Ramón de Hoces el Sevillano : ¿Personaje histórico en Don Quijote de la Mancha?

Este estudio se centra en una figura secundaria de Don Quijote, Ramón de Hoces el Sevillano, para repasar lo que la crítica ha aportado sobre ella y despejar incógnitas sobre su pretendida historicidad. Concluyo que no se puede afirmar que De Hoces sea un personaje histórico con los datos aportados hasta hoy por los diferentes investigadores

Dulce Maria Loynaz' Jardin: Subversive tropological discourse

The purpose of this dissertation is to analyze how the tropes or figurative discourse in Loynaz’s novel, Jardín, becomes a means by which she involves the reader within a text that subverts socio-cultural conventions. Through textual analysis, it explains how the poet communicates her views of the world as a conflictive space where existence is the will to live, life being a human construction like a garden, and a woman’s decision –often frustrated by men– to seek self-realization.^ By tracing some critical studies focused on polarities allegedly present in Jardín, such as: poetry/prose, lyric poetry/novel, word/silence, life/death, character novel/space novel, civilization/barbarism, posmodernismo/vanguardismo, and femininity/feminism, this essay explores Loynaz’s esthetic and ideological codes to demonstrate how opposition can be seen in her novel as part of her arrangement of an artistic philosophy.^ This research refers to three main sources: the semiotician Umberto Eco’s notion of the text’s indeterminacy as an opera aperta, reception theory, and Mikhail Bakhtin’s concept of dialogism. By applying these theories to the analysis of this novel, I seek to show Loynaz’s literary modus (tropological language) and ideological dictum , which correlate oppositions and transform them as a point of departure to reconsider civilized life. The poet is presented as an esthetic force that compels the reader to question some false values, by creating an implicit but intelligent dialogue between him/her and a lyrical text. To describe such literary procedure, I coin in this study the term dialirismo (dialyricism). ^ My essay is centered on the tropes through which Loynaz creates her dialyrical text. By focusing on metaphor, symbol, synecdoche, and metonymy, I examine Jardín as a convergence of the following conceptual aspects: intertextuality, primitivism, and feminist discourse. I argue that Loynaz’s novel is a creative response to the literary tradition, as well as a proposal to understand writing –and reading– as an open, interactive process in search not only of artistic values but also of critical knowledge.^ This exploration shows how the novelist faces a so-called civilized world through the eyes of her fictional character, Bárbara, who confronts patriarchal discourse. It celebrates Loynaz’s poetic representation of this inquisitive woman, in her fenced garden, as a human being who can see, above and beyond an iron curtain, the possibility to overcome an aggressive male-centered civilization.^

La vérité polyphonique : la problématisation théorique et pratique de la dichotomie entre fiction et documentaire, précédé du film YT Remix

La création cinématographique de l’étudiante qui accompagne ce mémoire sous la forme d’un DVD est disponible à la Médiathèque de la Bibliothèque des lettres et sciences humaines sous le titre : YT Remix (documentaire) ; Sonorisation d'un extrait de L'homme à la caméra (D. Vertov).(https://umontreal.on.worldcat.org/oclc/957316713)

La vérité polyphonique : la problématisation théorique et pratique de la dichotomie entre fiction et documentaire, précédé du film YT Remix

La création cinématographique de l’étudiante qui accompagne ce mémoire sous la forme d’un DVD est disponible à la Médiathèque de la Bibliothèque des lettres et sciences humaines sous le titre : YT Remix (documentaire) ; Sonorisation d'un extrait de L'homme à la caméra (D. Vertov).(http://atrium.umontreal.ca/notice/UM-ALEPH002370775)

Vicarious Power: The Interpersonal Transference of Power

Previous research on power has predominantly focused on power as an intrapersonal process. Relatively little research, however, has investigated the interpersonal transference of power. In the present research, I documented the vicarious power effect – people vicariously feel more powerful when their psychological connections with powerful figures were made salient. Compared to participants in the control conditions, who wrote about either a non-powerful figure with whom they felt psychologically connected or a powerful figure with whom they did not feel connected, participants writing about a powerful figure with whom they felt psychologically connected reported a higher level of power. This effect was true for both a real-life powerful figure (Study 1) and a powerful fictional character (Study 2). In Study 3, I found that, compared to participants in the control conditions (non-powerful but close, powerful but not close), participants writing about their experience of taking a picture together with a close and powerful person (close and powerful condition) made a lower counteroffer in a seller-buyer negotiation task. Furthermore, in Study 4, I found that, compared to participants in the control conditions (non-powerful but close, powerful but not close), participants writing about a close and powerful person (close and powerful condition) were more likely to engage in self-beneficial lying behaviors and less likely to engage in other-beneficial lying behaviors. The research sheds light on vicarious psychological processes in general. Remaining issues and directions for future research are discussed.

