Examines the historical development of parody in order to examine its place, purpose and practice in the postmodern world of contemporary artforms.

In this original and eye-opening study, Stefan Morawski sheds light on the often confused debate about postmodernism, postmodernity and human values. Drawing upon a wide range of evidence from the experience of everyday life in the sciences, religion, visual arts, literature, film, television and contemporary music, The Troubles with Postmodernism is an indispensable guide to our understanding and evaluation of contemporary literature.

A Theory of Parody: The Teachings of Twentieth-Century Art Forms

The Troubles With Postmodernism

The Slender Man first started on the Something Awful forum threads in 2009, where many users all jointly contributed to the creation of a tall monster who appears to be wearing a suit. He is known for making children disappear and causing violent deaths to the adults who seek to know more about him. His creation was caused by mass communal storytelling, each singular narrative being created by different authors all inspired by their own view of the creature. Despite this more disjointed creation almost ten years ago, the Slender Man has retained an important place online, having spread from his forum thread to web videos, humorous memes, and even video games.

This work seeks to answer the question about what this mythos is truly saying in its deeper levels. Structural anthropological mythic analysis, sometimes paired with ethnographic details, seeks to demonstrate how the Slender Man mythology is structured. Connected to this, we also seek to answer the question of what cultural group the Slender Man’s mythology belongs to, leading to an important question on the existence of “digital culture”. We find the narrative holds a triadic structure, in which the Slender Man does not necessarily have a place, but controls the structural flow. We also find there is little in the way of an existence of a full “digital culture”, but rather that the online environment is comprised of communities.

The Slender Man Mythos: a structuralist analysis of an online mythology

Self-Definition through Poetry in the Work of Gloria Fuertes and Pilar Paz Pasamar in the Period 1950-1970 Based on a comparative method of enquiry, this thesis analyses the process of self-definition expressed in the work of Gloria Fuertes (Madrid, 1917-1998) and Pilar Paz Pasamar (Jerez de la Frontera, 1933) as individual alternatives to the collective ethos and literary practices promoted within the patriarchal society of Franco’s Spain. Recognizing the poets’ cultural and socio-political context as determining factors in their experiences as women and poets, and therefore in their outlook and poetics, this context and how it is reflected in their poetry provides the starting point (Chapter 1). Both poets acknowledge that writing poetry can provide them with a metaphorical space of freedom that enables them to develop their identity and explore their preoccupations. Therefore, their thoughts about poetry provide an important theme that occurs in the poetry of both (Chapter 2). Closely related to this is the link they establish between poetic inspiration and the divine, which in the case of Pilar Paz Pasamar leads to the attempt to use the special qualities of poetic language to refer to a universal truth that she is aware of and which transcends the capabilities of language, while Gloria Fuertes regards poetry as a divine gift that can provide solace and is ultimately able to improve the world (Chapter 3). The fourth chapter focuses on specific elements of the two poets’ work that reveal the distinctive mechanisms of self-construction they develop. The section on Fuertes considers humour as a survival strategy that enables the poet to reach out to her readership and emphasize her focus on the here and now, while the discussion on Paz’s work looks at how the use of sea imagery allows her to convey abstract experiences based on introspection. Thus, it is argued that their poetry reflects the different strategies the two women develop – based on integration in the case of Fuertes and a more separate position in the case of Paz – to define themselves in relation to their world.

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Self-definition through poetry in the work of Gloria Fuertes and Pilar Paz Pasamar in the period 1950-1970

This dissertation is primarily concerned with developing an understanding of how the use of pre-recorded digital audio shapes and augments conventional notions of counterpoint. It outlines a theoretical framework for analyzing the contrapuntal elements in electronically and digitally composed musics, specifically music mashups, and Glenn Gould’s Solitude Trilogy ‘contrapuntal radio’ works. Conventional studies of counterpoint encompass sixteenththrough early twentieth-century modernist and neoclassical materials but stop there. Composition by magnetic tape and computer software using pre-existing recorded audio offers the potential for a new study of music that displays clear contrapuntal elements but lacks the analytical models to outline the underlying musical systems. Central to these investigations is the assertion that counterpoint operates not only within the sphere of art music but also in the compositional logic of non-musical sound works (radio documentary) and in the harmonic and melodic underpinnings of popular music. The first chapter examines technological and cultural developments that contribute to the formation of digital contrapuntal music. The second and third chapters outline the traditional musical elements—harmony, form, and texture—of contrapuntal radio and mashups, respectively. Chapter Four explores how counterpoint exists in the sonic space of the stereo or mono sound field. Chapter Five presents the notion of program as a useful concept for analyzing interaction between lyric samples to form original narratives. These two final chapters present the original contributions from contrapuntal radio and mashups to a study of counterpoint. In each of these chapters, counterpoint forms the basis for how we perceive the underlying systems of musical works composed by traditional counterpoint or by assembling pre-existing recorded audio. The connection between the old and new is important, as one does not supplant but augment the other. As such, counterpoint is a fluid musical concept, rather than a fixed system of rules governing composition in a narrow musical palette.

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A Theory of Parody: The Teachings of Twentieth-Century Art Forms

Citations

The Troubles With Postmodernism

The Slender Man Mythos: a structuralist analysis of an online mythology

Self-definition through poetry in the work of Gloria Fuertes and Pilar Paz Pasamar in the period 1950-1970

Three Solitudes and a DJ: A Mashed-up Study of Counterpoint in a Digital Realm

Parodic Play with Paintings in Picture Books

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