Over fifty per cent of Nelligan's poems, approximately 100 out of a total of 175 poems written, contain images of animals and plants. In examining this imagery, the first step was to study it historically, considering the use of parable in the New Testament, some medieval works of painting, and literature, and the fable as handled by Aesop and La Fontaine. Secondly, the works of some of Nelligan's predecessors are considered. A brief view of a number of examples from these forbears led us to believe that this particular imagery was used as stock poetic imagery, possessing little value in itself. Its purpose in the poetry of certain members of the "Ecole de Québec" reinforced their romantic sentiments and patriotic loyalties to Canada and to France, as they reacted against such literary trends as the Symbolist and Parnassian schools, for example. Poets of the "Ecole littéraire de Montréal" used this imagery to describe their land - its forests, mountains, and other wild places. Both schools used natural imagery in their lyric poetry. The first chapter, concerning Nelligan's animal imagery, covers images of mammals, passes on to birds, and thence to "diverse animals," a minor category comprising insects and fish. After evaluating the frequency with which these animals appear, we have discovered that Nelligan has used those most familiar to him. Among mammals these were dogs, cats, horses, oxen; among birds they were simply "birds." In the majority of instances, animal images occur to help establish a particular atmosphere in a poem: goats and cattle accentuate a pastoral setting, deer a scene of wilderness, cats, at times, a domestic tranquillity. Birds appear in a variety of settings, indoor or outdoor, in close or distant association with man. In spite of their preponderance as images of secondary importance, certain ones form the chief subject of a poem: "Le Chat fatal," "Le Boeuf spectral," and "Les Corbeaux," are three examples. Here the animal image is of primary importance; in each of the poems noted, and in others, it is a clear indication of a neurotic mind. The second chapter, devoted to plant imagery, is patterned on the first. The images were divided into three categories: trees, flowers, and diverse plants. In this latter group are hay, grass, shrubs, and the like. Plant images occur more frequently than animal images, and again, most of them are of secondary importance. However, Nelligan's plants sometimes yield a variety of insights into his inner, poetic world. Flowers outside the house can indicate an optimistic attitude, a belief in renaissance, while those inside, cut and placed in vases, point quite literally to a dead end. Cypresses and willows are mentioned in conjunction with death and loss, a traditional and even banal usage. Plants foreign to Canadian soil appear mostly in metaphors and similes, as when a maple tree, whipped by wind, is said to twist itself like a bamboo. There is little breach of verisimilitude in the use of exotic plants. The third chapter unites plant and animal images to examine them in their various thematic contexts. These were established as follows: art (music and literature), the domain of the house, religion, and the world of dreams. The swan, image of purity and perfection, and flowers, symbols of beauty and rebirth, translate in part Nelligan's view of art as the realm of the elite. If the house represented to him a possible shelter against menacing elements, biting critics as well as biting winter winds, it did not fulfil its promise; for between these walls, in spite of the fire's warmth, the woman's love, the cat's physical satisfaction, there is nonetheless a stifling feeling, anxiety and fear. Flowers wither and die in this atmosphere. Moreover, at night cats prowl and fill the house with fearful and mysterious cries. Birds are often connected with Nelligan's religious penchant; representing the spirit, they present a kind of union with God. Nelligan's world of dreams, often of nightmares, is peopled with crows feeding on the dead bodies of zebras, cats feeding on the poet's own soul, and is an occasional setting for the attempted fulfilment of the poet's own thinly veiled sexual desires. Although Nelligan did not consciously use animal and plant imagery to demonstrate his individuality (which, to be more accurate, he showed in his subject matter), this imagery does frequently exhibit a uniqueness which distinguishes him not only from his predecessors but also from his contemporaries. / Arts, Faculty of / French, Hispanic, and Italian Studies, Department of / Graduate

