Mandelstam's reputation as a poet is now firmly established, but his critical and 'creative' prose (i.e. that which is based on autobiographical experience, rather than literary or historical subjects) has received little attention. The purpose of this thesis is to assess the nature of Mandelstam's creative prose which deserves more than the superficial approach thus far devoted to it. Egipetskaya marka is chosen as the focal point of this discussion since its position in Mandelstam's oeuvre is rather special. It waste only creative work to emerge during the years 1925-1930, when the pressures of material and physical conditions, combined with Mandelstam’s sense of isolation in the new Soviet society, had the effect of 'drying up' his poetic voice. Egipetskaya marka reflects Mandelstam’s state of mind during the 'silence'. In essence it is an attempt to define his position in the new society. Since he considered himself to be primarily a poet this definition involves a concern with artistic and especially with poetic creativity. An appreciation of Egipetskaya marka can therefore assist in the understanding of Mandelstam's work in general, The often very indirect allusions to creativity in Egipetskaya marka are concerned overwhelmingly with the nineteenth century. Mandelstam considered the influence of this period to be pernicious to human life and artistic creation alike, and his persistent allusions to it in Egipetskaya marka reveal how deeply disturbed he was at the direction in which Soviet society was moving, Egipetskaya marka is analysed in terms of characters, geographical and historical settings, central themes and structure, and this analysis is conducted with constant reference to Mandelstam's poetry and other prose. This comparative approach is doubly beneficial, for it highlights certain thematic and stylistic features in the other work and facilitates an appreciation of the difficult and intriguing product of the 'silence'.

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The purpose of this study is twofold: firstly to describe the views of Ramus on communication and in particular on the qualities of different kinds of discourse and secondly to compare these views with those of the theorists of the Pleiade. In the first chapter we shall see something of the life and works of Ramus (briefly, because this has been more than adequately treated by Walter Ong who bases himself on the contemporary biographiesq especially that of Nancel) and then the points of contact between Ramus and the various members of the P1eiade and some other associated writers and critics. The information we have on the subject of the relations between Ramus and the Pleiade is not extensive, but this fact is Significant in itselfy and corrects the commonly accepted view that Ramus was a close friend and follower of the P1eiade. The second chapter is devoted to a discussion of the main outlines of what has come to be known above all since the appearance of Grahame Castor's book which bears this title as P1eiade Poetics. The subsequent chapters deal with the same questions of literary and artistic theory as did the theorists of the P1eiade. They set out Ramus' views in great detail and then make a brief comparison between them and those of the P1eiade. The topics to be considered are: the relation of art to nature imitation, clarity and obscurity, truth and falsity, invention and disposition, some general questions of style and especially, plain and figurative writing and finally the relation between logic rhetoric and poetry.

This thesis is a study of the development of the blasom poétique in the sixteenth century. We have focussed our attention on the blason anatomique - a subsection of this main genre - and have tried to demonstrate that the blason anatomique does fit in with the blasom poétique, which itself forms part of a French literary tradition with roots stretching back to the fourteenth century, and which continues into the seventeenth century and beyond. The key tithe genre lies in its descriptive, interpretative character, inherited from its heraldic ancestry. The first section of the thesis examines the early blasom poétique. Chapter I investigates its heraldic origins, and the importance of its etymological meaning, denoting the description and interpretation of a painted shield. Chapters II indie examine the twin influences of medieval French poetry, and Italian petrarchism upon the blazons anatomiques. The central section (Chapters IT - VI) discusses the anatomical blasons and contreblasons, reassessing in particular the chronology of individual poems on the evidence afforded by recently rediscovered editions which have upset the previous opinion that these poems were produced only slowly, over a period of years Chapter VI underlines the argument that the blason is not an isolated genre, discussing the importance of the iconography of the blason anatomique, and its kinship with similar illustrated poetry of the mid-century - emblems, bestiaries or calendriers. The third section (Chapters VII - IX) traces the later development of the genre, after the anatomical blasonso In the later half of the sixteenth century two distinct branches of the blason emerge – the sonnet-blason perpetuates the characteristics of the anatomical blason, while the longer hymne-blason reverts to the universality of subject of the pre- anatomical blason.In conclusion we have emphasised that far from dying out, the genre continues to flourish - in such modified guises - throughout the early seventeenth century.

In this thesis Samuel Beckett's novels are examined in chronological order with the intention of tracing the developments in form that his fiction has generated over the years. A chapter is devoted to each of the six major novels: the early English works, 'Murphy' and 'Watt', the three novels of the French Trilogy, 'Molloy', 'Malone meurt' and 'L'innommable', and the later French novel, 'Comment c'est'. The novels are analysed in detail from a structural point of view with particular reference to the self-conscious creative process. The novelist's approach to the problems of creating a fictional world, its characters, its action, its organisation, is studied with the object of revealing the significance of the resulting form. The conclusion attempts to relate Beckett's modifications of the novel form to his concept of art. We find that art, for Beckett, is not so much a means of expressing his vision as that vision itself; art is a way of exploring reality, of coming to terms with the human condition and probing to the heart of self. Art is an approach to life. While his prose fiction continues to follow the inward road to the core of self, we find that, once the outer world recedes beyond the range of imaginative evocation, the structure of the novel can no longer be achieved.

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Since 1987, Linda Lê has composed a corpus (twelve novels, three short-story collections, two compilations of essays, an autobiography) that displays a marked preoccupation with exploring the endless possibilities of literary invention. This interest is manifest most immediately in her fictional depictions of lexically-obsessed protagonists and authors at work and further developed through her creative searching as a reader/writer, which sees her crafting a variety of genres, narratorial configurations, and literary references in her own texts. This thesis addresses the constructive potential of literature figured within Lê's oeuvre by drawing upon the notion of 'l'être des lettres', which expresses the diverse ways in which letters - referring to both a broader literary canon and the solitary activity of reading/writing - contribute to the formulation of Lê's diverse corpus as well as to the elaboration of the literary subject (either Lê as an author or her lexically-obsessed protagonists). The lexical slippage between the terms l'êtrel lettres suggests the transformative possibilities that arise when the subject and the literary converge. 'L'être' will refer to the various modalities of being constructed by and through 'lettres' in Lê's work and that this thesis will examine across three areas: the development of Lê's authorial 'être', or identity, as a result of reading/writing; her thematic representations of the impact of literature upon her protagonists' very being and bodies; and the effects of Lê's preoccupation with the compositional process on the creation, or 'coming to being', of her oeuvre. Departing from the primarily post-colonial and psychoanalytical interpretations of Lê's texts that suggest Lê uses literature to articulate aspects of her own history, this thesis adopts a corpus-based approach to Lê's oeuvre in order to posit reading/writing as a productive force allowing for the composition of separate and distinct literary personae and forms that, beyond her biography, reflect Lê's authorial preoccupations with exploring her craft.

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