Thesis (doctoral)--Uppsala University, 1995. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 238-249) and index.

Thesis (Ph.D.) - University of St Andrews, March 2010. / Electronic version restricted until 1st March 2015.

Thesis (M.A.)--Brigham Young University. Dept of English, 2006. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 91-94).

Afin de mieux comprendre le succès spectaculaire des récits policiers de Fred Vargas, la thèse s’efforce de resituer l’auteure dans le paysage éditorial, analyse son positionnement dans les trois sous-catégories du genre policier, et vise à mettre en lumière la fonction cathartique dans sa création littéraire. L’étude porte par conséquent sur les mutations romanesques et la diffusion transnationale et multimédiatique des œuvres de Fred Vargas, sur un corpus concernant essentiellement le cycle des Trois Evangélistes et le cycle du Commissaire Adamsberg. Des approches complémentaires sont mobilisées, relevant de la sociologie de la littérature, de l’analyse textuelle et de la psychologie des émotions dans une conception pragmatique. On parvient ainsi à comprendre comment Fred Vargas, en l’espace de trente ans, est consacrée “Reine du polar français" par la critique journalistique, qui célèbre sa posture singulière et contribue à sa reconnaissance médiatique et symbolique. Polareuse atypique, l’auteure mixe en effet différents sous-genres policiers et propose une œuvre originale fondée sur un art avéré du décalage, qui résiste aux tentatives de classification mais procure un plaisir consolatoire au lecteur. / In order to have a better understanding of the impressive success of Fred Vargas' detective novels, this thesis endeavours to place the writer in editorial landscape, analyses her positioning among the sub-categories of crime fiction, and aims to clarify the cathartic function in her literary creation. As a result, the study is about novelistic mutations, about transmedia and transnational spreading of Fred Vargas' works, with a corpus basically relating to the serie of the Three Evangelists and the serie of Commissaire Adamsberg. Some further approaches come from sociology of literature, textual analysis, and psychology of emotions in a pragmatic way. In this way, we can understand how Fred Vargas, within thirty years, was recognized as “the Queen of French crime novel" by literary critics, who celebrate her specific position and contribute to her mediatic and symbolic recognition. As an atypical author of detective novels, Fred Vargas mixes different sub-genres of crime fiction and proposes an original work based on an established art of “décalage", resisting to classification attempts, but providing a comforting pleasure to the reader.

This thesis examines the preoccupation with the relationship between history and fiction present in the work of Leonardo Sciascia and Jorge Luis Borges. By means of different narrative strategies, both authors underscore the narrative elements that underpin any reconstruction of the past, and in this way they link the process of reconstruction of past events to the process of rewriting of a literary work. They emphasise, however, that whereas the literary work can be enriched by multiple rewritings, multiple reconstructions of the same real past event risk threatening its truthfulness. This thesis investigates the different ways in which Borges’s and Sciascia’s works intersect, across three narrative forms: the detective story, the historical essay (inchiesta or ‘enquiry’ for Sciascia) and the historical fiction. The analysis of Sciascia’s texts starts from a focus on the structural similarities with the work of Borges in the detective story, paying particular attention to Il contesto (1971), Todo modo (1974), and Il cavaliere e la morte (1988). It then moves on to Sciascia’s inclusion of fragments of Borges’s texts in two of his inchieste, L’affaire Moro (1978) and Il teatro della memoria (1981). The last chapter of the thesis proposes a metafictional reading of Sciascia’s historical novel Il Consiglio d’Egitto (1963), in the light of the comparisons with Borges’s work undertaken in the previous chapters. The two key aims of this thesis are to show (1) that studying the ways in which Sciascia integrates Borges’s texts in his own writing allows a deeper understanding of Sciascia’s texts, but also underscores traits in Borges’s which might have been downplayed by previous criticism of his work, and (2) that reconsidering in the light of this understanding a number of Sciascia’s other texts where Borges’s influence is not explicit allows us to identify a preoccupation with regards to the relationship between history and fiction shared between both authors.

