Thesis (Ph.D.) - University of Queensland, 2004. / Includes bibliography.

Informe de Seminario para optar al grado de Licenciado en Lengua y Literatura Inglesa. / Chance is a key figure in our daily lives, since we are uncertain about events in our future that may affect our health, economic stability, or personal interactions. It comes, therefore, as no surprise that chance affects a human life deeply -- as deep as a person's convictions, beliefs, and other matters central to someone‟s life-plan. If she had not missed her train, she would never have met her spouse. Had she lived in other times, she may have been a black slave in Georgia instead of an American citizen with equal rights.

Informe de Seminario para optar al grado de Licenciado en Lengua y Literatura Inglesa. / The purpose of this work is to study Paul Auster’s feminine characters in terms of their dramatic contribution and relevance as women. They will show us their strength and firm attitudes to face life’s adversities, which are conditioned by the author’s recurrent themes of chance, solitude, urban nothingness and desolation.

Facultad de Filosofía y Humanidades / Informe de Seminario para optar al grado de Licencia en Lengua y Literatura Inglesa / Our research began through Blake’s poetry, by seeing how the people he portrayed were engulfed by the city, how this new modern construct affected their daily living. As Heather Glen has very accurately stated in her Blake’s London: “The eighteenth-century London street was […] a place where that sense of the other as object –often as feeble and wretched object- […] was the dominant mode of relationship (148).” This new type of urban mode of living is extreme to the 18th century Englishman, a place where the rule becomes to survive, if you can, in this distant society. “This world simply is. Reciprocal human relationships in which otherness is acknowledged and the needs of all harmonized do not exist: the only relationships […] are instrumental ones. People have become objects (155).” As is very well shown through Glen and Blake in this case, this is a very bleak prospect. Cities become in a way, object-enemies, by this I mean that the city is distant and unfamiliar, in much the same way people are according to Glen, and each citizen has to do what he can to survive in this hostile world. Glen specifically focuses her analysis on Blake’s London, a portrayal of this growing metropolis that pushes the common Londoners further into ‘their’ corner; they watch it with fear because it is becoming distant. They belong in the city, for without them the city would not function, yet they are mere objects, they are not part of its creation or development. They are not free in the city.

Informe de Seminario para optar al grado de Licenciada en Lengua y Literatura Inglesa / The urban subject has been a matter of frequent discussion among writers from different ages and origins. In the present, we cannot conceive an exploration of human subjectivity without taking into account the urban experience. The contemporary self is, in fact, an urban self. Under that vein, "the city and the urban subject" is the main object of study of the seminar that frames this thesis. The work that has been chosen for the exploration of the urban experience is Paul Auster´s novel, City of Glass written in 1985, and part of The New York Trilogy. The reason behind this choice is that the novel posits a search for identity in an urban context, specifically in New York City. This well known metropolis can be said to be an icon of the American tradition, it has inscribed their history in it, and it is, at the same time, a tissue of experiences and perceptions that continually interweave through time. Naturally, as time goes on, people change, perceptions change, and the urban environment also changes. But in spite of this obvious transformation that affects almost everything, New York included, some people prefer consistency, regularity and uniformity, like the main character of City of Glass.

Informe de Seminario para optar al grado de Licenciado en Lengua y Literatura Inglesa. / Paul Auster is considered a postmodernist writer. His novels can be categorized under different genres, as, for example, science fiction, picaresque or detective novels. His influences are very wide and come from different sources such as fairy tales, his own unconscious and from a variety of writers, i.e. Nathaniel Hawthorne, Charles Dickens, Franz Kafka or Samuel Becket.

Thèse numérisée par la Direction des bibliothèques de l'Université de Montréal.

