Integrating a thematic perspective and textual analysis into the method, this Master's thesis proposes to study the theme and images of death in Madame Bovary. This essay analyses the representation of death, the relationships with the survivors and the links with the main character. It demonstrates the egoistic perception of death among the survivors and explains the thematic advancement in chapter VIII of the third part of the novel. The peripheral elements of death, such as the character Lestiboudois, the cemetery, the taboos and the generally accepted ideas, are studied in the first chapter. The second is devoted to Emma Bovary's romantic conception of death, through an analysis of artistic influences and inspirations, romantic mysticism, and complacency with regards to the idea of death. I will be studying the causes of her suicide, her desire to die, her distress experienced in love, her financial bankruptcy and her emotional and physical disequilibrium in the third chapter, which ends with the study of the thematic "spiral" in chapter VIII of the third section: the race, God, time, love, nature, anguish, emotional and physical disequilibrium and death, without neglecting the various interpretations of the Blind Man's ditty. In the fourth chapter, I study the mourning, suffering and social conventions, the influence from beyond the grave upon the survivors, the grave, the memories and immortality. Finally, the last chapter, so as to integrate the various notions explained in the preceding chapters, analyses the consequences of each death in the novel upon the survivors and their reactions.

This study explores the letters which Flaubert wrote to Louise Colet between 1851 and 1854, and scrutinizes more particularly the dynamics of their epistolary relationship as well as the nature of the "contract" between the author and his mistress. A letter justifies and exists only by virtue of the distance and absence of the other person, and its appears that Flaubert resolutely availed himself of this mode of communication with Louise, and thus preserved efficiently the necessary solitude and silence for the composition of his work. The first part of the inquiry, which attempts to define the status and function of Louise in the Correspondence, is devoted to the eloquent forcefulness and the sheer quality of Flaubert's exposition. The second part of this work focuses on the originality of Flaubert's ideas in the letters and how they are representative of this life long literary beliefs. This so called love correspondence is literally permeated with literary discussion, and the reader of these letters quickly begins to wonder why Flaubert elected as his privileged correspondent a mistress who was incapable of understanding or sharing his profound convictions on aesthetic matters.

No description available.

No description available.

No description available.

No description available.

No description available.

No description available.

No description available.

The phenomenon of retranslation (the repeated translation of a given work into a given target language) is widespread in practice, and yet its motivations remain relatively underexplored. One very prevalent justification for this repetitive act is encapsulated in the work of Antoine Berman who claims that an initial translation is necessarily 'aveugle et hésitante' (1990: 5), while retranslation alone can ensure 'la « révélation » dřune oeuvre étrangère dans son être propre à la culture réceptrice' (1995: 57). This dynamic from deficient initial translation to accomplished retranslation has been consolidated into the Retranslation Hypothesis, namely that 'later translations tend to be closer to the source text' (Chesterman, 2004: 8, my emphasis). In order to investigate the validity of the hypothesis, this thesis undertakes a case study of the British retranslations of Flaubert's Madame Bovary and Sand's La Mare au diable. A methodology is proposed which allows the key notion of closeness to be measured on both a linguistic and a cultural axis. Given Flaubert's famous insistence on 'le mot juste', Madame Bovary serves as a basis for an examination of linguistic closeness which is guided by narratology and stylistics, and underpinned by Halliday's (2004) Systemic Functional Grammar. On the other hand, Sand's ethnographical concerns facilitate a study of cultural closeness: here, narrativity (Baker, 2006) informs an analysis of how Berrichon cultural identity is mediated through retranslation. In both cases, the thesis draws on paratextual material (Genette, 1987) such as prefaces and advertisements, and on extra-textual material, namely journal articles and reviews, in order to locate specific socio-cultural influences on retranslation, as well as highlighting the type and extent of interactions between the retranslations themselves. Ultimately, this thesis argues that the Retranslation Hypothesis is untenable when confronted with the polymorphous behaviour of retranslation, both within and without the text.