Bachelor of Fine Arts (BFA), Ohio University, 2024, Film

Max Kaplan's thesis explores what it takes to make a standout body horror film, from researching horror's gothic roots to making a compelling and unique horror to the daily tasks of a film director.

Committee: Lindsey Martin (Advisor) Subjects: Film Studies; Fine Arts; Literature; Motion Pictures; Music; Performing Arts; Personal Relationships

Master of Fine Arts, Miami University, 2023, English: Creative Writing

My thesis, “Step into the Tin River” is a multilayered collection of verse and prose centered on the physical, as well as spiritual, movements of people of color in America across time. My own African American ancestry has called out to me and awakened a familial consciousness. Now, I wish to navigate the dreamlike landscapes, and surrealist terrain of my family's past in Louisiana. Both poetic and prose works will focus on a deep admiration for the ingenuity and brilliance of native groups who transformed the landscape with their own hands, allowing for a reimagining of individual experiences in nature. This journey will manifest through dreamlike, partially fictional renderings of family members, as well as through poetry and prose in conversation with the visible remnants (earth mound, effigies, engraved objects, crinoid stem beads, and more) of native groups who once inhabited the land. Reflections on the wit and sorrow of the black consciousness are prevalent to help establish the weight of family connections and adversities.

Committee: Cathy Wagner (Committee Chair); Stefanie Dunning (Committee Member); Tammy Brown (Committee Member) Subjects: Education; Spirituality

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), Ohio University, 2023, English (Arts and Sciences)

This dissertation is divided into two sections: an essay titled “Poetic Function Between Fact and Fiction: Examples from Six Contemporary American Poets” and a book manuscript titled Hello Nothingness. “Poetic Function Between Fact and Fiction: Examples from Six Contemporary American Poets” analyzes six examples from contemporary American lyric poetry to highlight the tension between fictionality and factuality in broader trends in lyric poetry. While this poetological tension between fictionality and factuality can be understood to exist broadly across the span of lyric poetry, this essay highlights selections from contemporary American lyric poetry to demonstrate the rhetorical and functional effects made possible by this interplay in lyric poetry. Hello Nothingness is composed of lyric poems that interrogate the uncertainty between perception and lived experience. The poems in the manuscript juxtapose high lyricism with language meant to mimic interior thought patterns, often making use of ekphrastic, surrealist, and/or confessional modes to explore their subject matter. The manuscript pays close attention to the formal composition of its free verse poems, and the poems themselves often combine artifacts of personal experience with disjunctive, lyrical expression to explore the poems' concerns.

Committee: Mark Halliday (Advisor) Subjects: Literature

Doctor of Philosophy, Miami University, 2022, English

This dissertation considers five novels: Parable of the Sower and Parable of the Talents by Octavia Butler, A Tale for the Time Being by Ruth Ozeki, The Overstory by Richard Powers, and Gun Island by Amitav Ghosh. It is interested in how vitalism, a term that emerges at the intersection of the work of Jane Bennett (vital materialism) and Amitav Ghosh (vitalist politics), might work to re-focus the form of the novel in a way that thoughtfully considers climate change. Vitalism is an answer to the mechanized, biopolitical, realist modes of contemporary human art and social organization. A vitalist politics reconceives of political systems and structures in a way that acknowledges the role that nonhuman agency plays in shaping human events. A vitalist politics would mean all political and economic decisions acknowledge that nonhuman entities and systems have agency. Vitalism reconceives of "nature" as not brute matter to be extracted, but a web of carefully linked systems. It differs from an animist politics in the sense that it shuns the idea of ascribing any sort of soul to an individual entity (whether human, animal, or plant) for considering all entities as linked in a collectivist, rhizomatic web. The focus of this dissertation project is on contemporary fictional texts out of which strong strains of vitalist politics and aesthetics emerge. In doing so, it considers what the shapes of novels might be in a future that is itself reorganized by climate change.