Ce mémoire a pour objectif de rendre compte des thèmes dominants du genre uchronique dans ses manifestations contemporaines aux États-Unis. Le premier chapitre se consacre à la genèse et à l'évolution de l'uchronie. Nous y exposons les différentes définitions du terme en confrontant les multiples visions de l'uchronie tirées des essais sur le sujet. C'est également le lieu où l'on verra les acceptions liminaires du mot et où nous nous positionnerons à travers ses nombreuses définitions afin d'établir un lexique qui permettra d'analyser les différentes œuvres à l'étude. Le second chapitre s'arrête sur le roman Man in the Dark de Paul Auster. Nous y mettons à l'épreuve les définitions issues du premier chapitre et nous y soulignons les passages clés du récit uchronique. Nous identifions les leviers narratifs propres au genre, analysons les différentes thématiques abordées et élaborons une lecture qui met en relief la vision politique qui transpire de l'œuvre. Le troisième chapitre aborde par le biais de la guerre culturelle qui sévit actuellement aux États-Unis, deux autres œuvres uchroniques. Nous y faisons d'abord l'histoire du terme de guerre culturelle (culture war) et élaborons sur la notion de polarisation idéologique qui en découle. Nous constatons que ce message d'abord et avant tout politique se retrouve tant dans le roman graphique DMZ de Brian Wood que dans la trilogie Assassin de Robert Ferrigno, œuvres soumises à l'étude. Les leviers uchroniques de ces deux œuvres sont repérés et les effets de lecture suscités sont analysés par l'entremise de la théorie sur le suspense élaborée par Raphaël Baroni et de celle sur la science-fiction avancée par Irène Langlet. Nous y révélons les thèmes que se partagent les deux œuvres. Pour finir, nous établissons une relation entre le climat politique qui prévaut actuellement aux États-Unis et ces œuvres qui réinventent des événements historiques fondamentaux dans la représentation que les États-Uniens ont d'eux-mêmes. ______________________________________________________________________________ MOTS-CLÉS DE L’AUTEUR : Uchronie, littérature américaine, post-11 septembre, polarisation idéologique, Paul Auster, Brian Wood, Robert Ferrigno.

保羅•奧斯特的〈紐約三部曲〉被歸類為「反偵探小說」（anti-detective novel）。在這三個故事裡，因緣際會背負了偵探角色的主角們，試圖還原事件的真相，卻個個受挫，甚至迷失在糾纏的線索與沈重的身份認同的遊戲中。他們像是一腳踏進了令人暈眩的泥沼，非但沒法用理智脫困，還愈陷愈深，隨著迷宮裡的音樂瘋狂起舞。 鈴鈴鈴不時搖著鈴鼓迷惑他們的聲響來自一串一串的文字：當他們想藉語言探求「真實」時，才發現無論語言或是理智都從來不是靜止與透明的。此外，與偵探行為息息相關的「命名」（naming）問題，也是〈紐約三部曲〉中的一個焦點。主角們的名字彷彿細軟的藤蔓般糾結在一塊，命名的議題以有趣的方式被呈現在這部小說中。本篇論文還要探討這部小說如何處理讀者與作者的辯證關係，因為讀者一走進這本小說便參與了作者精心設計的巨大遊戲。 本篇論文將研討〈紐約三部曲〉反映的三個問題：再現的問題、命名的侷限性，以及讀者與作者耐人尋味的關係。再現的問題會放到德希達(Jacques Derrida)提出的「延異」（differance）觀念下解釋—事物的意義不可能立即被揭露，而是永遠處在一種「延異」的狀況下。小說中主角們對唯一真實的追尋因而不可能被應許，而是遭遇一而再、再而三的延遲。另一方面，〈紐約三部曲〉對命名的功能性有所保留。本論文將疊合本小說中對命名的質疑與波赫士短篇小說裡對命名的不信任，說明奧斯特對命名的解構。〈紐約三部曲〉對命名抱持矛盾的態度：命名既幫助人們架構他們的世界，卻又滑溜溜的歪曲了人們的自我認識，讓他們被自身的自主性的假象蒙蔽。此外，讀者和作者究竟是不是維繫著一種同盟關係呢？本論文試圖闡釋存在〈紐約三部曲〉中，他們之間相互依存、卻又競逐對文意的解釋權的關係。只不過，躲在文字的簾幕後偷看著的黑影，始終是作者的吧？！ 〈紐約三部曲〉訴說的是一個追尋的故事。這個歷程沒有終結、沒有絕對的答案，只有故事拖長了腳步的身影。這個反偵探故事否定了許多關於理智的邏輯，但是它為書寫開闢了另一種可能：書寫與閱讀可以是無限延長的生命肌理。文字從不直接給予人們他們孜孜尋找的解答，他們只告訴你你將在文字中漂流的命運。 / Labelled as an anti-detective novel, The New York Trilogy defies the traditional detective process and instead renders the experience for man to distill and to locate meaning as an agonizing one. The protagonists in The Trilogy undertake the roles of the detective, hoping to reveal a sole truth behind the entangled situation. Yet they are not only frustrated in disclosing meaning, but thrown into extreme bafflement. Their identities fall apart, wriggling in the maze built by spiral words, crossed names and the ongoing efforts to define the relations. The protagonists find everything they used to hold as truth shudder. Language no longer stands for a limpid means to represent the real but rather shakes their beliefs. When they try to name and to draw their realm of autonomy over the flowing phenomena, they find naming a problematic strategy to define the world. Furthermore, as detective-readers who attempt to decode the text, the protagonists are desperate to comprehend their relations with the “writer” of their books, as the reader does in reading The Trilogy. This thesis attempts to probe into three prominent issues raised in The New York Trilogy: dubious representation, problematic naming strategy, and the peculiar bond between the reader and the writer. The doubtful representation in the novel will be examined under what Derrida suggests in “Differance”: Meaning can never be fully present, but remains in a state of differance. The protagonists in the three stories cannot disclose an overriding truth, but float in such a wave of doubts, uncertainties, and changing phenomena of the world. Also, the problematic strategy of naming will be compared with Borges’suspicion towards naming. Under both cases, naming serves as an extreme yet slippery means for man to draw his territory. In addition, the relation between the reader and the writer in the novel is investigated. The detecting process in the novel embodies the pursuit of the reader out of the text. Thus reading and writing are delineated as an everlasting journey. When the detective and the criminal as well as the reader and the writer seem to be in contest for the power of explanation, the pairing relation actually forms a close tie: The detective cannot live without the criminal; the reader and the writer need the eyesight of each other to survive. The New York Trilogy is not a journey providing answers but a whirl to disrupt the truth. Declining any definite inspiration, it nevertheless obliquely affirms the value of reading and writing. After exhausting complexities of the cases, only the reader remains. And what is heard even after one closes the pages is the voice of the reader encircling within the space. And the voice keeps telling and telling until the story belongs to him. We as readers will keep narrating the story with our little voice.

