The Bible serves as a source for Celestina, but biblical references and reminiscences in the text do not derive from the Scriptures themselves, but from secondary and even tertiary sources. These represent the typical medium of access to the Bible of laymen and, in the case of Celestina, of a very specific group of laymen: university members, which formed the original audience of the work and shared a same way of reading it. Therefore, biblical intertextuality in Celestina is defined by the relation of university members to these sources. When analysed from the perspective of university readers, Celestina becomes a pseudo-contemplative work to which the principles of visual mental representation of affective meditation apply. If read making use of these principles, the didactic and moralising message of the preliminary texts is confirmed and Celestina reveals itself as an admonitory tale against carnal love. Moreover, it appears as a counterfeit sentimental romance, concretely, a reply to "Cárcel de amor", to contemporary love habits and to courtly customs. In addition, reading Celestina from the perspective of an university audience offers a new view on the misuse of biblical references. Instead of being representative of a heterodox attitude toward the Scriptures, these function as a condemnation of the bad use of auctoritates in dialectic contexts. As a result, Celestina can be related to a reformist current in the university world, which was particularly critical to Scholasticism and its teaching methodology. In this sense, Celestina aligns itself with Humanism and, specifically with Christian Humanism. Finally, analysing Celestina from the point of view of university readers explains why a work, which had been originally conceived as a didactic and moralising text, was criticised in the sixteenth century for being inmmoral: audience and times had changed.

The future of our world will largely be determined by our willingness and ability to address practices and beliefs that threaten human dignity, promote violence, and impoverish communities. This dissertation develops an African humanist theology as a basis for concrete engagement with social problems (dehumanization, violence, and poverty) by drawing from Kenneth Kaunda’s concept of Christian humanism. Relying on writings by Kenneth Kaunda housed at Boston University library (books, pamphlets, and unpublished speeches), this dissertation argues that his concept of Christian humanism is a valuable, multidimensional concept that, properly understood can serve as a critical resource for addressing the ethical challenges related to human dignity, nonviolence, and economic justice. This dissertation undertakes four main tasks. First, the dissertation’s critical examination of Christian humanism and African humanism exposes shared yet distinctive emphases on human dignity. Second, the dissertation studies Kaunda’s biography to explore the contextual influences on his life and the development of his thought. Kaunda was deeply influenced by his missionary parents and, later in life, by thinkers such as Mahatma Gandhi. Third, the dissertation analyzes the theoretical bases of Kaunda’s Christian humanism with regard to the main themes of human dignity, nonviolence, and economic egalitarianism. Fourth, the dissertation proposes an African Christian humanist approach embodying the ideas espoused by Kaunda as a framework for addressing the ethical challenges in Africa related to violence and poverty. This study concludes that African Christian humanism in the sense proposed should be an important component of social ethics.

« Lisez l’histoire et le tableau » : telle est l’invitation formulée par Poussin à l’adresse d’un de ses commanditaires, etqui d’une certaine manière consacre d’emblée le bien-fondé d’une approche iconologique de ses oeuvres. Et l’artisted’affirmer ailleurs que « la nouveauté dans la peinture ne consiste pas surtout dans un sujet non encore vu, mais dans labonne et nouvelle disposition et expression, et [qu’] ainsi de commun et vieux, le sujet devient singulier et neuf ».S’agissant cependant de la part cruciale de l’inspiration de ce peintre savant que représente la transposition des auteursclassiques, nous avons constaté que ses modalités n’avaient guère retenu l’attention de la critique. Nous avons donctenté de saisir, pour reprendre les mots de Poussin, ce qui fait la nouveauté et la singularité de la manière dont il traite sesapports littéraires. Il est ainsi apparu que le parti qu’il en tire, bien moins illustratif que d’ordre herméneutique, exige uneparticipation active du spectateur, en l’occurrence invité à déceler dans ses tableaux les rapports secrets qui s’y trouvent suggérés entre plusieurs passages d’une même oeuvre, voire entre le texte ancien apparemment figuré et tel autre, le cas échéant d’un auteur cette fois moderne. Une telle conception de sa pratique culmine dans le recours à un dispositif tout aussi ignoré de la critique, alors qu’il apparaît on ne peut plus caractéristique de l’art de Poussin : l’équivoque visuelle. Nous y percevons en dernier recours l’héritage du tableau à énigme cher aux collèges jésuites, et par là l’une des nombreuses marques que contient son oeuvre de la culture propre aux membres de la Compagnie. / « Read the story and the painting »: this invitation, sent by Poussin to one of his patrons, grounds the iconological approach of his works. The artist asserted elsewhere that « newness in painting does not consist mostly in a yet unrepresented subject, but in a proper and new dispositio and elocutio, thus turning the common and the old into the singular and new ». Still, little sustained critical attention has been paid to the actual ways in which Poussin made use and transposed the Ancient authors from which this erudite painter drew a large of share of his inspiration. We have therefore tried to recover what, according to Poussin himself, constitutes the newness, the singularity of his way of transposing the literary material. It appears that, rather than producing an illustration, Poussin’s word relied on a hermeneutic mode of engagement, calling upon the viewer to decipher in the paintings the secret relationships drawn between a plurality of a literary work’s loci, or between the Ancient source text ostensibly figured in the painting and another, eventually modern one. Such a conception of his practice is epitomized in Poussin’s characteristic use of a critically neglected device : the visual equivoque. We mayrecognize in its use the trace of a genre, that of the enigma painting, dear to the culture of Jesuit colleges, and anothermark of their influence on Poussin’s oeuvre.

