A framework for graphic description in book design

This project is concerned with the way that illustrations, photographs, diagrams and graphs, and typographic elements interact to convey ideas on the book page. A framework for graphic description is proposed to elucidate this graphic language of ���complex texts���. The model is built up from three main areas of study, with reference to a corpus of contemporary children���s science books. First, a historical survey puts the subjects for study in context. Then a multidisciplinary discussion of graphic communication provides a theoretical underpinning for the model; this leads to various proposals, such as the central importance of ratios and relationships among parts in creating meaning in graphic communication. Lastly a series of trials in description contribute to the structure of the model itself. At the heart of the framework is an organising principle that integrates descriptive models from fields of design, literary criticism, art history, and linguistics, among others, as well as novel categories designed specifically for book design. Broadly, design features are described in terms of elemental component parts (micro-level), larger groupings of these (macro-level), and finally in terms of overarching, ���whole book��� qualities (meta-level). Various features of book design emerge at different levels; for instance, the presence of nested discursive structures, a form of graphic recursion in editorial design, is proposed at the macro-level. Across these three levels are the intersecting categories of ���rule��� and ���context���, offering different perspectives with which to describe graphic characteristics. Contextbased features are contingent on social and cultural environment, the reader���s previous knowledge, and the actual conditions of reading; rule-based features relate to the systematic or codified aspects of graphic language. The model aims to be a frame of reference for graphic description, of use in different forms of qualitative or quantitative research and as a heuristic tool in practice and teaching.

All friends now? Critical conversations, West Indian literature and 'The Quarrel with History'

In this essay Alison Donnell returns to the material object of Edward Baugh's essay, published in the pages of the Trinidadian little magazine Tapia in 1977, in order to re-read the force of its arguments in the context of its own politicocultural history and to assess the significance of its publication venue. Donnell attends to Baugh's own standing in the highly charged field of Caribbean literary criticism as a critic of both Walcott and Naipaul, and acknowledges his creative contribution to this field as a poet. She also considers how, in the years between the original publication of Baugh's article and its republication, the questions of historical invisibility have entered newly disputed territories that demand attention to how gender, indigeneity, spirituality, and sexuality shape ideas of historical and literary legitimacy, in addition to those foundational questions around a politics of race and class.

Recensionernas retorik : Om k��nsroller i kulturjournalistiken

At the centre of this study lies the question if normative gender thinking affects the way poetry gets reviewed and how the reviews are written, this in relation to both the gender of the reviewer and the poet. The study crosses three academic fields; gender studies, poetry and journalism, and is based on the cultural studies theory of media affecting and even creating the world around it. The study is based on two types of analysis. One quantitative analysis based on the thematic criticism theory about detail studies that shows bigger patterns, this analysis focuses on how the poet and his/hers work are being treated in the reviews in areas such as how much space they��re given in the newspapers, how they are named by the reviewer and the tendency to quote the reviewed work. ��And one qualitative analysis based on the new criticism method of close reading, that focuses on the reviewers way of writing and how that may be connected with theories of gender differences, this both connected to the gender of the reviewers and the poets. The material chosen for this study are all the reviews that were published in the same newspapers and that reviewed two specific poetry works by two specific poets chosen with great sensibility to age and career so that their difference in gender would be the most significant difference between them. The works were chosen based on year of publishing, they were supposed to be published as newly as possible and as close to each other in time as possible. The works I ended up with were Dimman av allt (2001) and Svart som silver (2008) by Bruno K. ��ijer and Silversk��p (2000) and Nu f��rsvinner vi eller ing��r (2007) by Birgitta Lillpers. The results of this study show several differences in how poetry is being judged and how poetry reviews are being written are connected with the gender of the poets and the reviewer. Lillpers got 35% less space in the newspapers and ��ijers poetry got quoted a lot more which confirms that female poetry often is considered as less important than the male poetry, and that men in general tends to be judged as more professional than woman. The male reviewers tended to express themselves with greater certainty than the female reviewers who held a more professional tone in their reviews and focused more on the technical aspects of the poetry. This confirms the theory of the male words are being looked upon as the truth but contradicts the theory of women writing more based on personal experience and of women being less skilled in language techniques. In conclusion, there are differences in how poetry gets reviewed and how the reviews are written that are connected to the genders of the poet and the reviewer but these differences are complex and does not show a clear normative way of thinking about gender

Vilhelm Ekelund och den fransk-italienska kultursf��ren : N��gra nedslag i de tidiga prosaverken - fr��n Antikt ideal (1909) till Attiskt i f��gelperspektiv (1919)

