Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Queensland, 2002. / Includes bibliographical references.

In recent years, Hjalmar Söderberg’s novel Doktor Glas (1905) has been conceived as more complex compared to its contemporary interpretations, and has been associated with many different ideas. The novel stands the test of time and forces readers to reflect on difficult issues. However, only sporadic attention has been paid to the connection between Doktor Glas and tragedy, hidden in the form of direct references or allusions to Greek antiquity and occasional reminiscences of Greek tragedy.    Tragedy is a branch of drama and for centuries Aristotle’s Poetics offered the only definition of tragedy available. Nevertheless, renowned philosophers and thinkers have offered alternative definitions of tragedy that describe aspects of tragedy not adressed by Aristotle; the list of tragic requirements seems to change and vary through the ages and by extension the term may be applied to ”a conception of the tragic”.     This thesis explores the experience of tragedy and the tragic in Doktor Glas. That will be accomplished with four idea analyses of the novel, each one from a different ”tragic” point of view. In other words, through dialogue between the novel and the tragic conception as conceived by Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Arthur Schopenhauer, Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche and Albert Camus in order to embody in the novel the ”image” of the tragic as created by each of the above-mentioned important philosophers and thinkers, with focus directed towards the old question of the aristotelian term katharsis. One of the main results of the present study is that from a ”tragic” point of view, Doktor Glas is remarkably modern.    The author aims to perform a divergent, still creative approach to the ambiguous Doktor Glas according to her background and previous education in the anthropocentic discipline of studies in Classical Philology.

I locate my dissertation at the critical intersection of philosophy, medical discourse and literature, and anchor it around five intertwining concepts: modernity, subjectivity, masculinity, immunity and Frenchness. I contend that immunity, as a concept at which life and law converge, offers an alternative and largely overlooked episteme shaping contemporary French literary consciousness as a primary regulator/negotiator between health and sickness, belonging and not belonging, volition and involition, and, finally, self and other. I treat immunity metaphorically and scientifically, and then trace the episteme through the works of three French authors—Émile Zola, Albert Camus and Hervé Guibert—all of whom adopt the medical novel as a way of addressing the relationship of the individual to society and to the self. Anne-Marie Moulin frames the immunological revolution as an ever-evolving "semantic event." In this vein, I devote my first chapter to examining how immunity instituted itself as a common trope of "becoming" embraced—and left naturalized—by post-structural thinkers grappling with their corporal limits. This rhetorical turn culminates in Jean-Luc Nancy's characterization of the immune system as the body’s “physiological signature," inhibiting the potential of man to transcend his biology. In my second chapter, I move from the metaphor of immunity to a brief exposition of the history of the science, ending my survey with Elie Metchnikoff (and his legacy), the "father" of cellular immunology who envisioned the internal body as a dynamic, every-changing structure. I focus the next three chapters of my study on literary examples where the male protagonist’s immunity has been compromised. For my first two examples—Le Docteur Pascal by Emile Zola and La Peste by Albert Camus—I analyze the portrait of the supposedly immune doctor, considering what the “costs and benefits" of this immunity are and how this "exceptional status" is destabilized. Then, in my last chapter, I switch perspectives from the doctors to the patient, examining the texts of Hervé Guibert who, I argue, models his writing strategy on the retrovirus’s tactics, challenging literary conventions so as better to exteriorize his experience and “contaminate” (in the etymological sense as "touch together") his readers. / Romance Languages and Literatures

No description available.

According to postcolonial theory, postcolonial literature tends to depict non-Westerners – the native Other – as a homogenous mass, portrayed as carrying all the dark human traits. The Other is often represented as, for instance, being exotic, violent, hostile and mysterious, and either stands in opposition to, or is portrayed as being completely different from the Westerner. With postcolonial theory as a background, this study is a close-reading analysis and comparison of Albert Camus’ The Stranger (1942), which takes place in a colonial Algeria, and J.M. Coetzee’s Disgrace (1999), which is set in postcolonial South Africa. The novels have been analysed in terms of representation of the Other, as well as the power relations and hierarchy between Westerners and natives, in order to see if these aspects are portrayed differently due to the fact that one novel is written pre-independence and the other post-independence. The results show that the representation of the Other is in accordance with postcolonial theory, in both novels. The natives are exoticised, portrayed as violent and mysterious in a hostile manner, and the plot is viewed from the perspective of the Western, white male protagonist. However, the power relations differ; in The Stranger, the Westerners are definitely superior, whereas in Disgrace, some of the characters still consider themselves to be superior, but their power has declined – the natives strike back, leaving the white population with a choice: to comply to the new order, or to find themselves in a state of disgrace.

No description available.

Literary criticism has traditionally associated the work of Albert Camus with a very specific conception of literature. His more "philosphical" works (namely, his essays) are thus seen as demonstrations of the "message" that his truly literary works seek to transmit. As such, Le Mythe de Sisyphe and L'Homme revolte are considered to provide the driving themes (l'Absurde and la Revolte) of the author's fictive writings. This image (that of the "romancier a message") becomes problematic, however, in face of Camus' intransigent refusal to surrender to any form of dogma. Indeed, for the author, this possibility of surrender constitutes the greatest threat to la Revolte, representing its potential capitulation into Revolution and Terror. We believe that this notion of literature as a vehicle for philosophical beliefs is precisely the concept against which Camus was fighting. / Through the theme of "le juste", or more specifically the question of how we know what is just, Camus challenges this idea of literature and the act of writing. By exposing the mechanisms of self-justification underlying all universal values (and hence of all transcendental "truths" upon which they are necessarily based) the writer reveals them to be social and discursive constructs which permit and perpetuate the imposition of norms in a given domaine, including that of literature. This study proposes to examine Camus' rapport with this element of self-justification in literature, and the ways in which he calls the latter into question.

No description available.

Thesis (M.A.)--University of Delaware, 2007. / Principal faculty advisor: Elaine B. Safer, Dept. of English. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (doctoral)--Université de Paris 7 Denis Diderot, 1997. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 507-523) and index.