The purpose of this thesis is to examine in Virginia Woolfs fiction the demonic imagery of violence as it constitutes her ultimate conception of reality. Her novels record the self's ritualistic and symbolic journey into the interior landscape of the unconscious, each work probing behind the carefully wrought illusions of social reality in an effort to define that dark and violent inner truth. This quest in search of the self is essentially and necessarily narcissistic, frequently ending in disaster for the individual searcher who mistakes surface reflection for reality. Ultimately, Woolf depicts man as isolated and fragmented in his attempts to find pattern and meaning in life, and the inherent stubbornness which causes him to fight for life is seen throughout her novels in the recurring theme of identity lost, regained, and lost again. In this doomed world of Virginia Woolfs fiction, the tortuous and narrow path of man's destiny can, and does, lead only to the grave. In The Voyage Out, her first novel, Woolf uses consistently the violent imagery of disintegration that pervades all her fiction. Rachel Vinrace, the young, inexperienced heroine of the book, flees the sterility and isolation of her room for the glittering world of experience, only to drown in the "cool translucent wave" of that very experience. And as the long night of this book ends, the morning light brings no relief and no sense of rebirth—only a terrible reminder of life's pointless cycle of light leading to inevitable darkness. Indeed, Rachel Vinrace's return to the sterile darkness from which she emerged establishes the central metaphor in all Virginia Woolf's fiction. Although Night and Day appears to be a comedy of manners, it is a black comedy of life in a suffocating world where the individual must deny himself and his feelings in an effort to survive. The artificiality of the plot and structure only serves to underscore the artificiality of social life where truth is sacrificed in order to maintain the illusion of harmony and beauty, where the appearance of order and tranquility disguises the violence inherent in a society that worships conformity. In Jacob's Room the individual is never able to form a lasting relationship and remains isolated in a world where it is impossible to ever really know another. Jacob, in his restless, futile quest for identity, becomes a symbol of modern man, doomed to wander through the desert of life in a hopeless search for meaning amid the ruins of the past. The images of violence in Mrs. Dalloway once again create an impression of existence as a living death where the individual, enslaved by convention, is no longer able to communicate with others. Clarissa Dalloway's parties are her "offering" to life, an attempt to maintain order and balance in the face of the chaos which threatens to engulf her; yet, terrified of dying, her existence becomes a living death, an emotional suicide, mirroring the actual suicide of Septimus Smith. In To The Lighthouse the party is over long before the story has finished. With the unexpected death of Mrs. Ramsay, who has seemed to offer a beacon of warmth and security for those engaged on the voyage out, Mrs. Ramsay's family and friends are plunged into the darkness and confusion of the night, where they are no longer able to ignore the fact that life's harsh fruit is death. Virginia Woolfs penultimate novel, The Years, is a chronicle of three generations in the Pargiter family, reflecting the increasing sterility and isolation of modern society, where man must continue the endless dance macabre, doomed like Antigone to a living death. In Between The Acts, Woolfs final and most profound novel, the images of violence well up as if from the layer of mud at the bottom of the cesspool, spreading in ever-widening circles, pulling each one of the characters relentlessly into the vortex of loneliness and despair. As each falters and plunges to the bottom, he is faced with the reality that only bones lie in the mud beneath. And the "voyage out" in search of the self, failing to bring man to the shores of understanding and acceptance, becomes instead, an endless spiral of senseless repetition in which one must either drown or go mad. / Arts, Faculty of / English, Department of / Graduate

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Reproduction de : Thèse de doctorat : Lexicologie et terminologie multilingues-traduction : Lyon 2 : 2006. / Titre provenant de l'écran-titre. Bibliogr.

Thèse : Lettres : Lausanne : 1985. / Bibliogr. p. 281-292.

