Le premier travail de cette thèse a consisté à envisager l'artiste, essentiellement, comme un auteur. Il nous a conduit à suggérer, quant à l'auteur, que sa mort jadis annoncée imposait de penser sa résurrection à partir d'autres catégories et outils conceptuels que ceux qui ont permis de constater son décès. Après avoir démontré, d'une part, que l'auctorité (authorship) définissait exemplairement l'artiste, et s'être acquitté, d'autre part, d'un indispensable rappel historique permettant de comprendre les conditions de son apparition, nous avons tâché de faire jouer entre eux (au double sens de mettre en relation et de donner du jeu) les éléments qui structurent le phénomène artistique, ses doctrines et ses discours associés. Nous avons cherché à déceler, dans cet espace non ajusté, propice aux paradoxes et aux contradictions, le lieu d'une possible redéfinition de l'artiste-auteur, bâtie sur une rationalité plus large que celle d'une simple causalité. / The initial task of this thesis consisted in considering the artist mainly as an author. As for the author, this led us to suggest that his death, once announced, required to think of his resurrection from other criteria and conceptual tools than those which made it possible to bury him. Having established, on the one hand, that authorship defines the intrinsic status of the artist, and put forward, on the other hand, a necessary historical reminder in order to encompass the conditions of its emergence, we attempted to clear up (in the sense of displaying interactions and leaving a clearance between) the elements which structure the artistic phenomenon, its doctrines and related discourses. We sought to uncover, in this unadjusted space full of paradoxes and contradictions, the place of a possible redefinition of the artist-author, built on a rationality broader than that of a mere causality.

This study examines the literary career of the eighteenth-century American poet Joel Barlow. Because Barlow, unlike his peers, came to fully embrace print-based methods of authorship and advertising, between 1790-1810 he emerged as the most widely read American poet. Employing a book studies methodology, this project focuses on the publication details surrounding each of Barlow's poems including: his relationships with his publishers, the physical shape and appearance of his works, the cost of those works, how those works were advertised, and the extent of their geographic distribution. The arc of Barlow's career was extraordinary. Barlow's development, his transformation from a standard eighteenth-century club poet who relied on manuscript circulation and oral performance in the 1770s to an international man of letters and a periodical fixture by 1800, highlights the possibilities and limitations of American literary publishing during the early national period. Importantly, Barlow's ability to emphasize, rather than elide, his personal identity in the press, forces scholars to reevaluate their notions of late eighteenth-century republican print culture. Barlow's career also impacts our reading of American literary history. In an age of caution and deference in American poetry, Barlow was driven to maximize his audience, publishing his poems across all price points and in every medium offered by the time. Barlow's efforts at self-promotion, coupled with his staunch republican politics, allowed his poems to take on a life of their own in the era's fiercely partisan press. Thanks to his association with the transatlantic republican movement and radical religious thinkers, this study suggests that poems such as the "Conspiracy of Kings," (1792) "The Hasty Pudding," (1796) and the Columbiad (1807) enjoyed audiences as large and as economically diverse as those of popular fiction. Even in an age marked by the rise of the novel and the beginnings of romanticism, An Ink-Stained Neoclassicist contends that Barlow's proto-mass audience reveals the persistent popularity and cultural importance of neoclassical verse in the intellectual life of many Americans at the turn of the nineteenth century.

"August 2003." Includes bibliographical references (leaves 166-177) Pt. 1. At the flash & at the baci: contents, poems, notes to poems -- pt. 2. Exegetical essay: note on the text, essay: How I remember writing some of my poems - why, even Consists principally of poems. The collection does not pursue any particular theme. It is organized chronologically. An exegetical essay written as a poem forms the second part of the thesis. The essay does not explain the poem's 'meanings' to any great extent but considers the poems' relation to each other and to poems written in the past.

This study investigates and characterises the ways place and space occur in Eavan Boland's Object Lessons, May Sarton's Journal of a Solitude, Anne Dillard's The Writing Life, and a selection of journal material accompanied by poetry. The author's purpose in doing this is to gain insight into the creative processes of these writers and the nature of their engagement with the ongoing venture that Anne Dillard has termed 'the writing life'. This phrase, while evoking a sense of duration and commitment as regards writing, also invites questions about how such a vocation takes shape within the life of a writer. Both the terms 'place' and 'space' come trailing. Each may describe inner experiences, as well as pertaining to the realm of physical perception. Each is also a current focus of critique and contestation in various disciplines - for example, those of anthropology and geography - and by feminist thinkers.The author's introduction refers to some of these revisionings. Findings are summarised in the conclusion. / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

This thesis is a study of female authorship that examines the feature films of Jane Campion in order to determine how her preoccupation with the cinematic articulation of 'female experience' is expressed in her films-whether female experience can be aestheticised, and to discover whether her gender can be discerned through the films of a woman director. The exploration of these ideas entails a review of the feminist thinking, methodologies and epistemologies that are relevant to cinema, and that examine relevant theoretical positions within feminism and theories of cinematic authorship. The key lens employed here for theorising Campion's cinema is that of postmodern-feminism. As an approach, this allows an understanding of difference rather than 'Otherness', and an enquiry into gender that is neither essentialist nor constructionist, but facilitates critical thinking about both positions. The central argument of this thesis is that Campion's film practice functions as an investigation into gender difference, how women and men live together in the world-experience that world, and are engendered as female through historic, psychological and cultural experiences. This thesis therefore argues that Campion's aesthetic and perspective is not only feminist, but also, female, and feminine, and her work a cinematic articulation of female experience.

