Themes and structural symbols in the novels of George Eliot

Not availabl

Europe Rising (Again): A Comparative Study of the Dynamics and Types of Modern European Nationalisms, 1989-2018

Nationalism is nothing new to Europe. While theoretical explanations of the catalysts of post-1989 European nationalist phenomena remain contested along material and non-material lines, this dissertation posits that it is the interaction of economic insecurities, societal fears, and populism over time that have shaped the rise and types of post-1989 European nationalisms. Fuzzy-set Qualitative Comparative Analysis (fsQCA) is combined with a collective case study design to examine: 1) how forces – political, economic, societal, or other – have dominated the formation and latest surge of European nationalisms since the end of European Communism in 1989; and 2) whether different, context-dependent types of European nationalisms exist as a result. The five cases examined – Germany, Italy, Hungary, Ireland, and Sweden – extend the scope of earlier methodological efforts by: 1) recognizing the intersectionality of economic, societal, and political variables; and 2) are geographically, economically, culturally and politically representative of all Europe. Findings indicate that while modest generalizations across the cases can be drawn, there is no universal trend or type of post-1989 European nationalism. This is because national identities and their expressions depend critically on the claims people attach to them in different economic, cultural, and political contexts and times. Thus, nationalism – its origins, dynamics, and types – are unique, evolutionary, and context-dependent. With some historic and symbolic features that are continuous, they adapt to transforming landscapes to guarantee a sense or perception of belonging, national self-determination, and economic, cultural, and political autonomy

Ethics in Schopenhauer and Buddhism

In the following thesis I outline Schopenhauer’s ethics in its metaphysical context and in contrast to ethics based on egoism. I look at criticisms of Schopenhauer’s philosophy which have emerged quite recently, and some of which (if valid) would undermine Schopenhauer’s compassion-based moral theory. I have explained these criticisms and offered a defence of Schopenhauer. In order to take up Schopenhauer’s claim of affinity with Buddhist philosophy, I outline first of all early Buddhist then Mahāyāna ethics focusing on the latter’s central idea of compassion. It has been suggested by some scholars that there are specific problems in Buddhist ethics which undermine the idea of compassion and I explain, then attempt to counter, these claims with specific reference to Śāntideva and his rejection of egoism as a means of acting in a moral way or of finding liberation from suffering. I then address recent criticisms of Śāntideva’s Bodhicaryāvatāra, especially the idea that the specific role of compassion in his ethics and its soteriological role are illogical – an idea which I argue against. Finally I compare the core ideas of Schopenhauer’s solution to the problem of suffering with what seems similar in Śāntideva. In doing this, I examine whether or not Schopenhauer is right in claiming convergence between Buddhism and his own philosophy, especially in the area of soteriology as it relates to ethics

A Christian theology of place.

Available from British Library Document Supply Centre-DSC:DXN048698 / BLDSC - British Library Document Supply CentreSIGLEGBUnited Kingdo

Forever Young: Youth, Modernism, and the Deferral of Maturity

This dissertation is about adolescents in European literature between 1900 and the First World War who shy away from maturity. The authors discussed are Franz Kafka, James Joyce, Robert Musil, Georg Büchner, J. M. Barrie, Robert Walser, Rudyard Kipling and Witold Gombrowicz. The main argument is that the remarkable proliferation around 1900 of novels whose protagonists, by some means or other, avoid growing up is not due to a somewhat twisted affiliation to the genre of the late and ultimately failed Bildungsroman, but rather to an underestimated branch of modernism. At first glance, their strategy of retreat looks like a flinching from societal responsibility, yet the opposite turns out to be true. Instead of representing an early instance of the prolonged adolescence that has nowadays become proverbial, their recoiling from maturity entails a critique of the totalizing tendencies inherent to the ideals of Bildung and Enlighten­ment

The Great Middle Class Revolution: Our Long March Toward a Professionalized Society