The aim of this work is to describe the development of literary works of well-known Spanish writer Antonio Muñoz Molina on the basis of an analysis of his selected novels, which were published in the period up to the year 2000. They are Beatus Ille, El invierno en Lisboa, Beltenebros, El jinete polaco, Ardor guerrero and Plenilunio. In the introductory part of this thesis we briefly summarize the development of the Spanish novel, which occurred between the sixties and the eighties of the 20th century. This theoretical part will be followed up with the analysis of the author's works. Selected novels will be divided into three groups, which also correspond to the three main creative periods through which Muñoz Molina's work has passed. Within each chapter, we first describe the specifics of the set creative periods and then analyze all the novels we have included in that chapter. When distributing the novels to individual units, the chronological order in which they were published will be preserved in order to obtain the most accurate picture of the development that the author's creation has undergone. In the end, we summarize the defined creative periods and set the trends that Antonio Muñoz Molina is constantly returning in his novels.

The study examines cognitive rationality as to()l for problemsolving within the context of a movement from determinism and monolithic universal Reason towards indeterminism and plurality. It is contended that theories of literature do not provide an adequate conceptual framework, and therefore, extensive use is made of pluralist fallibilism (Popper, Helmut Spinner) and chaos theory. The philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche is viewed as a decisive influence in the shift towards plurality and scepticism. In chapter 2, Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes stories, a novel by Agatha Christie and Gaston Leroux's Le mystere de Ia chambre jaune are discussed as examples of optimistic rationalism. Chapter 3 indicates that Eco's II nome della rosa emphasizes the conjectural nature of truth and objective knowledge, underpinned by a 'soft' rationalism which amounts to monopolistic pluralism. Chapter 4 analyses the defeat of cognitive rationality by the complex interaction of a multiplicity of independent causal series. The detectives' relationship with the feminine exemplifies the interpenetration of rationality and the instinctual, while the mystery of the feminine is a metaphor for impenetrable complexity. Chapter 5 shows that hypotheses concerning random complex systems remain inconclusive. However, as the trajectory of a complex system can be regulated, so reason can be viewed as the underlying regulative pattern (strange attractorl for an infinite proliferation of hypotheses. Thus, despite .shifting conceptions of rationality and order, all the detectives in the study accept objective truth as regulative principle and are involved in a search for objective knowledge / Afrikaans and Theory of Literature / D.Litt. et Phil. (Theory of literature)

[pt] Este trabalho tem como objetivo analisar alguns dos mecanismos do poder estatal colocados em cena no romance Balada da Praia dos Cães, de José Cardoso Pires. Partindo das teorias de Louis Althusser sobre os Aparelhos ideológicos de Estado e ensaios de Michel Foucault acerca dos efeitos positivos do poder e da utopia de uma ação omnividente do poder estatal, essa dissertação busca estabelecer alguns pressupostos para uma compreensão holística de alguns mecanismos da construção e manutenção da cultura salazarista, tanto em sua esfera mais institucional quanto na própria intimidade dos sujeitos sociais. A partir de levantamento teórico e leitura de trechos do romance, são trabalhados e analisados aspectos como a construção de ficções de Estado e de uma Economia de Verdade que fazem a gestão da circulação desses relatos, os efeitos paranóicos engendrados na sociedade e no próprio corpo de funcionários do Estado pelo esforço de alcançar a utopia de um poder omnividente e a ação estatal na trama social de relatos. / [en] This dissertation aims at analysing some mechanisms of state power put into play in the novel Balada da Praia dos Cães, by José Cardoso Pires. Following some theories of Louis Althusser about the Ideological State Apparatuses and Michel Foucault s essays concerning the positive effects of power and the utopical aim of an omnivident action of state power, this dissertation pursue the construction of some assumptions for an holistic apprehension of some salazarist culture s mecanisms of construction and maintenance, in its more institutional instance and even on the intimacy of social subjects. Studied and analyzed from a selection of theoretical reading and close reading of novel s excerpts, aspects as the construction of state fictions and an Economy of Truth that makes the management of the circulation of such fictions, the paranoid outcomes created on society and also into the proper body of States employees as a result of the the effort to achieve the utopical omnivident power and the State action into social narrative web.