Poema en prosa y mundos especulativos : en torno a Les chasseurs du temps de Daniel Walther

The prose poem has traditionally been considered above all a lyrical genre. Nevertheless, there are short fictions showing the main features of the prose poem, such as brevity, intensity, autonomy, importance of connotation, visionary character and, above all, the dominance of description. The fictional prose poem gives shape to an imaginary world which is poetically described, rather than narrated. The fictional character of this kind of prose poem is especially clear when what is described is a future reality, as it is the case in Stéphane Mallarmé’s «Le Phénomène futur» and in later series of prose poems which create prospective universes. Among them, the series collected by Daniel Walther in 2010 under the title of Les Chasseurs du temps stands out for its mysterious force, its fictional coherence and the beauty of its ima¬ges.

The Cat Who Walks Through Years: Chris Claremont's X-Men as Kitty Pryde's bildungsroman

This dissertation examines the fictional character Kitty Pryde from the X-Men comic book series during the tenure of writer Chris Claremont. Claremont's work on the character primarily involves the years 1980-1990, though a return to writing the character in the 2000s is also discussed when relevant. The thesis question revolves around the definition of the bildungsroman genre and whether Claremont's narrative arc for Kitty Pryde's character fulfills that definition. Jerome Hamilton Buckley's 1974 book Season of Youth: The Bildungsroman from Dickens to Golding is used as the primary authority for the bildungsroman genre, and more specifically a list of nine criteria that Buckley deems particularly key to the definition of the genre. Each of the nine criteria is looked at in depth, demonstrating where and how they can be found in the narrative, if at all. However, because Buckley's perspective and criteria come from a time of less diversity, examination from a feminist and minority perspective is also added with ideas from Rita Felski and Stella Bolaki. Combining Buckley's initial list of nine criteria with more modern criticism, these ideas are then used to analyze Kitty Pryde's narrative arc and to determine whether it can be seen as a bildungsroman. The findings support reading Claremont's narrative arc of the Kitty Pryde character as a bildungsroman. Three of Buckley's nine key themes are identified as particularly prevalent in the narrative: the search for a vocation, ordeal by love, and the conflict of generations. Three more key themes are found to be less prevalent but still clearly present: the search for a working philosophy, the larger society, and alienation. Because Buckley's definition for the bildungsroman genre requires the presence of six of his nine key themes, the presence of the aforementioned six thus validate the reading of the narrative as a bildungsroman. The text also provides some suggestions for finding the three least applicable key themes within the narrative, but because their presence is not necessary to fulfill the definition of the bildungsroman, they are not rigorously examined. In addition to fulfilling Buckley's key themes, the paper also discusses the more modern minority-oriented views. It is shown how the narrative can be read in terms of a journey to diverge from norms, as per Felski's ideas of the unique qualities of the specifically female bildungsroman. As Kitty Pryde's narrative can be shown to conform to the bildungsroman ideas of both Buckley and Felski, the thesis question is thus answered positively: Chris Claremont's X-Men can indeed be read as Kitty Pryde's bildungsroman.

Vicarious Power: The Interpersonal Transference of Power

Thesis (Ph.D, Psychology) -- Queen's University, 2016-07-29 15:58:26.695

The representation of the northeastern migrant: interstices and culture in the figure of Francisco da Silva in "Liberdade", by Ruth Laus

It serves as the object of analysis of this article the representation of the northeastern migrant in the figure of the male character Francisco da Silva, protagonist of the short story "Liberdade", by Ruth Laus, as a fictional character who lives "in an interrogatory, interstitial space between the act of representation [...] and the presence of community itself" (Bhabha, 1998, p. 22) where he comes to enter and to settle. Chico, as he is known, embarks on a crowded truck, and his fate, like that of many other migrants, is the Southeast region of Brazil, where, between São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro, he chooses the sea. To the same extent, beyond the concept(s) of culture(s), and the need to (re)think the concept of [cultural] human community - here adding the cultural term to the proposal of Bhabha (1998), as a way of thinking about the role of the individual - are taken and analyzed, also, the cultural identity concepts based on the difference itself. It is thought in what way, then, and through what imposing character, the wealth and the values ​​of the Northeast, although managed to be spread on national home soil, yet not are conspicuous by their guarantee of permanence of its inhabitants in their homeland.  

