Thesis (doctoral)--Humboldt-Universität, Berlin, 2004. / Bibliography: p. [507]-525.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Ohio State University, 2007. / Title from first page of PDF file. Includes bibliographical references (p. 261-272).

Thesis (M.A.)--University of Delaware, 2009. / Principal faculty advisor: Mary Donaldson-Evans, Dept. of Foreign Language & Literatures . Includes bibliographical references.

Cette thèse vise à étudier la persistance et l’évolution de la malédiction littéraire dans le champ culturel français des XIXe et XXe siècles. En suivant une approche pluridisciplinaire au croisement de la littérature française, de la littérature comparée et de la sociologie, je montrerai que ce mythe demeure toujours actif et prolifique. Loin de me placer dans la perspective d’une vision sacrée de la littérature, je montrerai enfin comment la figure des auteurs maudits s’insère depuis toujours au sein d’une véritable stratégie éditoriale à des fins de visibilité. Sur la base de ces considérations, mon travail montre comment un phénomène qui appartient à la vie littéraire a pu dépasser ce domaine pour influencer et façonner d’autres disciplines, comme la musique, le cinéma ou la bande dessinée. / This thesis seeks to examine the persistence and the evolution of Literary damnation into the French literary scene of XIXth and XXth centuries. Using an multidisciplinary approach, French literature, comparative literature and sociology, I will show how this myth remains active and prolific. Far from the perspective of a sacred vision of literature finally I will show how the image of the accursed authors is always inserted in a true editorial strategy. My work shows how a phenomen on which belongs to the literary life was able to exceed this domain to influence other disciplines, like the music, the movies or the comics.

Although the works of Christine de Pizan have been of interest to scholars for some time, technological advances and initiatives to make digital copies of manuscripts available online have only recently enabled close comparisons between the visual programmes of her works to be made. This thesis demonstrates that detail usually considered secondary or 'paratextual' in Christine's manuscripts actually formed a carefully-constructed part of the work itself that Christine explicitly asks her audience to read. Through 'reading' the text and image simultaneously, the visual programme proves to comprise additional layers of meaning that were woven into her didactic works. These meanings can serve to supplement the educational and moral aims of the works, or, conversely, can be inconsistent with the message conveyed in the text, leading the reader-viewer to contemplate further on the matters presented and form their own opinions on them. Sometimes, meaning is created by intervisual connections with pre-existing iconography, such that viewers may be creating associations between the miniatures seen in Christine's manuscripts and other imagery, leading them to make certain associations - this is notably the case in author-portraits of Christine. As manuscripts prepared under the author's supervision came to be copied, changes were made to the iconographic programmes, testifying to and enabling different types of readings to take place. The findings of this thesis have implications for editorial practices of medieval works in general, as these tend to circulate in editions without the visual programme, providing modern readers with only a partial view of the complete work.

No description available.

