No description available.

If one of the first accomplishments of the French Revolution was to prohibit torture, attempts to abolish the death penalty in the early years of the Revolution proved unsuccessful. As a result, the function of executioner survived, but the executioner's job description and his status changed considerably. The prohibition of torture led to the banishment of the term "bourreau;" the guillotine, adopted in 1792, made executions less cruel and more egalitarian; and the executioner, a full-fledged citizen since 1790, ceased to act as the "hand" of the king striking on behalf of God, to become the last link of the judiciary. One could therefore expect the executioner to disappear into the mass of anonymous civil servants, particularly since the number of executions steadily declined over the course of the nineteenth century. But the opposite is the case: the "bourreau" haunts the literary imagination of the period. Most of the texts by Balzac, Hugo, and Sanson examined in this dissertation have in common an effort on the part of narrators to convince the reader that executioners are not monsters but good and sensitive human beings. The goal of this dissertation is to explain this paradox. In Chapter I, which is devoted to Balzac's Memoirs of Sanson and An Episode Under the Terror, we show the Romantic portrayal of the executioner to be part of the royalist policies of commemoration of the regicide, of the dominant political discourse of the time that placed the blame for the regicide on the Convention. In Chapter II, we trace the evolution of Victor Hugo's thinking on the death penalty from Han d'Islande, with its sensitive executioner, to The Last Day of a Condemned Man, and its firm and unequivocal stand against the death penalty on moral grounds, and to Claude Gueux, an analysis of crimes and punishments in their social context. In chapter III, devoted to the Memoirs of the Sansons, we examine the reasons for the success of this work published by an ex-executioner in 1862, decades after the official disappearance of the "bourreau."

No description available.

L’étude ici proposée repose sur un corpus extrêmement récent, c'est-à-dire exclusivement composé d’œuvres du XXIème siècle, allant de 2009 à 2011 pour la plus récente. Ces quatre œuvres font intégralement partie du corpus de la littérature québécoise. Dans La mémoire de Québec : les fossoyeurs d’André Lamontagne, professeur en littérature française à l’Université de Colombie-Britannique, a été publié en 2010 aux éditions David. André Lamontagne nous dépeint l’histoire d’un journaliste établi à Vancouver qui profite d’un séjour à Québec pour se pencher sur le passé de sa voisine chinoise, Rachel, et de ce fait, sur les rituels mortuaires chinois. Avec plusieurs personnages en parallèle, André Lamontagne fait ressurgir le passé de Québec et des incendies qui ont marqué la ville et dont les peintures de Joseph Légaré au milieu du XIXème siècle ont préservé la mémoire. Jocelyne Saucier, dans Il pleuvait des oiseaux, publié aux éditions XYZ en 2011, nous ramène aux grands feux du nord de l’Ontario au début du XXème siècle, le plus connu étant sans doute le grand feu de Matheson en 1916. Ici aussi, c’est à travers la peinture de feu Boychuck que nous redécouvrons le passé, grâce à la volonté d’une journaliste de gratter à la surface de ce pan méconnu de l’Histoire de l’Ontario. La journaliste découvrira bien assez tôt que le prix à payer sera l’exil hors de cette société, pour embrasser une temporalité passée. Kim Thúy, dans Ru, roman que l’on pourrait presque croire autobiographique, revient sur l’histoire des boat people à travers Nguyen An Tịnh, le personnage principal, et son arrivée fortuite au Canada francophone. En dernier lieu, Guyana, d’Élise Turcotte, a été publié aux éditions Leméac en 2011. Guyana se partage entre deux spatialités et deux temporalités parallèles, le présent à Montréal d’un côté, le massacre de Jonestown en 1978 de l’autre. Le meurtre de Kimi, la coiffeuse d’Ana et de son fils, déclenche le début d’une quête effrénée de la vérité sur les raisons de sa mort. Tous ces romans sont ainsi caractérisés par leur côté métahistorique, intégrant un pan de l’Histoire dans leur narration. C’est ainsi de l’histoire de l’Histoire que témoignent ces différents romans, ce qui suppose deux plans historiques qui s’entrelacent. On retrouve le massacre de Jonestown chez Élise Turcotte, le passé des rituels chinois chez André Lamontagne, les grands feux du début du XXème siècle chez Jocelyne Saucier et l’histoire des boat people chez Kim Thúy. Tous ces romans sont partagés entre le présent et un autre temps, qui appartient à l’Histoire, à une communauté. On oppose ici deux temporalités : la temporalité historique et celle de la fiction. Les différents niveaux de la diégèse semblent ainsi s’entrelacer, peut-être même jusqu’au point de ne faire qu’un. C’est là l’aboutissement de notre réflexion. Pourquoi l’auteur n’a-t-il pas choisi d’écrire deux romans? Ces deux temporalités sont-elles nécessaires l’une pour l’autre? Comment interagissent-elles dans ces romans métahistoriques? Peut-on trouver l’intersection même des deux temporalités?

