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Barger, Wendy Noel. "Toward a theory of press criticism /." view abstract or download file of text, 2003. http://wwwlib.umi.com/cr/uoregon/fullcit?p3113000.
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Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Oregon, 2003.Typescript. Includes vita and abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 302-311). Also available for download via the World Wide Web; free to University of Oregon users.
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Blose, Chris. "Ideas in action : film theory in film criticism /." free to MU campus, to others for purchase, 2004. http://wwwlib.umi.com/cr/mo/fullcit?p1421115.
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Wisch, Stephen H. "Teaching Literary Criticism Through Independent Reading." Ohio Dominican University / OhioLINK, 2019. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=oduhonors1556705309193909.
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Rockhill, Paul Hunter. "The Reception Theory of Hans Robert Jauss: Theory and Application." PDXScholar, 1996. https://pdxscholar.library.pdx.edu/open_access_etds/5153.
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Hans Robert Jauss is a professor of literary criticism and romance philology at the University of Constance in Germany. Jauss co-founded the University of Constance and the Constance group of literary studies. Hans Robert Jauss's version of reception theory was introduced in the late 1960s, a period of social, political, and intellectual instability in West Germany. Jauss's reception theory focused on the reader rather than the author or text. The original reception of a text was compared to a later reception, revealing different literary receptions and their evolution. Jauss's Rezeptionsgeschichte (history of reception) illustrated the evolution of the reception of texts and the evolving paradigms of literary criticism that they were a part of. However, Jauss's essays proved to be more of a provocation for change in literary criticism than the foundation for the next literary paradigm. The empirical studies discussed in this thesis reveal the.idealism of Jauss's theory by testing main ideas and concepts. The results show the inapplicability of Jauss's theory for practical purposes. The intent of this study is to illustrate the origins, development and impact of Jauss's version of reception theory. The interrelationship between the social environment, the institutional reforms at the University of Constance, and the methodology of reception theory are also discussed. The new social values in West Germany advocated individualism and questioned status quo institutions and their authority. This facilitated the establishment of the University of Constance, which served as the prototype for the democratization of German universities and the introduction of Jauss's reception theory. With the democratization of the university, old autonomous faculties were broken down into interdisciplinary subject areas. The Old Philology and New Philology department were made into the sciences of language and literature and ultimately introduced as the all-encompassing literaturwissenschaft. Five professors from the Slavic, English, German, Classics and Romance language departments gave up direction of these large departments to work together under the Constance reforms in an effort to form a new concept of literary studies. The result was the socalled theories of "reception" and "effect" which they continue to research.
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Bellinson, Robin L. "Theory in Culture: Toward a Psychoanalytic Criticism of Advertising." unrestricted, 2006. http://etd.gsu.edu/theses/available/etd-04042006-125208/.
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Thesis (M.A.)--Georgia State University, 2006.Title from title screen. Calvin Thomas, committee chair; Nancy Chase, Christopher Kocela, committee members. Electronic text (122 p. : ill., photos) : digital, PDF file. Description based on contents viewed May 8, 2007. Includes bibliographical references (p. 112-118).
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Barga, Rachel M. "Sex Theory: Theology of the Body as Literary Criticism." Miami University Honors Theses / OhioLINK, 2011. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=muhonors1304527876.
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Orr, G. Michael. "An articulation theory perspective of Neil Postman's media criticism /." free to MU campus, to others for purchase, 2002. http://wwwlib.umi.com/cr/mo/fullcit?p3060130.
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Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Missouri-Columbia, 2002.Typescript. Paging starts with leaf 2. There is no leaf 1. Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 165-185). Also available on the Internet.
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Barlow, Lauren Nicole. "Criticism as Redemption: Jonathan Safran Foer's Theory of Meaning." BYU ScholarsArchive, 2010. https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/etd/2123.
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Not long after the release of his first novel, Everything is Illuminated, critics and authors alike began showering Jonathan Safran Foer with both praise and disparagement for his postmodern style. Yet, this large body of criticism ignores the theoretical work taking place within Foer's fiction. This thesis attempts to fill this gap by highlighting specific aspects of Foer's theoretical work as it relates to the creation of meaning in a text and to explore what this work might imply for the broader literary community. Much of Foer's work toys with the capacity of language to express meaning, indulging in the playfulness of language throughout his work to highlight the place where at written language blurs the line between word and flesh, or language and experience. In this playfulness, Foer seems to assert that meaning is created in the space between language and experience through the act of metaphor. This theory of metaphor places the individual, the author, and the critic all in a creative position and the narrative content of Foer's works examines how this creative power is used by individuals to create a world of meaning out of experiences that seem to have none. In this way, Foer argues that the creative act of metaphor is a redemptive act—an act of saving one's self from the void. Such a conclusion can be applied to all who use the word to create, particularly authors and critics, wherein the creative act as well as the interpretive act become acts of redemption.
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Kent, Michael Oval. "Theory and criticism of the rhetoric of social movements." CSUSB ScholarWorks, 1987. https://scholarworks.lib.csusb.edu/etd-project/370.
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Filsinger, Judy Ann. "Literary criticism, composition, and "passing theory": Conflicts and connections." CSUSB ScholarWorks, 1994. https://scholarworks.lib.csusb.edu/etd-project/963.
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Segal, A. P. M. "Deconstruction and the logic of criticism." Thesis, University of Cambridge, 1987. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.234922.
