Five "critical" utopias by Quebec women writers ( L'Euguelionne and Le pique-nique sur l'Acropole by Louky Bersianik; Le silence de la Cite and Chroniques du Pays des Meres by Elisabeth Vonarburg and L'Espace du diamant by Esther Rochon) make up the corpus of this thesis which aims to explore how the three novelists exploit the possibilities of this particular form of contemporary utopian writing. For these authors, the transformation of society depends upon the transformation of the individual. We therefore propose to examine the ways in which Bersianik, Vonarburg and Rochon represent, through the experiences of their characters, the social construction of individual identity. For our corpus, this entails a study both of the representations of gender and of the role of language in the construction of identity. We explore gender from a feminist perspective by examining the initial dystopian situation of the individual living in society; we then analyze the positive (i.e. eutopian) process of change undergone by the individual. / This thesis begins by exploring a definition of literary utopia. We then trace the major periods in the history of literary utopia to provide background for our corpus. In chapter two, we examine the ways in which Bersianik, Vonarburg and Rochon denounce, through their fictional representations of the individual, dystopian configurations of gender. In particular, we study various "structural" metaphors used by the authors to interrogate the social role of women and the status of the female body in patriarchal society. In chapter three, we examine the new configurations of social and sexual identity proposed by the authors. We then study the author's treatment of the role of language in the social construction of individual identity in chapter four. After defining "sociolect" and introducing "sexualect", we apply these concepts to the study of the critique of sexist language and discourses of authority in our corpus. In chapter five, we explore how the authors employ discursive strategies, such as parody and "defamiliarization", to alter language and thus inscribe female subjectivity in language (Bersianik and Vonarburg) and to liberate individuals from the imprisonment of authoritarian discourses (Bersianik, Vonarburg and Rochon). Lastly, we find that after having examined the human condition in dystopian societies, our authors propose social projects that are infinitely dynamic and mutable rather than fixed models of an ideal social state.

This thesis constitutes an investigation into contemporary writing--both fictional and philosophical. More specifically, it is a comparative analysis of the work of British novelist Angela Carter, and French philosophers Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, in the light of the concept of synthetic authenticity. It is divided into three chapters, "Becomings", "Events", and "Machines", and each chapter presents the work of both Carter and Deleuze and Guattari, respectively, in light of one of these topics. Chapter Two, however, focuses closely on Angela Carter's first novel, Shadow Dance, as it relates to the concept 'event'. And Chapter Three focuses on Carter's novel The Infernal Desire Machines of Doctor Hoffman, as it relates to and differs from the schizoanalytic notion of desiring machines.

With the progress of globalization, it is becoming increasingly evident that there lies within it a Westernizing thrust that forms a part of the European colonial legacy. Postcolonial theorists, exemplified by Homi K. Bhabha, Edward W. Said, and Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, have, over the last twenty years, produced some of the most influential discourse-analysis of colonialism, and critiques of neocolonialism. Their works, committed to various streams of poststructuralism, nonetheless exhibit some debilitating epistemological problems this thesis demonstrates by recourse to Wittgenstein and Kierkegaard. In conclusion it offers an alternative approach to globalization derived from Kierkegaard's dilemma of first principles in Either/Or, and Wittgenstein's discussion of language games in Philosophical Investigations .

From the artistic experience of Saint-Denys Garneau, who decided to devote himself to painting and writing at the beginning of the 1930's, to the poetry and essays on art of Claude Gauvreau, Roland Giguere, Jacques Brault or Robert Melancon, Quebec's poetry maintains a fertile dialogue with the art of painting. Whatever form it takes, discourse on art allows the poet to reinforce or refine aesthetic sensibilities, to question the links or the disparities between texts and images, but also to conceive a theory about visual perceptions. Despite all that separates these two expressive modes, literature and painting both produce "visibility": even if some pictures are not figurative or some poems do not contain imagery, visual arts, beyond the topics or themes they provide to writers (landscape, portrait, still life, etc.), contribute to the development of "ways of seeing", ways of perceiving sensitive reality and of inserting oneself as a subject in the world. This is particularly true in the works of the three poets around which the main parts of this study are centered: Saint-Denys Garneau, for whom painting is a way of "learning to see" (apprendre a voir), Roland Giguere, whose poetic and artistic works share a desire to "give to see" (donner a voir), and finally Robert Melancon, who borrows from painters ways to "make see" (faire voir). By using notions and concepts that come from disciplines close to Aesthetics, this work proposes to circumscribe those "ways of seeing" and to assess how painting acts as a "seeing school" (ecole du regard) for these three authors. More broadly, since discourse on painting can be found throughout Quebec's modern poetry, this study also constitutes a point of view on the history of poetry in Quebec since Saint-Denys Garneau. / Keywords: Quebec poetry, painting, Aesthetics, visual perception, history of literature.