Committee: Anita Mannur (Committee Chair); Stefanie Dunning (Advisor); Timothy Melley (Advisor); Theresa Kulbaga (Advisor); Marguerite Shaffer (Advisor) Subjects: Environmental Justice; Literature; Philosophy of Science

Master of Fine Arts, Miami University, 2022, English

Gregor Samsa is changing. Expelled from the Army, disoriented by the stresses undergone during treatment at a sanatorium, and pressured into a job he loathes, Gregor clings to writing as a source of identity. In his diaries and notebooks, Gregor struggles to make sense of the world, his body, his relationships with others, and the workings of his own mind. As he contends with his inner dualism—the urge to create and the impulse to self-destruct—the lines between fiction and reality begin to blur. In this reimagining of Franz Kafka's The Metamorphosis, Gregor's human past is revealed through written forms such as diary entries, letters, interviews, and telegrams. As readers encounter a variety of narrative structures, gaps in recorded history, and a chorus of unreliable narrators, they are invited to take part in puzzling together the story of a life on the verge of an extraordinary transformation.

Committee: Brian Roley (Advisor); Daisy Hernandez (Committee Member); Joseph Bates (Committee Member) Subjects: Fine Arts

Master of Fine Arts, The Ohio State University, 2022, Design

The animated short film Self in Progress investigates how the aesthetics of Surrealism and Surrealist animation can be used as inspiration for visualizing an animated film centered around a woman's journey with anxiety and mental illness. This paper documents the secondary research regarding Surrealist art and animation and mental illness representations in media that informed the film project, the film production process, and an assessment of the project outcomes. Animation is an excellent medium for portraying narratives about mental illness because the animator can create imaginative, dream-like imagery to portray a character's emotions and internal experiences in ways that would be difficult to achieve in live action film. As part of the project, I surveyed the works of Surrealist artists and animators, such as Salvador Dali, Leonora Carrington, and Jan Svankmajer, and identified key components of Surrealist art and animation, such as metamorphosis, double imagery, and dream logic, and used these principles to visualize the narrative. I explored the central research questions of how to portray narratives of mental illness through animation and how Surrealist aesthetics can support and enhance that narrative through practice-based research. This project could serve as inspiration for other artists seeking to discuss mental illness in their works and for artists that are interested in synthesizing historic and modern artistic practices.

Committee: Kyoung Swearingen (Committee Chair); Mary Anne Beecher (Committee Member); Maria Palazzi (Committee Member) Subjects: Design

Doctor of Philosophy, Miami University, 2021, Educational Leadership

This conceptual research uses an Afro-Pessimistic lens to analyze the lack of Black Self-Determination in the United States of America (U.S.A). It sought to find out if counter-narratives could play a cultivating role. Upon completion of the analysis several concepts to deepen and expand understanding of the lack of Black Self-determination was revealed. Collectively the concepts help dissect counter-narratives into four types (counter-narrative moments, movements, periods, and permanents). This occurred by considering the conditions that make up counter-narratives and the functional possibilities of the counter-narratives given such conditions. Accounting for the make-up (substance) and the function of counter-narratives indicated two cultivating categories: liminal and permeant. To deepen understanding of and conceptually test counter-narratives within these categories, they were put into an Afro-Surreal Futuristic script (chapter 4). The script engaged the Afro-Pessimistic while aiming towards the Afro-Futuristic, by drawing upon the Afro-Surreal as a bridge. It was the bridge because it focused attention on the strengths in what had survived over time and could aid moving forward towards distinctly different realities. By doing so, counter-narratives that cultivated Black Self-Determination had to functionally help move beyond the current states maintaining the problem (Afro-Pessimistic conditions) and get to new states (Afro-Futuristic conditions) with levels of permanence. My exposure to being Black and living a Black Self-Determined existence is foundationally shaped by: 1) being born in the latter part of the 20th century in the U.S.A; 2) consistently sharing life with people born across generations; and 3) having grown up around countless responsible elders who were blood related or like family. The oral histories, witnessed accounts of racism, racial diversity of my grade-school classmates, slew of examples where adults chose to uphold certain values de (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Thomas Poetter PhD (Committee Co-Chair); Denise Baszile PhD (Committee Co-Chair); Michael Dantley EDD (Committee Member); Paula Saine PhD (Committee Member); Lisa Weems PhD (Committee Member) Subjects: Aesthetics; African American Studies; African Americans; Black History; Black Studies; Curricula; Education; Educational Leadership; Ethics; Families and Family Life; Individual and Family Studies; Pedagogy; Performing Arts; Philosophy; Public Health Education; Rhetoric; Social Research; Social Work; Sociology; Systematic; Teaching; Urban Planning; Womens Studies

Master of Fine Arts (MFA), Bowling Green State University, 2021, Creative Writing/Fiction