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The dissertation seeks to take account of the implications of Jacques Derrida's deconstructive philosophy for literary theory and criticism through analysis of the work of non-deconstructionists theorists and critics. In particular, the dissertation deals with the attempt by much traditional Anglo-American literary theory to articulate what might be called a lq'logic of criticism' - an attempt evident in the use made by this theory of oppositions such as intrinsic/extrinsic, structural/genetic, essential/contingent, and so on. The attempt is considered with respect to three concerns of modern literary theory: organic form, authorial intention and the question of value. On the first issue, it is argued that the organicist's construal of the relation of form and content in poetry is analogous to Husserl's construal of the relation of signifier and signified in speech, and that Derrida's deconstruction of Husserl's privileging of voice provides the model for the deconstruction of organicism. In the case of intention, it is argued that modern criticism and theory has characteristically relied on a notion of the literary work as saturated by a fully conscious intention, a reliance which marks a succumbing to what Derrida calls 'the structural lure of consciousness'. Concerning the question of value, the target is the attempt to defend value by locating it as the ground, the centre, the telos or origin of the phenomenon to be accounted for. The dissertation concludes by broaching the question of the nature of a properly deconstructive literary criticism. It is argued that so-called deconstructionist criticism involves a neutralization of deconstruction, a defect which Derrida avoids in his own literary criticism.
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Skelley, Steven J. "Yeats, Bloom and the dialectics of theory, criticism and poetry." Thesis, University of Nottingham, 1992. http://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/13628/.
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This thesis begins by showing how a strong and subtle challenge to poetry and theories of poetry has been recently argued by writers like Paul de Man and J. Hillis Miller—critics whose ironic linguistic "disfigurations" of lyrical voice have thrown poem and poet into an anti-mimetic free fall, an abyss of bewilderment or undecidability. To its credit, de Manian deconstruction strongly misreads various mimetic approaches to William Butler Yeats, as its corrosive irony empties out theories of imitation. Chapter two explains how New Criticism, biographical, psychoanalytic, and philosophical criticism, all treat Yeats's poetry as a reflection or imitation of some prior being, text, or doctrine; and chapter three how, most recently and energetically, various new historicisms treat his poems as ideological artifacts determined by the world or history, but as artifacts that must seek to change the world in order to have value. Harold Bloom's theory meets such challenges. It enacts deconstruction's misreading of poem and poet without reducing them to a linguistic abyss; and it re-envisions mimetic approaches by reading poems in terms of genealogical influence, without moralizing. Chapter four investigates Bloom's vision of strong poetry as a "supermimesis" or in terms of gnostic figures of "negative transcendence." Bloom's work, however, also needs Yeatsian creative correction. As the fifth and sixth chapters show, it needs, like Yeats's poetry, to hold itself more open to the chaos of history. Invoking instruction from the very poetry that has so influenced Bloom's theory of influence, yet from which Bloom has turned away, this thesis re-interprets Yeats's poems and Yeats criticism generally. Using Yeats's openness to history to revise Bloom and his pragmatic theory of misreading to re-interpret Yeats, the thesis attempts to advance dialectically both Yeats criticism and Bloomian theory.
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O'Flaherty, E. "Relativism and criticism in seventeenth-century French thought." Thesis, University of Cambridge, 1986. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.383845.
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ALVES, REGYSANE BOTELHO CUTRIM. "TRANSLATION CRITICISM IN THEORY AND PRACTICE: THE CASE OF VERSÃO BRASILEIRA." PONTIFÍCIA UNIVERSIDADE CATÓLICA DO RIO DE JANEIRO, 2009. http://www.maxwell.vrac.puc-rio.br/Busca_etds.php?strSecao=resultado&nrSeq=13974@1.
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PONTIFÍCIA UNIVERSIDADE CATÓLICA DO RIO DE JANEIROO objetivo desta dissertação é melhor entender a crítica de traduções na teoria e na prática. Para isso, ela apresenta os modelos de avaliação de tradução propostos por Katharina Reiss, Juliane House e Antoine Berman e, a seguir, analisa as críticas de tradução literária publicadas na coluna Versão Brasileira da revista Língua Portuguesa. A fim de enriquecer o estudo proposto, são rapidamente descritas algumas críticas de tradução literária publicadas no Brasil anteriormente à revista. Os comentários de Gabriel Perissé, autor de Versão Brasileira, discutem questões tradutórias e indicam que esse tipo de crítica pode ser realizado com qualidade no contexto jornalístico, apesar das limitações de espaço e tempo. As críticas da coluna atendem em vários aspectos as orientações teóricas que funcionam como parâmetro para a análise; além disso, são inovadoras na medida em que convidam o leitor a participar das críticas desenvolvidas em cada coluna.
This thesis aims at better understanding translation criticism in theory and practice. In order to achieve this goal, it presents the translation evaluation models developed by Katharina Reiss, Juliane House and Antoine Berman and, afterwards, it analyses the literary translation critiques that are published in the column Versão Brasileira by Língua Portuguesa magazine. To enrich the proposed study some literary critiques that were published in Brazil before the magazine are briefly described. Commentaries written by Gabriel Perissé, author of Versão Brasileira, discuss translation issues and indicate that this kind of criticism can be done with quality in the journalistic environment, in spite of time and space limitations. The critiques in the column answer several aspects from the theoretical guidelines that have worked as the analysis parameters; besides this, they are innovative in so far as they invite the reader to participate in the criticism developed in each column.
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Taghavie-Moghadam, Mariah. "A Miraculous Deliverance: An Adaptation Through Historical Criticism and Feminist Theory." VCU Scholars Compass, 2019. https://scholarscompass.vcu.edu/etd/5740.
