This thesis seeks to interrogate the presence and purposes of intertextuality in the work of contemporary French filmmaker Claire Denis, with specific focus on Michael Riffaterre’s theories of ungrammaticality, and Paul Ricoeur’s work on discourse as event or performance. Neither Riffaterre nor Ricoeur’s theories of intertextuality have been engaged in much depth in the study of cinema. Denis’s œuvre, which is composed mainly of feature films, but also includes short films, documentaries, music videos and collaborations on exhibitions and live concerts, is vastly intertextual, engaging with other moving image media, music, visual art, philosophy, poetry and literature, and media coverage of real events. In current criticism, Denis and many of her fellow contemporary French female filmmakers are more commonly referred to through a gender-neutral prism of auteurism rather than with reference to their gender, which may be read as a means for a female director to disengage with any categorisation of her work as resolutely female-centric. The auteur label is problematic, however, as it tends to suggest a state of creative isolation and supremacy, where the author’s recognizable creative voice as it appears throughout their work is more important than any other element of a film. This description sits particularly uneasily with the work of Denis, for whom collaboration and intertextual engagement with other sources is vital; this is evident in Denis’s consistent highlighting of the importance of her regular collaborators’ contributions to her work, and the texts with which her films engage, in interviews. Interviews with Denis, therefore, will form as important an element of my primary research material as her corpus of films and other works. In the introduction to this thesis, I will highlight some of the main themes and concerns of Denis’s work, namely foreignness, intrusion and the body, and introduce the corpus of critical work which has explored them. Such themes will certainly arise in my work, but will always be explored through the foregrounding of Riffaterre and Ricoeur’s theories of intertextuality. I will then proceed to briefly examine how Denis may be read as an intertextual auteur, though the phrase may as yet seem something of an oxymoron. The main body of the thesis thereafter will be used to search Denis’s œuvre for intertexts, aligning specific films and other creative endeavours together wherever they share particular themes or may be read productively through a particular theory of intertextuality. My aim, eventually, will be to examine how this intertextual richness may lead to a re-evaluation of Denis not as an auteur in the conventional sense, but as one for whom collaboration and textual openness are crucial.

Beginning with an analysis of Northrop Frye’s concept of modal progression (i.e., the cycle from myth to irony—and back again) and an application of modal theory to an analysis of postmodern narrative forms, the need to revise Frye’s concept of modal progression becomes apparent. Rather than following the cyclical pattern Frye proposes, the course of modal progression appears to be fixed to an axis of experience: a certain normative threshold which describes the narrator’s and/or the narrative protagonist’s power of action relative to an assumed neutral audience. How the narrative depiction of the narrator and/or the fictional protagonist relates to this threshold determines the characteristics of the literary mode. As argued in this dissertation, the increase in the hero’s power of action (typical of late modern and postmodern literature) does not necessarily indicate an abrupt return to the mythic mode (as predicted by Frye). Instead, what is seen to emerge is a decidedly advanced species of narrative irony, or, “high irony” that, while maintaining its distinctly ironic qualities, displays a remarkable tendency to disassemble/reassemble precedent narrative forms (e.g., myth, nonfiction, realistic fiction) into a self-reflexive, highly metafictional form of parody. As the absurd, parodic chaos of the high ironic mode shares several significant traits with both myth and nonfiction, these overlapping, parodic relationships are of great literary importance and theoretical interest. These modal connections and disconnections are what this dissertation attempts to explore and clarify. To that end, this dissertation charts the various ways that myth and nonfictional forms have been put to parodic use in the high ironic metafictions of Donald Barthelme, Robert Coover and Ishmael Reed, three writers whose seminal mid-20th century works did much to shape and direct the course of contemporary American literature. Of special emphasis in this study is the American postmodern preoccupation with revision and the politics of literary subversion that attends this revisionary impulse. The final hypothesis reached by this dissertation is that the literary repercussions of these mid-20th century excursions into ironic, metafictional abstraction have not led to a return to myth, but rather to a discernable tendency among 21st century American writers to return to previously eschewed forms of nonironic narrative. This trajectory thus marks a movement away from forms of narrative irony (as well as away from the mode of myth) and an emerging tendency towards more referential, less fantastic forms of narrative fiction.

Die Rezension bezieht sich auf den von der Forschergruppe "Allgemeine Literaturwissenschaft" an der Ungarischen Akademie der Wissenschaften herausgegebenen Sammelband "Kulturtechnik Philologie". Es werden das Gesamtkonzept des Bandes und ausgewählte Artikel näher besprochen.

