Browsing by Subject "Benjamin, Walter, 1892-1940 -- Criticism and interpretation"
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- ItemLithographic Interiority: Reading Odilon Redon with Walter Benjamin(2012) Rockwell, Alethea; Saltzman, Lisa; Levine, Steven Z.
- Item"The Contagion of Cinematic Violence in Cronenberg's 'A History of Violence'"(2013) Bedrossian, Danny; McInerney, Maud BurnettThe field of psychoanalysis in film certainly has provided a useful contemporary framework for analyzing the mechanics of spectatorship, but since the problems of depicting violence in film is an endlessly historical one, I would like to take a more philosophical stance. I will thus turn to Walter Benjamin’s “Critique of Violence” to develop an ethical framework for assessing different directorial depictions of violence. The objective of this essay, moreover, is to use Cronenberg’s film, A History of Violence, to explore a new way of critiquing the function of violence in film, beyond the sense of ‘good’ versus ‘evil,’ or ‘necessary’ versus ‘gratuitous.’ This essay does not attempt to assess, or sympathize with, the characters’ violent actions as either “morally good” or “morally bad,” or to quantify and qualify the amount of violence in Cronenberg’s film, but rather to analyze why and how a viewer might perceive and value certain acts of cinematic violence, from a philosophical viewpoint. I also will focus more carefully on the contagious effect of violence within A History of Violence itself, and on how that violence contaminates the identities of each character, all of which are themes pervading Cronenberg’s opuses.
- ItemThe Mythos of pUr-fection: Language, Theology, and Benjamin in J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings(2014) Ryan, Kelsey; McInerney, Maud BurnettJ.R.R. Tolkien, father of the modern high fantasy story, developed his Middle-Earth realm not out of an idea he had for characters or plot, but out of his own constructed languages. Tolkien invented upwards of 14 languages for Middle-Earth, and the languages themselves play roles just as important as any character, in driving action and illustrating character development. His "Elvish" language Quenya serves as a kind of universal language, uniting all noble characters under one holy tongue. But what's more, Tolkien uses Quenya (and its relationship to the other characters) as the access point for a kind of non-religious religion, or a "natural theology" (coined by Catherine Madsen in "Light from an Invisible Lamp: Natural Religion in The Lord of the Rings" (39)). What does this mean about Quenya? How do acts of translation work-–who translates Quenya, when, how, and why? In this thesis, I seek to connect The Lord of the Rings and its Quenya language to Benjamin's "The Task of the Translator,"--showing Quenya as a "pure," Ur-language, crafted by Tolkien through linguistics and narrative to be the verbal embodiment of a nonspoken core universal language. By using key moments of Quenya, such as the poem "Namárië," I argue that Tolkien's moments of translation are, in effect, done more for the reader than the characters, who understand the Ur as it relates to them. An Ur-language does not require translation, as it is the deeper meaning of what spoken words intend; in creating a physical representation of the Ur, Tolkien narratively grounds Quenya in religious vocabulary, relating characters' morality to their fluency of Quenya speech.