Everything Endlessly Rising is a collection of short stories about the confrontation between the desire to hide parts of ourselves from the world for our own protection and the desire to be seen and understood completely. Drifting between the genres of realism, surrealism, and horror, the twelve stories examine marginalized identities: how does one survive as a Black queer boy in a football community, as a woman with body-dysmorphia in an absurdly misogynist world, as a non-binary person who's only example of trans representation ends in tragedy, or as a woman with PTSD from an abusive marriage living in a haunted house? Mental illness figures prominently in the collection, and the ways our society diminishes it and ignores its effects on a person's quality of life. Though the characters find themselves at different points on the journey, the overall collection tells the story of becoming aware of a mental illness and endeavoring not to be healed of it, but to accept and manage it in order to achieve something closer to the life they desire. Otherwise, the characters are doomed to a life of masking their illnesses in an attempt to be perceived as “normal,” or worse, a life where they use their unhealthy coping mechanisms as an ersatz shield to hide from reality. Relationships are destroyed or strengthened in the stories in the collection dependent on whether or not the characters choose to reveal themselves and risk being known or continue to hide parts of themselves away. In some cases, the characters must confront their doubles, a shadow or mirror image of themselves that helps them see themselves clearly. Other stories are anti-love stories: tales of romantic relationships where love isn't all you need.

Committee: Lawrence Coates (Advisor); Jackson Bliss (Committee Member); Larissa Szporluk Celli (Committee Member) Subjects: American Literature; Fine Arts; Literature

Master of Arts (MA), Bowling Green State University, 2019, English/Literature

This project explores representations of the human body in two poetry collections, Copper Mother by Alyse Knorr, and Exit, Pursued by Dalton Day. Both published in 2016, Copper Mother imagines a future in which extraterrestrial beings discover the Voyager Golden Record and visit Earth. Exit, Pursued presents a surreal world with no tangible sense of space, time, or materiality, as Day explores the possibilities of malleable bodies. I argue in Chapter One, that by attempting to understand the human through the eyes of an alien Other, Alyse Knorr breaks down definitions of bodily normativity, allowing us to gaze upon both human and Other from a space of empathy, free from preconceived notions of the human body. In Chapter Two, I argue that by removing all standards of normativity, or even of material consistency, Dalton Day allows the reader to inhabit an entirely non-normative body, while extending our expectations of what a human body should be or do. Both poetry collections, then, open up possibilities for the human body based not in normative expectations, but in individual understandings of the self, and in empathy for the Other.

Committee: Kimberly Coates PhD (Advisor); Albertini William PhD (Committee Member) Subjects: American Literature; American Studies; Gender; Gender Studies; Literature

Master of Fine Arts (MFA), Bowling Green State University, 2018, Creative Writing/Poetry

Sober is a collection of words ultimately dedicated to answering the question, what happens when we get sober? The poetry within explores pain and trauma, addiction and love, grace and betrayal through the lens of a semi-consistent speaker or variations thereof. The work is presented in the form of prose poetry, couplets, found poetry, free verse, tercets, quatrains, block poetry, and experimental poetry, and has been influenced by both traditional and contemporary writers. Fragments of absurdist humor posed as knock-knock jokes work as partitions to emphasize key themes of the thesis and provide comic relief. An author's note designed as a ten-minute play at the end of the thesis is included for the reader's benefit to assist in marrying the different versions of the same speaker. While Sober does tackle specific issues such as gun violence, alcoholism, sexual assault, and transphobia with nods to the 2016-18 political climate, it is cohesively much more than that: the collection speaks to the greater power of salvation through empathy. In essence, Sober is a love poem from a place of darkness to create a lighter gradation of suffering in the human experience.

Committee: Larissa Szporluk (Committee Chair); F. Daniel Rzicznek (Committee Member) Subjects: Literature

