Disney has been releasing Disney Princess films since 1937. They started out with Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs and just now, a thirteenth film has been added to the list: Moana. A distinct...Show moreDisney has been releasing Disney Princess films since 1937. They started out with Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs and just now, a thirteenth film has been added to the list: Moana. A distinct change in character is noticeable when looking at the princesses. The princesses from the first generation (1937-1959) have passive characters, they are submissive, enjoy domestic chores and play no active role in their own tales. They simply wait to be swept off their feet by a prince. In fact, they represented what people considered to be the perfect woman in those days. However, nowadays, that is not what we consider the perfect woman to be. The second generation princesses (1989-1998) introduced a change. They were rebellious, took agency and instead of falling for any man, they wanted the right one. However, these films still focus on finding love, as if that is all that a woman's life should be about. The most recent princesses (from 2010 onwards) are increasingly more independent and active. They do not rely on men to save them, take matters into their own hands and determine their own fate. They are progressive princesses and continue to increasingly become more proactive and independent. These new princesses provide the twenty-first-century audience with role models they can actually learn from. Disney is not there yet, but they are slowly but surely letting go of the Disney formula.Show less
Using the premise set forth by Roland Barthes that “food signifies,” this thesis analyzes immigrant fiction and how diasporized peoples construct and perform their identities along class, gender,...Show moreUsing the premise set forth by Roland Barthes that “food signifies,” this thesis analyzes immigrant fiction and how diasporized peoples construct and perform their identities along class, gender, and ethnic lines. The first chapter unpacks and presents food culture theory as a meaningful tool to analyze works of literature. The subsequent two chapters apply food culture theory and its role in identity production through a close reading of T.C. Boyle’s novel The Tortilla Curtain (1995) and Jhumpa Lahiri’s short story collection Unaccustomed Earth (2013). In both, food behavior of the migrants exemplifies the ongoing vacillation between the desire for assimilation and rejection of the host culture. Moreover, the various foodways presented in the works show how food consumption can signify a divide or exemplify a struggle to reconcile public and private identities.Show less
In a time where illness could often not be explained from a medical perspective, those who fell ill sought to find the meaning of their suffering elsewhere. Today, many illnesses, ailments and...Show moreIn a time where illness could often not be explained from a medical perspective, those who fell ill sought to find the meaning of their suffering elsewhere. Today, many illnesses, ailments and pains can be explained in medical terms, but biomedicine does not seem to allow many, if any, other narratives to coexist with the restitution narrative. Illness as a lived experience goes beyond the purely medical and clinical terms that define it, illness is more than an occasion to practise medicine; it is an occasion to practise humanity and perhaps this is what best defines the field of medical humanities and what becomes clear in John Donne’s and Timothy Roger’s illness narratives.Show less
This is a thesis that analyses several Dr Who serials in relation to concepts such as Colonialism, Empire, Fascism, and Humanist values. As such it treats its popular-culture subject seriously and...Show moreThis is a thesis that analyses several Dr Who serials in relation to concepts such as Colonialism, Empire, Fascism, and Humanist values. As such it treats its popular-culture subject seriously and shows how such long-running TV serials are much more than just commercial entertainment.Show less
In the following chapters, I shall compose a theoretical framework of both children’s literature and female gender studies and use this for an analysis of the presentation of female gender in Roald...Show moreIn the following chapters, I shall compose a theoretical framework of both children’s literature and female gender studies and use this for an analysis of the presentation of female gender in Roald Dahl’s Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (chapter 2), The Witches (chapter 3) and Matilda (chapter 4). Following Culley’s analysis, Dahl’s at times grotesque and even sadistic narratives appear to uncover ideological hypocrisies like sexism or stereotyped gender roles, hereby drawing attention towards gender issues. However, the satirical presentation of these ideological stereotypes may present Dahl’s work as mainly humorous or entertaining, in this way overshadowing the actuality of repressing gender stereotyping as projected in the text.Show less