The main objective of this study is to establish a framework for the designation of transpoetic and transcultural spaces in a selection of West African and Caribbean Francophone novels, namely Ousmane Sembenes Les Bouts de Bois de Dieu, Ahmadou Kouroumas Les Soleils des Indépendances, Aminata Sow Falls LAppel des arènes, Simone Schwarz-Barts Ti-Jean Lhorizon, Maryse Condés Traversée de la Mangrove, and Patrick Chamoiseaus Solibo Magnifique. In shaping the argumentation for this study, critical components from a variety of academic disciplines including anthropology, musicology, philosophy, and literary criticism are considered. This study further examines texted representations of rhythmic and musical phenomena as presented in each of the selected novels, and explores their implications in linguistic, sociocultural, political, and aesthetic domains. Whether manifest in quotidian biological, mechanized, and musical rhythms, or sonorous melodies, euphonies, and cacophonies, such sounding components significantly contribute not only in promoting local aesthetic values and cultural sensibilities in the six novels selected for this study, but also how they open spaces for autonomous identity appropriation and configuration in the the transpoetic transcultural space of the text. In following with this notion, in exploring the texted heartbeats, drumbeats, dance steps, and other sonorities that comprise the rhythmic and musical soundscapes of each novel, it becomes apparent how and why these sounding techniques are important, particularly in view of questions of identity in the post-colonial Francophone world. In this respect, this study endeavors to discover what happens when the freedom and the possibility of rhythm and music resonate from within the textual interface of the novel.

FRENCH REMEMBERING THE FUTURE: FRANCOPHONE PERSPECTIVES ON THE ISRAEL-PALESTINE CONFLICT RACHEL NISSELSON Dissertation under the direction of Professor Nathalie Debrauwere-Miller This dissertation takes as its focus the role of memory in the representation of the Israel-Palestine conflict within Francophone literature. The prevailing narratives of both Israelis and Palestinians emphasize memories of past suffering in order to encourage empathyand moral and military supportfrom an international audience, as well as antagonism for the other. These monolithic narratives often propagate stereotypical articulations of the identity of the other: the Israeli as occupier and the Palestinian as terrorist. The works of Francophone authors Slimane Benaïssa, Hubert Haddad, Edmond El Maleh, and Elias Sanbar, however, challenge these flattened depictions, highlighting hybrid identities and counter-narratives. In addition to promoting a re-imagination of the actors in the conflict, I contend, these texts encourage a more complex rendering of the regions history by exposing the multiplicity of narratives and by uncovering lost, forgotten, or obscured stories. As textual spaces in which divergent accounts are forced to confront one another, I argue, these works ask us to reconsider the past and reflect on how these polyphonic histories might play out in the future. Approved ______________________________Date ____________________________

Albert Camuss novels provide insight into the worldview of the pieds-noirs, Algerian-born descendants of European settlers facing ever-increasing pressure to abandon what they saw as their homeland as decolonization accelerated after the Second World War, when Camus was writing. This study examines Camuss four main novels, Létranger, La peste, La chute, and Le premier homme in their colonial context. Through a careful analysis of Camuss use of the tropes and imagery associated with the robinsonnade, or island adventure tale, and its inherent connection to colonialist discourse, this study nuances our understanding of Camuss position on the subject of Algeria. We will argue that Camuss fiction suggests mixed feelings about the colonial project in Algeria and furthermore that he clearly anticipated the impending end of the French-Algerian experiment. In Létranger we see how the Algerian landscape is defined by impenetrable borders, forcing mutually antagonistic groups into violent encounters within narrow spaces. In La peste we examine the islanding of the city of Oran due to the plague outbreak, and we note how the functioning of the city is laid bare due to the pressure of quarantine. La chute shows us that Camus was fixated on an insular Algeria even when writing of northern Europe. Le premier homme provides final proof that the island Algeria portrayed in Camuss novels is associated with the colonial adventure of the pieds-noirs, and that this adventure will end, as in all robinsonnades, with a return to the mother country. The novels of Albert Camus were read as expressions of universal existentialist truth until Conor Cruise OBrien pointed out the importance of considering them in the colonial Algerian context. Subsequent criticism of Camus has been largely shaped by OBriens approach and by that of the late Edward Said, who followed up OBriens critiques with an even stronger indictment in Culture and Imperialism of Camus as being in outright opposition to Algerian independence and in assuming that the French colonial project in Algeria is immutable. We will more clearly analyze Camuss perspective on the French colonial endeavor in Algeria as it is expressed in his novels.