MA, Kent State University, 2017, College of the Arts / School of Art

Early twentieth-century visual artists Andre Masson and Pablo Picasso both used the Minotaur to represent their thoughts and experiences, but for very different reasons. The relationship of both artists to Surrealism, along with their life experiences, allowed the Greek figure to develop into their work. After Masson broke away from the Surrealist group, he had a strong relationship with theorist Georges Bataille. The two worked on their own journal Acephale. Masson's use of the Minotaur was highly inspired by the writings of philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, who wrote extensively on Greek myth. It was in Acephale that Masson published numerous drawings related to the Cretan myth. Picasso's Minotaur, on the other hand, was mostly featured in his commission, the Vollard Suite. These drawings tell the tale of his faltering marriage to Olga Khokhlova and his mentally-deteriorating affair with Marie-Therese Walter. For these two artists, the Cretan myth was an expression for either the frustrations with personal relationships or the result of a deep-seated interest in a philosophical idea. The Minotaur was personal for them. In addition to laying the importance of the Minotaur to Masson and Picasso, another aim of this thesis is to solidify the place of the journal Minotaure in the canon of Surrealism as it relates to the theme of the Minotaur. Although Masson and Picasso were the two artists who brought the Minotaur into their work the most, the covers of Minotaure were decorated by such famous artists as Salvador Dali, Marcel Duchamp, Henri Matisse, and Rene Magritte amongst others. The covers show that the Minotaur was much more prevalent in Surrealism; they demonstrate it was not a coincidence that both Masson and Picasso illustrated the myth.

Committee: Marie Gasper-Hulvat Ph.D. (Advisor); John-Michael Warner Ph.D. (Committee Member); Albert Reischuck M.A. (Committee Member) Subjects: Art History

MARCH, University of Cincinnati, 2017, Design, Architecture, Art and Planning: Architecture

The creation of architecture is often approached as a social act: many buildings are created for public consumption, and many architects believe the users' experiences (and by association the architecture itself) are enriched through encountering public spaces and opportunities to interact with other users or with the public at large. Moments are identified within the design where potentially disparate paths will cross and the people on them will acknowledge and understand each other. This investigation argues that the same architectural tools used to engineer these moments of collision may also be employed differently to be productively disruptive of the user's journey, creating moments of mental solitude. To that end, this thesis explores the architecture of self-reflection, solitude, and self-understanding. Rather than identifying ways to encourage interaction with others, this is an examination of how architecture might suggest that users look inward. To create architectural experiences of this nature, inhabitants' visual and spacial perception are challenged through manipulation of form and space. In the perceptual vacuum that is created when the user's idea of reality is denied, the inhabited space is, in a sense, Surreal. This investigation proposes that when we are unsure of the space we inhabit, and the Surreal dominates, we are given a moment to look inward. In this way, the spacial constructions informed by surrealist thought can promote meditation and reflection. Building on surrealist intentions, themes of the surreal may be applied to architecture to fulfill similar architectural intentions of this thesis: questioning the true nature of our environment to promote self-reflection. Through an iterative case study exercise, architectural form is manipulated using strategies informed by surrealist ideology to challenge the user's perception of reality, providing an opportunity to reflect.

Committee: Christoph Klemmt A.A. Dipl. (Committee Chair); Aarati Kanekar Ph.D. (Committee Member) Subjects: Architecture

Master of Fine Arts (MFA), Bowling Green State University, 2017, Creative Writing/Poetry

The speaker in this collection is a continually evolving entity which is both aware of, connected to, and separate from the previous versions of themselves. In the first section, the speaker still needs to explore and spends a great deal of time wondering about what they are. The speaker eventually realizes that they are not the same as the members of their family, or possibly not even humanity as a whole. By the second section, the speaker has become aware of themselves, but still feels the need to explain or describe themselves to the reader, and sometimes even to the previous versions of themselves referred to as “she” and “you,” with “she” being the oldest or original version of the speaker. The speaker does not have much compassion for the lack of enlightenment in their previous counterparts in this section, but that begins to change by the third and final section. In the last section, the speaker has become fully aware of themselves and has developed a more mature and confident voice. Their wondering has disappeared, as has any lingering bitterness toward their previous selves. Instead, the speaker, while still viewing themselves as separate from the “she” and the “you,” speaks more directly to them in a more tender and understanding tone, as the speaker knows what it is they will have or have gone through to become the “I.” The collection as a whole deals with themes of birth, metamorphosis, the self, and what it means to be entirely other, however one might interpret the idea of otherness.

