Ce travail constitue une réflexion sur la chanson contestataire contemporaine aux États-Unis à travers les chansons et l’engagement politique et social de Bruce Springsteen. Nous défendons la thèse que Springsteen renouvelle le genre de la protest song en s’adaptant à l’époque contemporaine. Pour ce faire, le chanteur adopte quatre stratégies artistiques. Elles consistent à chanter sur les gens ordinaires et leur quotidien, aborder le désenchantement et le désespoir des plus exclus, composer des chansons qui remplissent une fonction cathartique en ayant recours à l’imitation et enfin à militer dans la sphère politique et sociale en soutenant des candidats lors des élections présidentielles américaines tout en offrant des dons aux organisations caritatives qui aident les plus démunis. La thèse démontre que Springsteen arrive à se hisser au sommet du classement des meilleures ventes aux États-Unis et à travers le monde grâce à ces stratégies. Elles lui ont permis de mobiliser un public et d’avoir des millions de fans. Nous proposons d’appeler les chansons engagées de Springsteen des chansons méditatives (reflective songs). La chanson méditative de Springsteen est, sans doute, l’outil culturel de contestation le plus adapté à l’époque contemporaine où il est difficile pour un artiste engagé de protester efficacement du fait de la marchandisation de l’acte même de sa contestation. Il se peut que la reflective song de Bruce Springsteen ne change pas le monde, mais elle peut en revanche permettre aux gens de croire en un monde meilleur et donc de les dissuader de se révolter. / This work is a study of contemporary protest song in the USA through the songs and social and political activism of Bruce Springsteen. It contends that Springsteen has been able to reexamine American protest songs and frame a new genre under the umbrella of rock music by adapting his music to the social and political context of contemporary America. The thesis that I defend shows that the reason behind the commercial success of Springsteen can be explained by the fact that he has adopted several artistic strategies which have brought him an audience composed of dedicated fans who admire him. I argue that Springsteen adopts four main strategies: firstly, singing about ordinary people and reporting their daily hardships; secondly, composing somber songs that deal with the despair of blue collars and marginalized Americans; thirdly, adopting mimesis (imitation) which has a cathartic effect on Springsteen’s audience; and finally, getting involved in social and political activism. The thesis contends that Springsteen is among the top selling rock singers in the USA and several other countries thanks to these four strategies. Springsteen has reinvented protest song as a genre and has become a reference in a world where everything is co-opted including the very act of rebellion. I, therefore, suggest a new term, reflective songs, to describe the songs of Bruce Springsteen when they reflect on the condition of the socially excluded instead of protesting pointlessly. Springsteen’s reflective song is undoubtedly the most relevant artistic medium to shed light on the most deprived people of contemporary America. Perhaps, the reflective song of Bruce Springsteen will not change the world, but at least it gives people a reason to hope for a better future.

La chanson de geste et le roman arthurien en prose aux XIIe et XIIIe siècles dépeignent un univers largement guerrier. Mais loin d’en donner une signification homogène, les œuvres narrent différents types de conflits, des plus terrestres aux plus spirituels, et font entendre des voix diverses – y compris celle du jongleur ou du narrateur – qui tantôt justifient la violence collective, tantôt la condamnent, selon des critères variables. Cette pensée complexe de la guerre s’éclaire lorsqu’on replace les discours littéraires au cœur d’un dialogue avec d’autres textes – surtout ecclésiastiques – concernant l’activité guerrière et sa légitimité : ainsi, la manière de concevoir le sens de la lutte, dans des fictions destinées en premier lieu à un public noble, puise dans des systèmes de valeurs parfois opposés mais aussi complémentaires, laïcs et cléricaux. L’enjeu des relations conflictuelles tel que l’expriment les récits dépend également de schémas d’organisation intellectuelle qui sous-tendent une représentation de l’ordre : la guerre est conçue positivement lorsqu’elle vise à défendre ou à établir une certaine organisation du monde et de la société, parfois fondée sur une exigence de continuité et d’unité du pouvoir, parfois au contraire nourrie par une aspiration à la totalité. En dernier lieu, la valeur de la lutte dépend de son rôle dans la destinée humaine, ce que l’épopée et le roman expriment chacun selon un régime d’historicité distinct : les discours de la guerre sont donc aussi fonction des spécificités poétiques des formes littéraires, de leur écriture de l’histoire, et de la façon dont elles organisent le temps. / 12th and 13th century chansons de gestes and prose Arthurian romances depict a largely warlike universe. But, far from giving an homogeneous interpretation of it, these works narrate different types of conflicts, from the more earthly to the more spiritual, and let diverse voices be heard – including that of the juggler or of the narrator – which sometimes justify collective violence, sometimes condemn it, according to different criteria. This complex view of war can be better understood if we place these literary discourses at the center of a dialogue with other kinds of texts – mainly ecclesiastical – about war and its legitimacy : thus, the way in which the meaning of fighting is conceived in fictions first of all destined to a noble audience is rooted in sets of values which are sometimes opposed but also complementary, lay and ecclesiastical. The stakes of the conflictual relationships as they are expressed in the narratives also depend on the intellectual constructions underlying a representation of order : war is conceived positively when its aim is to defend or to establish a certain organization of the world and of society, sometimes based on a requirement for continuity and unity of power, sometimes drawing on the contrary on an aspiration for totality. Finally, the value of the fight depends on its role in human destiny, which the epic and the romance each express according to a different regime of historicity : discourses about war thus depend on the poetic specificities of literary forms, on their writing of history, and on the way they organize time.

