This thesis approaches the work of American avant-garde composer John Cage from an unconventional perspective by utilizing rhetorical theory to examine the intellectual history informing his collected writings in the text Silence (1961). That historical period encompasses the whole of the commonplace art movement, which sought to have everyday items and experiences supplant art objects. In applying Lloyd F. Bitzer’s theory of the rhetorical situation to the history of the art of the commonplace, a new concept of influence between artists emerges, one where exigences and situations shape popular notions of art. Briefly stated, a recurring exigence appeared throughout this period, bringing with it the necessary parameters for the inclusion of the commonplace within the realm of the art. From William Wordsworth, Walt Whitman, and Ralph Waldo Emerson through to Marcel Duchamp and Andy Warhol, this exigence can be seen constraining the actions of artists towards a fitting, persuasive method. It is in John Cage that one finds this new method. Demonstrated through numerous examples of Cage’s work, this methodology skews the traditional perception of the artist, forgoing the ego, invoking indeterminacy and using structure to emphasize the process of composition itself. This enabled pieces of music and writing that lacked any discernable intention and therefore invited readers to engage the material therein for what it was originally: sounds and words. The result is, at long last, a persuasive and compelling reason to accept commonplace experiences alongside art works and it is evidenced by the Pop movement that would follow shortly thereafter.

This thesis approaches the work of American avant-garde composer John Cage from an unconventional perspective by utilizing rhetorical theory to examine the intellectual history informing his collected writings in the text Silence (1961). That historical period encompasses the whole of the commonplace art movement, which sought to have everyday items and experiences supplant art objects. In applying Lloyd F. Bitzer’s theory of the rhetorical situation to the history of the art of the commonplace, a new concept of influence between artists emerges, one where exigences and situations shape popular notions of art. Briefly stated, a recurring exigence appeared throughout this period, bringing with it the necessary parameters for the inclusion of the commonplace within the realm of the art. From William Wordsworth, Walt Whitman, and Ralph Waldo Emerson through to Marcel Duchamp and Andy Warhol, this exigence can be seen constraining the actions of artists towards a fitting, persuasive method. It is in John Cage that one finds this new method. Demonstrated through numerous examples of Cage’s work, this methodology skews the traditional perception of the artist, forgoing the ego, invoking indeterminacy and using structure to emphasize the process of composition itself. This enabled pieces of music and writing that lacked any discernable intention and therefore invited readers to engage the material therein for what it was originally: sounds and words. The result is, at long last, a persuasive and compelling reason to accept commonplace experiences alongside art works and it is evidenced by the Pop movement that would follow shortly thereafter.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--York University, 2003. Graduate Programme in Language, Culture and Teaching. / Typescript. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 205-220). Also available on the Internet. MODE OF ACCESS via web browser by entering the following URL: http://wwwlib.umi.com/cr/yorku/fullcit?pNQ99164

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Dans les dernières décennies du XVIe siècle, s’épanouit une histoire « à hauteur d’homme », du fait de son objet et du fait des limites qu’elle se donne à elle-même. Les usages de la fortune contribuent au développement de cette pratique d’écriture qui se veut séculière et manifeste un intérêt pour les réalités humaines, mais dans laquelle la volonté divine est nettement prise en considération. Un prologue permet de définir la fortune comme un lieu commun et comme un objet polémique dans le contexte d’une crise politique et religieuse. L’étude s’attache ensuite à un corpus d’ouvrages d’histoire (Le Roy, La Popelinière, Belleforest…) et de Mémoires (Marguerite de Valois, Henri de Mesmes, Monluc…), rédigés ou publiés entre 1560 et 1600. Elle montre comment les usages du terme fortune permettent de penser l’adversité (I), de concevoir l’action (II) et de s’approprier le passé (III). Elle s’intéresse à la manière dont est élaborée la structure du récit, dont est construite une stratégie argumentative qui permet la valorisation d’une identité nobiliaire ou d’un parcours politique