ABSTRACT OF THE THESIS RE-IMAGINING THE VICTORIAN CLASSICS: POSTCOLONIAL FEMINIST REWRITINGS OF EMILY BRONTË by Yannel M. Celestrin Florida International University, 2018 Miami, Florida Professor Martha Schoolman, Major Professor Through a post-structural lens, I will focus on the Caribbean, specifically Cuba, Guadeloupe, Marie-Galante, and Roseau, and how the history of colonialism impacted these islands. As the primary text of my thesis begins during the Cuban War of Independence of the 1890s, I will use this timeframe as the starting point of my analysis. In my thesis, I will compare Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heightsand Maryse Condé’s Windward Heights. Specifically, I will examine Condé’s processes of reimagining and rewriting Brontë’s narrative by deconstructing the notions of history, race, gender, and class. I will also explore ways in which Condé disrupts the hegemonic and linear notions of narrative temporality in an attempt to unsilence the voices of colonized subjects. I argue that Condé’s work is a significant contribution to the practice of rewriting as well as to the canon of Caribbean literary history. I argue that the very process of rewriting is a powerful mode of resistance against colonizing powers and hegemonic discourse.

v anglickém jazyce This thesis deals with the dramatic production of Francophone African authors and the translation of their texts into Czech. The theoretical part briefly describes the history of African drama and its specific elements. The following chapters examine the perception of this specific genre in Europe - especially in France and the Czech Republic. The thesis also documents the history of the Czech festival Africa in Creation, which has been held in Prague in the first decade of the new millennium. During its existence, it presented many African authors. Later, their plays were translated into Czech within the series The Contemporary play, published by the Arts and Theatre Institute. From the point of view of translatology, the study focuses on the general theory of the drama translation (based on the theories of translation from the 2nd part of the 20th century, especially the Czech model of Jiří Levý) and the post-colonial and cultural translation theories. In general, the aim of the study is to define the problems which the translator could be faced with translating the text from the culture which is diametrically different from the target one. Based on this theoretical ground, a critical analysis has been made in order to examine three plays by African playwrights and their Czech...

L’Orient de la Princesse Bibesco comporte plusieurs facettes et dépasse la dimension spatiale. Dans cette recherche, nous avons abordé premièrement une expérience « antérieure » à l’existence terrestre de Marthe, dévoilée dans ses mémoires– La Nymphe Europe. Livre I. Mes vies antérieures . Cette première partie nous l’avons appelée l’Orient historique/ hérité. Ensuite, notre recherche met en question un Orient créé (au palais de Mogoşoaia, sa résidence roumaine qu’elle appelle « un coin d’Orient »), un autre Orient vécu et idéalisé dans des notes de voyages où elle se montre plutôt une observatrice subjective et parfois critique. Finalement un Orient conservé est dévoilé dans le folklore roumain représentant d’une part, le retour aux sources de l’humanité et d’autre part, l’élément exotique pour le public étranger. La vocation pour cette culture est constante dans la plupart des œuvres bibesciennes et exploitée sous différentes formes. Ce concept n’aura jamais dans son œuvre un sens dépréciatif, bien au contraire. Marthe Bibesco cherche la légende, le charme, le mirage orientaux. Pour elle le terme Orient ne désigne pas cet espace clos d’où tout le monde veut s’évader, mais la terre authentique, capable d’offrir à l’explorateur le plus beau spectacle. / Princess Marthe Bibesco’s Orient enfolds many facets and it rises above the spatial dimension. In our research, we have especially centred round the “historical” or the “inherited” Orient, identified in her memoirs La Nymphe Europe. Livre I. Mes vies antérieures , and the “created” Orient (at Mogosoaia Palace, her Romanian residence). The second part of the research paper emphasizes the “experienced”/ “real” Orient as space narrated in her notes on travelling where the Princess proved to be a subjective observer and rarely a critic. At last, the Orient appears as “preserved” in the Romanian folklore. The latter represents on one hand, the return to origins and on the other hand, it becomes the exotic element for the foreign audience. The vocation for this culture is constantly found in Bibesco’s work and exploited in many different ways. This concept will never have a disparaging sense, on the contrary. Marthe Bibesco is in search of legend, charm, oriental mirage. For her the term “Orient” does not suggest closed space, but authentic territory, capable of offering to the explorer the most spectacular performance.

