This dissertation examines the link between food and writing about food in French modernist texts in nineteenth and twentieth-century French novels, tracing the central role of food in realist fiction as an encoder of bourgeois discourse to its persisting, yet altered, role in modernist texts. While the propagation of gastronomy and culinary discourse through realist texts presupposes and relies on the seamless conversion of diners into readers and the meal into text, this dissertation has at its root the exploration of the narrative potential inherent in the creation of space in conspicuous "second-order" consumption, leaving the diner and the reader, and the meal and the text, side-by-side, in play. I reflect on how the deliberate alignment and co-staging of the meal and the word (or the diner and the reader), rather than their conflation and collapse, throws into relief not only the act of incorporating the meal, but also the extradiegetic moment of incorporating the text, or a (self-)consciousness of the meal as text. I explore how this shift in the staging of food and eating is not only a hallmark of the play that characterizes modernist novels, which inscribe self-conscious moments of their own creation and consumption within the narrative itself, but also a key element in understanding the shifts from realism to modernism, as the meal remains central to both while at the same time crystallizing key differences in how narratives are crafted in each. / Romance Languages and Literatures

This doctoral thesis examines the literary series [collection litteraire], considered at one and the same time as a form of publication defined and redefined by the publisher since the invention of the printing press and as a paratextual component that has the ability to act on the process of reading the text: An original aspect of this work is that it combines in the same analysis fields of knowledge that are rarely studied together: the history of the book and of publishing, the sociology of literature and in particular the theory of the literary institution, the theory of paratextuality and reader response theory. This thesis examines separately the two dimensions of the topic but follows a logical progression that concludes with a third section. The first section explores the hypothesis that the literary series is the outcome of a long process of definition and specialization which has accompanied the evolution of French publishing and literature. It then goes on to examine cases illustrating the "convergence" of the two, such as the "Bibliotheque Bleue", the "Bibliotheque universelle des romans", the "Bibliotheque Charpentier", the collections of livraisons illustrees published in the 1850's, the "Collection Michel Levy" and a few collections published by Flammarion and Fayard. Following a rereading of the Genettien paratexte (1987) that reviews and further refines the parameters of the concept (its boundaries, its components and their functions) in order to increase its scope of action, the second section explores in depth the essence of the encounter between the series and literature itself and proposes a theory of the series which positions it in relation to a community of readers and recognizes a different functioning, different risks and effects depending on whether it is destined for a specialized public or the general public. Finally, the third section picks up the historical thread that the first section suspended at the beginning of the 20th century

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Dialogue is a written text representing an oral exchange between two or more persons; it also includes catechisms and rhetorically formulated series of queries and responses presenting an argument. The purpose of my thesis is to identify the main non-dramatic dialogues published in France and Italy between 1800 and 1914 and--through their discursive analysis--to provide an assessment of their signification and their impact on modern social discourse. / The first part focuses on the general discourse elements of modern dialogue, such as narrativity, rhetorical devices, character definition and function, paratextual structures, etc. / The second part includes a series of text analyses that proposes a study of ideological tendencies of modern social discourse through the most representative dialogues of the age. / Finally, the third part concentrates on the literary value and the build-up of dialogue as an aesthetic structure towards the end of the XIXth century and at the turn of the XXth century.

Cette etude propose une analyse de "Tel Quel" en tant que mouvement de neo-avant-garde situe a la frontiere de la modernite et de la postmodernite. Nous y considerons tous les textes de creation (roman et poesie) publies dans la collection "Tel Quel" entre 1960 et 1982, sans negliger l'etude de leur rapport avec la reflexion theorique exposee dans les essais et les articles de la revue. Cette these represente en meme temps un effort de synthese des principales typologies ou tentatives de definition proposees par la critique occidentale pour caracteriser les mouvements litteraires issus des societes post-industrielles: modernite, postmodernite, modernisme, postmodernisme, avant-garde, post avant-garde et neo-avant-garde.

This thesis intends to describe the contemporary self as drawn by literary theory and writing practice. This objective implies defining the human being considering its history as well as studying its representation in narratives. / In order to circumscribe today's self, we undoubtedly have to study its historical evolution. Exploring the diametrically opposed conceptions suggested by modernity and postmodernity will lead us to a better understanding of the hybrid composition of the contemporary self, which is characterized by a search for coherence and meaning to a multidimensional and constantly evolving individual. / This definition, so far theoretical, will have to be confronted with the representations of the self found in autobiographies. The study of such self-narratives will provide the opportunity to observe in concrete terms the conception of the human being today. / The essential role of narratives will be identified beforehand. Narrative form certainly allows the representation of the self, but moreover it enters in the constitution and definition of the being itself. Self-narrative permits to establish the coherence of the self, hence it clearly appears at the basis of the identity. Overall, the narrative constitutes the foundation of the contemporary self amidst modernity and postmodernity.

This work attempts to trace back the models for the various Berenice stories in French literature. Two different trends seem to emerge. The first one is related to the unhappy relationship between Titus and Berenice, the Judaic queen of the first century A.D. The other goes back to the events of the Ptolemaic period when a series of queens also bear the name of Berenice. Present day literature tends thus to show a return to the facts that originally gave birth to the myth.

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