The subject of this study is the fantastic Voyage in French Literature from 1662 to 1789, that is to say a number of works of prose-fiction in which can clearly be recognised a pattern of voyage and discovery, but in which the author (in spite of a somotimes ambiguous attitude) encourages the reader's disbelief in the characters and the adventures recounted. This study therefore aims at being complementary to those of Geoffrey Atkinson on the Extraordinary Voyage. The Fantastic Voyage was felt as an entity by contemporaries, in spite of a certain confusion of issues in the classification of fiction. Its sources are numerous, for it is one of the earliest types of fiction; but the genre underwent during the seventeenth century a definite twist which increased its dependence on contemporary philosophy, either of a rationalistic or of an occultist type. Nevertheless, the existing pattern could also be applied to literary criticism (of an author or a genre) to the satire of manners, or to the spreading of revolutionary ideas; its study therefore has a sociological as well as a literary interest. After an examination of the various types of fantastic Voyages (determined either by the setting or by the philosophical attitude of the author), there is a summary of the salient features of the genre. Finally, there is a bibliography of the works studied within the period considered, which helps one to appreciate the popularity of this type of fiction.

This study sets out to consider the terms used to designate buildings and agglomerations in Old French literary texts dated from c. 1150 to c. 1300. It begins with a definition of the field of vocabulary under review and a chronological enumeration of the texts from which our observations are made. There follows a discussion of various former and current theories on the possible semantic treatment of such a field of vocabulary. It is proposed that the field be considered as a structured whole; the units making up this structure are identified from textual examples, and the different relationships obtaining between the units are defined and illustrated. An onomasiological study presents all the terms which may occur within each unit, making special reference to their relative frequency, meaningfulness and stylistic nuance. Next, treating each term individually, there follows a semasiological study. This consists of commentaries on the conception of each term hitherto held and on the new conceptions which result from the closer definition made possible by our structural approach. Consequent lacunae in the Old French dictionaries are pointed out. The advantages of this kind of approach are next discussed, and the possible practical application of this study illustrated by means of a number of critical essays on the defined field of vocabulary in individual texts. The aim of this thesis is to present this section of Old French vocabulary as a whole and in relief, and our claim is that it will enable compilers of dictionaries and of glossaries to individual texts to assess each term in the field against the background of a structured and clearly dimensioned whole.

This thesis traces the history and development of the literary genre known as the satirical eulogy or paradoxical encomium, which flourished in France during the Renaissance. The first chapter investigates the origins of the genre and its widespread use in Greek and Latin literature. Particular attention is paid to Lucian, whose influence was important when the genre was revived. Between the end of antiquity and the fifteenth century there is virtually no trace of it, and so the next chapter passes straight to Erasmus' Moriae Encomium. A section on other, less famous Neo-Latin eulogies is followed by one on the various Italian manifestations of the genre. The second part of the thesis attempts to show how these diverse ingredients were combined in different ways at different stages to make the French satirical and ironical encomia. There had always been three main types of eulogy, each typified by one of Lucian's works. These categories were, broadly speaking, the praise of a vice, the praise of a disease or physical defect, and that of an unpleasant or insignificant animal or insect. French Renaissance eulogies also tended to fall into one of these categories and are therefore discussed in three groups. Of especial importance throughout are the numerous other literary forms, such as the 'blason' the 'hymne-blason', the epitaph and the paradox which modified and were modified by the classical genre. The conclusion suggests, tentatively, some of the reasons for what the thesis has shown to be a European, rather than a purely French phenomenon, the rise of a genre so popular as to appeal to writers of genius as dissimilar in temperament as Erasmus, Rabelais and Ronsard.

The aim of this study is to examine the life and work of Filippo de'Nerli and to see what this reveals about the politics society and historiography of his time. The first part of the study is biographical, tracing Nerli's involvement with politics and administration at various stages of his career. His period as governor of Modena is seen in the context of the war of the League of Cognac, the part which he played in cultural activities in Florence is considered, and in particular an attempt is made to analyse the changes which took place in the role of the Florentine ottimati in the mid sixteenth century as a result of the establishment of Medici absolutism. The second part of the study is devoted to an examination of Nerli's history of Florence. The sources of his work, its nature and the extent to which it served as a source for his contemporaries are considered and Nerli's relations with his fellow historians at Cosimo's court and in the Florentine Academy are discussed. Finally an attempt is made to reach certain tentative general conclusions about the nature and methods of historical writing in sixteenth century Florence. The aim throughout is to place Nerli in his correct context and this reveals him as a typical representative of his class who, for that reason, is a valuable subject for a study such as this.