Sexual blinging of women : Alice Walker's african character tashi and issue of female genital cutting

This thesis provides a reading of the different forms of representation that can be attributed to the character Tashi, the protagonist of the novel Possessing the Secret of Joy (1992), written by the African American writer Alice Walker. Before this work Tashi had already appeared in two previous novels by Walker, first, in The Color Purple (1982) and then, as a mention, in The Temple of My Familiar (1989). With Tashi, the author introduces the issue of female circumcision, a ritual Tashi submits herself to at the beginning of her adult life. The focus of observation lies in the ways in which the author’s anger is transformed into a means of creative representation. Walker uses her novel Possessing the Secret of Joy openly as a political instrument so that the expression “female mutilation” (term used by the author) receives ample attention from the media and critics in general. The aim of this investigation is to evaluate to what extent Walker’s social engagement contributes to the development of her work and to what extent it undermines it. For the analysis of the different issues related to “female genital cutting”, the term I use in this thesis, the works of feminist critics and writers such as Ellen Gruenbaum, Lightfoot-Klein, Nancy Hartsock, Linda Nicholson, Efrat Tseëlon and the Egyptian writer and doctor Nawal El Saadawi will be consulted. I hope that this thesis can contribute as an observation about Alice Walker’s use of her social engagement in the creation of her fictional world.

Character, Audience Agency and Trans-Media Drama

Changes in the television industry with regards to the development of new media technologies are having a significant impact on audience engagement with television drama. This article explores how the internet is being used to extend audience engagement onto platforms other than the television set to the point where television drama should increasingly be reconsidered as trans-media drama. However audience engagement with the various elements of a trans-media drama text is complex. By exploring audience attitudes towards character in the British television series Spooks and its associated online games, this article argues that in an increasingly converged media landscape audiences transfer values between platforms. Consequently the audience's perception of control in relation to their engagement with a trans-media drama text such as Spooks becomes complicated with values associated with television proving key to their engagement with the same fictional world in the form of games.

Being ethical : how process drama assists pre-service drama teachers to reflect on professional ethics

This research thesis focuses on the experiences of pre-service drama teachers and considers how process drama may assist them to reflect on key aspects of professional ethics such as mandatory codes or standards, principled moral reasoning, moral character, moral agency, and moral literacy. Research from higher education provides evidence that current pedagogical approaches used to prepare pre –professionals for practice in medicine, engineering, accountancy, business, psychology, counselling, nursing and education, rarely address the more holistic or affective dimensions of professional ethics such as moral character. Process drama, a form of educational drama, is a complex improvisational group experience that invites participants to create and assume roles, and select and manage symbols in order to create a fictional world exploring human experience. Many practitioners claim that process drama offers an aesthetic space to develop a deeper understanding of self and situations, expanding the participant’s consciousness and ways of knowing. However, little research has been conducted into the potential efficacy of process drama in professional ethics education for pre-professionals. This study utilizes practitioner research and case study to explore how process drama may contribute to the development of professional ethics education and pedagogy.

Downtime reduction analysis of the Australia Post flat mail optical character reader

Machine downtime, whether planned or unplanned, is intuitively costly to manufacturing organisations, but is often very difficult to quantify. The available literature showed that costing processes are rarely undertaken within manufacturing organisations. Where cost analyses have been undertaken, they generally have only valued a small proportion of the affected costs, leading to an overly conservative estimate. This thesis aimed to develop a cost of downtime model, with particular emphasis on the application of the model to Australia Post’s Flat Mail Optical Character Reader (FMOCR). The costing analysis determined a cost of downtime of $5,700,000 per annum, or an average cost of $138 per operational hour. The second section of this work focused on the use of the cost of downtime to objectively determine areas of opportunity for cost reduction on the FMOCR. This was the first time within Post that maintenance costs were considered along side of downtime for determining machine performance. Because of this, the results of the analysis revealed areas which have historically not been targeted for cost reduction. Further exploratory work was undertaken on the Flats Lift Module (FLM) and Auto Induction Station (AIS) Deceleration Belts through the comparison of the results against two additional FMOCR analysis programs. This research has demonstrated the development of a methodical and quantifiable cost of downtime for the FMOCR. This has been the first time that Post has endeavoured to examine the cost of downtime. It is also one of the very few methodologies for valuing downtime costs that has been proposed in literature. The work undertaken has also demonstrated how the cost of downtime can be incorporated into machine performance analysis with specific application to identifying high costs modules. The outcome of this report has both been the methodology for costing downtime, as well as a list of areas for cost reduction. In doing so, this thesis has outlined the two key deliverables presented at the outset of the research.

Bengali handwritten character recognition using modified syntactic method

Several approaches have been proposed to recognize handwritten Bengali characters using different curve fitting algorithms and curvature analysis. In this paper, a new algorithm (Curve-fitting Algorithm) to identify various strokes of a handwritten character is developed. The curve-fitting algorithm helps recognizing various strokes of different patterns (line, quadratic curve) precisely. This reduces the error elimination burden heavily. Implementation of this Modified Syntactic Method demonstrates significant improvement in the recognition of Bengali handwritten characters.