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David Foster Wallace’s 1996 novel Infinite Jest presents a version of postmodern myth that is mediated through film, television, and other commercial entertainments. This media landscape is hostile, grotesque, and self-referencing. Its recursivity corrupts the chain of narrativization that transforms reality into history into myth. In the novel, the newly formed Organization of North American Nations coopts the preexisting culture industry in order to create a new, updated mythos and identity in service of its nationhood. The myths that it manages to produce are bizarre, non-linear, and illegible. This myth-making machine, using (fictional) history as its source material, seems unable to make meaningful or unifying narratives about the North American people of Infinite Jest. This is because the nascent government coopts the culture industry as the medium for myth, which leads the North American people to understand the culture industry itself to be their new mythic inheritance. This situation resembles Francis Fukuyama’s proposed End of History. An important characteristic of post-History is the loss of art. Individuals in this post-Historical position are at risk of losing the ability to describe their historical context or understand their identity as one among a collective of people. I argue that this landscape can be described through abjection, as defined by Julia Kristeva and elaborated by N. Katherine Hayles. I additionally use Roland Barthes’ definition of myth, Marshall McLuhan’s definition of media, Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer’s critique of the culture industry, and Mikhail Bakhtin’s formalist method to aid my analysis of mythic entertainments that appear in the novel, which I term intratexts.

Orientador: Antonio Arnoni Prado Tese (doutorado) - Universidade Estadual de Campinas, Instituto de Estudos da Linguagem Resumo: Esta tese propõe uma nova leitura da obra literária de Cyro dos Anjos, tendo como ponto de partida a questão do mito quixotesco, constantemente referida nos romances do Autor. Estuda-se, assim, o mito, tendo como base a obra de ciência das religiões, de Mircea Eliade, bem como a fenomenológica de Gaston Bachelard. O caráter quixotesco é fundamentado em afirmações amplamente consagradas pela clássica crítica literária acerca da obra de Cervantes, sendo os estudos mais importantes, os de Miguel de Unamuno e José Ortega y Gasset. Esse caráter quixotesco é representado por toda a esfera imaginativa, sobretudo a arte e a poesia. Para Cyro, a poesia é a própria vida, compreendendo também o amor, a memória, o sonho, a música, a crença religiosa e até mesmo Deus, a poesia suprema. A tese aponta Cyro dos Anjos como partidário do quixotismo cervantino, revelando-o como um Autor que transpõe o idealismo mítico universal para uma obra genuinamente brasileira Abstract: This study proposes to present a new interpretation of the literary work of Cyro dos Anjos, based on the Quixotesque myth, constantly mentioned in the Author's novels. The myth is discussed from the work of Mircea Eliade, based on the study of religions, as well as from the fenomenology of Gaston Bachelard. The Quixotesque characteristics are based on already established ideas by the classical literary criticism of Cervantes's works, such as the studies by Miguel de Unamuno, José Ortega y Gasset. Art and Poetry are the major representatives of the Quixotesque, that means the imaginative sphere. For Cyro dos Anjos, Poetry is Life, and also includes love, memory, dream, music, religious belief, and even God - the supreme Poetry. This study presents Cyro dos Anjos as a follower of Cervantes's Quixotesque, but as an Author who carries this universal mythical idealism to a genuine Brazilian novel Doutorado Literatura Brasileira Doutor em Teoria e História Literária

This dissertation examines modes of citations in Hermann Broch's work Die Schuldlosen. Focusing on the topoi of romanticism and myth, I discuss tensions between Hermann Broch's theoretical arguments and his last literary work. These tensions are an expression and formal manifestation of an auctorial attempt to implement his self-declared principles of literature, such as the creation of epistemological value, the depiction of world totality, and the creation of a new form of expression, a new language, and a new myth. In each chapter, I focus on a different topos relevant to Broch's work Die Schuldlosen. With the help of close readings and a genetic analysis of the work, I demonstrate how Broch creates the unreliable citations that serve his goals. The first chapter illuminates the tension between Broch's theoretical works and Die Schuldlosen concerning the topos of romanticism. In a case study on stone imagery, I ask whether Broch's modes of citing romanticism can be considered a productive intermediate step to creating a new form. I show that Broch's citations can be qualified as unreliable citations, and how structural correspondences intensify their effect on the reader’s experience. The chapter ends with a discussion of the political function of Broch's citations. The second chapter deals with Broch's concept of myth and discusses the tension between Broch's declared intention to develop a new myth and his actual use of existing myths in his works. In two case studies, I trace Broch's citations of the Faust myth and the Don Juan myth. I show that one can understand Broch's specific citations of myth as an experiment to explore how the interruption of a recurring cultural cycle would allow for a new form to develop.