Shakespearean Influence in the Major Novels of Ann Radcliffe

A monograph presented to the faculty of the Graduate School at Morehead State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts by Virginia Seal Randolph in May of 1973

Richard Wagner's Essays on Conducting

A new translation of Wagner's various essays on conducting with a critical commentary on their genesis, publication and reception

Theories of fiction in the eighteenth century in England

Thesis (M.A.)--Boston University, 1947. This item was digitized by the Internet Archive

Art at the limits of perception: the aesthetic theory of Wolfgang Welsch

This thesis presents and critically assesses the aesthetic theory of the contemporary German philosopher Wolfgang Welsch, in particular his ideas of the intersection of philosophical aesthetics and contemporary culture. The three aspects of his ideas which frame this discussion and which I present in the first chapter are his project for reconfiguring aesthetics as a study of sensory perception, his characterisation of postmodern culture as aestheticised, and his conception of a new focus for aesthetics, the anaesthetic or imperceptible. Welsch's ideas intersect with several key issues in philosophical aesthetics which I outline in the second chapter, namely the status of the sensory and its relationship to the quality of indeterminacy, the subjective and cognitive nature of the aesthetic experience, the idea of the aesthetic as an epistemological ground that is in some way distinct from rational or conceptual knowledge, and finally the aesthetic characterised as an essentially modernist quality of defamiliarisation. The interlocutors here are Alexander Baumgarten, Kant and the Russian Formalists. This is followed in the third chapter by a more focussed discussion of Welsch's ideas on the sublime, a crucial aesthetic category which offers a theoretical background to his ideas on anaesthetics. Welsch reads the sublime as pivotal to the aesthetics of Adorno and the aesthetic thinking of Lyotard, and the main argument in this chapter compares the postmodern fascination with diversity or heterogeneity as values in themselves with a more ideologically informed conception of the cognitive and social function of modern and postmodern art as challenging existing modes of perception. I also read the limit experience of the sublime as a model for the modernist aesthetic of defamiliarisation. A critical discussion of Welsch's own variant of the sublime, the anaesthetic, follows in chapter four. The key issues here are the tensions between Welsch's disparate uses of the term, the ideological implications of each variant, and to what extent each allows a re-engagement of indeterminacy with everyday culture, or tends towards a more autonomous aesthetic. The final two chapters apply Welsch's ideas and the issues raised to examples of art, specifically drama, that operates at the limits of perception. The aim here is to assess whether Welsch's sensory terms offer the articulation of art and contemporary culture, or whether with some modifications they might. An overarching concern of the thesis is to distinguish between the transcendental significance of the aesthetic and its more marginal validity as cultural intervention

Art at the limits of perception: the aesthetic theory of Wolfgang Welsch

This thesis presents and critically assesses the aesthetic theory of the contemporary German philosopher Wolfgang Welsch, in particular his ideas of the intersection of philosophical aesthetics and contemporary culture. The three aspects of his ideas which frame this discussion and which I present in the first chapter are his project for reconfiguring aesthetics as a study of sensory perception, his characterisation of postmodern culture as aestheticised, and his conception of a new focus for aesthetics, the anaesthetic or imperceptible. Welsch's ideas intersect with several key issues in philosophical aesthetics which I outline in the second chapter, namely the status of the sensory and its relationship to the quality of indeterminacy, the subjective and cognitive nature of the aesthetic experience, the idea of the aesthetic as an epistemological ground that is in some way distinct from rational or conceptual knowledge, and finally the aesthetic characterised as an essentially modernist quality of defamiliarisation. The interlocutors here are Alexander Baumgarten, Kant and the Russian Formalists. This is followed in the third chapter by a more focussed discussion of Welsch's ideas on the sublime, a crucial aesthetic category which offers a theoretical background to his ideas on anaesthetics. Welsch reads the sublime as pivotal to the aesthetics of Adorno and the aesthetic thinking of Lyotard, and the main argument in this chapter compares the postmodern fascination with diversity or heterogeneity as values in themselves with a more ideologically informed conception of the cognitive and social function of modern and postmodern art as challenging existing modes of perception. I also read the limit experience of the sublime as a model for the modernist aesthetic of defamiliarisation. A critical discussion of Welsch's own variant of the sublime, the anaesthetic, follows in chapter four. The key issues here are the tensions between Welsch's disparate uses of the term, the ideological implications of each variant, and to what extent each allows a re-engagement of indeterminacy with everyday culture, or tends towards a more autonomous aesthetic. The final two chapters apply Welsch's ideas and the issues raised to examples of art, specifically drama, that operates at the limits of perception. The aim here is to assess whether Welsch's sensory terms offer the articulation of art and contemporary culture, or whether with some modifications they might. An overarching concern of the thesis is to distinguish between the transcendental significance of the aesthetic and its more marginal validity as cultural intervention

(Mis)Interpreting Arts and Health: What (Else) Can an Arts Practice Do?

