University of Macau / Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities / Department of Chinese

This dissertation is mainly based on the reading of three American novels to explore how female characters deal with their illegitimate pregnancies and how their solutions re-shape their futures and affect their inner growth. Chapter 1 discusses Dorinda Oakley's premarital pregnancy in Ellen Glasgow's Barren Ground and draws the circle of limits from Barbara Welter's "four cardinal virtues" (purity, submissiveness, domesticity, and piety) which connect to the analogous female roles (daughter, sister, wife, and mother). Dorinda's childless survival reconstructs a typical household from her domination and absence of maternity. Chapter 2 examines Ántonia Shimerda's struggles and endurance in My Ántonia by Willa Cather before and after Ántonia gives birth to a premarital daughter. Ántonia devotes herself to being a caring mother and to looking after a big family although her marriage is also friendship-centered. Chapter 3 adopts a different approach to analyze Charlotte Rittenmeyer's extramarital pregnancy in The Wild Palms by William Faulkner. As opposed to Dorinda and Ántonia who re-enter domesticity to survive, Charlotte runs out on her family and dies of a botched abortion. To help explain the aftermath of illicit pregnancies, I extend or shorten John Duvall's formula of female role mutations: "virgin>sexually active (called whore)>wife" to examine the riddles of female survival and demise. The overall argument suggests that one way or another, nature, society, and family are involved in illegitimately pregnant women's lives, and the more socially compliant a pregnant woman becomes after her transgression, the better chance she can survive with her baby.

Orientador: Eric Mitchell Sabinson / Dissertação (mestrado) - Universidade Estadual de Campinas, Instituto de Estudos da Linguagem / Made available in DSpace on 2018-08-27T20:21:09Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Mariano_FabioRoberto_M.pdf: 721675 bytes, checksum: 0863ae488f30abc0a8c4cbb050955f56 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2015 / Resumo: O objetivo deste trabalho é compreender a recepção de Faulkner na França a partir de uma contextualização da literatura francesa nos anos 1930 e da leitura detalhada dos referidos prefácios. O que está em primeiro plano não é uma leitura crítica do autor, e sim uma organização de leituras críticas anteriores. Ao fim do texto, é esboçada uma proposição acerca do apelo específico que Faulkner teve na França. Dos seis livros de Faulkner publicados durante os anos 30, cinco trazem prefácios. Esses textos são de autoria de figuras de grande influência no ambiente literário francês: os tradutores Maurice-Edgar Coindreau e René-Noël Raimbault, o crítico e escritor Valery Larbaud e o escritor, político e jornalista André Malraux. A partir das leituras propostas nesses prefácios, é possível tentar estabelecer uma relação entre o ambiente cultural da França e a obra de William Faulkner. Para estabelecer tal relação, este trabalho se divide em três partes, cada qual correspondendo a um de seus capítulos. Em primeiro lugar, faz-se uma análise do ambiente histórico e literário da França. Em segundo, uma leitura atenta dos prefácios é feita, levando-se em consideração também quem são seus autores. Por fim, o terceiro capítulo é um movimento de interpretação dos prefácios à luz da análise feita no primeiro capítulo / Abstract: The present dissertation aims at an understanding of the reader response to Faulkner in France. It is based both on a study of the mentioned prefaces and on an attempt to describe the literary and critical standards of the time. The main point here is not exactly a critical reading of the author's work in itself, but an effort of organizing earlier readings. This study is closed by a hypothesis about Faulkner's specific appeal to French readers. Five out of the six of Faulkner's books published during that time are prefaced, all of them by Frenchmen: translators Maurice-Edgar Coindreau and René-Noël Raimbault, literary critic and writer Valery Larbaud and politician, journalist and novelist André Malraux. A detailed analysis of these prefaces may be an effective strategy to establish a connection between Faulkner's work and the French cultural environment in which he is read. In order to effectively make such a connection, this dissertation has been divided in three parts, each of which corresponds to one of its chapters. In the first one, the literary and historical context of France is analyzed. In the second, a close reading of each of the prefaces is made, taking into account not only their words and references, but also their authors. In the third and last chapter, the prefaces are interpreted according to what had been exposed in the first chapter / Mestrado / Historia e Historiografia Literaria / Mestre em Teoria e História Literária