Cette thèse vise à rendre compte de la perception de la folie au XIXe siècle à travers l’analyse de textes mettant en scène un narrateur fou durant l’âge d’or de l’aliénisme (entre 1830 et 1870). Elle montre dans quelle mesure la littérature expose les différents discours qui la définissent et sert de plateforme d’expression au contre-pouvoir. Dans la mesure où il s’agit de concevoir la folie dans une perspective discursive, l’analyse a bénéficié des travaux de Foucault sur le domaine et contribue à l’avancée de la critique en privilégiant l’analyse littéraire de la représentation du fou et de son discours. Tout d’abord, l’analyse de La Fée aux Miettes de Nodier et de Louis Lambert de Balzac expose le discours aliéniste en rapport avec celui du fou, en considérant ce dernier comme un être non seulement malade, mais aussi sublime et exceptionnel. Le second chapitre montre comment les narrateurs de Mémoires d’un fou de Flaubert et Aurélia de Nerval rejettent la conception dominante de la folie en lui substituant leur propre conception, poétique et sublime, et en s’attaquant au terme lui-même, l’un par la multiplication de ses acceptions, l’autre par son éviction. Enfin, le troisième chapitre analyse Un Martyre dans une maison de fous de Karl-des-Monts, Mémoires d’une aliénée d’Hersilie Rouy et Un Beau-frère d’Hector Malot. Dans ces récits d’individus internés à l’asile, l’analyse dégage les moyens stylistiques par lesquels les narrateurs cherchent à invalider leur diagnostic de folie et dénoncer les défauts de l’aliénisme, tout en préservant leur individualité de la catégorisation médicale. La thèse montre comment la représentation de la folie et le discours du fou en tant que narrateur servent autant à la création littéraire qu’à l’établissement d’une conception de la folie alternative à celle proposée par l’aliénisme.

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French émigré literature is both under-explored and under-valued by scholars. This thesis aims to rehabilitate the female émigré novel within its nineteenth-century landscape, putting to the fore its originality and pertinent contribution to contemporary movements such as Romanticism and the realist novel. Recent work has unearthed the émigré-specific way of narrating the Revolution; yet no clear definition has yet been established. This thesis defines what the émigré novel is based on the dichotomy for novelists of having experienced the exile first-hand or not. The memoirs and novels of three émigré noblewomen, Madame de Boigne, de Souza and de Duras, who all spent a decade in London during the 1790s, are scrutinized for this purpose. Three angles of research frame this comparative analysis: the search for the genre of the émigré novel, or how several genres intertwine in this ‘sub-genre’; trauma of the emigration as the core characteristic of the novels; and gender questions, or how the émigrée is using her stay in Britain as inspiration to convey more genuine relationships for post-revolutionary French society. This thesis goes against the idea that to interpret a novel based on the life of the author is reductive: instead it rediscovers the creative potential of the autobiographical which the émigrées chose to inject in their fiction works. Likewise, it establishes that the trauma of the Revolution and exile is visible in the selected émigré novels in the way it is camouflaged, enhanced and fictionalised, which constitutes their originality and distinguishes them from non-authentic émigré fictions. Finally this thesis considers the gender modernisation asked for in the plots, based on the fact that the selected novelists had enjoyed more freedom of action, uprooted from French social etiquette and within British society.

