H. C. Artmann's structuralist imagination:  A semiotic study of his aesthetic and postmodernity [Austria]
Published: 2004
Language: eng
Number of pages: 544
Description: The present thesis about the Austrian writer Hans Carl Artmann (1921--2000) argues that his literary work is designed by a structuralist imagination in the sense of a reasoning that corresponds to linguistic structuralism that is based on Saussurean semiology. The study is divided in four sections. The first section provides introductory chapters on Artmann's biographic context, the scholarly context, and the cultural context of Austrianness. The second section discusses methodological implications that are relevant for theorizing postmodernity in general and Artmann's postmodernity in a particular sense. Given that Artmann's strong potential for postmodernity can be principally characterized by many different theories and notion of postmodernity, the study selects a narrow definition of postmodernity as bi-paradigmatic irony. The third section analyzes Artmann's three aesthetic principles (synchrony, arealism, smallness) and examines their relation to rhetoric, on the basis of which three typical categories of signs (aliens, angels, monsters ) are proposed to be characteristic of his work. Taking into account Artmann's aesthetic principles, the fourth section applies the selected definition of postmodernity in terms of bi-paradigmatic irony to three prose texts ( dracula dracula, tok ph'rong suleng, Grunverschlossene Botschaft ).
Notes: Adviser:  Jeff Peck.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Toronto, 2004.

Includes bibliographical references.

Electronic version licensed for access by U. of T. users.

Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 65-10, Section: A, page: 3819.