Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Wisconsin--Madison, 1967. / Typescript. Vita. Description based on print version record. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis--Paris IV, 1975. / Includes indexes. Includes bibliographical references (p. 827-850).

Thesis--Halle-Wittenberg. / Cover title. Vita. Includes index. Bibliography: p. [5]-10.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Wisconsin--Madison, 1930. / Typescript. eContent provider-neutral record in process. Description based on print version record. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 225-233).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Wisconsin--Madison, 1980. / Typescript. Vita. eContent provider-neutral record in process. Description based on print version record. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 307-335).

Editor's Thesis (doctoral)--Université d'Uppsala, 1981. / Summary in English. Includes bibliographical references (v. 2, p. 113-123) and index.

How does city space influence our behaviors in ways that might not even be perceptible? This dissertation examines Paris’s nineteenth-century urban upheaval in the works of Flaubert, Baudelaire and Zola. Haussmann’s comprehensive redesign of the French capital obliterated the narrow street patterns of medieval Paris, replacing them with wide boulevards lined with boutiques. This research shows how this radical transformation influences individuals’ inclinations. This interdisciplinary research synthesizes various representations of Paris together as a multidimensional mosaic to see what they reveal about the city and about us. This work aims to help us understand, as David Harvey says, “what the city was” and also helps us understand the modern city today and “what it could become.” This dissertation coincides with a number of new theoretical studies in architecture that aim to help us create new rapports with our cities. My argument is that the nineteenth-century French literature of this period portrays the urban space as a series of images to be visually and commercially consumed, a consumption that nourishes changes in the way individuals experience their daily lives and perceive their environment. By closely examining how these authors stress the dominance of the visual spectacle, this dissertation sheds new light on modernity’s immersion in the culture of the image, in which we even more today rely on images to experience the world and to interpret our daily lives. I use recent cultural and urban theories to show that the new open urban environment depicted in these texts created a milieu that encouraged individuals to display their personal lives before a quasi-invisible public. Flaubert, Baudelaire and Zola suggest that the dominance of commercial images in Paris brings with it a loss of reality. As a consequence, this world of illusion prompts individuals to engage in voyeuristic activities in an effort to find truth and reality. Ultimately, this research contributes to a broader understanding of our attraction to voyeurism and exhibitionism by linking the source of that attraction to nineteenth-century culture, particularly that of Paris as Walter Benjamin’s “capital of the nineteenth century.” / 2018-12-06T00:00:00Z

Boston University. University Professors Program Senior theses. / PLEASE NOTE: Boston University Libraries did not receive an Authorization To Manage form for this thesis. It is therefore not openly accessible, though it may be available by request. If you are the author or principal advisor of this work and would like to request open access for it, please contact us at open-help@bu.edu. Thank you. / 2031-01-02

Cette thèse vise à rendre compte de la perception de la folie au XIXe siècle à travers l’analyse de textes mettant en scène un narrateur fou durant l’âge d’or de l’aliénisme (entre 1830 et 1870). Elle montre dans quelle mesure la littérature expose les différents discours qui la définissent et sert de plateforme d’expression au contre-pouvoir. Dans la mesure où il s’agit de concevoir la folie dans une perspective discursive, l’analyse a bénéficié des travaux de Foucault sur le domaine et contribue à l’avancée de la critique en privilégiant l’analyse littéraire de la représentation du fou et de son discours. Tout d’abord, l’analyse de La Fée aux Miettes de Nodier et de Louis Lambert de Balzac expose le discours aliéniste en rapport avec celui du fou, en considérant ce dernier comme un être non seulement malade, mais aussi sublime et exceptionnel. Le second chapitre montre comment les narrateurs de Mémoires d’un fou de Flaubert et Aurélia de Nerval rejettent la conception dominante de la folie en lui substituant leur propre conception, poétique et sublime, et en s’attaquant au terme lui-même, l’un par la multiplication de ses acceptions, l’autre par son éviction. Enfin, le troisième chapitre analyse Un Martyre dans une maison de fous de Karl-des-Monts, Mémoires d’une aliénée d’Hersilie Rouy et Un Beau-frère d’Hector Malot. Dans ces récits d’individus internés à l’asile, l’analyse dégage les moyens stylistiques par lesquels les narrateurs cherchent à invalider leur diagnostic de folie et dénoncer les défauts de l’aliénisme, tout en préservant leur individualité de la catégorisation médicale. La thèse montre comment la représentation de la folie et le discours du fou en tant que narrateur servent autant à la création littéraire qu’à l’établissement d’une conception de la folie alternative à celle proposée par l’aliénisme.

In several of Michel Houellebecq’s, Marie NDiaye’s, and Michael Haneke’s works there are moments in which attention is drawn to a backdrop of interesting spaces and shifting urban and rural topographies. Rather than viewing the spaces of the narratives as a passive stage upon which the action takes place, or as an exteriorization of the characters’ emotional state, this thesis approaches their works with the perspective that socio-economic change impacts on space, and that this impact can be explored by narrative. This thesis takes three of Houellebecq’s novels, three of NDiaye’s novels, and two of Haneke’s films, and positions them in the context of the economic shift between two dominant modes of production: Fordism and post-Fordism. Post-Fordism can be defined according to four distinguishing features, each of which expresses itself on space in different ways: the first three concern the flexibilization, tertiarization, and feminization of the workforce; and the fourth refers to the global, informatized and geopolitical context in which these processes take place. The analysis in this thesis looks at the way in which the narratives depict these features, with a focus on their spatial attributes. An important part of the research question concerns whether the narratives respond to the precarious and volatile nature of post-Fordism by constructing a nostalgia for a more ‘stable’ past time and space. Houellebecq’s novels critique the impact of post-Fordist spatial change and emotively convey a sense of nostalgia. NDiaye’s novels also critique the impact of post-Fordist spatial change and explore the desire for stability. However, they simultaneously critique that desire, impeding recourse to nostalgia. Haneke’s films articulate the impact of post-Fordist spatial change and the way in which it impedes the city’s ability to be a space of ethical encounter. They present rural idylls and some urban spaces as offering opportunities for ethical relationships and the construction of community. The thesis offers a new way to approach two authors and a filmmaker who are among the most remarkable of the twenty-first century. It demonstrates the value of literary and filmic works in making sense of socio-economic change, as well as the way in which economic transition expresses itself on the French territory and impacts upon experience and interaction occurring within it.