Longtemps utilisé avec réticence, intensément débattu par les théoriciens, le terme « postmoderne » abonde aujourd'hui, depuis les discours spécialisés jusque dans les sphères de la vie quotidienne, témoignant de la nécessité de penser une notion nouvelle, plus adéquate aux transformations qui ont affecté le monde contemporain. Quelles que soient les différentes perspectives adoptées par les théoriciens pour définir la postmodernité et débrouiller les liens qu'elle entretient avec les notions de postmodernisme, modernité et modernisme, toutes observent le même constat que, depuis la fin de la Seconde Guerre Mondiale, les sociétés occidentales sont le théâtre de profondes mutations culturelles et d'une crise généralisée de l'identité qui elle-même s'accompagne d'une véritable crise épistémologique. Dans un contexte de redéfinition de la notion de culture, dont les Cultural Studies ont mis au jour la nécessité d'étudier toutes les manifestations, qu'elles soient issues de la high culture ou de la pop culture, voire de la mass culture, les fictions contemporaines (littéraires, cinématographiques et audiovisuelles) témoignent, en même temps qu'elles les analysent, des problématiques qui agitent nos sociétés occidentales postmodernes et hypermodernes. Dans cette optique, étudier les diverses manifestations culturelles permet de discerner les différents modèles culturels (« cultural patterns ») qui fondent les identités individuelles et collectives. / Long been used with reluctance, intensively discussed by theorists, the term “postmodern” is now pervasive, from specialized discourses to the very spheres of everyday life, testifying that it is necessary to think a new notion, more appropriate to the changes which have affected the contemporary world. Whatever are the different perspectives adopted by theorists to define postmodernity and to clarify its links to postmodernism, modernity and modernism, they all notice that, since the World War Two, western societies are the stage of deep cultural mutations and of a widespread identity crisis, which is itself accompanied by a genuine epistemological crisis. In a context of redefining the concept of culture, which Cultural Studies showed the necessity to study all the expressions, whether they are from high culture, pop culture, or even mass culture, contemporary fictions (literary, cinematographic, audiovisual) express, in the same time analyzing it, the issues of our western, postmodern and hypermodern, societies. According to that point, studying the various cultural manifestations helps discerning the cultural patterns that ground the individual and collective identities.

As literary modernism was emerging in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, a number of its most important figures and precursors began to talk about their own writing as a kind of starvation. My doctoral thesis considers the reasons for and development of this previously little-explored trope, arguing that hunger becomes a focal point for modernism’s complex relationship to aesthetic autonomy. I identify a specific tradition of writers, beginning in the nineteenth century with proto-modernists such as Melville and Rimbaud, flourishing in the pivotal figures of Knut Hamsun, Franz Kafka and Samuel Beckett, and expiring with modernist-influenced contemporary writers such as Paul Auster and J. M. Coetzee. Although these writers are avid readers and devoted disciples of one another, mine is the first study to read them alongside one another as a coherent literary tradition. Reading them in this way, I am able to trace the development of the ‘art of hunger’ as a locus for a crisis in aesthetic autonomy that spans the twentieth century. I develop this line of argument in two phases. In the first, I trace the emergence of an art of hunger out of modernist engagements with philosophical aesthetics and its notions of aesthetic autonomy. Readings of the “art of hunger” in Herman Melville, Arthur Rimbaud, Knut Hamsun, Franz Kafka and Samuel Beckett’s post-war work reveal that starvation carries autonomy to an extreme and hyper-literal endpoint, revealing both its desirability as an aesthetic ideal and the impossibility of art’s complete autonomy from the body, the market or the social dimensions of language. In the second phase, I consider how this trope has animated later twentieth-century engagements with modernism. For authors writing in the aftermath of modernism, hunger provides a way of considering new complications to aesthetic autonomy in the light of both their debt to modernism and their specific historical circumstances. In this light, I consider three different extensions of the modernist art of hunger: its absorption into high formalism in Beckett’s late prose; its collapse in the face of an emerging concern with the social in Paul Auster; and its transformation into an ethical aesthetics of food taboos, restriction and asceticism in J. M. Coetzee.