This thesis investigates the rise of aviation and its influence on modernist literature in the first half of the twentieth century, arguing that the emergence of heavier-than-air flight facilitated experimentation and innovation in modernist writing in order to capture the new experience of flight and its impact on the modern world. Previous critical discussions largely focus on militarist and nationalist ideas and beliefs regarding the uses of the aeroplane, and in doing so overlook the diversity of attitudes and approaches towards aviation that had greater influence on modernist thought. Through a historicist reading of a selection of modernist texts, this study extends scholarly debates by linking alternative views of aviation and modernist literary and narrative experimentation. I begin my study by exploring how H.G. Wells's calls for the establishment of a world government (necessitated by the emergence of aviation) led to an increasingly assertive and urgent tone in his later writings. His works serve as a useful starting point to read the more experimental, modernist prose forms that follow in his wake. While Wells's texts were affected on a pragmatic level, those of the modernists were affected in a more imaginative, perceptual, and sensory way, which highlights the deeper extent to which aviation influenced modernist thought. For Virginia Woolf, the all-encompassing aerial view offered a new way of seeing the connections between living things, leading to an expanded narrative scope in her later writings. For William Faulkner, flight as aerial performance and spectacle was a liberating experience and became a metaphor for escape from an increasingly capitalistic and creativity-deprived world. John Dos Passos, in contrast, saw the effects of air travel as harmful to the human senses and perceptions of the world around, leading him to incorporate aspects of flight into his fast-paced, multi-modal narratives in order to convey and critique the disorienting and alienating experience of flight. Collectively, these chapters show that as much as the aeroplane was capable of causing mass destruction, it was also constructive in the way that it enabled these new ways of thinking, and it is this complex and paradoxical nature, this thesis proposes, that makes the aeroplane an important modernist symbol.

This thesis examines the utopian writings of Robert Hugh Benson, H. G. Wells and Aldous Huxley in the context of contemporary and modern nationally conscious discourses. Focusing on the period of 1910-1939, the present study explores the terms and strategies whereby utopian visions of a World State, premised on religion or universal governance, engage with, and contribute to, constructions of England as a specific topography, with a political culture, social hierarchies, religious sensibilities, and literary tradition. Informed by literary history, utopian theory, studies of national character and nationalism, the thesis argues that the writings of Benson, Wells and Huxley communicate an ascertainable reciprocity between these authors’ utopian imagination and national susceptibilities. The thesis investigates the ways in which the studied fictions endorse visions of a World State, offering a mediated response not only to the contemporary condition of England, but also to England’s topographic, political, and socio-cultural continuity. Of particular interest is a re-invocation of Southern England as either a fictional setting or a liminal environment for the emergence of a World State. The study also investigates the narrative anxieties about the retreat of Liberalism from the national political scene, being superseded by the restrictive regimes of a World State; and a fictional renewal of social hierarchies as nationally conscious models for efficient government. The thesis further accounts for the authorial engagements with continuity, examining Benson’s investment in dynastic rule, Wells’s hostility to revolution, and Huxley’s redefinition of the ‘English poetic mind’ to oppose the dissolution of national literary traditions in a global future. In exploring the extent to which alternative versions of England (Catholic, Cosmopolitan, Alien) dominate the visions of world unity, this thesis contends that the nationality of a World State manifests itself not in the universal ends that such visions seek to achieve, but in the nationally conscious means they press into service.