O presente trabalho tem como objetivo destacar a importância da presença do personagem de cavalaria Orlando nas relações intertextuais que existem entre a obra de Italo Calvino e os clássicos da literatura italiana. Para tanto elaborou-se um histórico do personagem ao longo dessa tradição literária desde as canções de gesta até O Castelo dos Destinos Cruzados, tendo em vista o levantamento de características comuns entre as obras e os temas do amor e da loucura, que demonstram como tais variantes são retomadas ou modificadas ao longo do tempo, ou seja, a seleção dos elementos que apontam para uma reescritura da tradição literária cavaleiresca italiana. Mais especificamente foram analisados três poemas: La Chanson de Roland (1100), Orlando innamorato (1483) e Orlando furioso (1516), e duas narrativas escritas por Italo Calvino, La pazzia dOrlando, publicada no livro Orlando Furioso raccontato da Italo Calvino (1970), e História de Orlando louco de amor, em O castelo dos Destinos Cruzados (1973). / This study aims to show the importance of the presence of the cavalry character Orlando in an intertextual relation between Italo Calvinos literary work and the Italian literary classics. In order to reach this goal we elaborate the character history through out this literary tradition from the chanson de geste to The Castle of Crossed Destinies, regarding to mapping common features between the literary works and the literary topic of love and madness, that demonstrate how those variants are resumed or modify over time, in other words, the selection of elements that point to a rewriting of the Italian cavalry literary tradition. More specifically we analyzed three poems from the literary tradition: La Chanson de Roland (1100), Orlando innamorato (1483), Orlando furioso (1516), and two narratives written by Italo Calvino, La pazzia dOrlando, published in Orlando Furioso raccontato da Italo Calvino (1970), and Storia dellOrlando pazzo per amore, in the book The Castle of Crossed Destinies (1973).

L’étude interroge les représentations du souillé et de l’impur à travers les œuvres littéraires des XIIe et XIIIe siècles. Présent dans tous les genres narratifs profanes (chansons de geste, romans arthuriens, fabliaux, théâtre, Roman de Renart) le goût – ou le dégoût – médiéval pour le répugnant revêt de multiples facettes dont la prolixité et la diversité interpellent. De la boue aux excrétions du corps, de la lèpre aux tabous du sang, de la macule de la honte à celle du péché, l’expression de la souillure oscille entre sens propre et sens figuré pour énoncer et penser, en les ancrant dans la matérialité la plus concrète, des systèmes de valeur. Servant à établir des frontières, à définir des champs d’inclusion et d’exclusion, les manifestations de l’immonde révèlent, autant qu’elles contribuent à les forger et à les concilier, les ordres idéologiques imbriqués de la société médiévale. Par la place accordée à l’abjection, la littérature expérimente ainsi la manière de dire et de représenter le désordre – pour mieux le circonscrire. Les poétiques contrastées de la souillure élaborées par les différents genres montrent alors combien la mise en scène de l’impur rejoint une interrogation littéraire sur les pouvoirs du langage et la capacité des textes à exprimer le monde : idéologique, esthétique, la question de la souillure est aussi sémiotique. Tendues entre le concret et l’abstrait, le mot et la chose, le rire et l’horreur, les représentations du souillé et de l’impur dévoilent ainsi un univers où le rapport à la souillure, loin de la simple éviction, peut aussi aller dans le sens d’une réappropriation et d’une réhabilitation – voire, même, d’une rédemption. / This study explores the representations of the soiled and the impure through literary works of the 12th and 13th centuries. Present in all profane narrative genres (chansons de geste, Arthurian novels, fabliaux, drama, Roman de Renart), the medieval taste – or distaste – for what is repulsive manifests itself in a startling multiplicity of ways. From mud to body fluids, from leprosy to blood-related taboos, from the stigma of shame to the stigma of sin, the designation of what is soiled oscillates between the literal and the figurative in order to articulate and process value systems by anchoring them in the most tangible materiality. The manifestations of what is vile and squalid are instrumental in drawing boundaries and defining fields of inclusion and exclusion; they also reveal, shape and reconcile the different ideological orders built into medieval society. By giving abjection pride of place, literature experiments with the expression and representation of disorder – the better to circumscribe it. This contrasted poetics of what is soiled took shape across the different genres, which shows the extent to which the staging of what is impure corresponds to a literary attempt to question the powers of language and the capacity of texts to express the world: an exploration of what is soiled has ideological, aesthetical, but also semiotic implications. Between the tangible and the abstract, the word and the thing, laughter and horror, these representations unveil a medieval universe where the relationship with what is soiled goes far beyond mere rejection and can also lead to a form of reappropriation, rehabilitation, and even redemption.

