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This dissertation is an analysis of writings and illustrative material by Canadian travel writers Anna Jameson, Mina Hubbard, and Margaret Laurence, that attempts to reconcile the masculinist focus of postcolonial criticism and the charges of cultural imperialism levied against feminist criticism with the role postcolonial and feminist theories play in understanding women's travel narratives. I argue that Jameson's 1838 Winter Studies and Summer Rambles in Canada, Hubbard's 1908 A Woman's Way through Unknown Labrador, and Laurence's 1963 The Prophet's Camel Bell provide maps of the political, cultural, and physical features of the areas through which the women travelled, and of their own social and cultural positions. Their mapping is also done through more graphic media---including Hubbard's cartographic work, Hubbard's and Laurence's photographs, and Jameson's unpublished sketches---which reflect and complicate the written negotiations of gender and imperialism in which the three women engage. / Because my aim is to reconcile theoretical contradictions, I examine in detail books that clearly dramatize colonialist or anti-imperialist approaches and considerations or exemplifications of issues of gender. Not surprisingly, the three writers draw very different maps of those subjects, as a function of their disparate geographical and historical contexts. This study reveals, however, that the maps themselves are drawn with similar tools, which include an anti-racist philosophy and an acute awareness of women's position in their own and the visited societies. Thus Jameson makes philosophical connections between mid-nineteenth-century feminist and anti-racist theoretical approaches; Hubbard provides insights into an early twentieth-century woman traveller's relationship to First Nations men who have both more and less power than she; and Laurence serves as a witness to and astute reporter on oppression of mid-twentieth century women by specific colonial and patriarchal forces.

A number of critics have observed that there is no tradition of women's writing in Russian. The writings of Lydia Chukovskaya, I. Grekova and Tatiana Tolstaya--the principle subjects of the present work--partially contradict this perception, and defy the restrictions imposed by ideological authoritarianism and of gender. / All three writers describe aspects of the Soviet, and human, condition, in unique ways. Lydia Chukovskaya's fiction portrays women, paralyzed by the scope of the Stalinist terror, who attempt to survive with dignity and accept their individual responsibility. I. Grekova writes about single women who maintain their autonomy through a balance between their professional and domestic lives. Tatiana Tolstaya's characters inhabit an atmosphere of lyrical alienation from which there is no exit. / This study examines in detail the work of these writers in the context of other Soviet men and women writers, as well as in the light of Western, feminist thought.

The drole de roman gathers works by Marcel Ayme, Albert Cohen and Raymond Queneau, French novelists who belong to the same generation, share common readers and inspiration and, most of all, a specific vision: the nonserious. Their novels draw from the most obvious manifestations of the comical tradition (farce, burlesque) to its most subtle (irony, parody). In their works, laughter does not occupy a secondary position nor does it simply provide some reading impressions. In fact, laughter is often expressed by the characters and narrators themselves, whose sense of mischeviousness demonstrates the Rabelaisian joy of body and soul. / Besides, the drole is not restricted to its usual comical characteristics. In the prospect of literary history, it also refers to what stands apart from the realistic conventions inherited from Balzac and Zola. In other words, the drole is made of antirealism, merveilleux and fantasy. Thus, Ayme, Cohen and Queneau put forward their own response to the mimetic function of the 19th century realistic novel. Instead of renouncing the power of fiction, as Gide and Valery will often suggest, instead of denouncing its falseness, the three novelists give fiction even greater powers. / Based on the conclusions of the history of the novel and on studies concerning various aspects of its construction (the relation between reality and fiction, the conception of character and of its place in the community, the forms of the plot), this thesis wishes to shed light on the role and value of laughter through the study of three major themes: comedy, community and enchantment.