L’objet de notre recherche a été précisément de démontrer que des éléments historiques et mémoriels ont joué un rôle primordial dans la construction des héroïnes méditerranéennes. Notre but était donc de souligner ces éléments, d’étudier leurs manifestations dans les œuvres et d’interroger ces dernières afin de trouver les raisons pour lesquelles les écrivaines ont choisi ces éléments parmi d’autres dans la création de leurs personnages. Nous avons donc démontré que ce sont le patrimoine, la mythologie et les traditions orientaux et méditerranéens qui sont revendiqués par nos écrivaines tout en faisant appel à la référence et à la culture occidentales. Nos recherches nous ont permis de découvrir également que les évènements historiques et les traditions culturelles et religieuses ne sont pas les seules à influencer la représentation du personnage féminin ; Il nous a fallu démontrer que ces écrivaines ont nourri leurs œuvres en puisant dans leurs expériences personnelles et leurs souvenirs d’où s’ajoute le rôle de la mémoire individuelle dans la construction des personnages, ce qui nous a offert des pistes afin d’explorer l’inconscient de ces écrivaines en révélant les empreintes de ce dernier dans les textes. Cette étude, a l’ambition, de plus, de démontrer que les œuvres choisies sont des exemples indéniables de la rencontre entre les cultures et les langues, de décrire les différents défis auxquels font face les héroïnes mais aussi les femmes écrivaines et de contribuer à montrer que ces dernières expriment, à travers leurs écrits, leur humanisme et leur révolte contre les violences et les misogynies meurtrières. Ne pouvant nier, in fine, que ces écrivaines engagées et unies par l’amour de la langue et de la culture françaises insistent sur le rôle fondamental de l’écriture. / The object of our research was precisely to demonstrate that historical and memorial elements played a key role in the construction of mediterranean heroines. Our goal was to emphasize these elements, to study their manifestations in the works and to question them in order to find the reasons why the writers chose these elements among others in the creation of their characters. We have therefore demonstrated that it is the heritage, the mythology and the Eastern and Mediterranean traditions that are claimed by our writers while appealing to Western reference and culture. Our research also allowed us to discover that historical events and cultural and religious traditions are not the only ones to influence the representation of the female character; We had to demonstrate that these writers nourished their works by drawing on their personal experiences and memories, and added the role of individual memory in the construction of the characters, which offered us avenues to explore the unconscious of these writers by revealing the imprints of the latter in the texts. This study also aims to demonstrate that the selected works are undeniable examples of the encounter between cultures and languages, to describe the different challenges faced by heroines and women writers, and to contribute to show that the latter express, through their writings, their humanism and their revolt against violence and murderous misogyny. Not being able to deny, in fine, that these committed writers united by the love of French language and culture insist on the fundamental role of writing.

L'identité constitue une des notions-clés des littératures africaines. Elle prend une résonance particulière chez Senghor et chez Ken Bugul ainsi que chez beaucoup d’écrivains sénégalais. Elle permet d’établir une passerelle épistémologique avec le corps. Ainsi, les discours sur le corps aident à comprendre les enjeux identitaires qui animent la tension dramatique des structures narratives. Par exemple chez Cheikh Hamidou Kane, le corps devient le motif d'une appréhension métaphysique de l'"esse". Dans les autobiographies de Ken Bugul, l’affirmation identitaire du Moi féminin relève tout simplement d’un caractère existentiel, surtout à un moment où les littératures sont marquées par les conflits de genres. Cependant, l’on convient que le débat sur l’identité et le corps a son importance dans le saisissement de la psychologie du personnage. Il a aussi son importance dans le conditionnement du sens, celui à travers lequel la société révèle ses vices tout comme ses vertus. C’est pourquoi d’ailleurs chez Sembène, Abasse Ndione, Sanou Lô, Marouba Fall, Seydi Sow ou encore El Hadji Momar Sambe, la résonance sociale du discours littéraire aide à rétablir les parcelles de sens auxquelles renvoie toute écriture du corps. Telle est l’ambition de cette thèse qui s’est voulue avant tout un échange comparatiste entre des textes dont la richesse est à rechercher dans leur proximité thématique. / Identity constitutes one of the fundamental themes of African literature. It takes on a resonance in the writing of Senghor and Ken Bugul as well as in the writing of many Senegalese writing. It allows the establishment of an epistemological footbridge with the body. Therefore, the discourses about the body help to understand what is at stake concerning identity which livens up the dramatic tension of the narrative structures. For example, in the work of Cheikh Hamidou Kane, the body becomes the motive for a metaphysical apprehension of the "esse". In Ken Bugul’s autobiographies, the affirmation of identity of the feminine "Me" refers to the existential condition, especially when the literatures show the conflicts of gender. However, we agree that the debate on identity and the body has its importance in the understanding in the psychology of the character. It also has its importance in the construction of meaning, through which society reveals its vices and virtues. Moreover, that is why in the works of Sembene, Abasse Ndione, Sanou Lô, Marouba Fall, Seydi Sow or still El Hadji Momar Sambe, the social implication of literary discourse fragments of meaning to which all writing about the body refers. The ambition of this thesis is to construct a comparative exchange between their richness of meaning.