Committee: Larissa Szporluk (Advisor); Sharona Muir (Committee Member); Abigail Cloud (Committee Member) Subjects: Literature

MA, Kent State University, 2015, College of the Arts / School of Art

This thesis critically analyzes installations of telepresence art since 1986 and argues that the phenomological experience of engagement in telepresence suggests a new state of subjectivity at the end of the twentieth century: the hyper-subject, an overlapping of self and multiple others. I place telepresence art firmly in the genealogy of Surrealism by comparing artworks to Hans Bellmer's infinitely recombinant doll, La Poupee. While Bellmer represented the physical anagram of the body through the doll, telepresence art produces psychic anagrams of participants in the virtual sphere. Installations of telepresence art by multiple artists are probed to critically engage the artistic design of each, including humanoid telerobots, screen-based telepresence, and human avatars, and to assess their efficacy in upholding telepresence as what Lombard and Ditton define as "the perceptual illusion of non-mediation." By integrating psychoanalysis, post-anthropocentric posthumanism, and feminist disability theory, I examine telepresence art as a platform for social change. This research contributes the first art historical application of the uncanny valley to telepresence artworks, the first comparison of telepresence art to Bellmer's La Poupee, and advocates for more art historical research on the hyper-subject as a new state of viewing and experiencing art in the twenty-first century.

Committee: Navjotika Kumar Ph.D. (Advisor); Gina Zavota Ph.D. (Committee Co-Chair); Gustav Medicus Ph.D. (Committee Member); Fred Smith Ph.D. (Committee Member); Diane Scillia Ph.D. (Committee Member); Carol Salus Ph.D. (Committee Member) Subjects: Art History

MFA, Kent State University, 2014, College of the Arts / School of Art

This paper will explore the journey I have taken to achieve my thesis exhibition. After the completion of my BFA degree in 2007 with a focus in both sculpture and painting, I continued to pursue my passion for creating art. However, I was thrown into a world void of artistic surroundings and daily interactions. I had to adapt to my new, smaller environment with a lack of equipment and tools that were available during my undergraduate experience. I occupied a small studio that forced me to focus on smaller paintings and jewelry designs. Unable to pick up where I left off, I went on a search for new materials and subject matter that would accommodate my new art. It was this dramatic change that would bring me to where I am today as an artist.

Committee: Martin Ball (Advisor); Commito Gianna (Committee Member); Browne Kathleen (Committee Member) Subjects: Fine Arts

MA, University of Cincinnati, 2000, Design, Architecture, Art, and Planning : Art History

Cuban-born artist Wifredo Lam returned to his native homeland in 1941 after an eighteen-year absence. Over the next eleven years, Lam's work underwent a dramatic transformation from a somewhat cubistic technique to a more surrealistic style. This change may have been inspired in part by Lam's return to his native land as well as by his heritage as an Afro-Cuban. His work began to reflect the culture of Cuba and of Africans living in Cuba. He developed an iconography based on a Cuban religion that had derived from Africa. Throughout his career, Lam had often appropriated elements of the art of Africa. The influence of African art became more evident in the work from this period. Probably most significantly, Lam's work during this time began to reflect political and spiritual qualities that seem to have been inspired by the history and culture of the African peoples living in Cuba in the middle of the twentieth century.

Committee: Jo Face (Advisor) Subjects: Art History

MARCH, University of Cincinnati, 2007, Design, Architecture, Art and Planning : Architecture (Master of)

The comprehensive public art museum may be considered a surreal space. A reinterpretation of surrealism as an aesthetic methodology based in the cultivation of the unheimlich can help inform and direct an approach to museum planning and design so that modernization highlights and emphasizes the multiplicitous nature of the museum. As a staged environment that surpasses direct functionality and rationality, the surreal museum is a scripted space for the performance of cultural identity. The amalgamative development of museum buildings, the embedded typological forms, the strange relationship between displaced objects and display space, and the anxious overlaps in program make the comprehensive art museum a very complex and incredibly rich architectural space. The Cincinnati Art Museum is an exquisite corpse of a building illustrating all the qualities of the surreal museum. A strategic architectural intervention into the Cincinnati Art Museum can expose and emphasize this surreality.