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This thesis attempts to reconstruct the narrative of Anne Greene, a young female servant in 1650 England that was wrongfully found guilty of infanticide and made into a spectacle by her peers as an example of what happens when one breaks societies gender norms and is met by the influence of the gender politics of the period. Her female body was objectified and placed on display by a ritual performance of the hangman’s noose and the criminal corpse to further the process of by maintaining fear among members of the population, especially rebellious women. Thus, making Anne Greene a subversive figure, victimized by a patriarchal society, a trope that remains relevant today. By way of literary adaptation, explorations of bodily practice, and engagements with the historical archive this thesis allows Anne Greene’s disembodied figure to unfold as a narrative and visual tool in history. This study and the accompanying original play text allow Anne Greene to become an essential figure to feminist studies and continuing struggles for equality in the era of the “Me too” social narrative.
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Huismans, Anja. ""A just and lively image" - performance in Neo-classic theatre criticism and theory." Thesis, Link to the online version, 2005. http://hdl.handle.net/10019/1756.
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Allsobrook, Christopher John. "'On genealogy and ideology criticism'." Thesis, University of Sussex, 2011. http://sro.sussex.ac.uk/id/eprint/6319/.
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This thesis identifies and explains a fundamental philosophical problem of self-implication in Marxian ideology criticism that has led to its misuse and rejection in social theory and political philosophy. I argue that Friedrich Nietzsche's development of genealogy as a method of social criticism complements ideology criticism in a way that overcomes this problem, by addressing it explicitly, rather than trying to avoid it. In making this argument, I hope to bridge a widely perceived gap between Nietzsche's and Michel Foucault's genealogical approaches to social criticism, on the one hand, and Marxian ideology criticism on the other. The conflict between these approaches has been exaggerated in contemporary academic literature, to the loss of invaluable contributions Nietzsche and Foucault make to the theory and practice of ideology criticism. I begin by defining ideology in way that, I demonstrate, takes into account the use of the notion by Karl Marx and the early Frankfurt School Critical Theorists, Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno. I identify two central components of ideology, namely, an epistemic aspect, regarding illusion, and a functional aspect, which links ideology to its role in maintaining oppression. I also defend the notion of ideology against major objections to each of these aspects. In Chapter 4, I introduce the problem of self-implication that, I take it, poses the greatest challenge to the coherence of ideology criticism. The remainder of the thesis examines two alternative ways of dealing with this problem, namely immanent and transcendent criticism. I explain the weaknesses with each approach and, in doing so, show why Marx and Adorno each succumb to the problem of ideological self-implication. In the final chapter I argue that Nietzsche's method of genealogy is compatible with ideology criticism and can complement such criticism, to overcome the problems that have been examined.
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Kalant, Amelia. "The politics of dissonance : a criticism of Theodor Adorno's theory of music." Thesis, McGill University, 1989. http://digitool.Library.McGill.CA:80/R/?func=dbin-jump-full&object_id=61828.
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Miles, Robert John. "El espíritu de la colmena and criticism : three interpretations and a theory." Thesis, University of Leeds, 2007. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.446505.
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Coonan, Emma Marya. "Senses of theory : conceptual metaphors and manoeuvres in 20th-century literary criticism." Thesis, University of York, 2006. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.431650.
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Samperi, Ida Maria. "Critical fiction, fictional criticism : Christine Brooke-Rose's experimentalism between theory and practice." Thesis, University of Edinburgh, 2009. http://hdl.handle.net/1842/4067.
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This thesis focuses on the mature development of Christine Brooke-Rose’s experimental fiction, taking particular interest in the exemplary texts Between and Thru. I argue that these texts both critically refigure and respond to central aspects of the poststructuralist debate. I investigate Between and Thru specifically in relation to the theories of Irigaray, Barthes (in the case of Between), Derrida and Kristeva (in the case of Thru), demonstrating how the two novels develop these theorists’ core tenets in an innovative manner that critics have failed to recognise up to this point. Starting – in the first chapter – from Brooke-Rose’s first four conventional novels, I explore the issues which lie at the basis of the experimental direction she comes to take, and investigate her first two experimental novels, Out and Such. The second chapter explores Between in relation to the debate over language and identity, whereas the third chapter investigates the way the novel addresses the gender issue as related to language. The fourth chapter concentrates on Thru’s narrative technique in order to better elucidate – in the fifth and sixth chapters – how the novel succeeds in resolving both the tension generated by the notion of language as linked to the representation of an ontologically unstable reality, and the narrative anxiety deriving from the dispute around the death of the author and the ontological status of characters. The seventh chapter offers an overview of Brooke-Rose’s fictional output after Thru, while the eighth and final chapter aims at further positioning Brooke- Rose in the context of the postmodern debate, showing how her work represents a countertendency to the nihilist attitude engendered by the major critical tenets of postmodernism. The thesis thus sheds light on the importance and role of Brooke-Rose as a highly innovative intellectual figure, while rethinking some of the main literary implications of the postmodernist debate.
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Swiderski-Ritchie, Martha. "The contents of criticism : Ingardenian theory in the context of literary analysis /." [S.l.] : [s.n.], 1986. http://www.ub.unibe.ch/content/bibliotheken_sammlungen/sondersammlungen/dissen_bestellformular/index_ger.html.
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Potts, Tracey. "Can the Imperialist read? : race and feminist literary theory." Thesis, University of Warwick, 1997. http://wrap.warwick.ac.uk/63653/.
