This thesis interprets the language of the self in both editions of Jean Genet's five works of early prose fiction. Its appendices present the first list of the 65000 words of excisions and variants between the subscribers' (1943-48) and public editions (1949-53). Many critics have interpreted Genet's works in terms of his life, applying to them a reductive notion of the self. Subjectivity in this thesis is a broader concept which addresses the (self-) representation of narrators and characters. I apply close textual analysis to two types of passage (relating to gestures and language consciousness respectively) which represent subjectivity in non-specular language (where one thing does not clearly reflect or refer to another). I use the ubiquitous 'geste' as the guide-word for my analysis of gesture since its usage is similar in each of the texts considered. Gestures are of course mediated by language in Genet's texts but, surprisingly, are only partially represented in visual terms. Consequently, gestures do not serve to consolidate subjectivity and resist attribution to individual characters. It is rather in the interpretation of gestures that narrators and characters who both perform and interpret gestures can negotiate the assigning of meaning and the concomitant firming tip of subjectivity. Language consciousness is a textual speculation on the production and reception of a passage or text and each of Genet's texts demonstrates different interactions between such speculations and the representation of subjectivity. My emphasis on language consciousness helps to elucidate tile structure of the prose text (narrative frames, for example) and its relation to other genres (literary criticism and poetry, for example). I conclude that in Genet's texts innovative language represents (and sometimes fails to represent) plural subjectivity in complex ways. I argue that the interdependence of these three aspects (language, representation and subjectivity) presents a new paradigm for understanding Genet's texts. Furthermore, I outline in my conclusions how it is possible to apply a comparative analysis of these aspects to other works such as Martin Heidegger's Zur Seiqfrage (1955).

The introductory section of the thesis puts forward a view of the usefulness of the concept of masochism in studying literature, arguing that the tendency has been inadequately formulated by psychoanalytic theory. It refers to debates within gay studies, feminism, psychoanalysis and literary studies to contextualise the argument of the thesis. The first chapter analyses Freud's key essay on masochism, 'The Economic Problem of Masochism' (1924) and appraises other theoretical contributions which have discussed the relation of masochism to artistic creativity. It goes on to critique the feminist view of women's masochism as reflecting patriarchal relations, and examines Jungian perspectives which focus on the notion of an imitatio Christi. Chapter two contrasts a Christian view of suffering with that of psychoanalysis. It examines Simone Weil's life and ideas in the light of a sublimatory or moral masochism, and looks at the 'agonic' thought of Unamuno. The historical moment at which the term masochism was coined is the focus of the opening part of chapter three. Sacher-Masoch's novel Venus in Furs is analysed, referring to Deleuze's commentary which emphasises the death instinct. Sacher-Masoch's untranslated novel, Die Seelenfängerin, is also discussed. Chapter four deals with Michel Leiris's L'age d'homme, analysing the central themes of masculinity, the risk inherent in literary creativity and the sacred element in masochistic self-exposures. The final chapter on works by Marguerite Duras examines a novella, L'homme assis dans le couloir, describing the process of reading as a form of masochistic introjection. It then looks at La douleur to focus on a masochistic, feminine rite of passage. A discussion of La maladie de la mort locates a shattered solitude within masochistic desire. The thesis concludes by proposing a more nuanced dialogue between psychoanalysis and literature, by emphasising the importance of an exploratory women's writing, and suggesting the need for a more consciously masochistic body politic.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Rutgers University, 2008. / "Graduate Program in French." Includes bibliographical references (p. 227-251).

Thèse-Université de Grenoble.

These--Universit́e de Paris. Faculté des lettres. / "Bibliographie": p. [273]-278.

Inaug.-diss.--Münster. / Lebenslauf. At head of title: Romanische philologie. "Literaturverzeichnis": p. 133-134.

Thesis--Heidelberg. / Cover title. Vita. Includes bibliographical references (p. [3]-6).