Nowadays, liberalism is in crisis. Whereas conservatism suffered a profound meltdown during the Great Depression, today it is liberals who must confront the disconfirmation of many of their cherished beliefs. Sometimes, it seems as if a few are behaving like teenaged rebels, trying to prove that they will not buckle under adult hypocrisies. Yet, despite refusing to conform, they reflexively align themselves with the symbols of their sedition. Festooned with tattoos, body piercings, and spiky green hairdos, they insist they have arrived at these fashions independently. Liberals similarly take positions without acknowledging that these derive from groupthink. Like the journalists described in Myrna Blyth\u27s Spin Sisters, they chatter about political issues as vacuously as if they were sitting in a high school cafeteria. Aware that the unspoken price of communal status is an acceptance of the consensus positions on abortion or affirmative action, they comply. Brent Bozell experienced a similar political conformity when he appeared on a television talk show. After its technicians inadvertently failed to turn off his earpiece, he was treated to the show\u27s directors hooting about his conservative views while he was on the air. Much like a pack of fraternity brothers, these erstwhile professionals reveled in making sophomoric jokes about opinions they did not share. Impartially evaluating opposing views was not part of their intellectual repertoire.https://digitalcommons.kennesaw.edu/ksupresslegacy/1004/thumbnail.jp

Towards a Productive Aesthetics: History and Now-Time in Blake and Brecht

This thesis is a comparison of the theory and practice of aesthetic politics in key works of Bertolt Brecht and William Blake. I argue that there are two separate temporal moments that define Brechts and Blakes political aesthetics. The first moment is defined by a more direct engagement with the nowness and relative newness of their capitalist social world. Capitalist social relations bring out in each of the two a more directly engaging oppositional aesthetics. Given capitalisms desire to create a form of experience that not only makes sense for its subjects own subjugation, while while also attempting to negate any possible alterative to itself, Brecht and Blake develop a political aesthetics that exposes and undercuts these dominant forms of experience. Using Walter Benjamin, I argue that Brecht and Blake posit an oppositional aesthetics of the now which takes seriously capitalisms desires and successes in refashioning experience, but provides a means of both understanding this experience while counterposing and making desirable an oppositional form of existence. This political aesthetic response is grounded in contemporary social relations and responds using this as a framework of reference. The second moment under discussion examines the role of history and historical representation in Brecht and Blake. The central focus is how Brecht and Blake continue the responsive project referenced in the first two chapters by making use of history in aesthetic-political interventions in the present. I argue that they engage historical tropes and use history against the grain in the Jetztzeit (Now-Time), as Benjamin notes. Both repurpose history as a means to produce historical recoveries, making failures or losses in the past open for radical productive possibilities in the present. In this way forms of inherited experience or preconceived truths are placed in a space of contestation. Historical representation is another opportunity to cleave open an oppositional aesthetics and unsettle that which capitalism wishes to make silent

Erin\u27s Heirs: Irish Bonds of Community

“They will melt like snowflakes in the sun,” said one observer of nineteenth-century Irish emigrants to America. Not only did they not melt, they formed one of the most extensive and persistent ethnic subcultures in American history. Dennis Clark now offers an insightful analysis of the social means this group has used to perpetuate its distinctiveness amid the complexity of American urban life. Basing his study on family stories, oral interviews, organizational records, census data, radio scripts, and the recollections of revolutionaries and intellectuals, Clark offers an absorbing panorama that shows how identity, organization, communication, and leadership have combined to create the Irish-American tradition. In his pages we see gifted storytellers, tough dockworkers, scribbling editors, and colorful actresses playing their roles in the Irish-American saga. As Clark shows, the Irish have defended and extended their self-image by cultivating their ethnic identity through transmission of family memories and by correcting community portrayals of themselves in the press and theatre. They have strengthened their ethnic ties by mutual association in the labor force and professions and in response to social problems. And they have created a network of communications ranging from 150 years of Irish newspapers to America’s longest-running ethnic radio show and a circuit of university teaching about Irish literature and history. From this framework of subcultural activity has arisen a fascinating gallery of leadership that has expressed and symbolized the vitality of the Irish-American experience. Although Clark draws his primary material from Philadelphia, he relates it to other cities to show that even though Irish communities have differed they have shared common fundamentals of social development. His study constitutes a pathbreaking theoretical explanation of the dynamics of Irish-American life.https://uknowledge.uky.edu/upk_irish_american_studies/1000/thumbnail.jp