"August 2003." / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 166-177) / 2 v. (131, 177 leaves) ; 30 cm. / Title page, contents and abstract only. The complete thesis in print form is available from the University Library. / Consists principally of poems. The collection does not pursue any particular theme. It is organized chronologically. An exegetical essay written as a poem forms the second part of the thesis. The essay does not explain the poem's 'meanings' to any great extent but considers the poems' relation to each other and to poems written in the past. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Adelaide, Dept. of English, 2003?

Themes of authorship in Aphra Behn's Oroonoko and Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe highlight locations in the stories that expose the author's concerns with their responsibilities and contributions to society. In order to frame a discussion of authorship in Oroonoko and Robinson Crusoe, it is essential to position Behn and Crusoe as travelers who write autobiographies of their involvement in exotic circumstances. Oroonoko and Robinson Crusoe betray the tensions that arise from the barriers separating travel and colonial objectives, individual agency and social action. Although the stories may incorporate truth and fiction, writing enables the authors to present, with symbolic images, concerns with their participation in situations that hinder the free expression of their will. I refer to Aphra Behn and Daniel Defoe as "geographers" of writing because they identify tenuous boundaries that organize social views concerning gender, responsibility and behavior in contrast to individual desires. Aphra Behn's narrative role in Oroonoko charts the tragic outcomes of Oroonoko's rejection of slavery and also draws attention to the reception of a female author. Behn's identity as an author, as it is constructed within Oroonoko, is intertwined with the murder of a slave prince, and with a woman's freedom to write and publish in the 1680s. Although Defoe is the author of the text, he manipulates the presentation of the story to convince readers that Crusoe wrote an authentic account of his years as a castaway on an unnamed island. In his journal, Crusoe discusses his position in his culture and the resulting circumstances that result from his rejection of family and economic position in search of adventure. With limited resources, Crusoe uses writing to redefine his agency in contrast to the threats of the island and his responsibilities to God, family and society. Although there may be discrepancies that blur the "true" identity and involvement of the author in autobiography, these narratives raise discourses concerning the balance between the individual's desires and society's expectations for behavior. Attention to authorship identifies the discourses and contradictions faced by Behn's and Crusoe's participation in travel and the subsequent translation, resolution and apology enabled by authorship. / Graduation date: 2002

Thèse (M.A.)--Université Laval, 2000. / Comprend des réf. bibliogr.

This thesis examines five books by the American author Philip Roth commonly referred to as the “Roth Books,” which are The Facts: A Novelist’s Autobiography(1988), Deception (1990), Patrimony: A True Story (1991), Operation Shylock: A Confession (1993), and The Plot Against America (2004). These books, held together by the author’s proper name, are often viewed as texts that conflate fiction and nonfiction or demonstrate the “fictionality” of all factual narrative accounts in compliance with well-known postmodernist and poststructuralist theories. Contrary to this view, I argue that a valid understanding of the Roth Books demands that we acknowledge that these works represent a series of quite different ways for the author to transform his own life into written form, a creative act which is manifested in both fictional and nonfictional writing. In the attempt to argue this view, I turn to a field of study where the question about criteria for distinguishing fictional from nonfictional narrative literature has occupied a prominent place: narrative theory. However, my theoretical and methodological point of departure does not align itself with the “standard” paradigm in narrative theory with its origin in classical, structuralist narratology. Rather, the thesis promotes a pragmatic and rhetorical perspective which is argued to better account for how we read and make sense of different narrative texts. In opposition to standard narrative theory, where all narratives are considered to adhere to the same model of communication, I argue in favour of a view where narrative fiction and narrative nonfiction are conceived as distinct communicative practices. I open the thesis by showing that Roth’s books contribute to the discussion on how to distinguish fictional from nonfictional narrative texts (Chapter 1). I then continue by approaching the distinction between fiction and nonfiction in general theoretical terms (Chapter 2). And in what follows (Chapters 3-5), I present a reading where the Roth Books are juxtaposed against each other. This reading demonstrates how these texts, although in some sense related, because of their divergent qualities and differing intentions still communicate differently with their readers, inviting a readerly attention that is dissimilar from one work to the other.

A number of thinkers are becoming increasingly persuaded that our anthropocentric view of nature is inadequate, that we need a "new morality" with regard to the environment. In this essay, I argue that an alternative to anthropocentricism is available to us now-and has been since at least 1836. I look at three "checkpoints" in the evolution of environmental theory as proof of this: 1) the publication of Emerson's book Nature, 2) Aldo Leopold's A Sand County Almanac, and 3) the contemporary writing of Gretel Ehrlich, Gary Snyder, Wendell Berry, Mary Oliver, and A. R. Ammons. In short, I show that all these writers describe an aesthetic basis with which we may view nature that leads to a system of ethical values. What they advocate is a "moral framework" which I call noticing. My primary thesis is that we don't need a "new morality": we need only turn to the existing one these writers describe-and acknowledge it. / Graduation date: 1992