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Since the mid 1980's it has been unthinkable for white feminist literary critics to neglect race in their theoretical work. Strong challenges from black feminists have been effective in placing race high on the critical agenda. No longer is the kind of exclusivity that marked early (white) feminist literary theory possible. However, despite the evident commitment to addressing the race question in their work, the black feminist challenge has been greeted with a considerable degree of anxiety by white feminist critics. I suggest that the main source of anxiety is a failure to square the pressing need to 'include' race on the feminist agenda with doubts about straying into what is perceived to be black feminist territory. In other words, white feminist critics have yet to resolve their relation to the black feminist project. This anxiety has meant that a concern over the notion of exclusion has given way to that of appropriation. This has tended to place the white feminist reader in the paralysing position where there seems little available ground between the twin poles of exclusion and appropriation. Typical questions that have arisen out of this dichotomy are: should white feminists teach black women's writing? Should white feminist critics produce critical readings of texts authored by black women? Can white women readers read black women's writings without imposing onto them their own critical agendas? Is a non-appropriative reading relation possible? How should white feminists deal with the fact of their own race privilege and what bearing does this privilege have upon the readings they, potentially, might produce? This project examines some of the ways in which white feminists have attempted to address their relation to the race question in feminist literary criticism. Over the space of six chapters I focus on a number of specific reading strategies offered as positive critical interventions. My main contention is the impossibility of a guaranteed anti-imperialist theory or reading position. I also argue for the necessity of asking the question: whether the imperialist can read, as a complement to that of whether 'the subaltern can speak'. Chapter 1 questions the white feminist ambition of arriving at the truth of the black text as a means of decolonising the text. Through an examination of the Rodney King events some of the perils of appeals to pure seeing are highlighted. Chapter 2 explores the implications of white feminist abstention from the race debates. Chapter 3 looks at the issue of identification as a basis for reading. Chapter 4 questions the identifications that inhere in applying theory to a text. Chapter 5 challenges the use of contextualisation as a source of textual limits. Chapter 6 examines the limits of self-reflexivity as an anti-imperialist method.
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Mathews, Peter David 1975. "Strategies of realism : realist fiction and postmodern theory." Monash University, Centre for Comparative Literature and Cultural Studies, 2001. http://arrow.monash.edu.au/hdl/1959.1/8656.
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Cheung, M. P. Y. "Making readers : Theory and practice in modern writing." Thesis, University of Kent, 1985. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.377147.
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Gogan, Brian James. "A Case for Rhetorical Method: Criticism, Theory, and the Exchange of Jean Baudrillard." Diss., Virginia Tech, 2011. http://hdl.handle.net/10919/77371.
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This dissertation uses the case of Jean Baudrillard to argue that successful critics must consider rhetorical method as it relates to theory. Throughout this dissertation, I follow Edwin Black in using the term rhetorical method to describe the procedures a rhetor uses to guide composition. The project's two main goals are, first, to demonstrate how rhetorical method can serve as a foundation for worthwhile criticism, and, second, to outline a Baudrillardian rhetoric. In order to meet these goals, I perform close readings of Baudrillard's oeuvre alongside a wide range of sources, including critical writings, classical works, analogic photographs, contemporary texts, and recent obituaries.
Chapter one introduces my project and the concept of rhetorical method through an anecdote, which compares the later paintings of Andy Warhol to the writings of Jean Baudrillard. Next, I define rhetorical method and distinguish it from the concepts of critical method and rhetorical object. Then, I reveal the importance of rhetorical method in criticism by reviewing three cross-disciplinary interpretations of Baudrillardian rhetoric. I analyze each interpretation according to its argumentative strength, its treatment of rhetorical method, and its engagement with Baudrillard's reputation as a cross-disciplinary, postmodern rhetor. I argue that rhetorical method asks critics to reconsider the foundations of their interpretive claims. To conclude, I analyze one of Baudrillard's own essays that treats Warhol, assessing the degree to which Baudrillard critically engages with Warhol's rhetorical method.
Chapter two demonstrates that understanding rhetorical method opens up new understandings of rhetors and their rhetoric, by critically engaging Jean Baudrillard's dominant rhetorical method: exchange. Baudrillardian exchange radically revises the conventional rhetorical paradigm (to the exclusion of audience) and relies upon the perpetual movement between two agonistic theories of language: (1) the materialist theory—appearance, production, meaning-making; (2) the anti-materialist theory—disappearance, seduction, meaning-challenging. Baudrillard metaphorically describes exchange as a two-sided game and often embraces the anti-materialist theory of language in his writing and photography in order to challenge the materialist theory of language. After providing examples from his aphoristic writing and his analogic photography, I show how Baudrillard mobilizes disappearance as a move in service of his rhetorical method by analyzing one of his last works: Why Hasn't Everything Already Disappeared? I argue that, in this text, Baudrillard's rhetorical move of disappearance shifts in accordance with the posthumanist turn in thought, but his rhetorical method of exchange remains consistent with his earlier works.
Chapter three deploys exchange as a critical method by generalizing and extending this rhetorical method as an interpretive framework that can be applied to texts other than Baudrillard's own. Specifically, I show how Isocrates's Antidosis is successful in its creation of an ambivalent rhetorical space—a space that upends convention, dissolves logics, and ruptures values—and how James Frey's A Million Little Pieces is unsuccessful. In sum, my analysis of these two texts, one classical and one controversial, considers the ability of each text and its surrounding paratexts to challenge the meaning-making system and break with convention. My analysis further positions Baudrillardian rhetoric as a sophistic rhetoric that offers recourse to rhetors, such as Isocrates or Frey, who momentarily occupy the weaker side of the argument. Yet beyond forwarding a strong counterargument, the attention that Baudrillardian exchange pays to value systems proves a framework that is particularly amenable to questions of the public good.