The first section studies the history of the conflict of the Church and the French Republic which provides the political context of Bloy's work. It analyses the statements and forms of the early polemic articles in which he expressed his rejection of the mediocrity and banality of contemporary Republican society, from which religious idealism provided a refuge. Of the religious options available, Bloy rejected those which seemed to him no more than compromise with secular ideals - Liberal Catholicism, or the uncritical orthodoxjr of the mass of Catholic society, which reflected all the vices of the secular state - and gave his adherence to intransigent Catholicism. The traditionalist philosophy on which this was ba.sed confirmed his own denunciation of the ha.bits of secular society and offered a new context in which the individual could create for himself a heroic existence within this society. This would take the form of a morally responsible engagement in practical experience (necessarily ascetic, given that the context must by definition negate present values). The justification and the motivation for the heroic option were found in c, revision and renewal of the full dogmatic structure of traditional Catholicism. The second section considers the importance of the dogmatic structure in Bloy's work. Like the Catholic hierarchy at this period, he became increasingly absolute in defensive response to positivist attacks on dogma (the Catholic supernatural). This can be seen with particular force in the campaign against Zola which he inherited from Barbey d'Aurevilly. The supernatural realm was presented bv tho intransigents as a transcendent order which restored to human personality the dignity which had been denied by materialism. Bloy defended by reference to this the concepts of human freewill and responsibility and the validity of human reason which acknowledges its ontological source in God. Despite his frecuent appeals to the authority of intransigent philosophy (chiefly that of Blanc de Saint-Bonnet and Ernest Hello) his defence was not intellectually convincing, but one which relied on specious rhetoric to present its own case and crude polemic to discredit its opponents. In an attempt to establish the depths of human mind and experience, he appealed also to the example of the mystics - the Christological mysticism of Emmerick, Pascal, Angela di Foligno, Faber and Hello, and the via negativa of Dionysius the Areopagite. Heroic suffering, which denied the values of this life, was the basis for the accession to Truth (defined as intimate knowledge of God achieved through contemplation, initiated by God alone). Bloy's novels described the human condition which this implied; the truly conscious man, who is the man of religious convictions, must live in contradiction to the secular world, with all his forces and energies deriving from and tending to the supernatural. Unlike many of his contemporaries, Bloy can sometimes be seen to acknowledge the unsatisfactory nature of this division. A study of his treatment of the symbols encountered on the unitive way, compared with thr-t of the Areopagite, shows that his ascetic renunciations arc not always wholehearted. Much of Bloy's apologetic is based on the reinstatement of the dogmatic images by which Catholicism represents the supernatural. In this he followed a movement already present in the Church which recognised the appeal of the image to the imagination and emotions, which was more effective than one to discursive reason. He rejected the symbolist interpretation which reduced the specificity of dogma to the abstract moral truth it enclosed. He restored the traditional formulae expressing God's providential intervention in human history: on the general plane, introducing into history a sense of coherence and finality, and on the particular, using the contradictory nature of the image to carry his own ironic challenge to contemporary values. (The movement between the two moments of Fall and Second Coming is used to press for moral revival in individuals and society, and the need for national and moral unity to effect this revival. The imminent apocalyptic catastrophe is a vehicle for specific attacks on avaricious landlords and wartime profiteers as well as on general religious apathy.) Bloy's exegesis of the Catholic image includes references to other contemporary interpretations more familiar to his readers, as in his relation of the Second Coming to the Third Reign popularised by the Romantics and, more recently, by Lévi and Vintras. These, however, have only the status of imaginative supports to his Catholic propositions, and are in no way intended to detract from the orthodoxy of his doctrine. Less direct methods of incorporating the concept of the supernatural include the use of Biblical and liturgical thoir.es, and the exploitation of techniques also used by the secular poet. Here Bloy's treatment of the theme of death is especially important. The central point of Catholic doctrine for Bloy was its enrohasis on suffering. Suffering was the state which corporalised the ideal, mediating the supernatural into natural existence. He was brought to the theme by personal experience and by tho general tendencies of his period, which are considered in detail. A chronological account of the formation of his doctrine shows him indebted to de Maistre and Faber for the religious interpretation of suffering as expiation, having a co-redemptive function in conjunction with the sufferings of Christ, and to Blanc de Saint-Bonnet and Hello for the Romantic concept of suffering as the basis of heroic personality and of genius. These several elements were pulled together by Bloy around the theme of La Salette, where the meaning of suffering is set in the Passion of Christ in which humanity participates through the mediation of the Compassion of the Immaculate Conception. Bloy's doctrine is related to the secular experience which motivated its formulation (especially that of war) and to the contemporary formulations of tha Church in the doctrines of the Sacred Heart and the Communion of Saints, which provided the background for the theology of the literary Revival. It is emphasised that this Revival in no sense exaggerated the contemporary sense of the Church; that stress on expiation and reparation often considered its peculiar property were commonplace in the theology of this period. The last section studios Bloy's adaptations of his doctrine to his particular experience in the contexts of love, poverty and art. In the first, he created for himself an independent position detached from both a permissive literary milieu and a prudish Church. He was concerned to adapt to the ascetic doctrine the needs of his own passionate temperament; in this, he was strongly influenced by the work of Barbey, whose themes and attitudes he incorporated into his own work. An account of his experience and its transposition into imaginative forms (through Le Désespéré, the Lettres à sa fiancée and La Femme pauvre) shows Bloy exalting the idea of carnal passion as the medium through which man accedes to spiritual love, and the creative rôle of the couple as the image of the Church's redemptive co-operation with Christ - in terras, however, ultimately ascetic, and within a framework whose high degree of elaboration suggests a recognition of the instability of the; conjunction he has effected between the two concepts. A like pattern emerges from analysis of his treatment of the theme of poverty. Bloy perceived more clearly than many of his contemporaries the modern social problem of destitution, and was more willing to acknowledge the claims of the poor to recognition. At the same time he refused to relinquish the existing social order and dependent moral values which prevented the fulfilment of these claims.