Committee: Elizabeth Riorden (Advisor) Subjects: Architecture; Art History

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2008, French and Italian

The avant-garde is an aesthetic movement that spanned the twentieth century. It is made up of writers and artists that rebelled against art and against society in a concerted effort to improve both, and their relationship to one another. Four avant-garde groups, the Futurists, the Surrealists, the Situationists, and the writers of the journal Tel Quel, significantly contributed to the avant-garde movement and provided perspective into whether that movement can exist in the twenty first century. The first Futurist Manifesto, published in the French newspaper Le Figaro in 1909 by Philippo Tommaso Marinetti, instigated the avant-garde wave that would be taken up after the Great War by the Surrealists, whose first 1924 Manifeste du Surrealisme echoed the Futurist message of embracing modern life and change through art. The Surrealists, however, focused more on Marxism and psychoanalysis, developing ideas about life and art that combined these two ideologies in order to link the improvement of society with the unconscious individual experience. The Situationists, whose group formed in 1957, took up the themes of social revolution and freedom of the unconscious, developing a method for creating situations that were conducive to both of these things. The writers of the journal Tel Quel, who published from 1960-1982, claimed to be part of this literary history, and continued the discussions begun by the others, providing insight into how language and its structures, which paralleled those of society, needed to be changed in order to change society. This dissertation aims to define the twentieth century avant-garde and to inquire about its existence in the twenty-first century. The first chapter examines the socio-historic and philosophical context from which these groups emerged and against which they reacted. The second and third chapters analyze the themes of the city and politics in avant-garde works to demonstrate the aims and ambitions of the groups. The fourth chapte (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Jean-François Fourny Phd (Advisor); Karlis Racevskis PhD (Committee Member); Judith Mayne PhD (Committee Member); Charles Klopp PhD (Committee Member) Subjects: Literature

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2008, French and Italian

In 1924, Andre Breton launched the Surrealist movement in France with his publication of Manifeste du surrealisme. He and his group of male disciples, prompted by the horrors of World War I, searched for fresh formulas for depicting the bizarre and inhumane events of the era and for reviving the arts in Europe, notably by experimenting with innovative practices which included probing the unconscious mind. Women, if they had a role, were viewed as muses or performed only ancillary responsibilities in the movement. Their participation was usually in the graphic arts rather than in literature. In later generations, francophone women writers began to develop Surrealist strategies for enacting their own subjectivity and promoting their political agendas. Aside from casual mention, no critic has formally investigated the surreal practices of this company of francophone women authors. I examine the literary production of seven women from three geographic regions in order to document the enduring capacity of surrealist practice to express human experience in the postcolonial and postmodern era. From the Maghreb I analyze La Grotte eclatee by Yamina Mechakra and L'amour, la fantasia by Assia Djebar, and from Lebanon, L'Excisee by Evelyne Accad. These novelists represent mental and physical trauma and fragmentation of male/female relationships in times of combat. Celanire, cou-coupe by Maryse Conde and Pluie et vent sur Telumee miracle by Simone Schwarz-Bart illustrate how Antillean literature reflects the oral traditions, supernatural beliefs and heterogeneous cultural inheritance of its peoples. Both Jovette Marchessault's visionary novel, La mere des herbes, which draws upon her autotchonous heritage and lesbian orientation, and Anne Hebert's Les Enfants du sabbat, sabotage the paternalistic domination of the English-speaking Canadian government and the Catholic Church which relegated women to the role of reproductive automatons. This dissertation charts the evolution of f (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Danielle Marx-Scouras (Advisor) Subjects:

Master of Arts, The Ohio State University, 2002, Greek and Latin

The Greek surrealist movement gained momentum in the 1930s, at about the same time that the French surrealists were dispersing and searching for a new base due to the onset of World War II. The war and subsequent political problems the Greeks faced during the first half of the twentieth century stimulated surrealism instead of quelling it. The aim of this thesis is to investigate the reasons for the differences in Greek and French surrealism by analyzing the history of both movements, and by studying the work of three surrealists who typify the Greek movement. The first chapter of the thesis discusses the history of surrealism, beginning with the French movement and its roots in modernism. Because the nature of the surrealist movement is to rebel against tradition, it is important to understand modernism, the tradition against which surrealism was reacting. Modernism in France culminated in an aesthetic movement vocally opposed to the ideals of bourgeois society. The French surrealists maintained their predecessors' rejection capitalism, but decided to express these ideas in a radically different way. The Greek surrealists, because their modernist precursors were not concerned with capitalist society, were not so much interested in it as they were in Modem Greek identity, a theme addressed by the Greek modernists. Like the French surrealists, the Greek surrealists appropriated the topics addressed by the modernists, but treated them in a totally original "surrealist" manner. The subsequent chapters of the thesis each deal with a Greek surrealist. The second chapter singles out Nicolas Calas and aims to prove that his writing contributed to the surrealist effort to undermine the modernist legacy. The third chapter analyzes the poetry of Nikos Engonopoulos, whose writing also challenged his predecessors and the traditional use of language. Andreas Embeirikos, who is the subject of the fourth chapter, was different from the rest of the surrealist poets, and indeed from (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Gregory Jusdanis (Advisor) Subjects: