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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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Mémoire numérisé par la Direction des bibliothèques de l'Université de Montréal.

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.