Metaphor(m): Engaging a Theory of Central Trope in Art
Mark Staff Brandl

This is the main page for my PhD dissertation, which I am writing under the direction of Prof. Philip Urspung at the University of Zurich, Switzerland. My second reader is Dr. Andreas Langlotz at the University of Basel and University of Laussane, Switzerland.

I originally posted the almost-final drafts here one at a time. Links to those versions are still below.

Now, however, as of January 2011 I have an final draft. There will be one or two very minor changes, but I am putting up the whole thing, as a pdf.

The document is rather large, since it has many images. For example, each chapter begins with a painting by me, ends with a sequential comic art page and two chapters are almost entirely in that form. There are many illustrations as well. Each chapter was also announced on Sharkforum, www.sharkforum.org/, with a link to this archival location; on that e-zine the comments and discussion occurred.

All elements are (c) and TM 2008-2010 by Mark Staff Brandl.
 

Brandl Website Home
 

Link to entire dissertation as pdf document; click here.

 

Chapters, in earlier drafts, separately posted:

INTRODUCTION

PRELUDE: Trope, Agon et Quo Vadam as html. As pdf here

CHAPTER ONE: Wandering and Surveying:Links to Literary Theory and Contemporary Aesthetics

CHAPTER TWO: The Theory of Central Trope: Metaphor and Meta-Form

CHAPTER THREE: Excursus

CHAPTER FOUR: Conceiving Metaphor(m)s

CHAPTER FIVE: My Metaphor(m)

CHAPTER SIX: Central Trope in Two Contemporary Painters' Works

CHAPTER SEVEN: Artistic Ground: Cultural Inheritance, Struggle, Respect, Material and Identity

CHAPTER EIGHT: Metaphor(m) and the Expanded Text Concept

CHAPTER NINE: Timelines, Comics and a Plurogenic View of Art History

CONCLUSION