This thesis intends to explore colonial fictions written in French and set in the former Belgian Congo between 1945 and 1960. The investigation will focus on George Duncan (1898-1967), Henri Cornélus (1913-1983), Marcel Tinel (1904-?) and Joseph Esser (1901-?). The thesis - throughout - will endeavour to focus on both ethics and poetics. In order to achieve this overarching (double) objective it will attempt to address the following questions: (1) how are colonised subjects and colonisers represented by this fictional material? (2) how do colonial novelists account for and/or sympathise with the emergence of a Congolese opposition after the Second World War? (3) what are the implicit and explicit strategies deployed by the corpus to support or question the discourse(s) on which Belgian colonialism was premised? (4) what is colonial imagination? Did it decolonise itself - and if so how? - with the demise of the Belgian empire in 1960? In its poet(h)ical investigation this thesis will rely (a) on a range of representatives of postcolonial thinking such as Sartre, Fanon, Mouralis, Glissant and Mudimbe, (b) as well as a number of literary critics whose work is of relevance for my study. Chapter I will contextualise the thesis from both a critical and an historical standpoint and fall into four distinct parts. Part i will provide a historical overview of the Congo under Belgian rule. Part ii will concentrate on Belgian colonial discourse with a particular emphasis on its main ideologue, Pierre Ryckmans (1891-1959). Part iii will deal with the two colonial art and literary critics Gaston-Denys Périer (1879-1963) and Joseph-Marie Jadot (1886-1967) and their attempt to (a) promote colonial writing and (b) create synergies between 'white' and 'black' literatures at a time (1945-60) which coincided with the emergence of the first Congolese writers in French under the auspices of the journal La Voix du Congolais. Part iv will focus on the reassessment of Belgian colonial literature by contemporary critics. Chapters II to V will be author-based. In each case a central text will be read with / against a number of other primary sources. Chapter II will deal with Duncan's five colonial novels and their recurring main protagonist with a particular emphasis on Blancs et Noirs (1949). Chapter III will read Cornélus' novel Kufa (1954) against his collection of short stories Bakonji. Les Chefs, (1955). Whereas Duncan's and Cornélus' fictions primarily concentrate on white male subjects for whom Central Africa is a mere theatrical backdrop meant to be metaphorically mirroring the decline of Western civilisation, Tinel and Esser give their preferences to Congolese protagonists and engage more deeply with local cultures. Chapter IV will attempt to interpret Tinel's novel Le Monde de Nzakomba (1959) in the light of (a) Tinet's journalistic pieces on the colonial situation and (b) with regard to 'négritude', one of the underlying themes of the novel. In Chapter V the reading will focus on Esser's novel Matuli, fille d'Afrique (1960). As for Tinel, the interpretation will also rely on Esser's non fictional writing, the bulk of which is dealing with bantou culture. The conclusion of the thesis will propose a paradigmatic categorisation of the Belgian colonial corpus during the given period.

This thesis is an attempt to contribute to the growing body of work on literature from the French départements d'outre-mer of Guadeloupe and Martinique. More particularly, it represents an attempt to contribute to the growing body of work on women writers from these islands – referred to here as the Antilles - and to situate recent women's writing in relation to the Antillean literary tradition as a whole. The development of this tradition is traced in the introduction to the thesis: from the French colonial writing of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, to writing by white, Antillean-born 'creoles' (or békés), and the early 'assimilationist' writing of mulattoes and black Antilleans; from the radical philosophical and poetic texts of négritude, to more sophisticated, recent attempts to find ways in which to imagine Antillean identity and history. It is in relation to the more recent, black Antillean literary tradition, a tradition which has typically excluded Antillean women and Antillean women's writing, that selected novels by Guadeloupean women are examined here. This thesis traces the ways in which these writers position themselves - explicitly and implicitly - vis-à-vis the androcentric tradition which they have inherited. With reference to various feminist theoretical frameworks, it explores also the ways in which women writers disrupt the very tradition which they evoke, bringing questions of gender and sexuality to bear upon those of race. Chapter one examines three early examples of the way in which Antillean women writers interrogate the presuppositions of seminal Antillean texts, as Michèle Lacrosil's Sapotille ou le serein d'argile (1960), her Cajou (1961), and Jacqueline Manicom's Mon Examen de blanc (1972) are set against Fanon's Peau noire,masques blancs. Similarly, the second chapter examines the first two novels of the most prolific Guadeloupean woman writer, Maryse Condé: Heremakhonon (1976) and Une Saison à Rihata (1981). Here, Condé’s interrogation of négritude is explored, as are her efforts to imagine a role for women within a discourse which can be seen to be premised upon the exclusion of 'woman'. Chapter three - in which Simone Schwarz-Bart's Ti Jean L'horizon (1979) and Condé's Les Derniers rois mages (1992) are explored - deals with the way in which the Antillean quest for self-definition centres upon issues of legitimacy and paternity. In this chapter, as in chapter four, the importance of rewriting colonial history via the medium of fiction is examined. In chapter four, aspects of Edouard Glissant's Le Discours antillais are set in relation to Lacrosil's Demain Jab-Herma (1967) and Condé's Traversée de la mangrove (1989). Finally, Condé's Moi. Tituba, sorciere ... noire de Salem (1986) and Dany Bébel-Gisler's Leonora, L'histoire enfouie de la Guadeloupe (1985) are examined as examples of the Antillean movement towards the créolité recently theorised by Jean Bernabé, Patrick Chamoiseau and Raphaël Confiant, as well as towards the Creole language. What emerges throughout these chapters is a sense both of the way in which the Antillean literary tradition is developing and, more importantly, of the way in which Antillean women writers have come to play a crucial role in that development. What also emerges - and this is perfectly exemplified by Condé's very recent La Migration des coeurs (1995), which is discussed briefly in the afterword to this thesis - is the way in which the work of Antillean women writers has come to provide a vital mode of intervention into a tradition from which it had hitherto been excluded.

In recent years the name of Gustave Guiches has begun to appear more frequently in the pages of works dedicated to the great writers of the last quarter of the nineteenth century. It seems, therefore, appropriate that the work of this gifted and versatile writer who enjoyed considerable success and esteem in his life-time, should be made better known.