Alejandro López Andrada, poète, romancier et essayiste appartenant à la « génération des fils » comme la nomme Juan Vila, retrace le passé perdu ou en voie de disparition de son Andalousie natale. Sa prose se démarque par son caractère élégiaque et en dépit de la diversité générique qui caractérise ses œuvres, celles-ci ont en commun l’expression d’un sentiment nostalgique. Cette étude s’attache à présenter, en premier lieu, la voix narrative qui s’exprime dans le corpus choisi ainsi que la subjectivité qui la définit, puis, dans un second temps, les modes d’expression de cette nostalgie à travers l’exaltation de l’enfance dans laquelle s’inscrit la représentation de la terre natale andalouse. Enfin, la dernière partie de ce travail est consacrée à l’humanisme chrétien qui se dégage des textes, lesquels traduisent ainsi la foi personnelle de l’auteur. Celle-ci se manifeste notamment par l’expression de l’amour de l’Autre, de la revendication de valeurs et modes de vie renvoyant à nouveau à la période de l’enfance de l’auteur et par le poids important du religieux dans l’ensemble de son œuvre. / Alejandro Lopez Andrada, a poet, novelist and essayist from the "generation of sons" as Juan Vila calls it, traces the lost or disappearing past of his native Andalusia.His prose is notable for its elegiac character and despite the generic diversity that characterises his works, they all express a feeling of nostalgia.This study aims to present, in the first instance, the narrative voice that is expressed in the chosen corpus as well as the subjectivity that defines it, and, secondly, the expression of this nostalgia through the exaltation of childhood, in which the representation of the Andalusian homeland is enshrined. Finally, the last part of this work is devoted to the Christian humanism that emerges from the texts, which reflect the author's own personal faith. This particularly manifests itself in the expression of love of the Other, in the demand for the values and way of life which hark back to the author's childhood and by the weight given to the importance of religion in all his work.

À l’aide des écrits d’humanistes chrétiens, ayant exercé un contrôle sur la pratique des arts après le Concile de Trente, nous tenterons d’expliquer le développement du genre paysager en peinture. Le cardinal Federico Borromeo, Louis Richeôme ainsi que Jean Calvin figurent parmi les théologiens qui ont contribué à cette littérature chrétienne influente. Nous nous servirons surtout de l’historiographie récente afin de prouver le rôle essentiel joué par la pensée chrétienne dans le développement de la représentation de la nature en art. Prenant appui sur certaines études importantes, nous analyserons des exemples tant picturaux qu’architecturaux qui reflètent cette influence chrétienne sur la perception de la nature. Au préalable, nous tenterons de dresser un portrait de l’environnement culturel et religieux dans lequel ces humanistes chrétiens ont vécu et développé leur pensée. Notre objectif sera de prouver que l’humanisme chrétien a joué un rôle important pour l’essor du paysage à l’époque de la Contre-Réforme. Les sources contemporaines ainsi que leur interprétation par les historiens et les historiens d’art modernes permettront de mieux comprendre le rôle joué par la pensée chrétienne au sein de ce développement artistique. / Examining the writings of Christian humanists, who exercised control over the practice of the arts after the Council of Trent, this paper seeks to understand the development of landscape painting in the Early Modern period. Cardinal Federico Borromeo, the Jesuit Louis Richeome and Jean Calvin, are among those theologians who contributed to this influential Christian literature. We will mainly use the recent historiography to demonstrate the essential role played by Christian thought in the rise of the representation of nature into art. Building on some important studies, we will analyze both pictorial and architectural examples that reflect this Christian influence on the perception of nature. First, we will try to paint a picture of the religious and cultural environment in which the Christian humanists lived and developed their thinking. Our goal is to prove that Christian humanism played an important role in the development of landscape representations during the Counter-Reformation. Contemporary sources as well as their interpretation by modern historians and art historians will help us to better understand the role of Christian thought in this artistic development.

Understanding how the Renaissance rhetorical curriculum taught style as behavior makes it possible to unite the study of women writers' identities with formal criticism. Nancy L. Christiansen shows that early modern humanists built on the Isocratean tradition of teaching rhetoric as an ethical practice because they adopted and developed lists of rhetorical figures so extensive as to encompass all human discourse, thought, and behavior. For them, knowing, selecting, and applying these various forms was the ethical practice of good judgment, also called decorum. This type of decorum plays an important role in the rhetorical function of two key texts by early modern women. Margaret Fell and Aemilia Lanyer each use a humanist notion of decorum as the virtue of good judgment to formulate their intellectual and moral authority and to argue that women can exercise the same.