Dans le contexte de la Belle Époque, nombreux sont les romanciers qui s’attachent à représenter des « groupes », de forme et d’ampleur très diverses. Cette représentation du groupe engage des enjeux d’ordre moral mais aussi, et plus encore, des enjeux politiques. À travers le groupe, la question posée est celle de l’individu dans son rapport avec la société, voire avec la Nation. Dans cette période dominée par une volonté générale de réagir contre la décadence, cette question est celle de l’individualisme, analysé et présenté comme une maladie et comme le facteur même de la décomposition du corps social par Bourget, dès 1881, dans sa « Théorie de la décadence ». La question est d’ordre moral dans la mesure où elle concerne les devoirs de l’individu ; elle est aussi d’ordre politique, dans la mesure où elle concerne la bonne marche de la société, voire la bonne santé de la Nation. Elle est enfin d’ordre esthétique, à la fois parce que la problématique de la décadence de l’œuvre littéraire et celle de la décadence du corps social sont indissociables, suivant la vision organiciste de Bourget dans sa « Théorie de la décadence », et parce que le rapport entre l’individu et le groupe, en renvoyant au lien qui unit le romancier à son public, mais aussi à des groupes littéraires ou des réseaux d’influence, engage une certaine vision de la littérature. Cette thèse vise ainsi rendre compte de ces réflexions à partir, non pas des prises de position des uns et des autres, mais bien de la représentation du groupe proposée à l’intérieur même des fictions romanesques. Dans cette perspective, la réflexion se focalisera plus particulièrement sur quelques romans qui ont en commun de représenter différentes formes de groupes, notamment Paludes et Les Caves du Vatican d’André Gide, Les Déracinés de Maurice Barrès, L’Étape de Paul Bourget, Le Soleil des morts de Camille Mauclair et L’Enfant chargé de chaînes de François Mauriac / In the context of the Belle Epoque, many novelists who cling to represent "groups", shape and diverse scope. This group representation incurs moral issues but also, and more, political issues. Across the Group, the question is that of the individual in his relationship with the company or with the Nation. In this period dominated by a general will to react against the decay, this question is that of individualism, analyzed and presented as a disease and as the same factor of the decomposition of the social body by Bourget, in 1881, in his "Theory decadence. " The question is moral insofar as it relates to the duties of the individual; it is also political, insofar as it relates to the proper functioning of society or the health of the nation. Finally, it is aesthetic, both because the problem of the decline of the literary work and the decadence of society are inseparable, according to the organismic vision Bourget in his "Theory of decadence", and because the relationship between the individual and the group, referring to the link between the novelist to his audience, but also to literary groups or networks of influence, committed a certain vision of literature. This thesis aims to reflect these thoughts from, not the stances of each other, but the representation of the group proposed to the inside of romantic fictions. In this perspective, reflection will focus particularly on some novels that share represent different forms of groups, including Paludes and Les Caves du Vatican Gide, The Uprooted of Maurice Barres, The Step of Paul Bourget, Le Sun dead Mauclair Camille and The Child in chains of François Mauriac

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