French Canadian playwright Joseph Armand Leclaire (1888-1931) was very well known and respected in his time. Although he wrote over thirty plays, lyrics to several songs and an abundance of political poems, most of his work has been lost and Leclaire himself seems to have been forgotten. Several of his plays were produced at the time they were written, including his 1916 play La petite maîtresse de l'école (later published in 1929 as Le petit maître d'école), but none have been presented postumously nor have any been translated. This M. F. A. thesis presents the first ever translation and adpatation of Leclaire's play, titled in English as The Little Schoolmaster. The first half of the thesis provide historical context for the play's significance, as well as information about Armand Leclaire and the changes he made to his own work between the original 1916 version and the 1929 published version. The thesis then analyses the creative acts of translation and adaptation, proposing a new model of translation for a linguistically rich audience. Through this new model of translation-adaptation for a bilingual spectrum, the thesis concludes by demonstrating that dramaturgy can serve as a dynamic instrument for communities to engage in the exploration of bilingual and bicultural identity.

Race science is built on ideas of division and categorization. In the historian's quest to tell the story of race science, certain frameworks have been used that can greatly inhibit our understanding of this fraught topic. The impulse to study race science in the framework of the nation-state has led to certain misconceptions and lends itself to a historical narrative wherein racist concepts stop at artificially imposed borders. In addition, the national framework detracts from the individual's contributions and instead lumps these contributions together on the level of the nation-state, thus opening the door for judgments about whole nations being more or less responsible for race science. In this work, I explore contributions to race science pertaining to the "Jewish race" (which I have simplified to the phrase "Jewish race science") made by individual French writers and scholars. These contributions have been overlooked at times by historians who look to more notorious examples, such as those made by German race science theorists; in failing comprehensively to examine all significant contributions to race science, historians have often inhibited their own ability to understand Jewish race science fully. If such a historical field is to be understood, one must be aware of the full range of development of Jewish race science, both in terms of geographical scope and scholarly focus. By bringing attention to Jewish race science contributions made in nineteenth-century France, it is my intention to broaden the understanding of this field and to help bring about a new approach to the field that is less reliant on the nationalist framework in its evaluation of the nature and impact of race science.

Virtue in early modern France was a broad concept considered by clergymen, philosophers, and moralists as an instrument for measuring and implementing human ethics. This unprecedented research seeks to track the development of the notion of virtue from a gendered and dichotomous notion to a unique and undivided term. The word virtue is constantly present in French texts such as manuels de conduite1 , since the medieval period. Thus, it can be regarded as one of the most significant concepts defining genders in Western civilization. However, it is difficult for modern readers to grasp the complexity of the debate unless it is explained through its socio-historical and cultural implications regarding gender behavior. What is the author referring to when he/she uses the word virtue? Is it chastity for women, strength for men, or just the achievement of the highest moral standard? What are the social implications of virtue? Through an inter and multidisciplinary study involving literature, religion, philosophy, folklore, women and gender studies, and sociology, this cutting-edge research revolves around the literary analysis of conduct manuals, plays, novels and treatises, from the middle ages to the 18th century. Its objective is to map the evolution of the notion of virtue by evidencing social fluctuation of gender differences and conceptualizing our western civilization through the lenses of its moral discourse.

Summaries in French and English / Text in French / Les romans analyses - Une si longue lettre et Un chant ecarlate de Mariama Ba, O pays, mon beau peuple! by d'Ousmane Sembene et Agar d' Albert Memmi - proposent tous une histoire se deroulant en Afrique et ayant pour theme le mariage mixte et/ou polygame, theme particulierement riche comme foyer d'observation socioculturelle et interculturelle des milieux evoques. Le chapitre 1 cerne le theme du mariage et ses diverses configurations mixtes et polygames dans les quatre roamns. Sont examines dans les chapitres suivants: les rapports familiaux et sociaux tels qu'ils sont vecus par les couples protagonistes; la polygamie, centrale aux deux romans de Ba et omnipresente dans celui de Sembene; les religions des societes concernees, telles qu' ell es affectent les couples en jeu; les images de la femme - et surtout de la femme africaine - qui ressortent des situations conjugates developpees par les auteurs; l'eventuelle influence du sexe de l'auteur sur la representation de la femme. / The novels analysed - Une si longue lettre and Un chant ecarlate by Mariama Ba, O pays, mon beau peuple! by Ousmane Sembene and Agar by Albert Memmi - all tell stories set in Africa and share the theme of mixed and/or polygamous marriage, a particularly fertile theme through which to focus a socio-cultural and intercultural examination of the social environments portrayed. Chapter 1 identifies the theme of marriage and the various mixed/polygamous configurations it assumes in the four novels. The succeeding chapters examine: family and social relationships as experienced by the protagonists; polygamy, central to both novels by Ba and omnipresent in Sembene's novel; the religions of the societies portrayed, insofar as they affect the couples concerned; the images of woman - and particularly the Afiican woman - emerging from the marital situations developed by the authors and, finally, the possible influence of authorial gender on the presentation of woman. / Classics and Modern Euorpean Languages / M.A. (French)