Henri Bergson utilise régulièrement les arts pour illustrer sa méthode philosophique. Pourtant, il n'a jamais théorisé l'expérience artistique pour elle-même, et nous croyons que ses idées esthétiques méritent une recherche approfondie. Plus précisément, nous croyons que la littérature offre une porte d'entrée paradigmatique dans la recherche esthétique bergsonienne. Connaissant la minutie de son travail de rédaction, il nous semble important de s'attarder sur ce que lire signifie pour lui, car son style poétique constitue non seulement notre meilleur accès à sa pensée, mais en plus il participe à former notre expérience de cette pensée. Ce mémoire se veut donc une étude des idées esthétiques de Bergson, en centrant notre recherche sur la lecture. Dans un premier temps, nous proposerons une définition de l'acte de lecture à partir des concepts bergsoniens de la durée, de la mémoire, et de l'attention. Nous trouverons ainsi que la lecture serait d'abord une expérience de sympathie avec l'intuition de l'artiste. Cela nous mènera au deuxième moment de notre recherche, qui cherchera à définir l'intuition artistique. Nous explorerons ainsi le paysage interprétatif de ce concept polysémique, qui révèlera un conflit entre deux interprétations, l'une qui comprend l'intuition comme une connaissance sur le monde, l'autre qui la comprend comme une création de nouveauté. Cependant, nous trouverons que l'intuition artistique correspondrait à un vécu émotif dans le flux de la conscience, et en en ce sens elle serait les deux à la fois. Enfin, nous étudierons l'œuvre d'art, afin de comprendre comment l'intuition artistique se communique de l'artiste à la personne lectrice. Cette dernière étape révèlera que l'œuvre d'art possèderait un statut ontologique unique, c'est-à-dire qu'elle serait un lieu de rencontre entre deux consciences, celle de l'artiste et celle de la lectrice, et cette rencontre serait l'occasion d'une transmission de l'élan créateur à la source de l'intuition artistique. / Arts and literature are among Henri Bergson's most frequent examples to illustrate his philosophical method. However, Bergson never theorised the artistic experience in itself. His aesthetic ideas, however, deserve thorough research. Specifically, literature provides a paradigmatic point of entry in bergsonian aesthetic research. Knowing how meticulous his writing process was, it is important to understand what reading means for him, because not only does his poetic style constitute our best access to his philosophy, but it actively forms our experience of his ideas. This dissertation is thus a study of Bergson's aesthetic ideas. First, I will present a definition of the act of reading, drawing on the bergsonian concepts of durée, memory and attention. We will see that reading is essentially an experience of sympathy with artistic intuition at the origin of the work of art. This will lead us to the second part, where I will attempt to give a definition of the concept of artistic intuition in Bergson's thought. To this end, I explore the existing interpretations of this polysemous concept, thus revealing a conflict between two positions: one that understands artistic intuition as a form of knowledge of the world, the other that understands it as a creation of novelty. However, artistic intuition corresponds with an emotional experience in the lived flux of the consciousness and is thus both at once. Finally, I examine the concept of a work of art, to understand how artistic intuition is conveyed from the artist to the reader. I show that works of art hold a unique ontological status, that is a meeting point between two consciousnesses, the artist's and the reader's, and that this meeting is a prolonging of the creative élan at the origin of artistic intuition.

Chapter IV examines the increasing level of British interest in the Yugoslav revolt. Inadequately informed, and under pressure from internal and external sources, the British government resolved during autumn 1941 to offer exclusive support to Mihailovic. This decision was taken despite the knowledge that fighting had broken out between the insurgent groups. Chapter V covers the first part of 1942. Despite a growing awareness of the Partisan contribution to the anti-Axis struggle, and of the existence of civil war within Yugoslavia, the British continued to offer their full moral support to Mihailovic, and to attempt to rally all Yugoslavs to him. Chapter VI shows how during the second half of 1942, due to growing doubts over Mihailovic's political objectives and military strategy, the British policy consensus gradually disintegrated. Consequently, the reaffirmation of British support for Mihailovic at the end of the year was little more than a facade. Finally, the conclusion illustrates how British expectations of Mihailovic were based on a fundamental misevaluation not only of the latter's capabilities, but also of the very nature of the Yugoslav resistance movements.