This research project concerns arts practices in healthcare settings and the encounter between artist, researcher, healthcare professional and institution. Rather than understanding arts practices as either therapeutic or recreational services, this research asks instead, what (else) can an arts practice do? This is accomplished by connecting two previously separate bodies of scholarship; health sociology and an art criticism of expanded arts practices. By connecting these bodies of scholarship, this inquiry offers a new conceptual language and orientation for arts and health practitioners distinct from the evidence-based practice model most prevalent in academic and professional discourses and consequently establishes a transdisciplinary trajectory for artistic and research practices. Navigating between polemical art critical discourses and appropriating health discourses the research seeks to follow a generative path, to create a position of affirmation, where art encounters can be understood in the way they produce affects, defined by how they connect and transform, by what they do. Such an approach addresses a lacuna in scholarship created by the almost exclusive academic interest in impact studies and the sparseness of associated critical writing. The research inquiry then makes a contribution to knowledge of relevance to artists, researchers, healthcare professionals and institutions because it offers an expanded conceptual vocabulary and scope for art practices in healthcare settings

George Bataille's notion of transgression : the question of a possible experience concerning art and philosophy

Ankara : The Department of Graphic Design and the Institute of Economics and Social Sciences of Bilkent University, 2000.Thesis (Master's) -- Bilkent University, 2000.Includes bibliographical references leaves 91-94.This study aims at analysing George Bataille's notion of transgression. In this respect, the concepts of Bataille's discourse such as 'general economy', 'sovereign operation', 'inner experience', 'impossible', 'absence of myth' and 'sacred', are taken into consideration within the context of some recent post-structuralist texts. In addi tion, this study focuses on transgression in Bataille' s discourse reading it as a passage from interior to exterior. For this purpose, this study aims at showing that the transgression implied in Bataille's discourse transgresses itself. In that manner, this thesis brings two readings of Bataille's notion of transgression together: one is the reading of surrealism through George Bataille's and Andre Breton's approaches, and the other is the reading of the notion of transgression through some recent poststmcturalist texts. In the fınal analysis, this study discusses the discourse of transgression in Bataille with respect to both philosophy and art considering the problem of representation.Şiray, MehmetM.S

LEARNING TO COLONIZE: STATE KNOWLEDGE, EXPERTISE, AND THE MAKING OF THE FIRST FRENCH EMPIRE, 1661-1715

As recent scholarship has recognized, administrative knowledge-making was crucial to the formation of “modern” European states. This dissertation explores an important new domain of state knowledge in seventeenth-century France: overseas empire. When King Louis XIV began his personal reign in 1661, France lagged behind its European rivals as a maritime power, and control of its scattered fleets, ports, and colonies lay almost exclusively in private hands. Five decades later, Louis’s empire was the most powerful in Europe, and managed by royal officials according to well-defined protocols. Scholars have tended to cast the governance of France’s empire as an extension of “royal absolutism” to the New World. But in fact, there was no essentialized absolutism to be applied to the Americas in this period, only a rapidly shifting and contested set of practices. The records left behind by leading officials who served in Canada and the Caribbean reveal how administrators on the ground tailored a new suite of policies and procedures for the colonies through a collective process of learning. Their knowledge was rooted in firsthand experience of plantation management, overseas trade, urban planning, imperial rivalry, local jurisprudence, and indigenous diplomacy and warfare, all of which involved daily encounters with the unruly colonists, “barbaric savages,” and African slaves they sought to govern. By regulating and recording affairs for their superiors at court, they transformed the administration of colonies into a distinct realm of expertise, or “science,” controlled by the state. Ultimately, their experience encouraged the Old Regime monarchy to see the colonies as distinct from the metropole—alike in the fact of their difference and therefore comprising, in the eyes of royal officials, a common imperial project. Readers Advisor: David A. Bell (History, Princeton University) Michael Kwass (History, Johns Hopkins University) Gabriel Paquette (History, Johns Hopkins University) Bentley Allan (Political Science, Johns Hopkins University) Chair: Mary Favret (English, Johns Hopkins University