Thesis (PhD)--Stellenbosch University, 2014. / ENGLISH ABSTRACT: Jack-Alain Léger committed suicide on 17 July 2013 at the age of 66, leaving behind him a large amount of work that has not formed the object of any academic study, not even partially. Many articles have been written about the author but none about his novels. Léger was especially known for his multitude of pseudonyms, his manic-depressive tendencies, his conflicts with all his editors, his homosexuality, the controversy linked to the alias Paul Smaïl or for his Islamophobia, his hatred towards his biological father and towards an alleged brother who died before his birth but also for his literary talent, his wide erudition and his brilliant and provocative mind. Underneath these characteristics hides an author whose work, that appears incoherent at first sight, reflects a profound reflection on the aesthetic, the essence and the ultimate purpose of art. Although Léger’s art involves the domain of aestheticism, it is also intended to subvert and oppose a society that limits imagination and individual potential by imposing a uniform identity. In this way, Léger illustrates in all his works the separation and alienation of the self through the dead child motive, emphasizing his refusal to acknowledge having been born as an alienated self. Lost in the ambiguity of an image that had not been received by society, Léger wanders in the infinite game of mirrors like Narcissus searching for an ideal self and an ideal beauty in the lake’s waters where he gazes upon his reflection. In this multidisciplinary research, I will study the entirety of Léger’s work in the light of the notion of narcissism and the multiple reflections that it includes. The narcissistic force that serves as a fermenting agent for the creation of Léger’s work is developed through a literary, sociological, psychoanalytical and philosophical interpretation. The final chapter discusses the elements these different perspectives have in common and they are drawn together in the concept of tertiary narcissism, as a mechanism of self-protection and self-recreation which is, however, not without danger as revealed in the tale of Narcissus. / AFRIKAANSE OPSOMMING: Jack-Alain Léger het op 17 Julie 2013 in die ouderdom van 66 selfmoord gepleeg. Hy laat ‘n talryke oeuvre agter wat nog nie die onderwerp gevorm het van ‘n akademiese ondersoek nie, selfs nie gedeeltelik nie. Die skrywer word wel dikwels genoem in artikels en tekste maar nie sy werk nie. Léger was veral bekend vir sy verskeidenheid pseudonieme, sy bipolêre tendense, gedurige konflik met sy uitgewers, sy homoseksualiteit, die polemiek rondom die gebruik van die pseudoniem Paul Smaïl of sy Islamofobie, die haat vir sy pa en vir ‘n putatiewe broer wat voor geboorte dood is – maar ook vir sy literêre talent, sy uitgebreide kennis en sy briljante uitdagende gees. Onder al hierdie eienskappe is daar egter ook ‘n skrywer waarvan die oeuvre met die eerste oogopslag onsamehangend mag voorkom maar in werklikheid ‘n diep besinning inhou oor estetika, die essensie en die einddoel van kuns. Alhoewel Léger se kuns raak aan die veld van estetika, is die bedoeling daarvan ook subversief en gemik teen ‘n samelewing wat die verbeelding probeer hok slaan en die individu se potensiaal beperk deur die oplegging van ‘n eenvormige identiteit. Só illustreer Léger in sy werk die afsondering en die vervreemding van die self deur die motief van die dooie kind ; die versinnebeelding van sy weiering om gebore te word as ‘n vervreemde self. Verlore in die dubbelsinnigheid van ‘n beeld wat nie deur die samelewing ontvang kon word nie, dwaal Léger tussen die oneindige spel van spieëls soos Narcissus wat ‘n ideaal soek van homself en van skoonheid in die water van die meer waarin hy staar na sy beeld. Hierdie multidissiplinêre studie ondersoek Léger se oeuvre in sy geheel in die lig van die begrip van narcissisme en die veelvoudige weerspieëlings daarvan. Die narcissistiese krag as gis vir Léger se kreatiewe werk word ingeknie in ‘n literêre, sosiologiese, psigoanalitiese en filosofiese ontleding. In die laaste hoofstuk, bespreek ek dit wat hierdie verskillende perspektiewe in gemeen het en verwerk dit deur die konsep van ‘n tersiêre narcissisme, ‘n meganisme van beskerming en selfherskepping want nietemin ook sy eie gevaar inhou, soos dit onthul word in die verhaal van Narcissus. / RESUME: Jack-Alain Léger qui s’est donné la mort le 17 juillet 2013 à l’âge de 66 ans laisse derrière lui une oeuvre considérable qui n’a pas - même partiellement - fait l’objet d’études. Bien des articles ont été écrits sur l’auteur même mais aucun sur ses romans. Léger était surtout connu pour sa multitude de pseudonymes, sa tendance maniaco-dépressive, ses conflits avec tous ses éditeurs, son homosexualité, les controverses liées au pseudonyme de Paul Smaïl ou à son islamophobie, sa haine de son géniteur et d’un frère putatif mort avant sa naissance mais aussi pour son talent littéraire, son érudition, son esprit brillant et provocateur. Au-delà de ces attributs se dissimule un écrivain dont l’oeuvre qui paraît au premier abord incohérente reflète une réflexion profonde sur l’esthétique, sur l’essence et les finalités de l’art. Si l’art de Léger touche au domaine de l’esthétisme, il se veut aussi subversif et s’oppose à une société qui restreint l’imagination et les potentialités de chacun en imposant une uniformisation de l’identité. Léger illustre ainsi dans toute son oeuvre la séparation et l’aliénation du moi par le motif de l’enfant mort soulignant son refus de naître à un moi aliéné. Perdu dans l’ambiguïté d’une image qui n’a pas été capturée par le social, Léger erre dans le jeu infini des miroirs tel Narcisse qui cherche un idéal de soi et de beauté dans l’eau du lac où il se mire. Cette recherche multidisciplinaire explore l’intégralité de l’oeuvre de cet auteur à la lumière de la notion du narcissisme et des multiples reflets que celui-ci englobe. La force narcissique en tant que ferment du travail de création de Léger sera mise en valeur par l’interprétation littéraire, sociologique, psychanalytique et philosophique. Au chapitre final, je relèverai ce que ces différentes perspectives analytiques ont soulevé de commun et synthétiserai cela par le concept du narcissisme tertiaire, un mécanisme de protection et de recréation de soi qui n’est cependant pas sans danger comme nous le révèle le conte de Narcisse.

The anonymous French seventeenth-century play le Docteur Amoureux (1691) was written for theThéâtre Italien, the Italian troupe acting in Paris. It incorporated the techniques of both Old French farce and the commedia dell'arte into mainstream comic modes, in the manner of Moliáere but with some amusing twists. Le Docteur Amoureux remains a significant part of the French comic canon and the historical corpus of drama, yet it has never been translated into English. With prefatory commentary on the text and the period, the genres of stage performance, and the challenges involved in translating historical texts, this first translation of le Docteur Amoureux is intended to serve contemporary theater research into this rich and prolific period in the history of the French theater under Louis XIV. / by Elsa Cantor. / Thesis (M.A.)--Florida Atlantic University, 2009. / Includes bibliography. / Electronic reproduction. Boca Raton, Fla., 2009. Mode of access: World Wide Web.

