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The thesis is primarily an investigation of the heroic ideal propounded in the novel and the relationship of that ideal to the ideological climate of the period 1630-1660. Part I I: The heroic novel owes much to the Greek romances, l'Astrée and Amadis de Gaule but offers a different ideal of heroism from them. The Greek romances had depicted essentially passive heroes, l'Astrée the heroism of renunciation and Amadis the heroism of physical strength and prowess. The heroic novel presents a hero whose nature is more important than his deeds though it is through his deeds that his nature is manifested. He exists at a higher level than the rest of mankind and is an incarnation of moral freedom. II: Though the general characteristics of the hero were agreed upon by all writers of heroic novels, there were important differences in the way the qualities which made up the hero were interpreted. In general terms, the pessimistic concept of heroism saw the hero as completely cut off from the rest of mankind, concerned only with his egocentric image of himself ; the optimistic concept stressed the altruistic side of heroism, the hero working for the rest of humanity. The terminology of heroism - générosité, gloire, vertu, etc. - was interpreted variously in the light of this distinction. III: The heroic novel assumed the existence of a benevolent providence leading the hero on to his ultimate destiny but, within that area, showed him resisting the attacks of fortune by direct action. To be heroic, he had to resist fortune directly : any attempt to anticipate problems or find ways round them was by definition unheroic. Heroism was therefore opposed to any form of prudence which suggested that action could be rendered unnecessary. IV: Heroism drew support from the Catholic humanist theory of the passions which superseded the neo-stoic morality of the early seventeenth century. The hero derived his energy from his passions and directed them towards the end proposed by his will. The two passions of major interest, love and ambition, could produce a superhuman individual when properly directed. The supremacy of the will came into question, however, particularly during the 1650s, and the novel began to depict heroes who were unable to control their passions absolutely. V: In the major tradition of the heroic novel, love was subsumed by the need to retain moral freedom : both hero and heroine ensured that their relationship did not lead to subjection to their partner. The increasing influence of feminism led to the acceptance of the view that women were morally stronger than men, which combined with the decline of the belief in the supremacy of the will to produce a relationship in which the male was subservient and self-effacing. Love came to take precedence over the maintenance of heroic status. VI: The justifications for the pre-heroic novel put forward in the seventeenth century usually relied on the claims of the imagination. The heroic novel developed together with a prose-epic theory of the novel, according to which fiction was linked closely to history to produce a greater moral impact than history alone could provide. Within the novel itself, however, historical truth was secondary to the aims of stirring the reader's imagination and impressing a moral attitude upon him. Many of the historical incongruities in the novel can be explained in terms of these aims. Part II VII: Ariane and l'Histoire celtique are proto-heroic novels : both depict a hero who to a certain extent devotes his energies to rising above fortune and asserting his moral independence. VIII: Polexandre arrives at its final version after several earlier stages in which the heroic element is gradually increased. The definitive version of 1637 depicts a superhero with absolute will-power, free from the defects of ordinary men. He has received a kind of "grace" which makes him capable of pursuing and achieving the highest virtue. IX: Ibrahim defines heroism in terms of the individual's ability to control his passions. The heroic virtues depicted are such that heroism is an ideal which most people would be capable of achieving, associated with the ideal of honnêteté. X: Cassandre holds up an ideal of absolute individual freedom. Heroism is egocentric, the hero faithful only to his own image of himself. XI: Cléopâtre ostensibly postulates the same heroic ideal as Cassandre but it has been affected by the discovery that the individual cannot guarantee to control his passions. Moral autonomy is thus disappearing. Women appear as superior because they have a stronger sense of bienséance than men and are therefore more capable of dominating situations involving the passions. XII: Le Grand Cyrus analyses the nature of the emotions to which mankind is subject. It makes plain the potential tyranny of the passions and proposes an ideal of restrained emotional involvement (amitié tendre) as a defence against them. Part III XIII: The heroic novel declined rapidly around 1660 after maintaining its popularity throughout the 1650s. "Realistic" novels and the burlesque cannot really be seen as anti-heroic. The major factor in the decline seems to have been the loss of belief in the supremacy of the will with the consequent revelation of the power of involuntary love. By 1660, the heroic novel had ceased to offer a heroic ideal in favour of an analysis of the affective side of human nature. The heroic framework became redundant and the nouvelle took over the analytical function being performed by the novel. The heroic novel is a factor in the search for moral values during the period 1630-1660. It offered an ideal of human liberty, defined variously by different authors, but all the definitions had to give way before the realisation that human freedom was restricted by human nature.

