Le monstre intrigue et fascine : il a été étudié, disséqué, et abondamment mis en scène dans des œuvres littéraires. Il reste pourtant mystérieux : nous retrouvons par exemple des monstres similaires dans des cultures éloignées sans aucun contact aussi bien temporellement que géographiquement. Mais si la tératologie est florissante dans de nombreux pays, cet engouement paraît être moins partagé lorsqu’il s’agit de la littérature mexicaine contemporaine car les monstres y sont moins analysés. Ils y sont pourtant présents et nombreux. Une grande partie de notre travail consiste à proposer une typologie des figures du monstre du folklore mexicain en regroupant ceux qui apparaissent dans des recueils de légendes ou des dictionnaires de créatures étranges. Cela permet de comprendre comment il est perçu dans la croyance populaire puis ensuite réutilisé par des auteurs d’œuvres fictionnelles.Le monstre est inscrit dans un imaginaire populaire collectif partagé d’abord oralement puis passé à l’écrit, et ainsi transmis en héritage aux générations futures. L’écriture littéraire s’inspire de cet héritage, ce qui crée une sorte d’hypertextualité entre l’imaginaire collectif présent dans les mythes et légendes, et l’imaginaire individuel de l’auteur par le biais de ses œuvres de fiction. Ce dernier réactive ces sources et même les modifie. L’intertextualité est aussi présente entre les fictions mexicaines et celles du reste du monde, ce qui nous invite à proposer une analyse littéraire comparatiste lorsque celle-ci est possible. Le but de ce travail est de déterminer à travers ces jeux d’écriture et ces inventions, les enjeux de ces figures du monstre dans la littérature mexicaine. / The monster intrigues and fascinates: he was studied, dissected, and abundantly staged in literary works. He remains nevertheless mysterious: we find for example similar monsters in distant cultures without any contact so temporarily as geographically. But if the teratology is prosperous in numerous countries, this craze appears to be less shared when it is the contemporary Mexican literature because monsters are less analyzed there. Nevertheless, they are present and numerous. A big part of our work consists in proposing a typology of the figures of the monster of the Mexican folklore by grouping those who appear in collections of legends or the dictionaries of strange creatures. It allows to understand how it is perceived in the popular belief and then reused by authors of fictional works.The monster is registered in a collective popular imagination, shared at first orally then passed to the paper, and transmitted in inheritance to the future generations. The literary writing is inspired by this inheritance, what creates a sort of hypertextuality between the present collective imagination in the myths and the legends, and the individual imagination of the author by means of its works of fiction. The latter revives these sources and even modifies them. The intertextuality is also present between the Mexican fictions and those besides of the world, what invites us to propose a comparative literary analysis when this one is possible. The purpose of this work is to determine through these sets of writing and these inventions, the stakes in these figures of the monster in the Mexican literature.

No description available.

Jorge Semprún’s work is the fruit of an incarceration in the concentration camp of Buchenwald as a resistance fighter and his expulsion from the Partido Comunista Español in 1964. Due to these biographical circumstances, many critical literary studies to date limit the discussion of his works to the autobiographical and the realm of Holocaust studies. Together with the texts that do not fit adequately into this categories, his self-identification as a Spanish exile has up to now been neglected. The present thesis aims to provide a more global view of his oeuvre by extending the literary analyses to texts that have deserved little critical attention. In order to achieve this, it investigates the role played by memory and self-representation in a variety of works by Semprún. Aspects connected to memory such as exile and nostalgia, the Holocaust, the interplay between memory and writing, politics and collective memory, postmemory and identity are examined by means of a detailed analysis of the selected works and are discussed thematically. Differences in genre are discarded for the discussion and interconnections between the various narratives are highlighted. With the help of memory and trauma theories, we come to the conclusion that memory is the overarching principle of Semprún’s writing and that he invests it with an aesthetic and ethical value which is interpreted as the justification for his devotion to writing.

This thesis examines the articles the Brazilian writer Lima Barreto (1881-1922) published in the popular satirical magazine Careta. It argues that Careta epitomises Lima Barreto’s aim to create social impact through literature, as it provided him with the largest readership he enjoyed in his lifetime, reaching hundreds of thousands of readers weekly nationwide and internationally. The thesis expands the knowledge about the strategies Lima Barreto used to convey his ideas, showing how he endeavoured to engage with mass audiences in order to combat social fragmentation and intellectual alienation in early twentieth century Brazil. The significance of this thesis is evident on two levels. First, I demonstrate throughout the chapters that Barreto fully engaged with Careta to convey his ideas to a mass audience, choosing the magazine as his main periodical voice in the last years of his life. This argument challenges the idea that Lima Barreto was a marginal writer in the First Republic. Second, the originality of this thesis lies in locating and uncovering almost one hundred and fifty hitherto unknown texts, most of them published pseudonymously in Careta. Chapter one discusses the militancy of Barreto's works. Chapter two argues that Barreto elected magazines, more than newspapers, to convey his message to a large audience. Chapter three relates the early history of Careta. Chapter four suggests that Barreto incorporated pictorial strategies into his articles. Chapter five argues that Barreto embraced Careta's central theme derived from the Commedia dell'Arte. Chapter six discusses systematically the pseudonyms attributed to Barreto in Careta and provides robust evidence that he published many hitherto unknown texts pseudonymously. Finally, I conclude that Careta encapsulates Barreto's efforts to reach a mass readership and communicate with readers beyond literary circles.