Informada pelos pressupostos da área interdisciplinar conhecida como estudos animais, esta tese propõe uma leitura a contrapelo das figuras animais na literatura, na qual elas não são entendidas apenas como metáforas de certos aspectos da vida humana, mas como presenças textuais com um estatuto de personagens e, nessa condição, são interrogadas em sua alteridade. A questão central em pauta é: o que a metáfora diz sobre os animais e sobre a relação entre os animais e os seres humanos e o que significa des-figurar a metáfora e explorar a possibilidade de re-significar, a partir da textualidade ficcional, a relação humano-animal. Para tanto, desenho um panorama dos estudos animais, abordando o estado da arte no Brasil, inserindo tais estudos nas possibilidades de inovação no campo da literatura comparada. A seguir, elaboro um aporte teórico a partir da filosofia animal de Jacques Derrida, ao qual incorporo e coloco em discussão posicionamentos teóricos de Calarco (2008), Krell (2013), Lawlor (2007) e Naas (2010) sobre a questão em pauta. Por fim, realizo leituras comparadas entre A metamorfose (1915), de Franz Kafka, e Porcarias (1996), de Marie Darrieussecq, ambos sobre o tornar-se animal, e entre Flush (1933), de Virginia Woolf, e Timbuktu (1999), de Paul Auster, ambos sobre a domesticação de animais. / Following the tenets of the interdisciplinary area of animal studies, this dissertation presents a reading of animal figures in literature against the grain, which means that they are not taken only as metaphors of certain aspects of human life but as textual presences with a status assigned to characters and, in this condition, are interrogated in their alterity. The central question to be explored is: what the animal metaphor says about animals and the relation of animal and human beings and what it means to de-figure the metaphor in order to explore the possibility of re-signifying, in ficcional textualities, the human/animal relation. In order to address these issues, I draw a panorama of animal studies, including the state of the art in Brazil, to contend that this area adds to the possibilities of innovation in the field of comparative literature. Then, I consider a theoretical framework of Jacques Derrida’s animal philosophy, also discussing theoretical positions of Calarco (2008), Krell (2013), Lawlor (2007) and Naas (2010) on this topic. Finally, I propose comparative readings of Franz Kafka’s The metamorphosis (1915) and Marie Darrieussecq’s Pig tales (1996), from the perspective of becoming animal, and of Virginia Woolf’s Flush (1933) and Paul Auster’s Timbuktu (1999), both on domesticating animals.