Thesis (Ph. D.)--Bryn Mawr College, 1931. / Vita. Bibliography: p. 107-143.

Thèse--Lausanne. / Bibliography: p. [151]-211.

Proefschrift--Amsterdam. / "Ouvrages consultés": p. [162]-166.

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Our ways of thinking modernism and its legacy are imprinted with the pattern of an opposition, a struggle between two sets of extremes: objective and subjective; form and feeling; mechanistic and organic; mind and body; knowing and being; self and world; aesthetic and historical. The three writers whose work I explore in this thesis challenge prevailing notions of this oppositional discourse. Entering the scene of modernism late in its history, Elizabeth Bowen, Eudora Welty and Maurice Merleau- Ponty develop a new kind of vision that makes us rethink the relationships between perceiver and perceived, between mind, body and world. All three writers undertake a fundamental reorganisation of the relationships between internal consciousness and external things through the narration of a perception that is outside the limits of discrete sensations or causal relationships. Physical things are neither pure objecthood nor merely external triggers for the ramblings of a solipsistic consciousness, rather they infringe on a consciousness whose own edges are indistinct. This writing establishes an interdependent and interlocutory relationship between subject and world, which become not opposite ends of a perceptual scale, but aspects of a common flesh. The intimate connection to the world is both comforting and threatening, both reinforcing subjectivity and de-centring it. The re-ordering of the connections between self and world leads to a reassessment of collective identity and historical agency, as well as impacting upon approaches to modes of representation. In trying to express the pre-linguistic experience of embodied consciousness, this writing looks to models of mute expression found in visual images. Exploring how the invisible aspects of experience emerge within the visible realm, the writing takes on an often hallucinatory or uncanny character. Charting the passage from being to doing, from perception to creation, from the style of the flesh to the style of fiction, Merleau-Ponty, Welty and Bowen dissolve received boundaries and distinctions at every level.

This thesis examines representations of the ‘métisse’ in nineteenth-century metropolitan French literature to determine the figure’s function and significance in the texts that display her and the larger society that imagines her. By ‘métisse’, I refer specifically to a woman of ‘black’ and ‘white’ ‘racial’ mixture whose identity, in the context of the texts that figure her, both legitimates and deconstructs distinct and discrete ‘racial’ identity. As such, she is a useful figure through which to investigate and unpack conceptions of ‘race’. I will suggest that her innate performative ability – a product of her deceptively white exterior – demonstrates the discursive nature of identity that can be seen as constructed and parodied rather than as a simple ontological category. I use the term ‘tenebrous’ to describe the ‘métisse’ because it conjoins the two constitutive aspects of her signification – her ambiguity and her colour. Her fundamentally ambiguous identity is crucial to her figuration as an erotic and dangerous femme fatale. Unknowable and protean, she attracts and simultaneously disconcerts or terrifies her prey. Concurrently, the term ‘tenebrous’ highlights the explicit colouring of her body by all of the authors who imagine her so as to mark her as identifiably different, and to explain her essential bestial, primitive, and dangerous sexuality. This thesis locates the ‘métisse’ at the crossroads of discourses of race, class, gender, and sexuality. In an era when fears of personal and social degeneracy and decline were capturing the collective imagination, the ‘métisse’, as a figure of frightening alterity and deceptive similitude, embodies deviancy. Primarily portrayed as a natural courtesan due to her essential yet hidden ‘black’ blood, the ‘métisse’ attracts ‘white’ men with her seductive body, but her malign sexuality corrupts, dilutes, or kills them. Associated with the working-class, the prostitute, the criminal, and the savage, the ‘métisse’ fits into a larger discourse that seeks to postulate the normative identity of ‘white’, bourgeois masculinity. Her ability to dilute the ‘purity’ of her ‘white’ male victim articulates a general contemporary fear of pathological sexuality and, through it, invisible degeneration. Using the comparative framework of ‘case studies’, I will examine Eugène Sue’s Les Mystères de Paris, Émile Zola’s Thérèse Raquin, Arthur Gobineau’s Essai sur l’inégalité des races humaines, Pierre Loti’s Le Roman d’un spahi, a selection of poems from Charles Baudelaire’s Les Fleurs du Mal, as well as the critical and biographical studies centring around the figure of Jeanne Duval, Baudelaire’s long-time and muchmaligned ‘métisse’ partner. The wide variety of texts and the diverse list of authors will demonstrate the surprising currency of this literary figure in the collective imagination of nineteenth-century metropolitan France, as well as twentieth-century literary criticism. By focussing upon well-known and significant French authors, I will reexamine the cultural heritage to which these writers contributed with specific attention to the investigation of cultural assumptions, desires, and fears pivoting around the theme of mixed-race.

