After the change of their country’s political and international statuses, post-colonial and respectively post-communist individuals and collectives develop feelings of alienation and estrangement that do not involve physical dislocation. Eventually, they start imagining their national community as a collective of individuals who share this state. Paraphrasing Benedict Anderson’s definition of the nation as an “imagined community,” this study identifies this process as “imagined exile,” an act that temporarily compensates for the absence of a metanarrative of the nation during the post-colonial and post-communist transitions. This dissertation analyzes and compares ten English Canadian and Romanian plays, written between 1976 and 2004, and argues that they function as expressions and agents of post-colonial and respectively post-communist imagined exile, helping their readers and audiences overcome the identity crisis and regain the feeling of belonging to a national community. Chapter 1 explores the development of major theoretical concepts, such as nation, national identity, national identity crisis, post-colonialism, and post-communism. Chapter 2 and Chapter 3 analyze dramatic rewritings of historical events, in “1837: The Farmers’ Revolt” by the theatre Passe Muraille with Rick Salutin as dramaturge, and “A Cold” by Marin Sorescu, and of past political leaders, in “Sir John, Eh!” by Jim Garrard and “A Day from the Life of Nicolae Ceausescu” by Denis Dinulescu. Chapter 4 examines the expression of the individual and collective identity crises in “Sled” by Judith Thompson and “The Future Is Rubbish” by Vlad Zografi. Chapter 5 explores the treatment of physical and cultural borders and borderlands in Kelly Rebar’s “Bordertown Café”, Guillermo Verdecchia’s “Fronteras Americanas”, Petre Barbu’s “God Bless America”, and Saviana Stanescu’s “Waxing West”. The concluding chapter briefly discusses the concept of imagined exile in relation to other investigations of post-colonial and post-communist dramas and reviews some of the latest perspectives of national identity, reassessing this study from a diachronic perspective.

Christian Spirituality, Church History and Missiology / M.Th. (Christian Spirituality, Church History & Missiology)

Les paramètres de l’exil, comme déplacement, se transforment aujourd’hui dans un contexte de mondialisation, interrogeant le rôle des nations alors que les sociétés impliquent de plus en plus de mobilité et de diversité culturelle. Cette condition d’exilé aux repères mouvants, inscrite dans une temporalité discontinue et dont l’expérience est toujours douloureuse, a donné lieu à une littérature prolifique dans le domaine des études littéraires au cours du 20e siècle. En quoi le 21e propose-t-il un regard différent sur cette condition ? Dans ce mémoire nous analyserons quatre œuvres contemporaines qui nous proposent différentes variations des transformations identitaires profondes qui caractérisent la condition d’exilé. Deux des grands axes autour desquels s’est articulée la condition d’exilé ont été développés par Edward Said, qui propose une posture critique et politique, et Julia Kristeva, qui présente l’exil comme une condition plutôt psychique. Suivant cette perspective analytique, l’autobiographie de Mourid Barghouti fait écho à la compréhension de l’exil telle que l’entend Said, en pleine autonomie instauratrice. Puis, le roman de Rawi Hage dans une expérience plus psychique de l’exil, plus traumatique et plus violente du vécu avant l’exil, suggère que le rapport avec le milieu environnant a un impact sur l’expérience de l’exil, alors que dans ce cas il reste dysfonctionnel, et qu’un rapport pathologique à l’existence peut ensuite se manifester. Ensuite, le roman d’Abla Farhoud expose la possibilité d’un dépassement de cette expérience pathologique de l’exil par la distance, celle de l’âge et de la prise de parole. Finalement, dans la pièce Incendies de Mouawad, l’expérience psychique de l’exil est dépassée à la fois par une traduction de l’indicible de la violence, par un retour sur les traumas précédant l’exil, et par un travail collectif – comme autres formes de distances. Cette dernière œuvre est donc porteuse d’une compréhension de l’exil impliquant une dimension psychique, tout en devenant critique et politique, telle que le révèlent les écrits de Jacques Rancière. À la lumière de ces analyses, la condition d’exilé réclame d’urgence un retour sur les traumas précédents, le trauma qu’est l’exil, afin qu’une autonomie, une créativité et un engagement s’en dégagent, dans une société, dans un monde plus grand que soi. Pour les trois derniers auteurs, c’est la société québécoise qui révèle à la fois une compréhension des problématiques majeures de la condition d’exilé et une ouverture face à celles-ci, en ce début de 21e siècle. / Exile is a condition of displacement and a phenomenon that affects great masses of people today. Although this experience exists since the proverbial beginning of time, its parameters are changing in the present context of globalization, which transforms the role of nations and where societies are characterized by greater mobility and cultural diversity. The profound psychological and cultural transformations of identity – inward and outward – to which people are confronted through displacement can be understood as a condition per se, an exilic condition. This condition with moving marks, and which develops in a discontinuous temporality and as a necessarily painful experience, has been the source of prolific literature and of literary studies in the 20th century and before. How, differently then, does the 21st century gaze at this condition ? In this thesis, four works are analyzed in which the authors present different visions of the exilic condition. Two main lines of thinking have been explored around this condition: Edward Said embraced a critical and political posture while Julia Kristeva conceived of exile in its psychological dimensions. Within these analytic perspectives, Mourid Barghouti’s autobiography has affinities with Said’s approach as it inaugurates an autonomous condition. Through Rawi Hage’s novel, a more psychological experience of exile is observed, one that is more violent and traumatic. It sheds light on the undeniable impact of the environment on the experience of exile in the host country. If the relation to the host country stays dysfunctional, a pathological attitude to the exilic experience may develop. Abla Farhoud’s novel explores the possible overcoming of the pathologies of exile through distance, age, time, and words, the distance needed for Dounia. Finally, the psychological limitations of exile can be overcome by translating the “unspeakable” in violence, by a return to the pre-exilic traumas, and by a collective sharing of this restorative work. Mouawad’s play also exposes the psychological dimension of exile, but it also maintains its critical and political ones. We observe through these analyses that the exilic condition demands a redressing of the traumas that preceded exile, understood as another trauma, so that the exiled can exist in an autonomous, creative and committed way in his or her society of adoption. For the last three authors, this society is Québec, which shows openness to, and comprehension of, the major issues of the exilic condition in the 21st century.