The questions posed and examined in Violent Femmes take their genesis from psychoanalytic arguments which contend that identity is not a stable monadic thing but rather a continuing process of engagement and negotiation between the self and others. Sigmund Freud, Melanie Klein, D. W. Winnicott, and Christopher Bollas, amongst others, have noted the temporary, coalitional, and provisional nature of the ways in which identity is apprehended and experienced. This thesis expands upon such a theoretical framework of identity formation to specifically question the ways in which the formation and maturation of an artistic identity may, in part, be predicated upon the psychological capacity to enact violence within the realm of the imaginary. Violent Femmes examines the complex relationship between psychological violence and artistic identity as that relationship is recorded in the autobiographical writings of Virginia Woolf, Radclyffe Hall, and Emily Carr. / This project traces the written vestiges of Woolfs, Hall's, and Carr's individual internalised struggles to formulate an artistic identity in specific relationship with an already established 'model' of artistic creativity and identity. Woolfs, Hall's, and Carr's struggles to claim a personal artistic identity, in some ways from their individual model of the artist, are waged within the minds of the authors themselves. However, the violence enacted within their imaginations---the violence perpetrated against the models of the artist---is thrust into the external world, not only within the writings of these three women, but also by the ways in which each author resolves or fails to resolve her own violent conflict with her imaginary model of the artist.

Sadness in literature has often been thematically interpreted as an indication of literary originality. Notions of solitude, silence, and alienation contribute to the idea that melancholy benefits the introspective work of the artist. But it is also possible to explore sadness as a more complex literary phenomenon, one that expands the dimensions of affect and influences possibilities of aesthetic and ethical renovation that gesture beyond the usual themes of melancholy and solitude. Sadness thus does not come to be conceived as merely an aspect of mourning, but as a structure of loss that is intrinsic to our concept of the world's composition and insufficiencies. The energies that surround the experience of sadness measure the degree to winch many writers have been able to develop their sense of unhappiness into a way of charting the difficulties and transformative power of their own labours. As well, sadness in literature can be seen as illuminating a loss that writers generate in order to achieve through their art the possibility of aesthetic and even social reparation.

Not available

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Hawaii at Manoa, 1995. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 304-315). / Microfiche. / x, 315 leaves, bound 29 cm

This thesis sets off from an a priori hypothetical position that the universality of certain language features, particularly poetic expression, provides an opportunity for syncretism in the reading, analysis, explication, and interpretation of African literature, specifically oral poetry, our teleological point being the formulation of a syncretic approach. In the first chapter we undertake an overview of the debate which has been ensuing among 'African' critics in the search of an 'African' poetics. We proceed, in the second and third chapters, to undertake a study of two 'Western' schools of thought, namely Formalist-Structuralism and New Criticism, with a view to setting the critical theories and practice of some major protagonists of these schools of thought against sample readings of African oral poetry. In the fourth and fifth chapters we proceed to select and analyse some of the most prominent critics of African oral poetry, and undertake detailed case studies of their critical assumptions and practice, in retrospective comparison with the theoretical paradigms and practical readings dealt with in chapters two and three. In the sixth and final chapter we assess the syncretic approach suggested, together with its implications for the future research and teaching of African oral poetry. Our findings suggest that the case studies of critiques of African oral poetry reveal certain shortcomings which might have been strengthened by a perspicacious awareness of Formalist-Structuralist and New Critical methodology. From this postpriori perspective we suggest a syncretic approach which, in its sensitivity to the idiosyncratic features of African languages, will at the same time acknowledge, adopt and adapt sophisticated poetical analyses which have been developed by Western poetics. Our findings also suggest specific ways in which Western standards could be evaluated with a considerable degree of exactitude. We conclude by, inter alia, opening directions of research which could advance the debate towards an African poetics beyond doctrinaire wrangle, so that progress can be made through further close studies of other schools of thought and theories in order to assess their applicability and/or adaptability to African poetry and other genres. / Afrikaans and Theory of Literature / D. Litt et Phil (Theory of Literature)

M.A. (Linguistics) / Please refer to full text to view abstract