Le présent travail, dont le champ de recherche concerne le roman francophone d'Afrique au sud du Sahara, se propose d'analyser la mise en scène de la trajectoire de l'intellectuel africain, des années cinquante à nos jours. Il s'agit précisément de voir la manière dont les productions romanesques africaines de ces soixante dernières années représentent la situation de l'intellectuel dans la société africaine, à travers ses évolutions et ses perspectives. Quel rôle le roman africain de langue française a par le passé consacré au personnage de l'intellectuel et quels sont ses nouveaux modes d'actions et de productions d'idées contribuant aujourd'hui à renforcer ce rôle ? Au moment où, en Afrique, l'opinion publique parle de plus en plus de la faillite ou de la « mort de l'intellectuel africain », nous avons jugé nécessaire d'interroger le roman à ce sujet, à partir d'une sorte de panorama analytique allant de 1950 aux années 2010, pour observer comment la fiction littéraire africaine a longtemps représenté la figure de l'intellectuel et comment cette représentation a évolué au cours des dernières décennies. Empruntant sans cesse ses outils théoriques et méthodologiques à la sociologie de la littérature, cette thèse de doctorat s'interroge sur ce qui est advenu de l'intellectuel africain et sur le positionnement qu'il adopte dans le contexte actuel des sociétés africaines tournées vers la mondialisation. Sous forme d'histoire littéraire, elle présente chaque époque intellectuelle du continent africain à travers ses enjeux identitaires et politiques. Au-delà de ses échecs innombrables, l'intellectuel africain est une figure habitée par une éthique de conviction et de responsabilité. Dans cette perspective, la crise de l'engagement observable chez l'intellectuel évoluant dans le roman africain contemporain, loin d'être le signe de sa « mort » très prochaine, se veut en fait une crise des mutations, où de vieilles modalités d'engagement meurent et de nouvelles cherchent à éclore. / This work, whose research field concerns the French novel of Africa south of the Sahara, is to analyze the direction of the trajectory of the African intellectual, fifties to the present. It is precisely to see how African fiction productions of the last sixty years represent the situation of the intellectual in African society, through its developments and prospects. What French-language African novel role has historically devoted to the character of the intellectual and what are the new modes of action and ideas productions today contribute to strengthening the role? At the time, Africa, public speaking increasingly of the bankruptcy or the "death of the African intellectual," we found it necessary to question the novel on this subject, from a kind analytical panorama from 1950 to the 2010s, to observe how the African literary fiction has long represented the figure of the intellectual representation and how this has evolved over the past decades. Borrowing constantly its theoretical and methodological tools in the sociology of literature, this dissertation examines what happened to the African intellectual and positioning it adopts in the current tour to the African societies globalization. Form of literary history, it has intellectual every time the African continent through its identity and political issues. Beyond its countless failures, the African intellectual is a figure inhabited by an ethic of conviction and responsibility. In this perspective, the crisis of the observable commitment to evolving the intellectual in contemporary African novel, far from being a sign of his "death" imminent, wants it a crisis of change, where old modalities commitment die and new ones seek to hatch.

Cette analyse a pour but de dénoncer les mythes créateurs du féminin et du masculin hérités des politiques culturelles sexuelles érigées au creuset de la rencontre coloniale. L’étude de A Married Woman (Manju Kapur), Babyji (Abha Dawesar), Indian Tango (Ananda Devi), trois romans présentant le lesbianisme comme une stratégie féministe d’émancipation, permet de mettre au jour diverses dynamiques discursives, d’exploiter le concept de représentation, et d’interroger les catégories préexistantes. Ces trois romans sont en effet écrits par des femmes participant à la culture indo-hindoue, et proposent des héroïnes à la similarité troublante : brahmines, habitant Delhi et insatisfaites de l’immobilisme liberticide de leur genre. Le préjudice hétéropatriarcal gaine les individus plaqués à l’intersection de leurs appartenances identitaires diverses et superposées : le genre, la culture, la sexualité… Le chemin de ces héroïnes suit ainsi une évolution interrogeant les inventions patriarcales de l’identité de la femme indo-hindoue. Au-delà de la dénonciation des dérives de son essentialisation, c’est sa transgression qui est éblouissante, parce qu’elle est sexuelle et lesbienne, engageant ainsi les possibilités d’une altérité, d’une alternative, d’un devenir différent. Ces textes questionnent alors la poésie et l’efficacité d’une esthétique lesbienne, la validité démiurge d’une utopie lesbienne, et le symbolisme d’un motif qui unit femmes de papier et autrices de chair au sein d’un positionnement récusant la subalternité implicite de catégories oppressives et obsolètes. En s’emparant de l’ipséité, ces narrations introduisent une poétique queer défiant déterminismes, cristallisations, normes et hiérarchies. Elles ouvrent à des possibilités radicales et multiples d’existences, de créations, signalant la matérialité de marginalités subversives qui problématisent la notion même d’individu, envisagée dans sa perspective hypermoderne. / This analysis aims at denouncing the original myths of the feminine and the masculine, inherited of the sexual cultural politics uprighted in the crucible of the colonial encounter. The study of A Married Woman (Manju Kapur), Babyji (Abha Dawesar), Indian Tango (Ananda Devi), three novels presenting lesbianism as a feminist strategy of emancipation, allows to excavate various discursive dynamics, to exploit the concept of representation, and to interrogate the preexisting categories. These three novels are indeed written by women belonging to the Indo-Hindu culture, and offer heroines with troubling similarities: Brahmines, Delhiites and dissatisfied with the repressions and inertia of their gender. The heteropatriarcal prejudice suffocates the individuals tackled at the intersection of their several and overlapping identity belongings: gender, culture, sexuality… These heroines’ paths hence follow an evolution interrogating the patriarchal inventions of the Indo-Hindu woman’s identity. Beyond the exposition and accusation of its essentialization’s deviations, it is its transgression which is dazzling, because it is sexual and lesbian, introducing the possibilities of an alterity, an alternative, a different becoming. These texts thus question the poetry and efficiency of a lesbian aesthetic, the demiurge validity of a lesbian utopia, and the symbolism of a pattern unifying the paper women and the women writers in a positioning rejecting the implicit subalternity of oppressive and obsolete categories. By getting a hold of ipseity, these narrations introduce a queer poetic defying determinisms, crystallizations, norms and hierarchies. They open to radical and multiple possibilities of living and creating, indicating the materiality of subversive marginalities which problematize the very notion of individual, envisioned in its hypermodern perspective.

