‘Poor, pale, Rusalka’: The Polymorphic Nature of the Heroine of Dvořák’s Rusalka

Rusalka, the protagonist of Antonín Dvořák’s eponymous opera, is probably one of the most unique operatic heroines. Rusalka’s burning desire to become human in order to be with one and have a soul takes her on an interesting, yet tragic journey. From water nymph to human to will-o-the-wisp, Rusalka goes through three different states and two metamorphoses that leave her desire unfulfilled and cause her to suffer continuously. The two metamorphoses cause Rusalka to remain between the natural and human worlds, both of which reject her. This in turn leads to her eternal suffering. Her tragic fate and constant agony portray her as a victim. And yet Rusalka is also a powerful character who is in command of her own story: as the opera’s sole protagonist, we are encouraged to identify with her perspective. She is constantly present throughout the opera. Even in the scenes that do not require her presence, she communicates with us through absence and through other characters that are, like us, influenced by her presence. And when Rusalka is silent, she connects with us through the language of orchestral music; her mute exterior on stage eludes us and seeks our understanding and sympathy. Thus, her powerful presence and the complexity of her nature draw us as the readers/listeners/spectators to experience Rusalka’s story through her subjective perspective. In order to reveal the nature of the character and how it affects us as readers/listeners/spectators, I will use various approaches, with an emphasis on psychological concepts that will provide a new insight into Rusalka and the opera as a whole. My research will also suggest the impact of fin-desiècle misogyny on Rusalka and specifically her silence, which is the perhaps the most intriguing aspect of the opera and its protagonist. The thesis will follow Rusalka’s journey, from the time and culture of its creation to modern times, as portrayed in some of the more recent dramatic productions that resituate these themes in light of more current perspectives. I will expose in turn the layers in Rusalka: from the libretto and the music, to the use of voice, and finally the playing with meaning in a few representative stage productions. In the second and third chapters, focusing on the libretto and music respectively, I discuss the ways Rusalka articulates her nature, using the Freudian structural model of the psyche for the analysis of the narrative and repetition in the libretto and music. The analysis of music also points toward repetition as a key method, and I suggest connections with the psychological concept of repetition, linked with desire and the death drive, as observed by Slavoj Žižek and Renata Salecl. In the fourth chapter, I focus on the voice, more specifically the cry, in order to explore the ways in which we experience the voice, which I believe is the central element that causes a painful enjoyment (jouissance) in some of us, and in turn is key to our sympathetic empathy with Rusalka. Finally, with Rusalka on stage, I explore the ways in which we, as audience, relate to Rusalka’s suffering, focusing mainly on her silent state. With the addition of the layer of the gaze, I focus on the spectators’ reaction to mute Rusalka and how, in a way, they participate in these moments of suffering precisely through the gaze. Throughout the thesis, I demonstrate how Rusalka communicates with us through the opera’s layers and how in return we respond to them, either by sympathising or identifying with the protagonist

Twilight of the Anthropocene idols

Following on from Theory and the Disappearing Future, Cohen, Colebrook and Miller turn their attention to the eco-critical and environmental humanities’ newest and most fashionable of concepts, the Anthropocene. The question that has escaped focus, as “tipping points” are acknowledged as passed, is how language, mnemo-technologies, and the epistemology of tropes appear to guide the accelerating ecocide, and how that implies a mutation within reading itself—from the era of extinction events.Only in this moment of seeming finality, the authors argue, does there arise an opportunity to be done with mourning and begin reading. Drawing freely on Paul de Man’s theory of reading, anthropomorphism and the sublime, Twilight of the Anthropocene Idols argues for a mode of critical activism liberated from all-too-human joys and anxieties regarding the future. It was quite a few decades ago (1983) that Jurgen Habermas declared that ‘master thinkers had fallen on hard times.’ His pronouncement of hard times was premature. For master thinkers it is the best of times. Not only is the world, supposedly, falling into a complete absence of care, thought and frugality, a few hyper-masters have emerged to tell us that these hard times should be the best of times. It is precisely because we face the end that we should embrace our power to geo-engineer, stage the revolution, return to profound thinking, reinvent the subject, and recognize ourselves fully as one global humanity. Enter anthropos

James Joyce\u27s Ulysses and World War I.

