The works of Sir Thomas Browne are often described in terms of the contradictions and paradoxes which seem to exist both within his work as a whole and also within the individual essays themselves. The primary focus of this thesis is the relationship between seemingly opposed forms of discourse and systems of thought in the Religio Medici, Hydriotaphia and The Garden of Cyrus. The emergence of analytic discourse in the seventeenth century is presented through the study of changing concepts of religious, political and epistemological mediation. Browne's 'mediate' position within the conflicts of his era is seen as representing a desire to unite apparent opposites and arrive at a 'complete' way of thinking which combines the medieval and the modern. The unified vision he advocates is of interest in both modern science and literary theory, where the premise of objectivity fundamental to analytic thinking is now being questioned.

In 1973, Emile Ajar published his first novel, Gros-Calin, and his very unusual style drew public attention. In fact, the name of Emile Ajar conceals a famous writer, Romain Gary. He endeavours to escape from the iron grip of criticism and attempts to renew his writing by resorting to an assumed name. This thesis is based on the fictitious world of Emile Ajar and the rejection of societal norms. A close study of the composition of this fictitious universe permits the reader to unravel its particular nature. The first chapter explains the structure of the various tales and their characteristics such as the relationship between the narrator and the narrative, between the narrator and the reader, and between the subject and the means used by the hero to relate his experience. This analysis discloses how the author conceals the threads of his tale to captivate his audience more successfully. The second chapter presents society as it is; its characteristics, symbols and the hero's response to this environment. The last chapter explores the characteristics, symbols and the behaviour of the hero in a world characterized by antisocietal values. It reveals the importance and the meaning of this "antisociety" and Emile Ajar's rejection of the status quo.

This masters thesis aims at obtaining a better understanding of the character depiction in two Middle High German texts through a precise analysis of the characters and their actions as reported by the author Konrad von Wurzburg. For this study the novellas Heinrich von Kempten and Herzmaere were chosen, because they present characters within two areas of central literary concern to the Middle Ages: Heinrich von Kempten in the area of knighthood and Herzmaere in the area of courtly love. / The study consists of two main parts. The first, which deals with the novella Heinrich von Kempten lists the developments in research from 1970 until the present, describes all characters according to their depiction and actions and concludes with a summary of the results. The second main part of the thesis examines the novella Herzmaere following the same criteria of analysis as Heinrich von Kempten.

Graham Greene has stated that he believes there to be an undercurrent of fantasy running through all of his work that has largely gone unnoticed by his critics. Within the context of any discussion on Greene can be found a starting point for an evaluation of his work in terms of the fantastic and fantasy. Eric S. Rabkin defines fantasy as the inverse of reality. In a fantasy world, the ground rules, expectations, and perspectives of everyday experience are reversed, or diametrically opposed, and the effect is a sense of hesitation and wonder. All of Greene's fiction describes worlds divided. He constructs borders that continuously separate people, places, situations, motivations, perspectives, objectives, and states of mind. Each side of the border describes a world that is the opposite of the other. The reality of one side is turned over on the other side, and life on the border is unpredictable and uncertain. The concept of alternate realities and other worlds which characterize fantasies, can be applied to all of Greene's works in general, and more specifically to a particular group of the fiction which exhibits a much higher degree of fantastic content.

Criticism of Michael Ondaatje's prose emphasizes the author's deconstruction of familiar binary oppositions as he challenges history and authority. The criticism, however, neglects the opposition between men and women. This omission is surprising, considering the remarkable transition in the representation of women throughout Ondaatje's prose. Women in The Collected Works of Billy the Kid (1970) and Coming Through Slaughter (1976) are objectified: lacking the tools for self-representation, the women are framed as sites of sexuality, negativity, and darkness. In Running in the Family (1982), however, the narrator finds community with female family members, recognizing in himself the penchant for storytelling of his female relatives. Running bridges the earlier texts with the later In the Skin of a Lion (1987), where the narrator grants a more complex subjectivity to the women, empowering them with ability equal to that of men to take "responsibility for the story"(Skin 157).

Blake's writings were explored as a refutation of Newton and Locke, and thereby positivism and atomistic psychology, leading to a renovation of the sensual body and the imagination. The form of Blake's work, the Illuminated Manuscript, is examined for the relationship between image and text in the prophetic mode, and for its investigations of the copy within a typographic culture. In the last Chapter, Blake's prophetic poem Jerusalem unveils his conception of the Spiritual Fourfold as the restitution of an ornamental universe and the 'building' of the Heavenly City on earth.