Vilhelm Ekelund och den fransk-italienska kultursf��ren: N��gra nedslag i de tidiga prosaverken ��� fr��n Antikt ideal (1909) till Attiskt i f��gelperspektiv (1919). (Vilhelm Ekelund and the French and Italian cultural heritage: A study of his early prose ��� from Antikt ideal (1909) to Attiskt i f��gelperspektiv (1919)). The Swedish poet, essayist and aphorist Vilhelm Ekelund was not only influenced by German literature and philosophy, he also wrote extensive literary criticism on the subject of Romance language authors. This article discusses Ekelund���s relationship to some of the most influential French and Italian writers ��� as it can be seen in his work during the period 1909-1919. This relationship was ambiguous: he paid homage to French authors such as Montaigne, Montesquieu, Stendhal and Comte ��� as well as to the Italian poet and philosopher Leopardi ��� but he also severely criticized such distinguished writers as Baudelaire, Rousseau and Maupassant. One conclusion of this article is that the authors praised by Ekelund all venerate the Greek and Roman cultural heritage, whereas the despised novelists and poets were, in his opinion, either too ���modern��� or too ���feminine��� ��� both highly pejorative adjectives in the author���s terminology. It is also noted that Ekelund���s most ferocious attacks date from the first part of the decade, before he entered a more harmonic period with the works Metron (1918) and Attiskt i f��gelperspektiv (1919).

"Spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings" : romantic imagery in Mary Shelley's Frankstein

Romantic English literature ��� written at a time when prose fiction was predominantly a medium for sheer entertainment ��� is rooted in poetry. One or two novelists may exceptionally be granted the adjective ���Romantic���, but Mary Shelley is not ranked among them. For centuries, her work has been restricted to that section in handbooks reserved for exotic Gothic literature. This thesis argues that literary criticism has failed to recognize Frankenstein���s obvious relation with the movement. The argument will be fostered by a brief look at such handbooks, and developed through the analysis of the imagery of the novel, so as to trace the Romantic elements there contained. The analysis relies mainly on the frame developed by Northrop Frye concerning the nature and function of imagery in literature. The concept of intertextuality will also be useful as a tool to account for the insertion of images in the novel, and for the novel���s insertion within the Romantic context. The work is divided into three parts. The first contextualizes the main issues set forth by Frankenstein, establishing connections with the life of the author and with the Romantic movement. The second exposes the theoretical basis on which the thesis is grounded. The last presents my reading of the novel���s web of images. In the end, I hope to validate the thesis proposed, that Frankenstein embodies the aesthetic and philosophical assessments of the English Romantic agenda, and therefore deserves to be situated in its due place in the English Literary canon as the legitimate representative of Romanticism in prose form.

A narratological analysis of D. M. Thoma`s: the white hotel (1981)

���A Narratological Analysis of D. M. Thomas���s The White Hotel (1981)��� originated within a seminar on British Postmodernist Literature during the first Master���s Degree in ���British and North-American Culture and Literature��� (2001-04) at the Universidade da Madeira set up by the Department of English and German Studies. This dissertation seeks to present a narratological analysis of Thomas���s novel. The White Hotel stands as a paradigmatic example of the kind of literature that has dominated the British literary scene in the past three decades, commonly referred to as postmodernist fiction, owing to its formal craftsmanship (multiplicity of narrative voices and perspectives, mixing of differing genres and text types, inclusion of embedded narratives) alongside the handling of what are deemed as postmodernist topoi (the distinction between truth and lies, history and fantasy, fact and fiction, the questioning of the nature of aesthetic representation, the role the author and the reader hold in the narrative process, the instability of the linguistic sign, the notion of originality and the moral responsibility the author has towards his/her work), The narratological approach carried out in this research reveals that Thomas���s text constitutes an aesthetic endeavour to challenge the teleological drive that is inherent in any narrative, i. e., the inevitable progression towards a reassuring end. Hence, the subversion of narrative telling, which is a recurrent feature in Thomas���s remaining literary output, mirrors the contemporary distrust in totalising, hierarchised and allencompassing narratives. In its handling of historical events, namely of the Holocaust, The White Hotel invites us to reassess the most profound beliefs we were taught to take for granted: progress, reality and truth. In their place the novel proposes a more flexible conception of both the world and art, especially of literary fiction. In other terms, the world appears as a brutal chaotic place the subject is forced to adjust to. Accordingly, the literary work is deemed hybrid, fragmented and open. So as to put forth the above-mentioned issues, this research work is structured in three main chapters. The initial chapter ��� ���What is Postmodernism?��� ��� advances a scrutiny not only of the seminal but also of more recent studies on postmodernist literary criticism. Following this, in Chapter II ��� ���Postmodernist British Fiction��� ��� a brief overview of postmodernist British fiction is carried out, focusing on the fictional works that, in my opinion, are fundamental for the periodising of British postmodernism. In addition, I felt the need to include a section ��� ���D. M. Thomas as a Postmodernist Novelist��� ��� in which the author���s remaining literary output is briefly examined. Finally, Chapter III ��� ���A Narratological Analysis of The White Hotel��� ��� proposes a narratological analysis of the novel according to the particular Genettian analytical model. To conclude, my dissertation constitutes an approach to D. M. Thomas���s The White Hotel as a text whose very existence is substantiated in the foregrounding of the contingency of all discourses, meeting the postmodernist precepts of openness and subversion of any narrative that claims to be true, globalising and all-inclusive.