This thesis re-evaluates the relationship between original text and translation through an approach that assumes the equality of source and target texts. This is based on the translation strategy expressed in the work of the Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges and theoretical approaches by Walter Benjamin and Michel Foucault, as well as exponents of Possible World Theory. Rather than considering what may be lost in translation, this thesis focuses on why we insist on maintaining a border between the textual phenomena ‘translation’ and ‘original’ and argues for a mutually enriching dialogue between a text and its translation. The opening chapter investigates marginal cases of translation and determines where one form (original) ends and the other (translation) begins. The case studies derive from the anthology Cuentos breves y extraordinarios (edited by Borges and Adolfo Bioy Casares) and include ‘pseudotranslations’: texts presented as translations even though no linguistic transfer precedes them. Another example is Borges’s self-translation of his Spanish poem ‘Mañana’ into German as ‘Südlicher Morgen’ for the Expressionist poet Kurt Heynicke. Although an original text, the pseudotranslation is judged as a translation, problematizing the boundary between the two. Since its perception changes over time, it unsettles the idea of the stable text by positing a text in progress. The analysis of the effects of the translation is supported by a discussion of Michel Foucault’s categorization expressed in Les mots et les choses (1966). Translations are regarded as coins, which gain value through their ability to represent, and create heterotopias: potentially existing non-places, which escape logic and thereby create an ‘uneasy laughter.’ Heterotopias are based on anti-logical orders, exemplified in the organisation of Antología de la literatura fantástica, collaboratively edited by Borges, Bioy Casares and Silvina Ocampo in 1940. This organisation invites an interpretation based on resemblance rather than comparison, the latter of which always results in the production and reproduction of hierarchies. In Chapter Two, I uncover the fraudulent assumption that an original is a stable text. I make recourse to Walter Benjamin’s definition of origin in ‘Die Aufgabe des Übersetzers’ (1923) as ‘the eddy in the stream of becoming’, and André Lefevere’s notion of the refracted text, explaining that our first encounters with a classic text are mostly made through abridged, altered, and interpreted versions. Collaborative work also unsettles the idea of the single author as source and guarantor of authenticity, exemplified through examples of Borges and Bioy Casares’s collaboration, and Borges’s collaborative translations with Norman Thomas di Giovanni. I elaborate on Possible World Theory (PWT) following Marie-Laure Ryan and Ruth Ronen, explaining key terms and concepts and showing that PWT offers an alternative to thinking about the relationship of original text and translation as hierarchical. PWT can be employed to consider source text and target text to be possible, parallel versions of a fictional world. The findings lead to a link between authenticity and the different reception of original and translated texts. I note that the term ‘authenticity’, often used in reference to the original, also has ‘murderous’ connotations. Applied to a text, ‘inauthenticity’ might therefore be a more helpful term in discussing its ‘afterlife’ (Fortleben; Benjamin) as an inauthentic text. An effective way of ensuring a text can be read as ‘inauthentic’ is to dissimulate its origin and relations, whilst also unsettling the authority of the author and translator. The theoretical examination of hierarchies and categorization is then illustrated in case studies analysing Borges’s contrasting translations of works by Virginia Woolf and Franz Kafka. Chapter Three focuses on translations of Orlando and A Room of One’s Own attributed to Borges. While it remains uncertain whether Borges did in fact translate Woolf’s texts himself, the notion of ‘translatorship’ comes into focus. The continuation of claiming Borges as the translator serves to aid the publication of the translations by making use of the famous translator’s name. I give an overview over the publishing environment in Argentina of the 1930s into which the Woolf texts were translated, with particular focus on the readership of the publishing house Sur. I thereby foreground Victoria Ocampo’s particular interest in having Woolf translated into Spanish, since Ocampo considered Woolf a role model for feminism. Feminist discussions show parallels with the way in which translations and original texts are separated. Borges’s Orlando furthermore triggered controversy concerning his handling of gender issues. I offer a reading of the text along the lines of Feminist Translation Studies, as expressed by Sherry Simon, Luise von Flotow and Lori Chamberlain, amongst others. I argue that Borges’s translation can be read ‘inauthentically’ as fidelity becomes a movable factor. I regard the translations of Orlando and A Room of One’s Own attributed to Borges as texts translated in a feminist way as they offer many possible worlds of interpretation and much undecidability. The notion of ‘translatorship’ is picked up again in the final Chapter Four, as it applies equally to the translation of Franz Kafka’s ‘Die Verwandlung’ as ‘La metamorfosis.’ Since there are different versions of ‘La metamorfosis,’ the quest for the translator also questions where ‘translation’ ends and ‘editing’ begins. The popularity of Borges’s version might furthermore be particularly linked to this uncertainty, as I argue that the veneration of Kafka’s work is, at least in part, due to the fragmentary nature in which his work survived. This incompletion enables many possible interpretations of his texts, which thereby appear as perfect pieces of literature since they, like Foucault’s coin, are uncorrodable and have the ability to represent, much like inauthentic texts. The ‘inauthentic’ literary treatment of translating in collaboration, as is the case when Borges and Bioy Casares translate ‘Cuatro reflexiones’, ‘Josefina la cantora’, ‘La verdad sobre Sancho Panza’ and ‘El silencio de las sirenas’ is hence particularly adequate for these fragments. The translations in collaboration, besides undermining the authorial genius of the single author, also feature particular destructions of the perfection of the original. The concluding chapter summarises the findings concerning the questions as to why there should be a hierarchy between the reception of original texts and translations, why this hierarchy is so persistent, and what alternatives may be offered instead. I demonstrate how the selected case studies are exemplary of alternative approaches to Translation Studies and to what effect PWT and Borges have been helpful in pursuing this approach. I then suggest further routes of research, including: an increased visibility of translations in academic disciplines, through publishing books and reviews; further study on the translations of Argentine literature into an Anglo-American context and the ‘decolonized’ effect this could have; and an update of Feminist Translation Studies to expand it to Transgender Translation Studies. I finally suggest that the uncertain and unsettling effect brought about by translation in its creation of multiple worlds should be embraced as a way of reading and writing inauthentically.