Les récits autobiographiques modernes se distinguent par leur hétérogénéité non seulement entre eux rnais à l’intérieur de chaque texte. Trois textes, de facture autobiographique équivoque, ont été choisis comme objets de cette étude parce qu’ils illustrent cette hétérogénéité inter/intra-textuelle. La Détresse et l’enchantement, de Gabrielle Roy, représente le récit autobiographique supposérnent conventionnel, garantissant la ‘véracité’ de son discours narratif par un certain pacte de lecture; pourtant ce texte révèle une dimension romanesque. Les Mots pour le dire, par contre, récit à saveur de confidence de Marie Cardinal, est ambivalent dès le départ quant à son statut: ii bascule entre des éléments romancés et les souvenirs vérifiables, “événements vécus”, selon l’auteure. Enfin, Les Samourals, roman à clefs de Julia Kristeva, s’éloigne du récit-mémoires, rnais est lu comme une autobiographie à peine voilée à cause des éléments correspondant à la vie de l’auteure. La juxtaposition de ces trois récits montre que chaque texte se situe à un point mobile sur un spectrum entre deux pôles également impossibles à circonscrire—la fiction ou la ‘vérité’ pure. La fonction plutôt que la structure ou le style du texte importe ici; esthétique dans le cas de Roy, thérapeutique chez Cardinal et critique pour Kristeva. L’autobiographie romancée, genre hybride ou “métissé”, est privilégiée par ces écrivaines, toutes les trois déplacées géographiquement et linguistiquement, ayant vécu un “métissage” culturel. Le déplacement, associé à l’étrangeté, intervient dans le récit et dans la narration pour engendrer un rnouvement discursif où la différence entre le même et l’autre, entre l’ici et l’ailleurs, étoffe la structure du texte. Les trois écrivaines choisissent d’écrire en français, mais se considèrent étrangères à la France. Pour ces femmes, leur ‘féminité’ (aussi bien que leur exil) entre en jeu dans leur projet autobiographique, cette double altérité se prolongeant dans l’aliénation du moi/elle que produit la dimension fictive du récit. L’analyse de ces trois récits montrera d’abord comment la fiction s’immisce nécessairement dans le discours du ‘moi’ dédoublé et finit par imposer une texture/un métissage inhérent et essentiel à sa facture. Par ailleurs, l’altérité, envisagée sous le jour de l’étrangeté des autres et de soi—même, prend une importance capitale dans le projet identitaire de ces auteures expatriées. Enfin, l’écriture de ces trois femrnes conscientes de leur féminité s’avère aussi individuelle que celle des autobiographes masculins. Les trois parlent de leur rapport à la mère/la maternité, mais leurs récits révélent des divergences marquées par leur milieu, leur contexte socio—historique et leur relation à la psychanalyse. Le passé qu’elles évoquent est simple, imparfait ou composé, selon la fonction gui prime dans le texte. Ce que les trois auteures partagent, cest un désir de se raconter et une foi dans le texte écrit comme moyen d’atteindre l’autre à travers soi—même et soi—même à travers l’autre.

"Naming and Vocation in the Novels of J. R. R. Tolkien, Patricia Kennealy and Anne McCaffrey" discovers in recent works of fantasy and science fiction a pattern of authority which is rooted in the existence of namers and characters who are called to specific tasks. Each of these authors portrays individuals who are called to their own particular and unique roles by other figures whose knowledge of them is deeper than their own. The Biblical account of Samuel's life provides a paradigm for both namer and named that is informative in recognising this pattern in each of the works studied. The virtues essential to living out the call of a namer are faith and obedience; and personal fulfilment as well as heroic feats can only be achieved if those virtues are cultivated.

This dissertation demonstrates that irrationality in representative modernist novels is a significant and valuable feature of subjectivity. Building on contemporary theories of the novel, the thesis develops two closely related issues: the novel as an aesthetic vehicle of subjectivity and the novel as a reflection of its socio-historical moment. In major novels by William Faulkner, Hermann Broch, and Virginia Woolf a surrender to irrationality is paradoxically portrayed as a positive act which can contribute to a more complete fulfilment of the self. Furthermore, twentieth century notions of the self are often expanded, complicated, or revised at least in part through the genre of the novel which is used to represent them. / In three main chapters, the thesis draws an original link between studies of the novel as genre on the one hand, and explorations of the meaning of irrationality in early twentieth century fiction on the other. The first on Faulkner includes a section outlining my research into the theoretical domain of subjectivity, irrationality, modernism, and the novel which serves as a background for Faulkner, but remains pertinent also to the chapters on Broch and Woolf which follow. With reference to recent social theorists, philosophers of the novel, medical researchers, and literary critics, the dissertation establishes that Faulkner Broch, and Woolf construct works which advance the notion that irrationality can be conducive to the development of an autonomous, private self which is actively engaged in the outside world. Moreover, in each of the novels at the centre of this study, irrational characters personify an aspect of the novel which is essential to the structural development of the genre. / Key works by Faulkner, Broch, and Woolf insist that irrationality is at the core of a dynamic and modernist representation of identity. In novels by Faulkner, irrationality contributes to a flexible sense of time and to the elaboration of a valuable intersubjective communication. In Broch's trilogy, an irrational approach to reality encourages the development of a temporal, ethical, and subjective freedom. For Woolf, the validation of irrational impulses restrains a compulsive and debilitating drive towards introspection and facilitates social interaction.