Influential later eighteenth-century critics and philosophers (Stewart, Knight, Alison, Jeffrey, Godwin) argued that poetry's moral and practical benefits derive from "analytical" modes of reading rather than from the poet's instructive intentions. Frequently exploiting the philosophical "language of necessity," Wordsworth's essays and prefaces (1798-1815) protested that poetry directly improves the reader's moral code and ethical conduct. This dissertation discusses Wordsworth's criticism in the context of analytical principles of interpretation current in the 1790s, providing terms for exploring the theme of reading in early mss. of Peter Bell and The Ruined Cottage (1798-1799), the 1798 Lyrical Ballads, and later poems such as "A narrow girdle of rough stones and crags," "Resolution and Independence," "Elegiac Stanzas," and The Prelude (Book V). / These poems anticipate Wordsworth's presentation of reading as the "art of admiration" in the "Essay, Supplementary" to the 1815 Poems, and indicate a sustained search for alternatives and correctives to detached investigative approaches to the aesthetic experience. Attempting to reconcile the extremes of the credulous or fanciful response, reflecting a childlike desire to be free from all constraints, and the analytical response, fuelled by perceptions of contrast between poetic illusion and reality, Wordsworth's criticism and poetry depict the reader as the"auxiliar" of poetic genius. The purpose, traditionally undermined by critics as peremptory and egotistical, was to challenge readers to examine their basic motives in seeking poetic pleasure.

This dissertation is a study of the first three plays that Jean-Jacques Rousseau wrote for the operatic stage: Iphis and La Decouverte du nouveau monde, both examples of the genre tragedie lyrique, and Les Muses galantes, an opera-ballet. Semiotic and poetic analyses bring to light striking resemblances between the dramatic situations depicted in the operas and the personal drama of the young Rousseau in love. As a whole, the operas reveal two distinct portraits of the self in love. The first, painted in colours of passion, reveals a self implicated in triangular relationships that are resolved through the abnegation of desire; the second, brushed in shades of contentment, devotion, and fidelity, celebrate the delights of requited love. These two portraits are studied in the light of Rousseau's principal writings in order to demonstrate how the early operatic works reflect true images of an ever evolving self in love.

The five last vocal works of Claude Vivier: Lonely Child, Bouchara, Prologue pour un Marco Polo, Wo bist Du Licht! and Trois airs pour un opera imaginaire have in common different stylistic characteristics. The detailed analysis of these characteristics reveals the influence of tonal music in the melodic, harmonic and formal construction of these works. The tonal character of the music is masked by total chromaticism and the presence of harmonic spectra built through frequency addition, a technique borrowed from spectral music. These five works are also related by the use of an imaginary language, characteristic of Vivier's late music, serving a dual semantic and musical function. The conclusion of this thesis will discuss the evolution of these various characteristics in the context of Claude Vivier's life and aesthetics.

This thesis studies the works of Gabrielle Roy in an attempt to bring to light both the continuity and the evolution that characterize the novelist's writing. To do so, her works have been divided into four groupings. The first, composed of Bonheur d'occasion, La Petite Poule d'Eau and Alexandre Chenevert, identifies the poles of a paradox around which all of Roy's subsequent novels are articulated: disenchanted realism and idyllic chronicle are bridged, in an ironic mode, through the story of the Montreal bank teller. / The second grouping, also governed by this principle of alternation whereby each book seems to be the contrary of the one that precedes it, examines works of autobiographical inspiration (Rue Deschambault and La Route d'Altamont) and allegorical, almost didactic narratives (La Montagne secrete, La Riviere sans repos). / The novels that form the third grouping no longer oppose each other but rather bear the signs of a reconciliation that will only be realised fully in Roy's autobiography, La Detresse et l'Enchantement. Cet ete qui chantait, Un jardin au bout du monde, Ces enfants de ma vie and De quoi t'ennuies-tu, Eveline? combine work of autobiographical inspiration and third-person narratives, eliminating the barriers between the realistic, ironic and idyllic universes. / To each distinct form chosen by the author correpond a particular voice and a specific style of writing, which, although differing from book to book, nonetheless share common elements: doubt and hesitation, oppositions, questionings and interrogations. These are indicative of a new paradox, lodged in the writing itself, and which reveals itself through the co-presence of opposing perspectives. The different voices and the points of views they express reappear in La Detresse et l'Enchantement and Le temps qui m'a manque, which make up the fourth and final grouping. In her autobiography, Roy integrates these voices in order not to merge them into one, but to allow them to express themselves in a first-person plural narrative.