The present study elaborates a poetics of cross-cultural writing. Its primary theoretical reference is the ‘cross-cultural poetics’ (poétique de la relation) of Edouard Glissant: a set of poetic tropes and narrative structural strategies that he identifies in the mixed cultural setting of the Caribbean, in Le Discours antillais. My thesis argues that if these poetic strategies are indeed a response to specific social, cultural and political situations, then if analogous situations were considered elsewhere, we might expect an analogous poetics to arise. Taking North Africa as an example context, and specifically the novels of the Algerians Kateb Yacine, Assia Djebar, Mohammed Dib, and the Sudanese Tayeb Salih, I argue that these writers’ complex poetic strategies engage with – indeed, help to articulate – analogous socio-political concerns arising in their homelands. The formal poetical analysis of these authors is based on several key thematic tropes and structural strategies that Glissant advocates in his cross-cultural poetics. My five chapters consider roots and origins, living landscapes, silence and screams, literary opacity, and structural polyphony. They also develop a new critical vocabulary to describe how Glissant’s poetical strategies might take form at a close textual level; my analysis reveals a complex, and reciprocal, relationship between poetic expression and socio-political context. Glissant’s work is therefore shown to be more broadly relevant, but the founding tenets of his theory are also interrogated and questioned; the comparison with a North African setting entails a (re)assessment of the underlying conceptions of Glissant’s poetics – of the implicit logic by which he connects poetic form to social, cultural and political factors. These factors, for Glissant, also display a clear overlap with the (post)colonial; in studying cross-culturality, the postcolonial, and the poetics engendered by their overlapping, my thesis presents a specific critical focus for the postcolonial literary field.

This thesis compares the interaction of philosophy and literature in Plato and Lucretius. It argues that Plato influenced Lucretius directly, and that this connection increases the interest in comparing them. In the Introduction, I propose that a work of philosophical literature, such as the De Rerum Natura or a Platonic dialogue, cannot be fully understood or appreciated unless both the literary and the philosophical elements are taken into account. In Chapter 1, I examine the tradition of literature and philosophy in which Plato and Lucretius were writing. I argue that the historical evidence increases the likelihood that Lucretius read Plato. Through consideration of parallels between the DRN and the dialogues, I argue that Plato discernibly influenced the DRN. In Chapter 2, I extract a theory of philosophical literature from the Phaedrus, which prompts us to appreciate it as a work of literary art inspired by philosophical knowledge of the Forms. I then analyse Socrates’ ‘prelude’ at Republic IV.432 as an example of how the dialogue’s philosophical and literary teaching works in practice. In Chapters 3 and 4, I consider the treatment of natural philosophy in the Timaeus and DRN II. The ending of the Timaeus is arguably an Aristophanically inspired parody of the zoogonies of the early natural philosophers. This links it to other instances of parody in Plato’s dialogues. DRN II.333-380 involves an argument about atomic variety based on Epicurus, but also, through the image of the world ‘made by hand’, alludes polemically to the intelligently designed world of the Timaeus. Through an examination of Plato’s and Lucretius’ polemical adaptation of their predecessors, I argue that even the most seemingly technical passages of the DRN and the Timaeus still depend upon literary techniques for their full effect. The Conclusion reflects briefly on future paths of investigation.