Orientador: Ana Luiza Silva Camarani / Banca: Adalberto Luis Vicente / Banca: Andressa Cristina de Oliveira / Banca: Betina Ribeiro Rodrigues da Cunha / Banca: Luciana Moura Colucci de Camargo / Resumo: Voyage à Rodrigues, Onitsha, L'Africain e Ritournelle de la faim são textos que acompanham as mutações da literatura francesa contemporânea, seguindo as tendências da escrita de si, mas, ao mesmo tempo, distanciando-se da linha tradicional da biografia e da autobiografia e assemelhando-se à nova forma recentemente surgida no universo autobiográfico, identificada como autoficção. Tendo em vista que a necessidade de compreensão de si mesmo exige uma interrogação concernente ao passado e à origem, nessas obras, os protagonistas empreendem uma viagem no tempo e no espaço rumo ao passado, a fim de narrar fatos da infância, da vida dos pais e antepassados ou de alguma pessoa que tenha importância em suas histórias de vida. Traduzindo um desejo geral da própria época corrente, a obra de Le Clézio confirma a obstinação dos escritores contemporâneos em encontrar a herança perdida e evitar a irremediável passagem do tempo. Esse retorno ao passado constitui uma partida cujo fim é a busca de si mesmo, uma vez que, no esforço de descobrir as origens, os heróis manifestam o desejo de recuperar a identidade perdida, de suprir uma falta e/ou de restituir a dignidade roubada a um dos membros de suas famílias. A viagem (real ou figurada) e a escrita tomam, por conseguinte, uma dimensão iniciática, já que se desvelam como produtos de uma busca identitária, assumindo o papel de mediadoras do autoconhecimento e de preservação da memória, devido à capacidade de resistir à passagem do tempo, fazend... (Resumo completo, clicar acesso eletrônico abaixo) / Résumé: Voyage à Rodrigues, Onitsha, L‟Africain et Ritournelle de la faim sont des récits qui accompagnent les mutations de la littérature française contemporaine en suivant les tendances de l'écriture de soi, mais en même temps s' éloignent de la voie traditionnelle de la biographie et de l'autobiographie et se rassemblent à la nouvelle forme née récemment dans l'univers autobiographique, identifiées comme «autofiction ». Étant donné que le besoin de la compréhension de soi-même exige une interrogation concernant le passé et l'origine, dans ces oeuvres les protagonistes entreprennent un voyage vers le passé dans le temps et dans l'espace, afin de raconter des faits de leur enfance, de la vie de leurs parents, de leurs ancêtres ou de n'importe quelle personne qui a de l'importance dans leurs histoires de vie. En traduisant une envie générale à la propre époque actuelle, l'oeuvre leclézienne va attester l'obstination des écrivains contemporains de retrouver l'héritage perdu et d'éviter l'irrémédiable passage du temps. Ce retour au passé va constituer un départ dont le but est la quête de soi-même, car dans l'effort de découvrir les origines, les héros expriment le désir de retrouver l'identité perdue, de pallier un manque ou de restituer la dignité enlevée à un des membres de leurs familles. Le voyage (réelle ou figurée) et l'écriture prennent, par conséquent, une dimension initiatique, puisqu'ils se montrent comme des produits d'une quête identitaire en jouant le rôle de médiateurs d... (Résumé complet accès életronique ci-dessous) / Doutor

Thesis--Freiburg im Breisgau. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 239-253).

Inaug.-Diss.--Rostock. / Lebenslauf. Includes bibliographical references.