Le travail suivant tend à retracer la photographie du roman insulaire contemporain. En analysant le thème du retour dans certaines oeuvres sardes, siciliennes, corses et majorquines, nous voudrions souligner en particulier les points de ruptures avec le siècle passé voire remettre en question le concept d'île. / The following work aims at offering an overview of the contemporary insular novel. In particular, by analyzing the theme of the re-emergence in some works of Sardinia, Sicily, Corsica and Majorca, it intends to point out some divergencies from the tradition of the last century, which lead to questioning the concept is “island” itself. / Il seguente lavoro vuole tracciare una fotografia del romanzo insulare contemporaneo. In particolare, analizzando il tema del ritorno in alcune opere di Sardegna, Sicilia, Corsica e Maiorca, vorrebbe evidenziare i punti di rottura col secolo passato, sino a mettere in discus-sione il concetto stesso di ‘isola’.

In this thesis, 41 years of bright sunshine duration (SD) data of 192 meteorological stations in Turkey were analyzed. The main objective is to determine the trends of SD data and the importance of such analyses is the high correlation between SD data and solar irradiation reaching the surface of the earth. Because of the missing value problems, only the data set for 72 stations were examined. After imputing missing values of these stations by expectation maximization algorithm, to test the homogeneity Kruskal Wallis test (K-W) and Wald-Wolfowitz runs test for randomness were applied. Only 36 of the stations passed from these homogeneity tests therefore, trend analysis was carried out for these locations. To exclude the data sets which did not pass from the tests was important to reach more accurate trend analysis of the data in hand. Results of the trend analysis showed that the change of SD over the 41 years are in agreement with the globally identified surface solar radiation dimming and brightening time periods all over the world. The dimming period is mainly between the years 1970 and about 1990 while the brightening period is from about 1990 to 2010. The yearly averages of SD data sets of 27 locations out of 36, for the years in the dimming period, were in a good agreement with the global dimming trends. However, for the brightening period the agreement was not as clear as it was in the dimming period. Nevertheless, during the brightening period, the data set of most of the locations had zero trends or noticeably reduced rates of decrease of SD. The dimming might be attributed to the increase in air pollution and this might be an indication of human induced climate change. Larger amounts of negative trends during winter months supported this conclusion. However, to reach a concrete conclusion more accurate of different climatic parameters should be analyzed. Satellites images may be helpful for further clarifications of such conclusions on climate change issues.