Diploma thesis "Milan Kundera's 'The Joke' supervised. Critical reception of the novel in the context of its release and today" deals with critical reflection of the novel 'The Joke' in the period from the end of the 1960's up to current reviews. The author dedicates first chapters to the cultural and political background of the release. The core of the thesis focuses mostly on critical reception of the novel, which is divided into three historical periods. In the first part of the critical historical analysis and qualitative analysis, the author examines critical acceptance of the novel in the aftermath of its release (1967- 1969), in the Czechoslovakian and exiled journals and literary magazines in particular. The second part considers critical reaction to the novel throughout 1970's and 80's, and stresses outcomes of the reception in the sixties, official normalized critical reviews and the acceptance in the exile and samizdat literature as well. Finally, the last part of the thesis offers contemporary critical response to 'The Joke', analyzed on the basis of journals, literary magazines and newly emergent Kundera's monographs. Summarizing critical reception in each period, historical context is of primary importance to a profound understanding of the topic. The aim of the thesis is to find out...

1 Abstract This thesis provides an overview of the journalistic work and life story of the cultural publicist A. J. Liehm acting from the 1940s in the most important Czechoslovak cultural periodicals. Furthermore, the thesis shows the contemporary context of the last century and turning points in our history. The most important periodicals, in which content the author was involved, are described in two separate chapters. They relate to the weekly periodicals Kulturni noviny and Literarni noviny. Other periodicals are mentioned particularly in relation to author's exile work. Finally, the thesis explores the French magazine Lettre Internationale, which the author founded in the 1980s in Paris. The author used to meet a huge number of culturally and artistically oriented personalities, especially from the film industry. After emigrating from Czechoslovakia in 1969 he continued to publish from exile and repeatedly has been involved into discussions and interviews related to the Prague Spring and Czechoslovak culture. This thesis aims to collect information both from various official sources and by virtue of personal contact with the author himself and to provide an overview of his personality and life.

This thesis introduces the study of inmate marginalia as a method for understanding inmates’ uses of texts in prison libraries and for understanding the motivations for these uses. Marginalia are the notes, drawings, underlining, and other markings left by readers in the texts with which they interact. I use the examples of the Talmudic projects to set a precedent for the integration of marginal discourses into the central discourse of society. Next, I discuss the arguments surrounding the use of texts in prison libraries, including an outline for an ideal study of inmate marginalia. Finally, I discuss the findings of my on-site research at four prison libraries in Washington State. After scanning evidence of marginalia from forty-eight texts, a relatively small sample, I divided the marginalia by gender of facility, genre of text, address of the marginalia, and type of marginalia and found statistically significant correlations (p < 0.05) between gender and genre, gender and address, gender and type, and genre and type. However, while these correlations are statistically weak and require further investigation, the statistically significant correlations indicate the potential for integrating inmate marginalia studies into the scholarly discussions regarding inmates’ interactions with texts in prison.