A dial��tica do amor em pigmale��o, de G. B. Shaw.

Pygmalion (1913), by George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950), has many studies in literary criticism. However, this study brings a new interpretation to Shaw s play based on Harold Bloom s theory and methodology, that is, the anxiety of influence and the dialectic of revisionism. Through the analysis of poetic influence and the dialectic of love, we can see that Pygmalion represents an apophrades in relation to William Shakespeare s The Taming of the Shrew (1593) and Ovid s myth of Pygmalion and Galatea in Metamorphosis (c. 14), which creates a family romance between the three stories. Shaw s play surpasses The Taming of the Shrew when it shows the possibility of the relation between this parent poem and Ovid s myth, which it is also its parent poem, and because it represents a strong misreading of Shakespeare s play as well as of Ovid s myth.

Do cientista ao ativista: os problemas da ci��ncia do texto e uma solu����o revolucionaria na obra de Terry Eagleton

The literary critic Terry Eagleton obtained notoriety in academic circles when he was recognized intellectually for his bestselling book Literary Theory: An Introduction. In this book, the English author boldly proposes the end of literature and literary criticism. However, Eagleton proposed years before, in his book Criticism and Ideology (1976), a scientific system of analysis of literary texts, which seemed less radical, both in theory and in method, than in his later theoretical proposal. Based on this, the objective of this dissertation is to present the English literary critic��s initial method, explaining the reasons that led him to abandon his initial project - of develop a method of analysis of the literary text on a Marxist scientific perspective - and to propose, in the following years, in his most famous book and others, a revolutionary vision that would go beyond textual analysis and make literary texts have a practical intervention in society. Finally, we explain what would be his idea of revolutionary criticism

Coer����o e ruptura estil��sticas na poesia potiguar: a constru����o do ethos inventivo do poeta Jorge Fernandes

Within the poetic scenario of Rio Grande do Norte the publication of Livro de Poemas de Jorge Fernandes, in 2007, marks, in the imagery of the Potiguar community of poetry readers, producers and critics, the beginning of the social circulation of an inventive ethos associated with the poet Jorge Fernandes de Oliveira (1887-1953). Regarding the event mentioned earlier as a point of reference, this research investigates the construction of such ethos based on the counterpoint between the poet s individual stylistic choices and the stylistic options that prevailed in the lyric production of the Twenties in the 20th Century. The corpus comprises poetic texts (by the poet under discussion and by other poets who were, then, regarded as icons of the poetry of Rio Grande do Norte) and texts representative of local literary criticism (produced both during the Twenties and in other decades of the last century). Support to this analysis is grounded in Mikhail Bakhtin s theory of the utterance (mainly regarding style) and in Dominique Maingueneau s theory of the utterance (mainly regarding ethos). During the course of this investigation, the research has outlined an inventory of the prevailing individual stylistic choices of Jorge Fernandes de Oliveira and the reasons why such choices point out towards the inventive ethos associated with the poet.

Outras verdades, muito extraordin��rias, do grande sert��o

This study explores the symbolism of evil way in the novel Grande sert��o: veredas, by Guimar��es Rosa, regarding faustian pact by Goethe, and so tries to understand how the rosiana language are present to the strategies which put in suspense the effectiveness of the demonic agreement and enable, with poetic intensity, different interpretations, especially as regards the anguish of the human condition. This research thus has drawn upon the Mythical Symbolism, in Literary Criticism and aspects of Metaphysics, in addition to analyzing classic literary essays in approaching of Rosa s masterpiece structure. It has also demonstrated that the incorporation of the Faust legend in Grande sert��o reflects the same desire for happiness that is not done completely, and in this manner, instigates a discussion about the limits to the satisfaction of being human. Therefore, it has observed that epic narrative of ex-gangster Riobaldo to the doctor of city speculates on human man, in the continuous learning of his passing

Duas ou tr��s coisas sobre Antonio Candido

Busca-se aqui investigar a conex��o entre duas caracter��sticas definidoras da originalidade cr��tica de Antonio Candido: sua filia����o �� linhagem do marxismo ocidental e sua inser����o numa tradi����o nacional.