Cette thèse de doctorat a pour objet d'étude la chanson d'auteur italienne de 1958 à l'orée du XXI° siècle. Une période si étendue correspond à la volonté de ne pas enfermer le sujet, ni dans des bornes chronologiques étroites, ni dans une définition close de la chanson d'auteur. Cette étude s'intéresse également aux liens entre la chanson italienne et le contexte sociétal et politique. La 1° partie analyse les principaux phénomènes artistiques justifiant, à la fin des années 50, l'affirmation d'un tournant « d'auteur » dans la chanson italienne, jusque-là figée dans un mélisme hérité de l'opéra, tout en tenant compte des éléments conjoncturels et des hasards de l'Histoire. La 2° partie est vouée à l'étude de la langue, de la poétique et de l'esthétique de cette chanson. Une large part est faite à la question dialectale, démontrant que cette question ne se réduit pas au folklore. La 3° partie étudie la chanson par le prisme de l'Histoire : de façon rétrospective mais aussi comme un reflet des temps en prise directe. La 4° et dernière partie aborde notre contemporanéité et la chanson d'auteur sous des formes nouvelles : rock, nouvelle école cantautoriale, rap.Ce cheminement nous mène à toute une série de pistes de réflexions : la réécriture, l'aspect performatif, la légitimité culturelle d'un genre artistique et, à l'ère d'internet, les nouvelles formes et modalités de réception de l'art mais également la révolution que le web provoque dans la création. La chanson compte une place importante dans la société et dans la culture des XXème et XXIème siècles. Elle a donc besoin d'être envisagée plus que jamais, et peut nous aider à comprendre à quelle époque on vit. / This doctoral thesis explores the Italian art song genre from 1958 until the dawn of the twenty-first century; the broad scope of investigation was chosen so that the subject would not be overly circumscribed either temporally or notionally. The thesis also examines the relationship between the Italian art song and its social and political contexts. The first part, taking into account those influences as well as the effect of the random events of History, analyses the main artistic phenomena at the end of the '50 that led to an "artistic" turning point for the Italian popular song, hitherto locked into an opera derived melismatic mode. The second part investigates the language, the poetics and the aesthetics of the art song genre addressing at length dialect, demonstrating that this question cannot be explained merely in terms of folklore. The third part develops the art song seen through the lens of History, both retrospectively and as a reflexion of the current events of the day. The fourth and last part discusses the new forms of art song that have developed within a contemporary context: rock, the new cantautoriale school and rap. The rewriting, the performance act itself are discussed; the cultural legitimacy of an artistic genre and new forms and ways of experiencing art, as well as revolutionary modes of creation with the advent of the Internet are explored. The song was granted an important place in the society and culture of the second half of the twentieth century and the beginning of the twenty-first; today, imbued with the troubles of a new period, it invites our questions and research more than ever to help us understand the age we live in.

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This thesis addresses the connection between Analytic Cubist paintings and popular music culture in pre-World War I Paris. In particular, it focuses on popular music, performance, song lyrics, music iconography and its connected poster advertising as each relates to the Analytic Cubist paintings of Braque and Picasso. During the last years of the nineteenth century, the world of fine art came into close contact with the realm of popular entertainment, in particular institutions such as the cabaret, cafe'-concert and the music-hall. A revival of this performance which occurred around 1910, not only impacted the everyday world, but also the Cubist artists whose work reflected this renewed interest. Popular music culture provided a vocabulary of devices that were taken by the Cubists and reinterpreted to a more complex, less popular cultural ends. This is reflected in the derivation of visual elements which are essential to Analytic Cubist paintings. Some of these "borrowed" devices can be traced to techniques typically used in popular music poster advertisements. For example, elements common to posters such as the representation of illusionistically drawn objects and the use of words as well as the juxtaposition of imagery and letters can be found in Analytic Cubist work. Similar to posters, popular music also makes its way into Cubist painting. In addition to the well-documented example of Picasso's use of the "Ma Jolie" refrain from Harry Fragson's hit song Derniere Chanson, other instances of subject matter as well as attributes (sous entendre and repetitive lyrics) of popular song can be found in Cubist painting. Elements of popular-music culture, linked through performance, posters and song lyrics are in fact essential visual components of the vocabulary of Analytic paintings.