The final words of Ulysses underline the text\u27s position on the cusp of the pre- and postwar eras. Joyce was emphatic that Molly\u27s Yes be immediately followed by those crucial coordinates: centerlineTrieste--Zurich--Paris. centerline 1914-1921. Where does this unsettling epitaph point us? In the direction of history, clearly; we are nudged toward the text\u27s and its nail-paring creator\u27s autobiography. Even the shallowest knowledge of recent history will indicate the centrality of those towns, during those years, to all those wretched quarrels ... erroneouslv supposed to be about a punctilio of honour and a flag (526). Even the shallowest knowledge of recent history will make us aware that Ulysses\u27 initial plotting was done in one world and its final incarnation fixed in another. We reflexively turn those coordinates upon the foregoing text and try to gauge their significance. How might they have affected the narrative? Here I explain how World War I affected Ulysses in important ways which have yet to be critically explored. And I also explain how Ulysses reflects back upon that war and the culture it transformed. I first sketch James Joyce\u27s interest and involvement in World War I, an engagement with history that belies his later, self-conscious pose of aesthete. I then demonstrate specifically how the War, though anachronistic to the date of Bloomsday, is yet important to Ulysses\u27 theme, characters, tone. I explore how the war manifests itself in the book\u27s protagonists\u27, and their creator\u27s, new attitudes to heroism. I probe the war\u27s relation to Joyce\u27s new mechanics of plot and perspective. I examine how the War is evinced too in the theme of the Waste Land as it is sited in the book. I explain how the poignant sense of homelessness experienced by many characters within the book is related to the dislocation of space, time and meaning often experienced by participants and civilians during and after the war. Finally, I emphasize how the war manifests itself in Ulysses\u27 alternate site, the Dublin (f) abled by daughters of memory (20). This alternate site is characterized by stabilizing coordinates which provide a new grounding for postwar space and time. Joyce creates for his readers a comforting world within the text: thus Ulysses transcends the crisis of values which it simultaneously reveals

Hear: Law and the Senses

Hearing is an intricate but delicate modality of sensory perception, continuously enfolded in the surroundings in which it takes place. While passive in its disposition, it is integral to the movement and fluctuations of one’s environment. Always attuned to the present and immersed in the murmur of its background, hearing remains a situated perception but fundamentally overarching and extended into the open. It is an immanent modality of being in and with the world. It is also the ultimate juridical act, a sense-making activity that adjudicates and informs the spatio-temporal acoustics of law and justice. This collection gathers multidisciplinary contributions on the relationship between law and hearing, the human vocalisations and non-human echolocations, the spatial and temporal conditions in which hearing takes place, as well as the forms of order and control that listening entails. Contributors explore, challenge and expand the structural and sensorial qualities of law, and recognise how hearing directs us to perceiving and understanding the intrinsic acoustic sphere of simultaneous relations, which challenge and break the normative distinctions that law informs and maintains. In exploring the ambiguous, indefinable and unembodied nature of hearing, as well as its objects – sound and silence – this volume approaches it as both an ontological and epistemological device to think with and about law

HEAR

Hearing is an intricate modality of sensory perception. It is continuously enfolded in the surroundings in which it takes place. While passive in its disposition, hearing is integral to the movement and fluctuations of one’s environment. At all times, hearing remains open, (in)active but attuned to the present and continuously immersed in the murmur of its background. A delicate perception that is always situated but fundamentally overarching and extended into the open. Hearing is an immanent modality of being in and with the world. Beyond the capacity of sensory perception, hearing is also the ultimate juridical act, a sense-making activity that adjudicates and informs the spatio-temporal acoustics of justice. This penultimate volume of ‘Law and the Senses’ gathers contributions from across different disciplines working on the relationship between law and hearing, the human vocalisations and non-human echolocations, the spatial and temporal conditions in which hearing takes place, as well as the forms of order and control that listening entails. Through notions and practices of improvisation and noise, attunement and audibility sonic spatiality and urban sonicity they explore, challenge and expand the structural and sensorial qualities of law. Moreover, they recognise how hearing directs us to perceiving and understanding the intrinsic acoustic sphere of simultaneous relations, which challenge and break the normative distinctions that law informs and maintains. In an attempt to hear the ambiguous, indefinable and unembodied nature of hearing, as well as its objects – sound and silence – this volume approaches hearing as both an ontological and epistemological device to think with and about law

Theme and countertheme : the function of Child ballad 155, "Sir Hugh, or the Jew's daughter," in James Joyce's Ulysses /

Ph. D