A la fin du Moyen Âge et au début de la Renaissance, les femmes s‟affirment en politique, notamment comme régentes. Anne de France, fille de Louis XI et soeur de Charles VIII ainsi que Louise de Savoie, mère de François Ier, s‟illustrent par leur action à la tête du royaume et par leur puissance. Sous leur influence, la régence s‟invente, se construit et s‟institutionnalise. Pratique empirique du gouvernement, elle ne cesse d‟évoluer et de se métamorphoser. La prise de pouvoir par les femmes implique un questionnement sur l‟autorité et sur la souveraineté du roi et génère des contestations. La régence s‟ancre dans le sang, dans l‟amour et dans le droit, qui légitiment celles qui l‟exercent.Ce pouvoir se construit sur des réseaux et avec l‟appui du roi. Il s‟édifie sur diverses stratégies qui ont comme idéal éthique et politique une pratique du pouvoir fondée sur la vertu, la prudence et la feinte. La régence féminine est un pouvoir aux multiples facettes. Parole et écrit, images et gestes, signes et symboles, histoire et mythes sont autant d‟outils pour celles qui le pratiquent. / At the turn of Middle Ages and of the Renaissance women asserted themselves in the field of politics and more specifically as regents. Anne of France, daughter of Louis XI and sister of Charles VIII as well as Louise of Savoy, mother of Francis I distinguished themselves by their action at the head of the kingdom and by the power, which they attained. Under their influence, regency was invented, established itself and became an institution. As an empirical practice it kept undergoing advances and transformation.Women‟s taking and holding the reins of power prompted pondering the king‟s sovereignty and authority as well as it engendered controversy. Regency rested on royal descent and blood, on love and law, which conferred legitimacy to those who exercised it.This power was built through alliances and networks and in the case of Louise of Savoy with the king‟s support. The exercise of a regency by a woman involved a multifaceted power. Speech and written works,

This thesis is a study of the reception by critics in Canada of Anne Hébert's novels. We base our investigation of the critical texts upon the reader reception theory as articulated by Hans Robert Jauss, member of the "School of Constance" in Germany. Jauss explains the process by which a literary work acquires meaning as a fusion of two horizons. The first horizon is that which the reader brings to his reception of the work and contains all of his cultural, political and social attitudes as well as all of his previous experiences remembered either consciously or unconsciously. The second horizon is set up by the literary text itself and guides the reader's attention in certain directions in order to establish expectations and to evoke memories of past reading or experiences, and then sustains breaks, alters or reorients these expectations. Our thesis undertakes a definition and an explanation of the first horizon as pertaining to the reception of Anne Hébert's novels. From our analysis of these critical texts we find that critics from certain periods favour particular types of analysis which lead them to bring out of Anne Hébert's novels specific aspects related to these approaches. The approaches were, in their turn, influenced and even determined by the horizon of expectation of the critic, product of his time and environment. We find that the first type of criticism of Anne Hébert's novels is hermeneutic, favouring the analysis of themes. Through the 1960's and 1970's this criticism takes the form of several approaches such as the psychoanalysis of literature and the study of symbolism among others. However, these critics interpret Anne Hébert's works according to their pertinence to the Québec experience, whether it be in its psychological, religious, social, symbolic or even mythological implications. At a time when Québec society is undergoing a quest for a new collective identity, facing the transformation of a traditional society dominated by the jansenist messianic myth into a modern society, the literary community looks to Québec's contemporary writers to give direction in this process of transformation. Therefore, literature is seen as being subversive of the old order and defining a new collective identity for the Québec people. This is what the critics of this era expect to read about and so it is for this that they search in Anne Hébert's novels. During the early 1980's, the literary community undergoes a transition, perhaps due to the resolution of the independance issue in the 1980 Referendum. The new movement is internationalist, and Canadian critics follow suit by adopting the formalist approaches of literary criticism in vogue in Europe and the United States, and assign Anne Hébert a place in international literary currents such as postmodernism. These critics still see thematic importance in Anne Hébert's work, but as it pertains to man's universal experience rather than only to the Québec situation. The evolution in the works of Anne Hébert is certainly the other principal cause of this changing interpretation. We study the reorientation in the critics' horizon of expectation and leave to future undertakings the investigation of the role played by the original texts in this transition. / Arts, Faculty of / French, Hispanic, and Italian Studies, Department of / Graduate