Die Vermittlung zwischen Deutschen und Tschechen in der Vertreibungsliteratur Josef Mühlbergers Eine Untersuchung anhand der Bücher Bogumil. Das schuldlose Leben und schlimme Ende des Edvard Klima...Show moreDie Vermittlung zwischen Deutschen und Tschechen in der Vertreibungsliteratur Josef Mühlbergers Eine Untersuchung anhand der Bücher Bogumil. Das schuldlose Leben und schlimme Ende des Edvard Klima und Der Galgen im Weinberg. Eine Erzählung aus unseren Tagen.Show less
Chapter 1 – Introduction & Methodology Such modern classic horror films as The Exorcist (1973), Rosemary’s Baby (1968) and Don’t Look Now (1973) probe deeply into our fears, playing on them to...Show moreChapter 1 – Introduction & Methodology Such modern classic horror films as The Exorcist (1973), Rosemary’s Baby (1968) and Don’t Look Now (1973) probe deeply into our fears, playing on them to provoke genuine re- sponses of terror. Beyond that, fictional horror has an impact on modern culture through con- sumption. It is a common belief that overconsumption of horror leads directly to real-world vio- lence and terror (Cooper 8). Others feel that critical arguments “that find violent fictions culpable for real-life violence are problematically deterministic: they strip agency away from the vio- lence’s human perpetrators and assign it to inanimate causal factors” (Cooper 8). As such, it is necessary to analyze works of modern horror in order to understand this blurring of reality and fiction within the genre, not only to understand horror’s place within the creative context of film but also to understand the role that horror plays in understanding ourselves and the world around us. The type of horror that is most associated with this blurring of reality and fiction is found nestled within postmodernism. Postmodern horror succeeds at playing on our fears as the “uni- verse of the contemporary horror film is an uncertain one in which good and evil, normality and abnormality, reality and illusion become virtually indistinguishable” (Pinedo, “Postmodern Ele- ments” 85). Postmodern horror plays on the viewer’s fear that they are themselves a monster – they see elements of their personality reflected in the character of the villain on the screen. This thesis focuses on the blurring of the distinction between being human and being a monster, or between good and evil, in postmodern horror cinema and critically explores the creation of the postmodern monster, which is not the “Other” but contains recognizable elements of ourselves.Show less
Les éditoriaux et les articles qu’a écrit Albert Camus pour le journal Combat, parus entre 1944 et 1947, sont le point de départ de ce mémoire, dans lequel nous avons essayé de dégager comment l...Show moreLes éditoriaux et les articles qu’a écrit Albert Camus pour le journal Combat, parus entre 1944 et 1947, sont le point de départ de ce mémoire, dans lequel nous avons essayé de dégager comment l’idée de ce qui est juste de Camus s’est développée pendant cette période à Combat. Nous croyons que son idée de ce qui est juste trouve une de ses sources au bureau de la rédaction de Combat. C’est pourquoi nous nous avons étudié comment la justice, et l’idée de ce qui est juste, s’est manifestée dans ces textes journalistiques.Show less
This thesis analyses the function and meaning of the depiction of landscapes in Ann Radcliffe’s The Mysteries of Udolpho in relation to contemporary paintings, the emergence of the Gothic as a...Show moreThis thesis analyses the function and meaning of the depiction of landscapes in Ann Radcliffe’s The Mysteries of Udolpho in relation to contemporary paintings, the emergence of the Gothic as a genre, and the notions of the picturesque, the beautiful and the sublime.Show less
Die vorliegende Arbeit liefert einen Beitrag zu der zurzeit noch geringen Forschung zu Andreas Maiers Romanen und zur Forschung über die Rezeption Heideggers in der deutschsprachigen Literatur....Show moreDie vorliegende Arbeit liefert einen Beitrag zu der zurzeit noch geringen Forschung zu Andreas Maiers Romanen und zur Forschung über die Rezeption Heideggers in der deutschsprachigen Literatur. Meine Argumente stärke ich mit biographischen Informationen über das Leben und die Weltansichten Andreas Maiers. Hierzu verwende ich Maiers Poetikvorlesungen aus Ich (2006) und seiner Mainzer Poetik-Dozentur 2003 (2003). Die Arbeit untersucht den Roman Klausen (2002) auf seine intertextuellen Bezüge zu Sein und Zeit, insbesondere zum fünften Kapitel: »Das alltägliche Sein des Da und das Verfallen des Daseins«. Die intertextuellen Bezüge in Klausen auf Sein und Zeit bestehen aus einer Kritik des begrifflichen Instrumentariums Heideggers und aus einer möglichen Übernahme der Konzepte ´Man´, ´Gerede´, ´Geschreibe´, ´Neugier´, ´Zweideutigkeit´ und ´Verfallenheit´. Die Übernahme der Konzepte lässt sich nicht beweisen, stellt sich aber, anhand von auffälligen inhaltlichen Parallelen zwischen den beiden Texten, als plausibel heraus.Show less