La thèse traite de l'évolution de l'écriture du voyage à l'ère de la mondialisation, notion qui comprend l’accélération et la banalisation des moyens de transport et l'interconnexion planétaire par les nouveaux moyens de communication. Comment les nouveaux modes de voyage ont influencé la pratique de l'espace d'une part, et la perception de l'exotisme et de l'altérité d'autre part ? La profusion des images de l'Ailleurs fait-elle du voyage un déjà-vu ou la découverte reste possible ? C'est à ces questions que cette recherche apporte un début de réponse. Le corpus comprend Les mots étrangers de l'écrivain grec Vassilis Alexakis,. Le carrousel sicilien de l'écrivain anglais Lawrence Durrell, Le jour des morts de l'écrivain néerlandais Cee Nooteboom, La montagne volante de l'écrivain autrichien Christoph Ransmayr et le Ravissement de Britney Spears de l'écrivain français Jean Roli. Dans un premier temps, cette recherche comparatiste aborde l'évolution formelle à la fois synchronique et diachronique . Ensuite l'étude s'interroge si les motivations du voyage contemporain ainsi que la création de l'imaginaire par le biais des nouvelles technologies. La recherche se penche sur les étapes importantes du voyage (le départ, le passage des frontières, l'arrivée, le retour) ainsi que sur différents modes de voyage (tourisme, voyage, quête, errance, globe-trotting) afin d'identifier les évolutions. La question de l'exotisme et de l'altérité ainsi que celle du post-colonial sont abordée. Cette étude porte également sur l'exotisme spatial et l'archipélisation du monde. Enfin, sont abordés les exotismes nouveaux, comme l'exotisme de proximité, l'eisotisme et l'exotisme virtuel. / The thesis studies the evolution of the travel writing in the globalization era. By globalization we mean the speeding up and the banalization of transports and also the planetary interconnexion due to the new technologies. How the new travel types (tourism, globe-trotting) influence the practice of space in one hand, and the perception of the exoticism and the othemess on the other hand ? ls travel a déjà-vu because of the great number of images of the whole world, or discovery is still possible ? This research gives some answers to these questions. The corpus is composed of Foreign Words by the Greek writer Vassilis Alexakis, The Sicilian Carousel by the British writer Lawrence Durrell,Ali Soul's Day by the Dutch writer Cees Nooteboom , n Flying Mountain by the Austrian writer Christoph Ransmayr and Britney Spears' Kidnapping by the French writer Jean Rolin. This comparative literature research studies the evolution of the form, synchronie as diachronie. Then this study examines the motivations of nowdays travel and the creation of the imaginary through new technologies. The research reviews the important moments of the travel (departure, border crossing, arriva retum) and the different types of travel (tourism, quest travel, roaming, globe-troning) in order to identify the evolutions. This study concerns the questions of exoticism and otherness and also of the postcolonial. lt is also about the exoticism of different spaces and the « archipelization (fragmentation) of the world. Finally, the question of new exoticisms, like proximity exoticism, eisoticism and virtual exoticism, is approached.

Also submitted by the author as part of application for candidature for the degree of Doctor of Letters, University of Adelaide, School of Humanities, Discipline of European Studies and Linguistics, 2006. / Includes bibliographical references and index. / 564 p. ; / Title page, contents and abstract only. The complete thesis in print form is available from the University Library.

"Die Geschichte der ‚unschuldig verfolgten Frau‘ wurde im Mittelalter und darüber hinaus vielfach tradiert. Die Erzählung der ‚Leipziger Kleinepikhandschrift‘ Ms 1279 aus dem 15. Jahrhundert liefert eine Variante, die Crescentia als Heilige und Ärztin stilisiert. Integriert in eine literarische Sammelhandschrift vermittelt die Erzählung Handlungsanleitung auf der Ebene des sensus moralis".