Chapter four offers a metacritical commentary on the use of Baudrillardian rhetoric as a critical method as well as on the construction of Baudrillard as a rhetorical theorist. Focusing on the relationship between method and theory in rhetorical criticism, I argue that rhetorical criticism is a productive enterprise and that existing explanations of this enterprise are insufficient because they abandon method. To better explain the method and theory dynamic that produces rhetorical criticism, I turn to Baudrillard's work on the model and the series in The System of Objects. After demonstrating method's affinity with the model and theory's affinity with the series, I argue that the distinction between the model and the series is a rhetorical distinction. With that distinction in mind, I offer a metacritical commentary about the ways in which rhetorical scholars have treated Baudrillard's writing and constructed him as a rhetorical theorist. To conclude my discussion, I turn to Baudrillard's own critical commentary about his rhetoric as it relates to his notion of the simulacrum. Analyzing his discussion of "the rhetoric of simulation" in The Perfect Crime, I argue that Baudrillard was indeed a rhetorical theorist in the most robust sense, since he engages with both theory and method.
Chapter five argues that critics should consider rhetorical method to be as important to rhetoric as ethos. To support this argument, I examine two instances of criticism which involved unflattering obituaries and their responses: Jonathan Kandell's 2004 obituary of Jacques Derrida and Carlin Romano's 2007 obituary of Jean Baudrillard. I, first, analyze these obituaries in accordance with a conventional understanding of rhetoric as representation and, second, in accordance with each theorist's rhetorical method. While conventional responses to these obituaries could repudiate them for their negative tones and nasty messages, I contend that both theorists actually sanction these admittedly distasteful texts. In other words, the unconventional approaches of both rhetorical theorists to writing—namely, the Derridian différance and the Baudrillardian fatal strategies—seem to endorse the respective obituaries. I argue that these obituaries further suggest two new models of obituary writing, both of which are grounded in revised understandings of poststructuralist epideictic rhetoric: (1) a Derridian model that exposes the inadequacy of the contextual component of epideictic rhetoric; and, (2) A Baudrillardian model that revises the relationship between epideictic rhetoric and the value contemporary society places upon vitality.
In my conclusion, I propose a methodological definition of rhetoric: Rhetoric is the meeting of two methods. As I argue, this definition of rhetoric is not only grounded in the history of rhetorical studies but it also possesses much potential in contemporary times. As contemporary rhetorical studies emerges as an interdisciplinary endeavor, this methodological definition of rhetoric will allow rhetoricians to explain what rhetorical studies actually studies and how those studies are conducted. It will allow rhetorical critics to bracket the questions that forestall the study of rhetoric and explore a variety of methodological interstices. This definition can further imbue rhetorical studies with a research status tied to method that it has so desperately sought at certain historical junctures.Ph. D.
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Al-Shamaa, Khaldoun. "Modernism and after : modern Arabic literary theory from literary criticism to cultural critique." Thesis, SOAS, University of London, 2007. http://eprints.soas.ac.uk/28817/.
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This thesis aims to provide the interested reader with a critical account of far-reaching changes in modern Arabic literary theory, approximately since the 1970s, in the light of an ascending paradigm in motion, and of the tendency by subsequent critics and commentators to view literary criticism in terms of a self-elaborating category morphing into cultural critique. The first part focuses on interdisciplinary problems confronting Arab critics in their attempt "to modernize but not to westernize", and also provides a comparative treatment of the terms, concepts and definitions used in the context of an ever-growing Arabic literary canon, along with consideration of how these relate to European modernist thought and of the controversies surrounding them among Arab critics. The second part explores some distinguishable morphological markers whose deployment involves a more or less radical distinction between, on the one hand, renovationist assumptions of cultural change as an uninterrupted process of historical continuity, and, on the other, innovationist assumptions based on discontinuity. The first of these modernizing models, involving revivalist ideas from the age of al-Nahdah, laid the foundation for a double dependency, on the past, serving to compensate, through remembering and reviving, for lack of creativity; and on the European-American West, serving to compensate, through intellectual and technical adaptation and borrowing, for the failure to invent and innovate. However, it is the second, counter-revivalist model that has assumed pride of place through the work of various poets, theorists and critics considered here. By the end of the eighties a self-generating, self-referential modernist theory had become the dominant critique. The third part proffers the case for a new paradigm. Drawing on the arguments and views of numerous scholars, the emphasis here is that "difference" establishes a distinctive mode of autonomy vis-a-vis Western Eurocentric theory.
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Da, Silva José Rodolfo. "Of zoogrammatology : a Derridean theory of textual animality." Thesis, Cardiff University, 2017. http://orca.cf.ac.uk/111504/.
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This thesis aims to ‘apply’, as it were, some of Jacques Derrida’s conclusions regarding the age-old distinction between ideal and material to an understanding of animality and how it emerges in texts. I propose the paleonym “arche-animality” to understand the workings of animality in texts. In the field of Literary Animal Studies, some challenging questions concerning animals in texts seem to mirror Derrida’s topics in his early works. On the one hand, we can conceptualise animals as radically different from humans due to their embodiment, but, on the other hand, we can take them to be only differently embodied subjectivities, not unlike the human’s as it is thought to be housed in the body. Both positions are fraught with problems and are, in fact, entangled with the relationship between materiality and ideality. These challenging questions – especially concerning animal embodiment – must be approached with an eye towards paleonymy, the procedure by means of which Derrida was able to propose arche-writing as the origin of both vulgar writing and speech. To demonstrate the appropriateness of paleonymy, I uncover the arche-animal in different texts of different genres and varying degrees of ‘animal presence’: a ‘theoretical’ text (Sigmund Freud’s Totem and Taboo), a film (Darren Arofnosky’s Black Swan), a novel (Clarice Lispector’s The Apple in the Dark), and a poem (Ted Hughes’ ‘The Thought-Fox’).