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The title of our thesis is The Myth of Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe in Michel Tournier's Vendredi ou les limbes du Pacifique and J.M. Coetzee's Foe. We intend to show how Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe story has become a renewed, transformed myth in the fictional works of Michel Tournier and J.M. Coetzee. In the first chapter, we will analyse the attitude of critics to Daniel Defoe, Michel Tournier and J.M. Coetzee's works, and we shall review the pertinent aspects of the three novelists' life. In the second chapter, we will define the concept of myth according to the African and European thinkers. We shall also stress the types, functions and myth's expressions in literary work. In the third chapter, we shall analyse and compare the characters of the three novels following the theory of A.J. Greimas which will be enriched by Evgueni Meletinski. We will divide the characters into protagonists, accessories, opponents, neutrals and absents. Analysis and comparison of the fictional characters will identify two major groups: colonizer and colonized. There will also be an examination of the meaning of characters' names used by the three novelists as well as our opinion on the fictional characters of Defoe, Tournier and Coetzee. Analysis of plot structures will show how the three novels are composed according to a cyclical pattern. The fourth chapter will be devoted to a comparative thematic analysis of solitude, sexuality and education. This will reveal the two faces of each theme as well as the hidden philosophy of the three novelists. And the fifth chapter will identify the narrative and stylistic techniques of the novels. It will show the kind of genre used by Defoe, Toumier and Coetzee as well as the letter and journal. It will also show the types of stylistic aspects of the three novels which are present in the novels. We will examine in the sixth chapter the spaces and the time framework of the three novels. / Thesis (Ph.D.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Pietermaritzburg, 2007.

Doctorat en philosophie et lettres / info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished

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Popular writer and man of the people, Zamenga Batukezanga, in 1971, wrote, using his personal experience, his first book entitled The Ups and downs. In his novel, he describes the life of a young villager, Difwayame, who disenchanted acceded the developed class assigned to fight the customs of his native land. In 1986, he published a book entitled My husband on strike. In this novel, he depicts the life of Laurent Lubaki, disenchanted by his clan adheres first the sect called The world will change, and then a catholic church to fight the customs of his native environment. In1991, he wrote and published A Villager in Kinshasa. In this novel, he showed the reader how Amuly who disillusioned by the mores of Kinshasa’s people returned to the village training first agriculture becomes rich and helps villagers. In 2008, he published a book entitled Forbidden way. In this novel, he describes the Hassein Ben Diouf who disillusioned by the behaviour of his mother leaves the house of his parents and adheres to as path as banned group to fight corruption, prostitution, dictatorship which block the development of his country. After carefully reading the above four novels, one realizes that Zamenga Batukezanga puts bare retrograde and anti-values that are common after the independence of his country. That is why from a book to another, he struggles against the retrograde customs and anti- values by evoking the suffering of young people. He keeps coming in his novels on a thematic or dialectic – disenchantment and commitment. What does he mean by disenchantment and commitment? How the two concepts manifest themselves in the works of Congolese writer? What means has he put at the disposal of young struggling to fight retrogrades customs and anti-values in order to achieve freedom? / Linguistics and Modern Languages / D. Litt. et. Phil. (French)

Text in French, with abstracts in French and English / Au lendemain des indépendances africaines, les écrivains tentent de dénoncer, sinon l’aliénation des intellectuels, du moins ce que le peuple désignait sous ce terme dans les excolonies françaises et belges. Le recours fréquent, dans la construction du récit, à la thématique de la faute de l’intellectuel se présente comme résultat d’un manquement au rôle qui lui revient. Pour mener à bien notre enquête, la théorie utilisée est l’Analyse de contenu thématique (A.C.T.) de Pierre Lannoy. Ce modèle aidera à cerner tout ce qui menace l’équilibre de l’édifice social. Cependant l’étude de l’aliénation des intellectuels a montré que l’émergence d’une crise semblable relève d’une série de causes complexes. Sa compréhension fait appel à de multiples champs scientifiques : sociologie, psychologie, économie, […] La seule solution est le compromis pour tous. C’est une vaine prétention que de vouloir établir ici un bilan exhaustif : l’étude de l’image de l’intellectuel ne peut qu’être évolutive. / In the aftermath of African independence, writers tried to denounce, if not the alienation of intellectuals, at least what people meant by this term in the former French and Belgian colonies. Frequent recourse to the theme of the fault of the intellectual in the construction of the narrative is presented as the result of a failure to fulfil the role that was assigned to him. To carry out our investigation, the theory used is Pierre Lannoy's Thematic Content Analysis (T.C.A.). This model will help to identify anything that threatens the balance of the social edifice. However, the study of the alienation of intellectuals has shown that the emergence of a similar crisis is due to a series of complex causes. Its understanding involves multiple scientific fields: sociology, psychology, economics, [...] The only solution is compromise for all. It is a vain claim to want to establish an exhaustive assessment here: the study of the image of the intellectual can only be evolutionary. / Classics and World Languages / D. Litt. et Phil. (French)