et militaire, et dont sont conférées aux faits passés une portée édifiante ou une valeur pratique. La fortune ne constitue pas un moteur de l’histoire comme somme d’événements, mais peut être un outil de l’écriture de l’histoire qui permet de désigner et de penser les rapports de l’homme à ce qui lui est extérieur (l’action d’autrui, les circonstances), ce qui lui échappe (l’action divine, l’action royale) mais aussi à ses propres failles et à ses propres capacités. / During the last decades of the XVIth century, a history flourishes « at human size », for its object and for the limits it gives itself. Uses of fortune contribute to the development of a writing which wants to be secular and shows interest for human realities, yet in which the divine will is strongly taken into consideration. The prologue defines fortune as a commonplace and as a polemical object in the context of a political and religious crisis. Then the study analyses a corpus of history books (Le Roy, La Popelinière, Belleforest…) and Memoirs (Marguerite de Valois, Henri de Mesmes, Monluc…) which are written or published between 1560 and 1600. It demonstrates how uses of the word fortune allow to think adversity (I), to understand action (II) and to take ownership of the past (III). This dissertation is interested in the elaboration of the narrative structure, in the construction of an argumentative strategy which gives value to a noble identity or a political and military experience, and in the way facts are given an edifying or a pratical significance. Fortune is not a driver of history as sum of events, but can be a tool to write history, to name and to think the relation of man to what is external to him (someone else’s action, circumstances) and out of range (divine action, royal action), but also to his own flaws and capabilities.

O presente trabalho tem por objetivos: em primeiro lugar, realizar uma transcrição modernizada do tratado Antiguidade da Arte da Pintura, sua nobreza, divino, e humano que a exercitou, e honras que os monarcas fizeram a seus artífices, 1696, de Félix da Costa Meesen; em segundo lugar, apresentar uma análise de elementos retóricos do texto, para isso levando em consideração a tradição de leitura à época de Félix da Costa Meesen. O tratado é um dos primeiros documentos a reivindicar a criação de uma Academia de Artes em Portugal, o que de fato só aconteceria em meados do século XIX. Para assegurar seus argumentos, Félix da Costa aplica no discurso do tratado escolhas elocutivas a partir do gênero epidítico, como por exemplo, quando opera lugares-comuns de Plínio, o Velho. Esses lugares-comuns elevam a Pintura a altos patamares. O tratado conta atualmente apenas com uma publicação: uma edição fac-similar seguida de uma tradução para o inglês sob a organização de George Kubler, de 1967, por meio da Yale University Press, da Universidade de Yale - EUA. A versão digitalizada do tratado está disponível no site Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library da Biblioteca da Universidade de Yale. O códice é de difícil acesso a demais leitores que não possam compreender manuscritos seiscentistas. Justificamos, assim, nossa transcrição modernizada porque acreditamos que ela fará com que esta obra de Félix da Costa, de grande relevância por abordar a tratadística sobre a Arte da Pintura, ganhe mais consulentes. / The present work has as its objectives: firstly, to carry out a modernized transcription of The Antiquity of the Art of Painting, its nobility, the divine, and the human who practiced it, and the honors that monarchs made to their artificers, 1696, by Felix da Costa Meesen; Secondly, to present an analysis of the rhetorical elements of the text, taking into account the reading tradition at the time of Félix da Costa Meesen. The treatise is one of the first documents to argue for creation of an Academy of Arts in Portugal, which in fact, only happened in the mid-nineteenth century. Félix da Costa uses eloquent choices from the epideictic genre in the discourse of the treatise to ensure his arguments, specially, when he operates in Pliny the Elder commonplaces. These commonplaces elevate the painting to high levels. The treatise currently has only one publication: a facsimile edition followed by an English translation under George Kubler organization, 1967, Yale University Press, Yale University - USA. The digitilized version of the treatise is available on Yale University Library website at Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library. The book is difficult to access for readers who can not understand seventeenth-century manuscripts. We justify, therefore, our modernized transcription because we believe that it will make this work of Félix da Costa, of great relevance for the Art of Painting, gain more readers.