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Kolbas, E. Dean. "Critical theory and the literary canon." Boulder, CO : Westview Press, 2001. http://hdl.handle.net/2027/heb.07706.
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Douglas, Jason G. "Towards a New Currency of Economic Criticism." BYU ScholarsArchive, 2008. https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/etd/1466.
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“The Purloined Letter,” Edgar Allan Poe's third and final tale featuring the detective Dupin, has evoked a long history of critical response. Criticism has tended to read the text for its role in the development of detective fiction and as illustrative of various theoretical positions. However, the implications of the “The Purloined Letter,” as a tale of ratiocination, has largely been left unexplored. “The Purloined Letter” explores logical processes of value and exchange, particularly economic exchange, in a manner very similar to what Charles Sanders Peirce will call pragmatism several decades later. Dupin's deductive methods and Peirce's abductive logic express the nature of objects in terms of social systems of preference and perception rather metaphysics. Peirce's classification of signs as icon, index, or symbol provides a framework of signification which can be read in conjunction with “The Purloined Letter” to flesh out the role of materiality and value in the theory of economic criticism. Reading value and exchange as part of a social system of signs, perceptions, and representations of value will serve to expose a penchant for material fetishism in economic criticism and provide a theory of currency, value, and exchange that contextualizes representational and material notions of value within the social and economic system that provides the processes and mechanisms of value determination. The way that the Prefect, the Minister D___, and Dupin each conceptualize the purloined letter as having a different representational relationship with value can be used to demonstrate Poe's abductive framework for economy.
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Campbell, Erin J. "Old-age style and the resistance of practice in Cinquecentro art theory and criticism." Thesis, National Library of Canada = Bibliothèque nationale du Canada, 1998. http://www.collectionscanada.ca/obj/s4/f2/dsk2/ftp02/NQ35120.pdf.
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Sychrava, J. "Redescribing the naive : A critique of the 'sentimental' tradition in literary theory and criticism." Thesis, University of Oxford, 1986. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.376021.
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Jones, Keri Henry. "Wallace Stevens' theory of poetry 1990-1940 : postmodernist criticism and the contemporaneity of modernism." Thesis, University of Sheffield, 1998. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.436180.
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Pitcher, Jonathan Michael. "Excess baggage : a modern theory and the conscious amnesia of Latin Americanist literary criticism." Thesis, University College London (University of London), 2004. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.407698.
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Brown, Angus Connell. "Between lines : close reading, quotation, and critical style from practical criticism to queer theory." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2014. http://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:bfe790f7-90f5-4dee-b5f5-4bf51af6c232.
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Between Lines: Close Reading, Quotation, and Critical Style from Practical Criticism to Queer Theory offers a set of theorizations and heuristics with which to investigate the history of close reading in the Anglo-American university. Working from 1920s Cambridge to the American New Criticism, and from the arrival of deconstruction at Yale to the rise of queer theory, it argues that close reading is best understood as a changing but cohering institutional style of writing that runs through twentieth-century literary criticism. In readings of I. A. Richards, William Empson, Cleanth Brooks, Paul de Man, and Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick it documents unexpected contiguities between close reading, literary modernism, twentieth-century poetics, and autobiography by positing that quotation has a formal and compositional function in critical style. Ultimately, this thesis contributes to a growing body of scholarship on the history of reading by offering the first sustained history and theory of close reading to account for the practice as it predates and outlasts the New Criticism.
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Caviglia, Marconi Alessandro. "Social Criticism, Inmanent critique and Trascendental Critique The question of Inmanent Critique in Critical Theory." Derecho & Sociedad, 2017. http://repositorio.pucp.edu.pe/index/handle/123456789/118201.
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The present work seeks to clarify the issue of immanent criticism and transcendent criticism in the so-called Critical Theory. To this end, the different forms of social criticism are used to present clearly what the Frankfurt School calls “immanent criticism of society”, following in the footsteps of Hegel and Kant. After that, it presents the observations that Rainer Forst, reinserting a Kantian inspiration, presents a distinction between immanent criticism / transcendent criticism.El presente trabajo busca aclarar la cuestión de la crítica inmanente y la crítica trascendente en la llamada Teoría Crítica. Para ello distingue las diferentes formas de crítica social para poder presentar con claridad lo que la Escuela de Frankfurt denomina “crítica inmanente de la sociedad”, siguiendo las huellas de Hegel y Kant. Seguidamente pasa a presentar las objeciones que Rainer Forst, reinsertando una inspiración kantiana, presenta a la distinción entre crítica inmanente/crítica trascendente.
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Casto, Andrew Christopher. "Reading Consciousness: Analyzing Literature through William James' Stream of Thought Theory." Thesis, Virginia Tech, 2011. http://hdl.handle.net/10919/32531.