"Bombay is the future of urban civilization on the planet. God help us" (Suketu Mehta) Mit dieser Prophezeiung verweist Suketu Mehta in seiner diasporischen Reisereportage Maximum City: Bombay Lost and Found (2004) nicht nur auf die wachsende ökonomische Bedeutung der Millionen-Metropole Bombays, sondern thematisiert auch die 'degenerierten' Lebensformen außerhalb oder 'unterhalb' des stolzen monumentalen Raumes der wohlhabendsten postkolonialen 'neuen' Metropole. In ihrer Antrittsvorlesung am 28.04.2010 eruiert und verwendet Prof. Dr. Cecile Sandten, Inhaberin der Professur für Anglistische Literaturwissenschaft, die Begriffe "Metroglorification", "Diffuse Urbanism", das Postkoloniale oder den Palimpsestraum mit Bezg auf die so genannten "neuen" Metropolen. Die Veranstaltung beginnt um 19 Uhr im Hörsaalgebäude an der Reichenhainer Straße 90, Raum 113. Im Zentrum der Antrittsvorlesung stehen literarische und mediale Repräsentationen des Postkolonialen im urbanen Raum in den so genannten 'neuen Metropolen' wie Bangalore, Bombay, Delhi, Hongkong, Johannisburg, Kapstadt oder Lagos. In ihrer Vorlesung begreift Prof. Dr. Cecile Sandten die 'neuen Metropolen' als Palimpsesträume, in denen kosmopolitische bzw. globale, gleichsam individuelle und/oder kollektive Identitätsentwürfe auf vielschichtigen Bedeutungsebenen verhandelt werden. Diese Verhandlungen gelingen bzw. misslingen wiederum in Abhängigkeit von der Wechselwirksamkeit performativer und narrativer (Re-)Inszenierungen kolonialer Geschichte(n) und deren postkolonialen Transformationen und Dekonstruktionen. Vor dem Hintergrund urbaner Eigengeschichte(n) und exil-urbaner Fremdgeschichte(n), wie sie z.B. aus der Sicht von neuen Migrantinnen und Migranten oder (politischen) Flüchtlingen erzählt werden, wird dieses Phänomen anhand einer Auswahl an englischsprachigen literarischen und medialen Texten analysiert. Untersucht werden dabei die ungleichen Machtverhältnisse, die im postkolonialen (Stadt)Raum vorherrschen, als auch die vielfältigen Repräsentationen der metropolitanen Unterwelt auch im Sinne des 'Liminalraums', wie sich dieser im Zusammenhang mit z.B. illegalen Migrantinnen und Migranten, Slum-Bewohnern, Kriminellen und in Bezug auf korrupte Regierungen darstellt. Weiterhin soll durch die verschiedenen literarischen und medialen Protagonisten auch das benjaminsche Konzept des "Flaneurs" – in seiner Neuformierung hin zum 'postkolonialen Flaneur' – betrachtet werden.

Notre étude se propose d’analyser les enjeux et les formes de la représentation d’une figure d’auteur dans la fiction narrative comique du XVIe au XVIIIe siècle en Europe. Cette figure, extérieure à la diégèse ou appartenant au personnel narratif, exhibe un discours d’auteur, mime un dialogue avec le lecteur, instaurant une communication narrative fictive avec le lecteur. Cette communication apparaît paradoxale, elle représente une parole orale, problématique dans un texte écrit, et la présence réelle de l’auteur est insituable dans le texte, la figure auctoriale appartenant déjà à l’univers fictionnel. Le dialogue avec le lecteur repose sur une fiction de présence et sur un dispositif rhétorique séducteur dont les enjeux sont pragmatiques. Le récit est donné comme porteur d’enseignements. Il thématise une formation du héros souvent sujette à caution, dont le lecteur doit démêler les enjeux. La structure comique du récit et de l’énonciation contribue à une mystification du lecteur, appelé à interpréter un texte ludique, à la fois comique et sérieux, qui refuse de livrer son sens de façon univoque. Du XVIe au XVIIIe siècle se mettent en place, en relation avec leur contexte d’écriture, les formes d’un genre sério-comique, qui repose sur la parodie et le détournement des codes et des formes de la littérature contemporaine, sur l’instauration d’une attitude intellectuelle ironique et critique et d’une communication fictive avec le lecteur. Nous analyserons les formes de l’ambiguïté énonciative et narrative chez Rabelais, chez l’auteur anonyme du Lazarillo, chez Mateo Alemán, Cervantès, Charles Sorel, Grimmelshausen, Marivaux et Henry Fielding. / Our study intends to analyse the stakes and forms of a figure of author’s representation in the comical narrative fiction in Europe from 16th to 18th century. Such figure, either external to the diegesis or belonging to the narrative characters, produces the speech of an author, mimes a dialogue and by doing so, establishes an imaginary narrative communication with the reader. This kind of communication seems paradoxical. It represents oral speech, which is problematic in a written text; the actual presence of the author cannot be placed within the text whereas the auctorial figure already belongs to the fictional world. The dialogue with the author is set on an imaginary presence and on a seducing rhetorical device with pragmatic stakes. Lessons are expected to be drawn from this narrative. It topicalizes the forming of the hero, which is often questionable, and it is up to the reader to untangle the stakes. The comical structure of the narrative and of the enunciation contributes toward a deception of the reader who is expected to give an interpretation of an entertaining text which is both comical and serious, and which refuses to deliver its meaning in a univocal way. From 16th to 18th century forms of a serio-comic gender are established within their writing context. They rely on parody and diversion of the forms and codes of contemporary literature, on the introduction of an ironic and critical intellectual attitude as well as an imaginary interaction with the reader. We will analyse the different forms of enunciative and narrative ambiguity in Rabelais, in the anonymous author of Lazarillo to Mateo Alemán, Cervantès, Charles Sorel, Grimmelshausen, Marivaux to Henry Fielding.