O presente trabalho tem por objetivos: em primeiro lugar, realizar uma transcrição modernizada do tratado Antiguidade da Arte da Pintura, sua nobreza, divino, e humano que a exercitou, e honras que os monarcas fizeram a seus artífices, 1696, de Félix da Costa Meesen; em segundo lugar, apresentar uma análise de elementos retóricos do texto, para isso levando em consideração a tradição de leitura à época de Félix da Costa Meesen. O tratado é um dos primeiros documentos a reivindicar a criação de uma Academia de Artes em Portugal, o que de fato só aconteceria em meados do século XIX. Para assegurar seus argumentos, Félix da Costa aplica no discurso do tratado escolhas elocutivas a partir do gênero epidítico, como por exemplo, quando opera lugares-comuns de Plínio, o Velho. Esses lugares-comuns elevam a Pintura a altos patamares. O tratado conta atualmente apenas com uma publicação: uma edição fac-similar seguida de uma tradução para o inglês sob a organização de George Kubler, de 1967, por meio da Yale University Press, da Universidade de Yale - EUA. A versão digitalizada do tratado está disponível no site Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library da Biblioteca da Universidade de Yale. O códice é de difícil acesso a demais leitores que não possam compreender manuscritos seiscentistas. Justificamos, assim, nossa transcrição modernizada porque acreditamos que ela fará com que esta obra de Félix da Costa, de grande relevância por abordar a tratadística sobre a Arte da Pintura, ganhe mais consulentes. / The present work has as its objectives: firstly, to carry out a modernized transcription of The Antiquity of the Art of Painting, its nobility, the divine, and the human who practiced it, and the honors that monarchs made to their artificers, 1696, by Felix da Costa Meesen; Secondly, to present an analysis of the rhetorical elements of the text, taking into account the reading tradition at the time of Félix da Costa Meesen. The treatise is one of the first documents to argue for creation of an Academy of Arts in Portugal, which in fact, only happened in the mid-nineteenth century. Félix da Costa uses eloquent choices from the epideictic genre in the discourse of the treatise to ensure his arguments, specially, when he operates in Pliny the Elder commonplaces. These commonplaces elevate the painting to high levels. The treatise currently has only one publication: a facsimile edition followed by an English translation under George Kubler organization, 1967, Yale University Press, Yale University - USA. The digitilized version of the treatise is available on Yale University Library website at Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library. The book is difficult to access for readers who can not understand seventeenth-century manuscripts. We justify, therefore, our modernized transcription because we believe that it will make this work of Félix da Costa, of great relevance for the Art of Painting, gain more readers.

Cette thèse se propose de questionner, sous l’angle du langage, le phénomène de l’idéologie en partant de la francographie négro-africaine. Caractérisant cette dernière, nous restituons les temps forts de sa construction, tumultueuse, en pratique professionnelle organisée, pour aboutir à l’hypothèse que les idéologèmes du texte porteraient en premier sur une interprétation du vécu sociopolitique du continent. À partir de ce point, et compte tenu de l’ubiquité de notre sujet, nous tentons de circonscrire un cadre opératoire de nœuds idéologiques dans le texte. Pour ce faire, nous avons recours à l’analyse du discours, surtout avec ses notions de pratique et de formation discursives, ainsi qu’avec celle d’habitus, développée par Bourdieu pour rendre compte d’un système de signes culturellement et socialement conditionnés. Ceci écarte l’immanence structuralise et permet une porosité de l’analyse dans la perspective d’un aller-retour permanent entre l’idéologie de l’auteur et celle de son personnel en texte. C’est sur ces deux plages, et sur les deux plans (le plus fondamental de représentation du monde, et le plus calculé, le plus stratégique, voire le plus polémique) du processus idéologique, que nous parvenons à bâtir la structuration de notre thèse. Nous analysons ainsi, sous le couvert de la lexicologie, La caractérisation, La description et La créativité lexicale, qui prennent globalement en charge les artifices d’agencements discursifs des locuteurs pour donner à voir les êtres et les choses. Il en découle une vision plutôt négative du cosmos chez les personnages mis en scène, même si certains auteurs ont su relever l’image de l’Afrique, aussi bien auprès des Occidentaux que chez les Africains eux-mêmes. Dans la seconde partie, qui se penche sur La