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Proceeding from the assumption that psychoanalytic theory has yielded insightful
literary interpretations, I propose that equally legitimate readings result from analyzing
consciousness in literature. William Jamesâ â Stream of Thoughtâ offers a psychological
theory of consciousness from which I develop a literary theory that counterbalances the
Freudian emphasis on the unconscious. Examining two works by Henry James, I
demonstrate how assessing the elements of a characterâ s consciousness leads to
conclusions at which other theories do not arrive. This analytical approach leads to not
only an alternative critical agenda but also a fuller understanding of the psychological
function of the characterâ s and, by extension, the human mind.Master of Arts
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Talbert, Kevin M. "AN EDUCATIONAL CRITICISM OF THE NARRATIVE CURRICULUM OF AN URBAN TEACHING COHORT PROGRAM." Miami University / OhioLINK, 2012. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=miami1342803252.
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Griffiths, David Andrew. "Sex, science and symbiosis : feminism and queer theory in a more-than-human world." Thesis, Cardiff University, 2014. http://orca.cf.ac.uk/58333/.
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This thesis interrogates various accounts of the relationship between the biological and social. Often the biological is conceptualised as built upon, or originating from, the foundation of the social (or vice versa). I suggest an alternative approach, using various resources and approaches from the sciences and from social theories, to reconceptualise the biological and social as always already entangled. I develop an account of the entanglement of the biological and social that also entangles the ontological and epistemological, matter and meaning. I begin by exploring feminism and sociobiology in the 1970s and 1980s, particularly feminist standpoint and postmodernist epistemologies. Building on this, and developing my approach (particularly in terms of conceptualising material and more-than-human agency), I explore queer and deconstructive approaches to sexuality alongside the Human Genome Project and genetic determinism in the 1990s, and more recent theories of kinship from gender and sexuality studies alongside insights from animal studies and critical posthumanisms. Finally, I interrupt this trajectory, suggesting that the so far uninterrogated opposition of living/non-living that structures biological science is threatened by the liminal status of viruses. More importantly, people living with viruses can become liminal in relation to this and other binary oppositions, with consequences for their health and ability to live well. I propose an approach to living well that is both ecological and queer; connections, symbioses and entanglements are crucial throughout. I argue that attention to the entanglement of the biological and social offers a way of interrogating narratives of biological determinism and for countering the effects of patriarchy and heteronormativity in the theory and practice of science. Furthermore, this approach can offer ways of rethinking the production of scientific knowledge and the effects this has on the possibility of living well as biopolitical citizens in the more-than-human world.
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Jolliffe, Christine. "After relativism : literary theory after the linguistic turn." Thesis, McGill University, 1998. http://digitool.Library.McGill.CA:80/R/?func=dbin-jump-full&object_id=35901.
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In this dissertation I examine the issues concerning the problematics of historical-textual relations in the wake of the linguistic turn. I begin by showing how the emphasis on the generative rather than the mimetic properties of language has led a number of critics to reject the notion of knowledge as "accurate representation" (Richard Rorty), and then go on to demonstrate how this critical position has undermined the way in which literary and intellectual historians alike have traditionally understood such concepts as causality, human agency and social determination.I show that, in the light afforded by the linguistic turn, there can be no unproblematic distinction between literature and history, text and context, but I also contest some of the more dogmatic versions of this position which make the claim that there can be no such thing as history prior to its textualization, or no such thing as human agency because individual human persons are thoroughly constrained by discursive structures. I suggest that in giving up the notion of an uninterpreted reality, we do not have to abandon the idea of the historically real, of reality, of agency, or of truth.
In doing so I examine the work of Alasdair MacIntyre and other critics who provide us with a productive way of approaching the methodological and philosophical issues that are raised by these questions, and then I examine a variety of literary texts which I believe give the questions further historical detail and relevance. In the letters which the twelfth-century abbess Heloise wrote to Abelard, in Geoffrey Chaucer's treatment of the problem of historical-textual relations, and in Brian Friel's inquiry into the linguistic embodiment of traditions in his play Translations we have a variety of testimonies to the dynamic way in which self and world, agency and structure, are related.
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Lloyd, James Robert. "Representation, learning, description and criticism of probabilistic models with applications to networks, functions and relational data." Thesis, University of Cambridge, 2015. https://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.709264.
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Harvey, David I. H. "The later music of Elliott Carter : a study in music theory and analysis." Thesis, University of Oxford, 1986. http://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:c47d92da-277e-4850-9e3b-e5e0cd93308f.
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Any composer's writings form an important source for the critical study of his music: they must nevertheless be used with care, Carter's writings are considered as part of a tradition in American music. His musical development up to 1959 is briefly sketched, with particular reference to those elements which with hindsight can be seen to have been most significant in the evolution of a mature musical language - various experimental and non-western musical traditions, influences from other domains of art, and the philosophy of A. N. Vhitehead. In order to avoid the spectre of 'merely technical analysis' of atonal music, we need an analytical approach which can describe the way in which the characteristic properties of a musical surface (principally pitch register and duration; secondarily dynamic and timbre) act to create larger structures in time. Pitch-class Set Theory is rejected as embodying an unacceptable level of abstraction, and failing to account for the dynamic, developmental aspects of musical structure, Instead, a more flexible and sensitive method is developed, drawing on an alternative analytical tradition for twentieth-century music. Precedents and justifications for this method are sought in contemporary accounts of structure in general, and parallels and distinctions are drawn between the hierarchic structures of tonal music, atonal music, and language, This context-sensitive analytical approach is then applied to three of Carter's most characteristic works: the String Quartet no.2 (1959); the Double Concerto for Harpsichord, Piano, and Two Chamber Orchestras (1961); and the Concerto for Orchestra (1969).
