This thesis places P. D. James's detective novels within the historical and critical framework of the detective genre, and explores her particular contributions to it. James's awareness of the implications of a police investigation, coupled with her strikingly bleak and moralistic representation of our contemporary world are two of the main reasons she has achieved such widespread critical acclaim. Her novels also have a didactic dimension that ranges from an assertion of morally-correct modes of behaviour in an age without religion, to the constant reminder that, although they provide entertainment, murder mysteries must never be taken too lightly. These signature features of James's fiction have become more pronounced over the years, and reached their apotheosis in such novels as Death of an Expert Witness, A Taste for Death, and Devices and Desires. As a result, these texts are the principal analytic focus of this thesis.

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The specific characteristic of Jean Ethier-Blais' works is the continuity of a French Canadian tradition against the spirit of rupture that prevailed during the Quiet Revolution. His intellectual, literary and political thought was strongly influenced by his master, Canon Lionel Groulx who taught him the importance of the nation and its history. He was also influenced by the exiled French Canadian poets (Marcel Dugas, Paaul Morin, Robert de Roquebrune), particularly by Francois Hertel who was an incomparable intellectual master while he was a Jesuit priest. Charles Maurras represents the best incarnation of French and classical intelligence who led Ethier-Blais and his master, Canon Groulx, towards the restoration of Quebec French identity.

This paper presents different aspects of architect Aldo Rossi's thought related to analogy. The idea of type which is central to The Architecture of the City, is reinterpreted here in relation with Rossi's ideas about analogy which are proposed in A Scientific Autobiography. The influence of Etienne-Louis Boullee and Ernesto Rogers are discussed. Rossi's architectural type is related to Carl Jung's archetype whose numinous and compulsive aspects relate type to Rossi's ideas about architecture as instrument or apparatus. The theme of the cabine and the sea, and that of deposition are analyzed in order to illustrate the ideas above. The deposition introduces a discussion of Rossi's ambivalence about the role of type and the possibilities of architecture today. Finally, the moral and political aspects of these theories about analogy is presented in relation Rossi's ideas of the analogous city and of technique.

My thesis studies rewriting in the works of Madeleine Ferron. I analyze passages Ferron took from her own writings and rewrote in later texts. Between 1960 and 1995, Ferron produced 114 texts; they include tales, short stories, articles, novels, ethnographic studies and biographies. The author rewrote twenty-two passages and four complete texts. My study describes and analyzes the functions of the rewriting process in these texts: it explores, among others, literary devices, thematic structures and the manner in which the rewritings determine editorial strategies. Rewriting is at the core of the Ferronian esthetic and is here characterized by the transposition of genres, and corresponding processes of fictionalization or defictionalization. I identify three stages in Madeleine Ferron's writing career: the early years (1960--1970), when Jacques Ferron (her brother, a well-known writer) rewrote Madeleine's texts, the period during which her major works were produced (1971--1989); and 1990 to 1995, the period that saw the publication of her most "personal" texts; these chronological divisions correspond to the three main chapters of this thesis.

This thesis is an attempt at an analysis of Andrzej Wajda's political films, Man of Marble, Man of Iron and Danton in a broad cultural and historical context. The manuscript is divided into five chapters. The first chapter, "The Political Film of Andrzej Wajda--Issues of Methodology", presents a theoretical basis for the discussion of political film. Bakhtin's dialogism complemented by linguistic pragmatics provides the methodology used in the thesis to illustrate the dialogical process of meaning formation in political films of Andrzej Wajda. Chapter two discusses Wajda as the carrier of the political message, while chapters three, four and five, respectively, contain the historical, the dramatis personae and the aesthetic discourses in the films under study.

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In the six plays studied, the songs fulfill an essential role in the development of the story. They nourish, motivate and direct the very essence of the narrative while communicating a precise message: an emotion, an inner reflection or a want which could not be transmitted by other means (be it through the characters, the stage direction or the decor). / The author explores the central hypothesis which suggests that the songs represent the voice of a silence: the silence of those characters suffering from a profound solitude and incommunicability. The first chapter examines the songs written by Marie Laberge while the second focusses on those borrowed from other sources. Through the use of Greimas' model, the study underlines the importance in the choice of the songs and in the strategic place they occupy within each play.