‘The Ethics, Aesthetics and Politics of Carlyle’s French Revolution’ examines the work of Thomas Carlyle as a crucial aesthetic intervention in the modern reception of the French Revolution in Europe. It interrogates the prevalent critical constructions of Carlyle’s work and finds them to proceed predominantly from the Whig historical agenda, structured around such key nineteenth-century concepts as utilitarianism and civilisational and moral progress. Within this critical framework, Carlyle’s largely conservative cultural stance and Christian spirituality are hardly allowed any creative potential and, ever since the famous fabrication of James Anthony Froude who depicted Carlyle as ‘a Calvinist without the theology’, they have been perceived as artistically-stunted, irrational, and out of touch with the nineteenth-century political, social and cultural realities. In examining Carlyle’s involvement with German Romanticism on the one hand, and with contemporary British periodical press on the other, this thesis proposes a more comprehensive reading of Carlyle’s politics, aesthetics and spirituality in an attempt to represent his radically open, catholic and indeed cosmopolitan artistic agenda which taps into the Scottish Enlightenment concept of rationality, Calvinist scepticism towards nineteenth-century progressivism and acute perception of evil in this world, and post-Burkean Romantic aesthetics of the sublime. We chart the aesthetic movement from Carlyle’s early dialogue with Schiller and Goethe to ‘The Diamond Necklace’, Carlyle’s first artistic rendition of the French pre-revolutionary scene, delivered as a (Gothic) moral tale and anticipating The French Revolution (a historical work that uniquely employs the Gothic genre within historical narrative, arguably unparalleled in British post-Burkean Romanticism). The critical reception of The French Revolution in Britain is examined, with special attention paid to the highly unfavourable review by Herman Merivale in The Edinburgh Review, in order to challenge the Whig line in Carlylean criticism and to expose the fundamental artistic, political and moral disagreement between Carlyle and Merivale. Carlyle’s Calvinist stance sees both Merivale’s and Thomas Babington Macaulay’s facile exorcism of the categories of good and evil from their historical agendas as irrational given the recent French terror (which, in Carlyle’s reading, released its demons precisely through such a botched ethical deal). Similarly, I highlight Carlyle’s close dialogue with John Stuart Mill both in their correspondence, and in the publications in the London and Westminster Review, while I argue that this intellectual exchange is crucial for the reading of The French Revolution as a text challenging Mill’s utilitarianism, and written within the institutional framework of the contemporary periodical press. Finally, Carlyle is seen to make capital of the concepts of Gothic and sublime, introduced by Edmund Burke and popularised by the Anti-Jacobin Review in Britain, by applying them directly to the French mob in search of a new spiritual tongue for his times (a move that even a nineteenth-century radical liberal thinker such as Mill sees as politically, if not artistically, far too subversive and revolutionary). Creative non-conclusiveness and playful deconstruction of the prevalent post-revolutionary narratives of 1789 characterise Carlyle’s deeply spiritual and artistically-sophisticated text, which, in an orthodox Christian reading, rejoices in the messy, dark and complex residue of human history, through which Christian providence acts in mysterious and unexpected ways that do not allow for any simple, de-mythologised reading.