Proefschrift--Amsterdam. / "Bibliographie": p. 246-253.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Brown University, 2005. / Vita. Thesis advisor: Réda Bensmaïa. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 196-204). Also available online.

The following thesis is an investigation of the textual strategies functioning in four novels by Boris Vian: L'Ecume des jours (1947), L'Automne a Pekin (1947), L'Herbe rouge (1950) and L'Arrache-creur (1953). It examines the novels' usage of intertextuality (references, direct and indirect, to other works of literature), and analyses the potentiality for producing meaning that is contained within this usage. By conjoining the four novels in this common textual strategy, it also examines how the novels refer to each other (intratextuality), and how they may, therefore, be considered as a unified and coherent tetralogy. Within this threefold strategy, the thesis yields a new reading of the four novels: Chapters One and Two deal with caricature and 'clins d'reil' in L 'Ecume des jours, exposing an association with Surrealism and the beginnings of a novelistic mythology; Chapters Three and Four follow the surface structure of L 'Automne a Pekin, at each stage revealing the veiled intertextual structure, the importance both of Parisian novels and the genre of detective fiction; Chapters Five and Six question the status of L 'Herbe rouge as a novel of Science Fiction, exposing its oneiric qualities and the role of death; finally, Chapters Seven and Eight show how the tetralogy can be seen to reach its climax in a final novel which closes the circle, bringing the narrative back to the beginning of the first. This thesis, therefore, through the use of a critical tool (intertextuality) not before fully exploited in the context of Boris Vian's reuvre, discloses new readings of each of the four 'romans signes Vian', as well as offering a comprehensive view of a tetralogy of texts considered as one self-referential unit.

This study examines French political fiction of the 1930s, taking gender as its primary category of analysis. It considers texts by female novelists whose work has been largely excluded from critical attention, in order to bring their particular contribution to inter-war French literature to light. It integrates this analysis into a consideration of relevant and representative texts of the exclusively male canon of French political fiction dating from the 1930s, exploring points of contact and divergences to show how the work of the female authors relates to the wider context of French inter-war literary activity. Texts by eight writers are considered in detail, namely Madeleine Pelletier, Edith Thomas, Henriette Valet, Louise Weiss, Louis Aragon, Pierre Drieu la Rochelle, André Malraux and Paul Nizan. The analysis of the female-authored novels informs the study of their male counterparts, whose texts also offer fertile ground for an analysis in terms of gender. The corpus is approached, in broad terms, through the themes of commitment, sexuality and the body. These themes permit an investigation of the gendering of politicization as it is manifested in 1930s literature.

During the 1994 genocide in Rwanda, acts of extreme violence were committed against women. This thesis aims to explore how Rwandan women genocide survivors respond to and communicate such a traumatic experience. From a perspective of trauma theory, it engages with the published testimonies of Rwandan women survivors, seeking to understand how the genocide is remembered in both individual and collective memory and the challenges Rwandan women face in the ongoing process of surviving trauma. Exploring the ways in which Rwandan women position themselves as witnesses, the first chapter addresses the crucial questions of who is a witness and who has the right to speak about a traumatic historical event. It distinguishes between different categories of witness and looks at the levels of witnessing in Rwandan women’s testimonies, as well as considering the role of the reader-witness in the act of testimony. Responding to an imperative of memory, the women are speaking on behalf of other survivors and honouring the memory of the victims. At the same time, the experience of genocide is shown to be deeply individual, and the second chapter provides a detailed analysis of the narrative strategies Rwandan women adopt to communicate the particularity of their experiences. Through a range of ‘translation’ techniques, the women reconstruct their individual chronologies and challenge the notion of the unsayability of trauma. However, the extremity of what the women have lived through can be incomprehensible to the reader, who is often unwilling to hear the story. One of the ways in which cross-cultural communication can be achieved is through collaboration, a process which is examined in the third chapter. The collaborator plays a complex role in the production of the testimonies, functioning not only as empathic listener, but also as writer, editor, and mediator of the story. This chapter draws out the problems associated with collaboration and also highlights its potential value for the Rwandan women as it is ultimately through the collaborator that they are able to convey their story to a Western audience. Gaining access to the Western publishing industry is just one of the many obstacles the women must face in communicating their stories, and the majority of survivors continue to be silenced. The role of silence both within and surrounding Rwandan women’s testimonies is the focus of the fourth chapter, which looks at the physical manifestations of silence within the narratives as well as the silencing of survivors in Rwanda and across the diaspora. The silencing of survivors’ stories has strong implications for the recovery of the individual, often preventing her from moving from surviving to living, a notion that is examined in the final chapter. Testimony is shown to play a central role in this transition. Yet, in the face of the politically motivated processes of national reconciliation, justice and commemoration, Rwandan women struggle to regain control over their narratives. This final chapter emphasises the importance of the community in helping women to reclaim their voice and tell their stories on their own terms. Overall, women remain marginalised figures in the writing of history, and this thesis seeks to underline the necessity of developing new ways of listening to the diversity of Rwandan women’s voices, in order not only to gain greater insight into how traumatised individuals remember but also to hear the challenge they pose to conventional Western modes of responding to trauma.

The thesis is divided into three main sections i) Introduction ii) Text iii) Critical Notes and Glossary. The frontispiece shows the title page of the Anglo-Norman MS translation of Vegetius' De re militari. i) Introduction: In the opening two chapters, the historical setting of the translation is examined. First, the background to the writing in the fourth century of the original Latin text is established, and an outline is given of the substance of the text; then a study is made of the Vegetian tradition in France from the later years of the thirteenth century to the present day. The manuscript, its date and its authorship are discussed in Chapters 3 and 4. Then the value of the French text as a translation is discussed. The sixth and longest chapter examines the language of the translation, noting points of divergence from Continental French which generally fit into the pattern of Anglo-Norman usage. A short chapter is given over to outlining the plan followed in establishing the text of this edition. The Notes to the Introduction conclude this part of the thesis. ii) Text: The text is basically that of Add.MS.1. of the Marlay Collection of the Fizwilliam Museum, Cambridge. This is a unique manuscript. Corrections and emendations, which have been kept to a bare minimum, are shown in the footnotes. iii) Critical Notes and Glossary The Critical Notes are designed to amplify and clarify the text. Extensive reference is made to the Latin original, and many difficult or obscure passages are translated into English. The Notes are followed by a Select Glossary and an Index of Proper Names. Two appendices list the various manuscripts of the mediaeval French translations of Vegetius, together with certain additional Latin manuscripts of the De re militari. The volume ends with a list of the principal works consulted in the preparation of this thesis.

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