Le recit de la destruction d'un fils par sa mere et de la revolte de ce fils, revolte qui culmine par le matricide, constitue la trame de la premiere partie du "Torrent" d'Anne Hebert. Le propos de la deuxieme partie est consacre a 1'exploration de 1'alienation qui succede a cette tentative de liberation. La prise de conscience de la difficulte d'8tre, de vivre et de s'exprimer au Quebec des annees '40 sous-tend la nouvelle au niveau de la realite socio-culturelle qu'elle exprime. Au niveau de la realite psychique du heros, les themes, les images et les personnages sont su-bordonnessa 1'expression symbolique de 1'exploration de 1'inconscient. Au niveau de la motivation profonde de l'oeuvre, il y a 1'exploration du mystere de la creation artistique et 1'affirmation du triomphe de la parole en depit d'un inconscient empoisonne par la culpabilite. Enfin, a un niveau plus primitif, "Le Torrent" aborde la question de la procreation et de l'origine biologique de l'gtre humain. Ce besoin d'exprimer l'indicible complexite de la vie a donne nais-sance a la creation d'une ecriture qui se caracterise par une exploitation fort poussee du champ semantique des mots et des noms propres, par le pa-rallelisme et l'amalgame de plusieurs genres litteraires a l'interieur du cadre de la nouvelle. La juxtaposition de differentes approches de lectures permet de decoder les sens multiples qui sous-tendent la chalne eve-nementielle du "Torrent". Une premiere lecture, axee sur le drame d'une conscience alienee, fait ressortir la revolte d'Anne Hgbert contre 1'oppression morale qui regnait a l'epoque au Quebec. Cette revolte, amorcee par 1'impact des idees nouvelles amenees au Quebec par la guerre, fut precipitee par le choco: de la mort du representant le plus tragique de sa generation, le poete Saint-Denys Garneau. L'association^ la qu§te du Graal evoquee par le nom de Perceval--le cheval par le biais duquel le heros du "Torrent" espere se liberer--inspire une lecture orienteeksur l'aventure spirituelle et la quete exis-tentielle du heros. Le recours a la source medievale semble constituer une double tentative de sublimation: celle de l'aventure spirituelle de Saint-Denys Garneau et celle de la vocation d'ecrivain d'Anne Hebert. Cette vocation, en assurant la releve de son predecesseur, s'est vouee a la denonciation de tout ce qui emp§che 1'epanouissement de la personnai lite. Au coeur de l'oeuvre, il y a, en effet, d'une part, 1'exploration douloureuse d'une personnalite peu a peu detruite par la culpabilite et, d'autre part, 1'affirmation du triomphe de la parole-temoignage. Dans ce contexte, des elements de conte fantastique temoignent d'une imagination nourrie par les Ecritures et deformee par la peur du peche. Des elements d'auto-analyse revelent les sympt6mes cliniques d'une alienation qui de-bouche sur le suicide tandis que des elements de roman policier ont pour fonction de souligner le caractere truque d'une investigation qui se heur te aux resistances psychiques de son instigateur. Enfin, l'allegorie du couple antithetique, heros empeche et femme troublante au regard extra-lucide, permet de dramatiser le r61e que jouent 1'inconscient et la memoi Hire involontaire dans 1'inspiration poetique en faisant ressortir la force d'auto-destruction exercee par le moi profond sur une conscience alienee. Cependant, une plongee heroSque aux sources de cette alienation, symbolisee par les eaux tourbillonnahtes du torrent, et un engagement total envers une mission de temoignage par la parole permet-tent de triompher de la mort. Enfin, "Le Torrent", dont la structure mythique est identique a celle du mythe d'Oedipe telle que degagee par Levi-Strauss, pose la question essentielle de la complementarite des sexes et de l'origine de la vie. / Arts, Faculty of / French, Hispanic, and Italian Studies, Department of / Graduate

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Boston University. / An Apology for the Life of George Anne Bellamy was chosen for this study because it is representative both of a group of eighteenth-century theatrical lives and of minor autobiography generally in the peak years of biographical writing and because it has been brought sharply to the fore as a work of intrinsic merit by a favorable appraisal in Donald A. Stauffer's Art of Biography in Eighteenth Century England (1941). The epistolary Apology, which recounts the adventures of Mrs. Bellamy through her years of success at Covent-Garden Theatre and through her decline into poverty and neglect, was published in 1785, gained immediate popularity, and appeared in four editions by 1786. Critics praised it highly, but its fame was short. It dropped into semi-obscurity and for a century and a half was considered interesting principally as a work of theatrical history. The assertion of Stauffer that the Apology is an important biography of its century has directed attention to it once more, challenging us to a re-evaluation of the work, both as theatrical history and as literary art. This paper aims to gather and relate information concerning the Apology's accomplishments in both these fields and to estimate its permanent value and significance. [Truncated]

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Five decades after the event, portraying the Holocaust continues to be a precarious and controversial endeavor. The overall posture of Holocaust representation has been to underline the nonsensical and destructive nature of the event as it extends into the post-Holocaust generation's collective memory. While traditional representations of Jewish catastrophe have relied on ancient Biblical and non-biblical archetypes, originating with Adam's fall from God's grace and mankind's eventual restitution from his fall to be delivered in messianic time, Holocaust narratives have in general not carried a message of redemption, nor have they offered any closure to the event. Not only does Anne Michaels' Fugitive Pieces render a transformative narrative, but the closure in Part I of the novel reaches a level of redemption. This work addresses the problems with the restorative nature of the novel through untangling the dense metaphors, the plot structure and characterization, and by drawing on survivor accounts, psychoanalysis, historiography and literary criticism. I look closely at how Jakob recovers his past, reaches redemption, and how he ultimately comes through the trauma of the Holocaust while remaining on the edges of the event. Likewise, I discuss how the tenuousness of Ben's potential recovery from the transmitted past of his parents deconstructs the restorative closure offered in Jakob's story. That the novel is structured into two parts is significant to my reading; this work shows how the first part of the novel with its rich, lyrical discourse and fulfilling outcome is complicated by the second part which is notably less poetic and does not culminate in explicit restoration. This thesis demonstrates how the novel's parts complement each other, structurally forming a unified story that ultimately offers no real closure. I suggest a possible solution to the problem of redemption in Fugitive Pieces by reading Jakob's story as a myth based on the traditional Judaic archetypal\ restitution and Ben's story as an interpretation of the actual experience of the post-Holocaust ' generation. / Thesis / Master of Arts (MA)

Mémoire numérisé par la Direction des bibliothèques de l'Université de Montréal.

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