structuttion scénographique, nous analysons particulièrement le sens de l’énoncé à travers son énonciation, la (mise en) scène tant externe qu’interne de l’énonciation des auteurs et de leurs personnels. Éprouvant positivement le critère linguistique de la formation discursive de la graphie, Les représentations linguistiques montrent à quel point la langue française continue de hanter les esprits, plus d’un demi-siècle après l’occupation coloniale, que ce soit en vrai ou en faux, i.e comme soumis à un stratagème de positionnement dans la légende. Une étude de l’énonciation textuelle, par Les discours rapportés, Les déictiques et La temporalité narrative, montre comment les sujets parlant conçoivent l’altérité ou l’identité, comment ils migrent, selon le besoin de la cause, de l’énonciation singulière à l’énonciation universelle et vice-versa, comment ils manipulent l’énonciation d’autrui pour la soumettre à la leur. Les auteurs dénoncent, surtout sur le plan politique, un laxisme et un amour pitoyable de l’immédiateté.La francographie négro-africaine apparaît comme un champ de batailles idéologiques variées, que ce soit entre les écrivains, les politiques et les partenaires de l’édition, ou bien entre les écrivains et les lecteurs, africains ou francophones. Même si ces derniers ne répondent pas aux auteurs dans le texte, ou ne leur répondent pas tout simplement, les débats, les perceptions qui s’entretiennent de part et d’autre des deux camps se lisent en filigrane. / This thesis, entitled The ideology of the text: semiolinguistic analysis of the negro-African francography, is attempting a scrutiny of ideology in the novel. Characterizing what is known as francography, we restore the main events of its tumultuous development into the organized professional activity that it is today. We thus postulate that ideologems in the text initiate an interpretation of the sociopolitical situation in Africa. Trying to resolve the ubiquity of ideology in language, we manage to circumscribe a frame of study to spot the manifestations of our topic in the text. For that purpose, we recourse to discourse analysis, especially its concepts of discursive practice and discursive formation. The notion of habitus, developed by Bourdieu, also contributed to state systems of signs that are culturally and socially determined in the African literary field, as well as it deviated the structuralist immanence of text theories. This deviation led to an efficient switch between the ideology of the authors and that of their characters or narrators. It is on these two lines and on the double aspect (the basic one of thoughts and viewpoints, and the most strategic or controversial one) of the ideological action that we come to build the frame of the thesis. Through a lexicological study (Characterization, Description and Lexical creativity), we examine the lexical combinations constructed by the speakers to represent things and beings according to their judgments. It emerges from this that enunciators have a rather negative representation of their environment, even though some authors succeed in raising the image of Africa. In the second section of the theses, based on Thescenographic structuration, we scrutinize the sense of the utterance according to its enunciation, as well as we consider both the internal and the outside stage/staging of the various protagonists of the communication. Confirming the statement that African writers, more than fifty years after colonization, are still concerned with the linguistic question, The Linguistic representations illustrate the use of various conceptions of French that writers perform, either to simply get ordinary representations to reverberate across the literary field, either as a strategy to make their mark on a topic that has always been very successful. The study of the text enunciation, through Reported speech, Deixis and Narrative temporality, reveals how speakers/thinkers conceive otherness and identity, how they switch, according to their interests, from a singular to a universal reference and vice versa, how they manipulate the other’s enunciation to serve their viewpoints. In the aggregate, authors of the corpus denunciate an excessive free-and-easy political attitude and a pernicious propensity for immediacy.The negro-African francography turns out to be a field of various ideological battles, both for writers, political and publishing protagonists, on the one hand, and, on the other hand, for writers and readers, whether the latter are African or Europeans. It does not matter much that readers don’t answer writers back in the text, or don’t even simply retort; what is certain is that the battles and reciprocal perceptions over both sides are palpable in the text.