This doctoral dissertation, «The Retrospective Novel: The Romance of the Self,» focuses on the relationship between literary genres, ideology, and history. The novels I analyze are widely regarded as masterpieces of the last two centuries of Western literature. They include works by authors such as Melville, Conrad, Gide, Pirandello, Svevo, Roth, Faulkner, and Mann. All these novels present a biographical structure, in which the life of the protagonist is narrated retrospectively either by the hero himself (like in Pirandello’s Mattia Pascal) or by one of his friends (as in Thomas Mann’s Doctor Faustus). The research aims to examine the relationship between the retrospectivity of these novels and the rise of modern bourgeois society. The goal is to define the retrospective novel as a genre that, by continuing the Romantic tradition, reacts to Western ideas of modernity and to the realist novel. The dissertation discusses the formal features of retrospective novels to investigate the relationship between the crisis of linear plots and the existence of tragic heroes. The analysis takes into consideration the tension between polyphony and monologism, the combination of essayism and narration, and the importance of a centralized moral point of view that questions the predominant moral discourse of society. The discussion of these formal aspects of retrospective novels lets emerge the craving for epic anti-bourgeois heroes that characterizes retrospective novels. By employing a novel theoretical framework, the dissertation aims to reappraise capital texts of the Western canon and to reevaluate the underestimated influence of Romanticism on the development of the modern Western novel.

Ce mémoire en création littéraire est divisé en deux parties distinctes. La première se compose de deux récits racontant un épisode de la vie d'une mère et de sa fille, Carole et Hélène. L'un des récits est narré par la mère ; l'autre par la fille. Centrés sur ces deux femmes, les récits mettent en lumière quelques bribes de leur passé ainsi que l'influence de celui-ci sur les événements présents. La seconde partie présente une réflexion critique sur le conflit narratif, c'est-à-dire sur les contradictions qui surgissent entre deux ou plusieurs récits portant sur la même histoire. Nous examinerons le fonctionnement de ce type de conflit ainsi que ses conséquences sur le lecteur et sa relation au texte en prenant exemple sur quatre romans : Tandis que j'agonise de William Faulkner, Les Fous de basson d'Anne Hébert, L'enfant de sable de Tahar Ben Jelloun et Océan mer d'Alessandro Baricco.

America has adopted as its own the Eden myth, which has provided the mythology of the American dream. This New Garden of America, consequently, has been a masculine garden because of its dependence on the myth of the Fall. Implied in the American dream is the idea of a garden without Eve, or at least without Eve's sin, traditionally associated with sexuality. Our canonical literature has reflected these attitudes of devaluing feminine power or making it a negative force: The Scarlet Letter, Moby-Dick, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, The Great Gatsby, and The Sound and the Fury. To recreate the Garden myth, Americans have had to reimagine Eve as the idealized virgin, earth mother and life-giver, or as Adam's loyal helpmeet, the silent figurehead. But Eve resists her new roles: Hester Prynne embellishes her scarlet letter and does not leave Boston; the feminine forces in Moby-Dick defeat the monomaniacal masculinity of Ahab; Miss Watson, the Widow Douglas, and Aunt Sally's threat of civilization chase Huck off to the territory despite the beckoning of the feminine river; Daisy retreats unscathed into her "white palace" after Gatsby's death; and Caddy tours Europe on the arm of a Nazi officer long after Quentin's suicide, Benjy's betrayal, and Jason's condemnation. Each of these male writers--Hawthorne, Melville, Twain, Fitzgerald, and Faulkner--deals with the American dream differently; however, in each case the dream fails because Eve will not go away, refusing to be the Other, the scapegoat, or the muse to man's dreams. These works all deal in some way with the notion of the masculine American dream of perfection in the Garden at the expense of a fully realized feminine presence. This failure of the American dream accounts for the decidedly tragic tone of these culturally significant American novels.