Nombreux sont les écrivains malgaches francophones vivant en exil, tirant de cette expérience personnelle leur sujet ; un itinéraire culturel dont le point de départ est le bilinguisme et la volonté d’échapper à l’embrigadement que suggère l’insularité. Cela donne au texte le cachet de l’œuvre accomplie: liant à la fois la volonté d’aller à la rencontre de l’autre et la quête de soi, livrant de fait, l’intime, le profond à la surface, à l’universel. L’écriture est perçue et vécue en tant qu’acte cathartique contre l’égarement de l’ego sans doute mais surtout de l’environnement soumis, offert et dévoilé à l’écrivain ; une fin utopique peut-être, mais néanmoins essentielle pour celui qui entrevoit la création littéraire comme une épée pourfendant les faiblesses de la réalité, servant à se rapprocher, à entrevoir et à modeler les caractéristiques de son monde idéal. Avec, évidemment, la complicité du double imaginaire du créateur, ce jumeau sombre par lequel Faulkner désigne le narrateur. Se dégage la difficulté de vivre avec l’autre, une coexistence annonciatrice d’un phénomène de scission, d’assimilation, pour une mise en exergue de l’espace et de la psychologie des protagonistes: complexité et dialectique du caractère où révolte et soumission, héroïsme et apathie, s’entremêlent pour dévoiler l’itinéraire commun et le parcours individuel de leur créateur qui prend le choix de la réalité décadente comme matière de l’inspiration romanesque. En somme, si la littérature malgache d’expression française est fortement enracinée dans la culture malgache, elle met aussi face à une écriture qui constitue un espace de rencontre et de tension avec l’autre, où le français apparaît comme la langue de l’ouverture, salutaire ou non. / Many Malagasy French speaking authors live in exile and make their personal experience their topic ; their personal experience represents a cultural itinerary arising from their bilingualism and their will to escape from regimentation due to insularity. Their personal experience provides to their text the achieved work character, combining their will to meet the other and their will to look for themselves, therefore revealing their depths, their inmost being to the universe. Writing is perceived and experienced as a cathartic action probably against self distraction but chiefly against the distraction of the environment which has been submitted, offered and revealed to the author. This purpose may appear utopian, nevertheless it appears essential for the one who foresees literary creation as a sword assailing the weaknesses of reality in order to get closer, foresee and make the characteristics of his ideal world. This creation occurs obviously with the complicity of the author imaginary double, this dark twin [« jumeau sombre »] by which Mr Faulkner refers to the narrator. From all this it emerges a difficulty to live with the other, a coexistence that forewarns a splitting and assimilating phenomena tending to highlight the space and psychology of protagonists: the complexity and dialectic of the character intermixing rebellion and submission, heroism and apathy finally reveals the common itinerary and individual background of the author who decides to draw his romantic inspiration from the decadent reality. In short if the Malagasy French language literature is deeply rooted into Malagasy culture, it also offers a writing allowing to meet and interact with the other and therefore makes the French language an open-minded language.

Cette thèse se propose d'interroger l'existence possible d'une francophonie littéraire du Viêt-Nam. En cernant le profil si particulier des œuvres francophones de ce pays, notre démonstration consiste à éclairer leur position dans le champ littéraire. Leur marginalisation a semblé être un élément crucial à analyser, posant la question des causes, mais aussi des conséquences sur leur réception. En effet, leur difficulté à se constituer en ensemble littéraire autonome au sein d'une littérature nationale ou à s'intégrer dans la littérature française est apparue de façon prégnante. Cette oscillation tant au niveau d'un ensemble que d'une œuvre particulière a été un des moteurs de notre analyse. Marquée du sceau de l'origine de ses acteurs et actrices, elle est perçue comme singulière. Mais elle n'est pas un volet de la littérature nationale du Viêt-Nam. Où est donc son avenir ? C'est pour mieux comprendre cette singularité que nous avons étudié les œuvres de trois écrivaines contemporaines : Kim Lefèvre, Anna Moï et Linda Lê. Elles sont le visage le plus connu de cette francophonie, sans que leur projet initial soit de s'y inscrire. Elles empruntent des chemins littéraires différents, illustrant ainsi leur difficile quête d'ancrage. Leur place spécifique dans le champ critique francophone nous a obligée à des incursions critiques développées, d'où l'ampleur de la bibliographie. Celle-ci prépare et ouvre d'autres voies d'exploration. / This thesis investigates the potential existence of a French written literature from Vietnam. In exploring these singular works from this country, our aims are to highlight their specific position in the literary field. The marginalization of these works emerges as a key point to explain their origin as well as the consequences on their reading and broadcasting. The difficulty to constitute a separate field in the national Vietnamese literature or to be fully integrated in the French literature is evident. The oscillation of a particular work or a group of works between these two statuses was the foundation of our analysis. In addition, while they displayed defined specificities, they are not considered as an individual field in the national Vietnamese literature. What should be the future of such literary style? In view of a better understanding of its singularity, we specifically analyzed the works of three of the most famous contemporary women writers in this field: Kim Lefèvre, Anna Moï and Linda Lê. While their initial purpose was not to be a part of this literary trend, these authors used different ways to achieve works that could be classified in similar manner. This illustrates the difficulty to integrate them into a specific literary field. To analyze their specific position in the Francophone critical field, we constantly had to perform numerous critical incursions, which explains the large amount of bibliography. This thesis prepares and opens the way for further explorations.