This thesis investigates cognition and knowledge in a rich selection of late medieval Florentine commonplace books (zibaldoni) and diaries (ricordanze) with a special focus on Giovanni Rucellai’s Zibaldone Quaresimale. In Chapter Two a new methodology, named Mental Model Framework in History (MMFH), is elaborated. By studying mental processes such as categorisation and decision making, MMFH enables us to study cognition in historical documents. The dissertation is based on a computer-assisted analysis described in Chapter Three . This has brought together a number of technologies (Natural Language Processing, Semantic Web, Text Encoding Initiative) and used them according to the interpretative goals of the MMFH. Chapter Four investigates the knowledge-constructing practice of late medieval Florentines, and concludes that commonplace books and diaries were tools of information management and knowledge transmission. The core chapters study four domains of thinking: space, time, agency and perception. Chapter Five analyses social recognition and judgement in Renaissance Florence and reveals how a new ethical thought took shape, one that prepared the transition to capitalism. By applying decision and game theory, Chapter Six examines horizontal friendship, a bond that functioned as an informal but risky social insurance in Florence. Chapter Seven studies how Florentines used superlatives to construct a hierarchy of the world, with Florence on the top. This was the manifestation of a fierce competition within and outside the walls of Florence, competition that strongly influenced the social and physical environment of the city. By studying selection, periodisation and causal reasoning, Chapter Eight pinpoints the gradual secularisation of the conception of time. The thesis concludes that the late medieval revolution in information culture marked by the gradual transition from an overwhelmingly oral culture to an increasingly literate culture produced quantitative and qualitative changes in human thought. This largely contributed to the birth of modern thought, and to the late medieval transformation of the social and physical environment.

Ce travail propose de réfléchir sur la notion de lieu commun, à partir de deux perspectives générales. La première relève d’une enquête philosophique sur la persuasion et s’inscrit par conséquent à la croisée d’une réflexion sur les formes intelligibles et sensibles de la preuve et d’une exploration de la tradition rhétorique du discours persuasif. La seconde relève quant à elle d’une interrogation sur la parole propre, qui engage le rapport entre subjectivité, langage et expression. C’est précisément à l’intersection de ces deux problématiques que l’on rencontre la notion de lieu commun, en vertu de la double acception qu’elle revêt. Héritier de la réflexion rhétorique sur les formes de l’argument, le lieu permet d’interroger directement la nature de la preuve discursive, telle qu’elle se donne à entendre dans les effets sensibles de la parole persuasive. Par ailleurs, dans son acception devenue usuelle, le lieu commun apparaît sous la figure paradoxale d’un obstacle à l’expression du soi. Il traduit à la fois une hétéronomie de la pensée et du dire, et la manifestation d’une parole étrangère, aliénée et anonyme, tapie au cœur de l’intériorité. Comment ce concept, visant initialement la maîtrise persuasive du discours, en est-il venu à nommer une dépossession de la parole propre ? De la Rhétorique d’Aristote aux écrits de Jean Paulhan, une enquête à la fois historique et conceptuelle peut s’efforcer de retracer les raisons de cette évolution, et d’évaluer la façon dont le lieu, tout en résistant au modèle d’une possession subjective du discours, persiste néanmoins à faire entendre une autre forme d’appropriation de la parole. / This study is a reflection about the notion of « commonplace » (lieu commun) that aims at elucidating its nature from two different points of view. The first one is an investigation about the concept of persuasion, which closely intertwines a philosophical inquiry about the intelligible and sensible form of proofs and a historical approach of the rhetorical tradition of persuasive speech. The second one is a research about the idea of a “proper speech” (parole propre), which deals with the relationship between subject, language and expressivity. The notion of commonplace is a central issue for both perspectives, due to its equivocal sense. As the result of a complex rhetorical theory of argumentation, the commonplace is able to highlight the very nature of the persuasive proof, which is to be said and heard through the sensible effects of persuasive speech. Besides, in the “ordinary” sense of the notion, the commonplace is the highly paradoxical figure of an obstacle to the expression of the self: it allegedly reveals the heteronomy of one’s thought and speech, and the underlying presence of an estranged, alienated and anonymous voice inside the interiority. How can one account for the relationship between those two different, even opposite, meanings? From Aristotle’s Rhetoric to Jean Paulhan’s works, this study aims at exploring the historical and conceptual reasons of this equivocality. It eventually attempts to describe the very specific form of speech appropriation enables by commonplaces, despite their irreducibility to the concept of authorship involved in the “classical” concepts of subjectivity.