This thesis, situated in the context of francophone and maghrebian postcolonial studies, examines the impact of identity discourses on the protagonists’ subjectivity in Assia Djebar’s La Femme sans sépulture (2002) and La Disparition de la langue française (2003) and Nina Bouraoui’s Garçon manqué (2000) and Mes mauvaises pensées (2005). These novels draw a parallel between two historically connected spaces, France and Algeria, and periods,  the years of the Algerian war of independence and the rise of Islamists in 1990s  Algeria. The movement between the two spaces and periods constitutes in a literal and figurative sense a third space that contributes to the protagonist’s hybridisation. Hybridity is analysed as a narrative and discursive strategy that subverts and recodifies different identity dis­courses that transmit normative ideas about cultural, ethnic and gendered belonging. Hybridity is also shown in the literary genre. By connecting the past and the present through individual and collective reminiscence, the four novels reinterpret history while transgressing the frontiers of classical genres: the fictional, the testimonial and the autobiographical intertwine with the historiographical. Through the character of the narrator-cineaste and the story of Zoulikha, Assia Djebar reconstitutes in La Femme sans sépulture her own heritage and that of the interviewed women which is associated with Luce Irigaray’s theory of feminine genealogy as a model of identification. The languages’ different transcultural influences are shown in La Disparition de la langue française in the light of Homi Bhabha’s theory of cultural translation. Bouraoui’s fiction shows more radically than Djebar’s the body as a surface of cultural inscription, determined by ethnic and gendered norms. To emphasize the sociocultural dimension of the Bouraouian protagonist’s problems of identity the analysis uses Judith Butler’s theories about the performativity, the recognition and the melancholy of gender. In the four novels the return to one’s origins remains an illusion. The only place where the protagonists can negotiate and express their hybrid subjectivity is constituted in and through their writing. / Cette thèse, située dans le contexte des études francophones maghrébines et postcoloniales, analyse l’impact des discours identitaires sur la subjectivité des protagonistes dans La Femme sans sépulture (2002) et La Disparition de la langue française (2003) d’Assia Djebar, et dans Garçon manqué (2000) et Mes mauvaises pensées (2005) de Nina Bouraoui. Ces romans  mettent en parallèle deux espaces historiquement liés, la France et l’Algérie, et deux périodes, le temps de la guerre d’indépendance algérienne et les années 1990 avec la montée des islamistes en Algérie. Le mouvement entre les deux espaces et temps constitue au sens littéral et au sens figuré un tiers espace, qui contribue à l’hybridation des protagonistes. L’hybridité est analysée comme une stratégie narrative et discursive qui subvertit et récodifie différents discours identitaires véhiculant des idées normatives concernant l’appartenance culturelle, ethnique et genrée des protagonistes. L’hybridation se reflète également dans le genre littéraire. À travers la remémoration individuelle et collective des événements passés mis en rapport avec le présent, les quatre romans donnent une nouvelle signification à l’Histoire en transgressant les frontières entre les genres classiques : le fictionnel, le témoignage et l’autobiographique s’inscrivent dans l’historiographique. Moyennant le personnage de la narratrice-cinéaste et l’histoire de Zoulikha, Djebar reconstitue dans La Femme sans sépulture, son propre héritage et celle des femmes interviewées, ce qui est associé à la théorie de Luce Irigaray sur la généalogie féminine au sens d’un modèle d’identification. Les différentes influences transculturelles des langues sont éclairées dans La Disparition de la langue française à la lumière de la théorie de la traduction culturelle de Homi Bhabha. Bouraoui montre plus radicalement que Djebar le corps comme surface d’inscription culturelle gérée par des normes ethnicisantes et genrées. Pour souligner la dimension socioculturelle des problèmes identitaires de la protagoniste bouraouienne, les théories de Judith Butler concernant la performativité du genre, la reconnaissance et la mélancolie genrée sont utilisées. Le retour à l’origine reste dans les quatre romans illu­soire. Le seul lieu où les protagonistes puissent négocier et exprimer leur subjectivité hybride est constitué dans et à travers l’écriture.