The purpose of this dissertation is to show how certain female characters in Zola question the received notion about the human-animal border and the related distinction between the male and the female. The novels I examine are Madeleine Férat, La Faute de labbé Mouret, La Curée, Nana, and Travail. The renewal of interest in contemporary French philosophy on human-animal relations serves as a framework for a reevaluation of the naturalist author, and my analysis of animal metaphors proposes a refinement of the status of the human in Zola. I show how female characters constantly move between the human and the animal to the point of ending either in an ambiguous human-animal in-between or in a transcendence of such a limit. In order to establish a context for Zolas work, I analyze different aspects of the human-animal discourse in 19th century culture, from the legendary theory of impregnation to androgyny and from sexual inversion to the myth of the femme fatale in both literature and in the arts. Gilles Deleuzes and Félix Guattaris notion of becoming-animal, which inscribes animal instincts within a positive discourse, is my main critical reference. I also refer to Alain Badious ethics of truth, which describes the relation of ethics to subjectivity, in my discussion of the subjective status of humans seen as animals. This dissertation underscores oppositions inherent in the human animal, such as Nature versus society. As the title suggests, I posit an oxymoron in viewing woman as an unnatural animal, as an animal in conflict with its human nature or as a human in conflict with its animal side. The human-animal border is not only more frequently subverted but also more complex in female characters than in their male counterpart in Zolas novels, thus illustrating that the human-animal status of women characters poses a real problem while its male counterpart is less puzzling. Maybe unwittingly, Zolas women profoundly upset 19th century definitions of both humanity and femininity, to a degree that almost contradicts Zolas own avowed positions in this matter.

This dissertation focuses on the months of liberation of France, June 1944 to May 1945. It analyzes three under-studied works taken as samples of texts that touch upon the question of contested identities. The texts are chosen from the main divisions of the political spectrum, namely Gaullist, far right, and far left. Although the focus is on the texts themselves, I trace the arguments found in these works to the larger discourses in which they are inscribed. In particular, I address the questions of guilt and innocence, justice and vengeance, past and future in the given historical circumstances. The first chapter examines Le droit romain nest plus by Louis Aragon. I focus on the discussion of justice, vengeance, and punishment as they emerge from the text, notions that are embedded in the broader polemics among the intellectuals of the Resistance. I discuss the importance of music in this story where it plays the role of a structuring device. Finally, I examine the associations that can be made between writing, music and nationalism in the larger context of national identity. The second chapter deals with La Bete est morte! La guerre mondiale chez les animaux by Calvo. It is an allegory using animals as protagonists and is in comic book format. I discern three loci in the narration that work together in order to re-inscribe the national identity in the values of the republic, thereby providing its young readers with a grammar of good and evil, patriotism and treason, guilt and absolution. The third chapter is a discussion of Journal sous lOccupation by Marcel Jouhandeau who flirted with Fascism in the 1930s and manifested his anti-Semitism in articles and a book. I read his Journal sous lOccupation as a public testimony in writing of his purge trial that never happened. I investigate the question of fear, the process of self-exoneration in his reasoning, the question of the journal as instrument of self-definition, and discuss personal and national identity. The conclusion focuses on Guy Kohens Retour dAuschwitz and ties the different works and contemporary journalistic discourses together.

Writers have relentlessly acknowledged the influence of water on their poetic vision. The Romantic malaise found its solace in the proximity of a body of water. Offering the same ambiguity as the human character, the influence of the sea can be both beneficial and detrimental. My dissertation discusses the multivalence of a Romantic Sea in French, Italian and Spanish Literatures. Through a thematic as well as a comparative approach, I study numerous transnational examples revolving around the importance of the sea in the lives of a series of protagonists. The vicinity of the sea induces either an implicit or explicit dialogue between the character and the liquid element, triggering a deeper understanding of self, and providing an alleviation of the pressures burdening the psyche of the protagonist. Since the sea can represent death as well as salvation, the first chapter describes its ambiguity in the representations of a series of writings. Holding in its depths the power of Good and Evil, the sea can either save or threaten. The second chapter indicates how the unrestrained freedom of the waves could motivate the characters to liberate themselves from the burden of social constraints while recovering their own identity. The liquid element, assuming the role of a mentor, guides the character on the path of an emotional recovery. The third chapter focuses on the reflective properties of the water, which at times leads to a symbiosis, highlighting the communion between the character and the sea. The fourth chapter shows how the sea appeases the nostalgia of exile by filling the void left by the destierro from ones native land, thus bridging the gap of memory. The fifth and last chapter studies the sea as an agent of transcendence, going beyond the limitations of mortality, perception, as well as cognition. The human being and the Sea have a lot in common: depth, ambiguity, and ultimately, irrationality. Just like humans, the sea represents a mysterious realm, whose incommensurable depth triggers endless suppositions.