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林浩光 and Ho-kwong Lam. "A study of Zhou Ji's (1781-1839) theory of CI poetry." Thesis, The University of Hong Kong (Pokfulam, Hong Kong), 2003. http://hub.hku.hk/bib/B31244361.
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Ferretter, Luke. "Towards a Christian literary theory." Thesis, University of St Andrews, 1999. http://hdl.handle.net/10023/15232.
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Most contemporary literary theories are either explicitly or implicitly atheistic. This thesis describes a literary theory whose principles are derived from or consistent with Christian theology. It argues against modern objections to such a theory that this is a rationally and ethically legitimate mode of contemporary literary theory. The first half of the thesis constitutes an analysis of deconstruction, of Marxism and of psychoanalysis. These are three of the most influential discourses in modern literary theory, each of which constitutes a significant argument against the existence of God, as this has traditionally been understood in Christian theology. In a chapter devoted to each theory, I examine its relation to Christian theology, and argue that it does not constitute a conclusive argument against the truth-content of such theology. I go on to assess which of its principles can be used in modem Christian literary theory, and which cannot. The second half of the thesis constitutes an analysis of a Christian tradition of thought that pertains to literary theory. In the fourth chapter, I examine the concepts of language and of art expressed or implied in the Bible, St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas, and assess which of these concepts could be used in Christian literary theory today. In the fifth chapter, I examine certain twentieth-century Christian philosophers and literary critics, and assess how their thought could be used in contemporary Christian literary theory. In the final chapter, I synthesize the conclusions to these arguments into the outline of a literary theory that both derives from Christian theology and takes account of the objections to such theology posed by contemporary literary theory.
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Threadgold, Terry. "Feminist textual practice performance and critique." Monash University, School of Literary, Visual and Cultural Studies, 1999. http://arrow.monash.edu.au/hdl/1959.1/8576.
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Vaughan, Michael Hunter. "From camera to code : Godard, Resnais and the problem of representation in film theory." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2008. http://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:d8752498-1a8c-48ec-b774-b3e9f1e410ea.
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This thesis presents a theory of film representation as a process of organizing relations in order to connote the image's status as a type of representation. It is, thus, a study of film form, the form of its representations. Building from such theoretical sources as Merleau- Ponty and Deleuze, I hope here to use a phenomenological base to build a theory of film semiotics that focuses on the immanent field of film representation, which I will postulate as a structuring of the inter-dependent relationship between the content of representation and the signified source of representation. This relationship is infused through a film text according to various modes of differentiation: between the viewer and viewed, speaker and spoken or what, using principles of phenomenology, I call the problem of subject-object relations. In this study I use this framework of subject-object relations in order to re-conceptualize the problem of film representation and to systematize the fundamental debates in film theory. I will argue that even oppositional theories of film representation can be reconciled through their attempt to understand this immanent field as being organized so as to structure a relationship between the representation and an origin of meaning, or subject-function. This relationship is what I call a system of reference. The filmic subject-function is traditionally located within the camera itself or hi the diegetic subjectivity of a character; I will call these two systems of reference, respectively, objective and subjective representation. And, through a reconstruction of Deleuze's Cinéma project, I will argue that the immanent field of film representation is a constant fluctuation between these two poles, a dialogic circulation of interacting agencies and discourses. This thesis illustrates this fluctuation through a comparative analysis of two French filmmakers, Alain Resnais and Jean-Luc Godard. I will argue that, illustrating similar goals as one finds in the works of Merleau-Ponty and Deleuze, these two filmmakers radically deconstruct film codes in order to destroy the conventional division between interior and exterior that is imposed by classical notions of subjectivity.
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Sherwood, Yvonne M. "Hosea 1-3 and contemporary literary theory : a test-case in rereading the Prophets." Thesis, University of Sheffield, 1997. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.311550.
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Munro, Emily J. "The language problem in European cinema : discourses on 'foreign-language films' in criticism, theory and practice." Thesis, University of Glasgow, 2006. http://theses.gla.ac.uk/3776/.
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The thesis describes a range of discourse on language in cinema as they have emerged in film reception, production and exhibition contexts in Europe, and assesses their implications for the critical construction of European cinema. The thesis argues that the ‘problem’ of language is constituted in a number of pervasive but seldom acknowledged discourses which have circumscribed the ways in which the category ‘European cinema’ is understood. The primary sources utilised in the research, which date from the 1920s to the present day, are film magazines and journals, trade journals, policy documents and interviews. The thesis pays particular attention to the exhibition and reception cultures surrounding ‘foreign-language films’ in Britain. It takes a historical approach in addressing the cineaste attitudes promoted in the magazines Close-Up and Sight and Sound, and reflects upon the reaction against the film appreciation tradition communicated by the journal Screen. The thesis also explores the positioning of European cinema at film festivals and contemplates the translation issues therein, including the contemporary correspondence between the practice of subtitling and rhetoric on the ‘original version’ and the culturally ‘authentic’ film. It examines how language is implicated in the argument for a ‘cultural exception’, which was used in defence of European film industries during the 1993 GATT negotiations, and considers how filmmakers in Denmark have attempted in their production activities to test the parameters of this discourse on exceptionality by producing Dogma ’95 and English-language ‘cross-over’ films. The thesis finally looks at the relationship between Scottish cinema exhibitors and the European Commission, organisations which are institutionally linked through the Europa Cinemas network, and suggests that a similar ethics of consumption is articulated by each with respect to European cinema. The thesis argues that while the status of European cinema as foreign-language cinema is rarely addressed, its framing as such nonetheless impinges significantly upon the ways in which European films are consumed.