La littérature française médiévale a puisé aux sources celtiques et occitanes pour donner naissance aux romans courtois.D’autre part, la plupart des chansons de geste en langue d’oïl sont localisées en Occitanie et certaines d’entre elles ont puexister en occitan. Or, certains des héros de ces chansons sont Bretons. Les écrivains du 12ème siècle et leurs mécènes ont-ils rapproché deux mondes jusque-là distincts, le monde celtique et le monde occitan ? Ou bien les contacts ont-ils été directs et plus anciens ? La Bretagne continentale a-telle été un intermédiaire entre le Nord et le Sud ? Entre les pays celtiques et occitans ? L’étude s’appuiera dans sa première partie sur l’arrière-plan historique des relations culturelles entre Bretagne et Aquitaine : relations politiques, commerciales et religieuses depuis l’Antiquité jusqu’au 13ème siècle. La seconde partie sera consacrée aux relations littéraires autour de deux axes principaux : la Matière de Bretagne en Aquitaine et la présence des héros bretons dans les chansons de geste relatives à l’épopée occitane / Medieval French literature drew on Celtic and Occitan sources to give birth to courtly romances. On the other hand, mostof the chansons de geste in Oïl language are located in Occitania and some of them have existed in Occitan language.However, some of the heroes of these songs are Bretons. Did the writers of the 12th century and their patrons bringtogether two worlds hitherto separate, the Celtic world and the Occitan world? Or contacts were direct and older? WasBrittany a staging post between the North and the South; between the Celtic countries and the Occitan lands? The first part of this study will deal with the historical background of cultural connections between Brittany and Auitaine: political, commercial and religious connections from antiquity to the 13th century. The second part will be devoted to literary connections around two main axes: the Matter of Britain in Aquitaine and the presence of Breton heroes in the chansons de geste related to the Occitan epic

A Dissertation submitted to the Faculty of Arts, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, for the degree of master of Arts. / This thesis examines a medieval text which forms part of Italian chevalric literature i.e. The story of Ugone d'Alvernia. Its original name was Huon d'Auvergne. Firstly the text will be examined from the historic angle and then from a more scientific point of view. It shows how the original "chanson de geste", written in French was brought by the French "jongleurs" into Italy and became initialized, producing a unique phenomenon, a linguistic mixture known as franco-venetian. This literature played a decisive part in the diffusion of the stories surrounding Charlemagne. Huon d'Auvergne was elaborated and extended by Andrea da Barberino (c. 1370-1432) and called La Storia di Ugone d' Alvernia (The story of Ugone Of Alvernia). Various descents into Hell are then examined , from both the classic and the Christian point of view. This examination leads on to the comparison of the two "Inferni" described by Andrea da Barberino in his two works La Storia di Ugone d' Alvernia and in Guerino il Meschino with the descent described by Dante in his Inferno. A morphological analysis of the text is then undertaken. It applies the theory propounded and used by Propp in his morphological analysis of some Russian fairy tales. According to the theory there are thirty-one "functions" which can be applied in such an analysis / Andrew Chakane 2018

A Chanson de Roland, obra construída no século XIX como fundadora da literatura francesa, foi bastante explorada ao longo dos últimos 150 anos, muitas vezes com usos políticos, nem sempre expressos. Apesar de exaustivamente trabalhada pelos estudos literários, são quase inexistentes as investigações históricas sobre o seu conteúdo cristão e suas possíveis relações com a legitimação do combate contra os pagãos. Este trabalho investiga de que forma os pagãos são representados na gestas do final do século XI, e como estas constroem uma alteridade através da religião, da moralidade, da territorialidade, e da etnicidade. Investiga também como os cristãos são representados dentro uma unidade pan-européia, numa sobreposição das noções de império e cristandade, e como sua luta contra os pagãos é legitimada, e mesmo santificada, pelas obras, através do martírio dos seus cavaleiros. / The Song of Roland, explored in the nineteenth century as the main text of French literature, was heavily exploited over the past 150 years, often with political uses, not always expressed. Despite extensive work by literary studies, there hardly any historical research on its Christian content and its possible association with the legitimacy of the combat against the pagans. This work investigates how the pagans are represented in the gestas of the late eleventh century, and how they build an otherness through religion, morality, territoriality, and ethnicity.It also investigates how Christians are represented in a pan-European unity, in a superposition of the notions of empire and Christianity, and how their fight against the heathen is legitimated and even sanctified through the martyrdom of their knights.