O passado como um grande mistério. O professor de história como um investigador. Aquilo que se passou como um acontecimento, com Deleuze, a fissura em qualquer percepção que busca extrair um sentido dele mesmo. A narrativa literária como expressão de falar com os romances, e não sobre eles. A leitura e a escrita, simultaneamente, como procedimento de pesquisa. As tipologias históricas como composição de personagens. O problema de pesquisa que incita o drama. A presente dissertação busca produzir, na superfície da própria escrita, aquilo que propõe como tema. Por isso, a narrativa do ensino de história é expressa como um romance policial: as revisões bibliográficas como flashbacks, as problemáticas como reviravoltas e as conclusões como clímax (ou a espera por ele). Romance noir; onde a verdade é mais negociável e depende mais das paixões de quem a busca do que pelo comprometimento com o conhecimento; o acaso tem sua função; e um mistério leva a outro, e assim por diante. No assassinato que impulsiona a trama, não mais um fato, onde as perguntas do mistério de enigma seriam quem, como ou por que; mas sim o acontecimento, onde os efeitos se expandem pelo vazio deixado por ele. / The past as a great mystery. The history teacher as an investigator. What happened as an event, with Deleuze, the perception that any fissure in search extract a sense of himself. The literary narrative as an expression to speak to the novels, and not about them. Reading and writing simultaneously as a research procedure. The historical typologies as composite characters. The research problem that incites the drama. This dissertation seeks to produce, on the surface of the writing itself, what it proposes as theme. Therefore, the narrative of history teaching is expressed as a detective story: the literature reviews as flashbacks, problems such as turns and conclusions climax (or wait for it). Romance noir, where the truth is negotiable and depends more on the passions of those who search for their commitment to knowledge; chance has its function, and a mystery leads to another, and so on. In murder that drives the plot, not one more fact, which questions the mystery of who would riddle, how or why, but the event, where the effects expand the void left by him.

O presente trabalho tece uma análise do romance A varanda do frangipani, do escritor moçambicano Mia Couto, a fim de iluminar as reinvenções operadas pelo autor de aspectos do Sagrado ligado às crenças tradicionais de Moçambique. Apropriando-se e subvertendo o padrão do romance policial clássico símbolo da exaltação da racionalidade europeia , o autor reinventa no âmbito literário animais sagrados, rituais de iniciação e de adivinhação, espíritos de falecidos que convivem com viventes, assim como árvores divinizadas e mostra ao leitor uma visão de mundo e uma forma de existência diversas da eurocêntrica. Com isso, há a iluminação de questões culturais e sociais do país de onde fala Mia Couto, onde a tentativa de esmagamento cultural foi operada por anos de dominação e guerras. Para a realização desta pesquisa, embasamo-nos em autores como Mircea Eliade, Carlos Serrano, José Luís Cabaço, Omar Ribeiro Thomaz, entre outros, com o objetivo de obtermos a consistência teórica necessária a cerca do conceito de Sagrado e de questões sócio-culturais relacionadas a Moçambique e a outros países africanos; apoiamo-nos ainda em autores como Tzvetan Todorov e Ernest Mandel para percebermos o padrão estrutural e um pouco da ideologia ligada ao romance policial clássico e, assim, verificarmos a reinvenção dessa forma em solo moçambicano. / This paper presents an analysis of the novel A varanda do frangipani, from the Mozambican writer Mia Couto, in order to illuminate the reinventions done by he author of the sacred aspects linked to the traditional beliefs of Mozambique. Appropriating and subverting the Standard classic detective novel the symbol of European rationality exaltation the author reinvents within literary sacred animals, rituals of initiation and divination, spirits living among us, as well as divine trees, and shows the reader a different world view and a form of existence from the Eurocentric one. Therefore, there is enlightenment of cultural and social issues from the country where Mia Couto speeks, where the attempt to cultural imposition was operated by years of wars and domination. We based this research, on authors such as Mircea Eliade, Carlos Serrano, Jose Luis gourd, Omar Ribeiro Thomaz, and others, to obtaining the necessary theoretical consistency about the concept of sacred and socio-cultural issues related to Mozambique and other African countries, we rely on authors as Tzvetan Todorov and Ernest Mandel also, to establish the structural pattern and a little bit of the ideology linked to classic detective novel and thus verify the reinvention so on Mozambican soil.