A partir da leitura do romance Homens ao Sol (1963), de Ghassan Kanafani (1936- 1972), esta dissertação visa ampliar a compreensão histórica do exílio palestino. A pesquisa exigiu um diálogo entre esse texto literário e a produção historiográfica sobre o seu contexto, investigando uma condição que, desde 1948, está presente na vida da população árabe palestina. Este trabalho, por isso, foi estruturado a partir de questões levantadas ao longo do enredo do romance, proporcionando reflexão para a construção de uma História da Palestina. Diante das memórias dos protagonistas exilados e da imposta necessidade de possuir uma identidade, o texto ficcional revela-se como uma análise crítica da história e, ao mesmo tempo, como um projeto transformador da realidade, provocando ideias para uma resistência nacional na Palestina. / From the reading of the novel Men in the Sun (1963), written by Ghassan Kanafani (1936-1972), this dissertation aims to expand the historical understanding of the Palestinian exile. The research has demanded a dialogue between this literary text and the historiographical production on its context to investigate a condition that is present in the lives of the Palestinian Arab population since 1948. Therefore, this work was structured from issues raised throughout the novel\'s plot and thereby it has provided reflection about the construction of a History of Palestine. The fictional text reveals itself as a critical analysis of history and at the same time, as a transformer project of reality from the memories of the exiled protagonists and the imposed need to have an identity, thus it provokes ideas for a national resistance in Palestine.

Bahram Beyzaie, né en 1938 en Iran, est considéré comme un très grand cinéaste et auteur dramatique de sa génération. Si certains de ses films sont bien connus, son théâtre est moins célèbre à l’étranger parce qu’il a été peu traduit et peu joué. Pour lui le théâtre est le lieu par excellence où renouer avec les formes traditionnelles de spectacle non pas pour les reconstituer mais pour parler au public d’aujourd’hui et lutter contre l’amnésie. Il nourrit donc ses pièces de théâtre, ses films, ses contes et ses narrations de l’héritage culturel oublié de son pays. Cette thèse propose d’examiner l’influence, dans son oeuvre dramatique, des spectacles traditionnels d’Iran tels que le Ta’zieh, le Naghâli ou l’Art du conteur, les marionnettes, la farce du Siyâh Bâzi, ainsi que la trace des mythes et de l’histoire de l’Iran. Dans tout ce qu’il écrit, une importance extrême est accordée à la langue perse utilisée avec virtuosité. De nombreux extraits d’ouvrages de recherche et de pièces sont proposés ici en traduction française. Une importante iconographie accompagne cette étude et rend compte des spectacles que Bahram Beyzaie a mis en scène. Il continue son travail artistique en Californie car il est actuellement un auteur en exil. / Born in 1938 in Iran, Bahram Beyzaie is considered as a great filmmaker and playwright of his generation. While some of his films are well known, his theater is less famous abroad because it has been little translated or performed. For him theater is the place where to keep in touch with tradition, not to just preserve it, but to reach today’s public and fight against amnesia. He thus feeds his plays, his films, his tales and his narrations of the forgotten dramatic legacy of his country. This thesis proposes to examine the influence, in his dramatic work, of traditional Iranian performances such as Ta'zieh, Naghali or the Art of Storytelling, Puppet Theater and Siyâh Bâzi or Farce, as well as the traces of the myths and history of Iran. In everything he writes, a prominent place is dedicated to the Persian language used with utmost virtuosity. Many excerpts of texts on the theater and plays are here translated for the first time into French. A very rich iconography, mainly of his own staging of his plays, illustrates the study. Beyzaie continues his artistic work in California where he is presently an author in exile.