Since Elaine Showalter's proposal of "gynocriticism", a considerable amount of work has been done in English-speaking countries to establish the existence o f a "female tradition" in literature. In France, where feminist critics have focussed on new ways "to write the feminine", there has been relatively little interest in reexamining the production of lesser-known women writers. The canon of French literature remains comparatively unchallenged, and few people are aware o f the many women who wrote at the beginning of the twentieth century. This dissertation is a contribution to the rereading of three of such authors, looking at the representation of femininity in relation to feminism. Three novels, one by Sidonie Gabrielle Colette, one by Marcelle Tinayre and one by Lucie Delarue-Mardrus. The careers of these "femmes de lettres", all established before World War I, were comparable, yet two o f them have been forgotten. These novelists remained ambivalent in relation to feminist efforts at that time to achieve the emancipation o f women. Despite their own relative freedom and lack of conformity in their lives, and the criticism o f established norms embedded in their narratives, all three kept their distance from feminism as a movement. The three texts compared here all have conservative endings, in spite of other elements that challenge the status quo. A t the core of their ambiguity is the tension between two concepts which remain in conflict today: on one hand the feminist agenda aimed at greater freedom and autonomy for women is based on the idea that gender roles are constructed, whereas on the other hand the concept of femininity is inseparable from the idea of an "essential" woman, represented, in the early 1900's in France by a particular nationalist concept of the French Woman. A close look at critical texts published in the first part o f the twentieth century shows the weight of that concept in the evaluation o f women's writing of that period. The growth in the number and reputation o f women writers ("femmes de lettres") was accompanied by a declaration o f the need to maintain French femininity ("l'etre femme"), and individual women authors like Colette, Delarue-Mardrus and Tinayre were caught in a dilemma. They all proclaimed their allegiance to the French ideal of femininity, while contributing to its denial and renewal by their own performance as successful women writers. Their representation of femininity as performed in their novels (as it was in their lives) shows the various ways in which it was possible to negociate a compromise between being feminine and challenging that concept through writing. These texts also demonstrate that women's literary production of that period in France is far more diversified than standard anthologies of French literature would lead us to believe. Colette appeals to reader's senses and aims to seduce, Tinayre appeals to reason and aims to convince, while Delarue-Mardrus appeals to the emotions and aims to move. All three, combine the "feminine" and the "feminist" in different ways, constructing literary models that represent a range of responses to a similar problem: how to remain a woman while contesting the notion of "woman".

This work proposes a double analysis of the mundane society representations between 1885 and 1914, in the press and the novel. This analysis separates these two categories of media to insist on their particularities, and tries to think of them in terms of an interaction. / A first part explores the organisation of the topics and the main genre of the mundane society in the press, applying the social discourse theory. The analysis is based on the perusal of a set of representative daily newspapers (Le Gaulois, Le Figaro) and of weekly and monthly publications (Le Grand monde, La Vie parisienne, Femina notably, as well as around thirty other titles). It shows that the mundane society in the newspaper is constrained by a poetics stemming from the characteristics of press writing: collective writing, periodicity of the publication, text length limitation and reference to reality. Some texts are tempted by fiction, even though they keep a reality-based referential, whereas other texts that are openly fictitious, fit the mundane fiction into the newspaper. / The second part is based on the general conclusion of the first part: the mundane society in the newspaper is a represented society, made of for a distant and anonymous public. With the advent of the medias in the 19th century, the mundane society has entered into the era of mediations and "industrial writing". Some writers, from Bourget to Proust, take these upheavals into account and present the mundane society as a metaphor of the mass media society. This is done following three main axes: the temptation of withdrawal of the fiction into a closed world (psychological and mundane movement impulsed by Goncourt with Cherie, prolonged by Bourget and Hervieux notably); the games of exchange between the novel and the newspaper (Maupassant, Toulet, Legrand, amongst others); and finally, the isolation of the mundane world and the aesthetic work on mediations (Rolland, Colette, Mirbeau, Lorrain et Gide notably). All these writings address the question of sociability at the era of the triumph of mediations: what room is left for the mundane society, for direct encounter, for exchange, in a world of mediation and mass media coverage? for immediate connections in a society of mediated ties? The epilogue proposes a journalistic reading of A la recherche du temps perdu, synthesis-work which inaugurates a modern and sociological perception: it is in the world of the imagined mundane society, distant and represented in the mass media, that the narrator draws the resources for his observation of the world.