The writings of Raymond Queneau span a period of more than forty years and reflect the multiplicity of his approaches: essays, songs, poems, scenarios for the cinema, translations (from English to French), journal, and novels. My study focuses mainly on five novels: Le Chiendent (The Bark Tree), Les Fleurs bleues (Between Blue and Blue), Le Dimanche de la vie (The Sunday of Life), Pierrot mon ami (Pierrot) and Zazie dans le métro (Zazie in the Metro), the one that made him known to a wide reading audience. Queneau contributed to the very rich philosophical and literary scene in France sandwiched between twentieth century surrealism and existentialism, drawing much of his inspiration from the popular characters of the everyday Parisian life. My thesis mainly focuses on Queneau's dichotomy between "what is" and "what appears to be". Because of Queneau's extreme versatility, I do not attempt to analyze every aspect of his writing but limit it to examining his concept of appearance and reality, an approach which cuts across various aspects of his writing. The first chapter outlines the interplay between the sciences, literature and the concept of humor interpreted in the light of a notion of a participatory rather than a passive reading. The second chapter, entitled "Le Défi du Langage" (The Challenge of Language), elaborates upon Queneau's "fantasy" world with a concentration on the linguistic elements and play-on-words. The third chapter, entitled "La Valeur Structurelle" (The Structural Value), deals with the way in which Queneau structures his novels and the different forms taken by his fiction: examination of the symbolic aspect of numbers and forms; echos and symmetry; dream and reality; repetitions and play on the "I/ eye". The fourth chapter, entitled "L'Etre et le Paraître" (Being and Appearing), answers the main question of appearance and reality while dealing with the philosophy of "being or not being" as well as the resulting corollary of realizing anguish and death. Queneau's characters answer to these eternal questions through a growing awareness and consciousness which drive them to espousing anonymity or popular wisdom. In so doing, Queneau's humor enlarges upon the parody of philosophers such as Parmenides, Plato, Descartes, Camus or Sartre. In the conclusion, entitled "Au-delà de l'humour" (Beyond Humor), Queneau's laughter which is omnipresent, expresses the underlying condition through his observation of particular individuals in their very individualities. In the final analysis, Queneau's humanism shines forth with great empathy, comprehension, and humility.

Julien Gracq' s quest for the "au-delà" is similar in many ways to the Surrealists' attempts to get in touch with the Beyond and to find that mythical and ideal point where binary oppositions are no longer contradictory but complementary. However, he differs greatly from the Surrealists in that his writing is anything but "automatic". Whereas he acknowledges being influenced by the Surrealists' ideas and by the works of certain authors, notably Goethe, Wagner, and Edgar Allen Poe, his works are a unique and carefully constructed web of style techniques, double-entendres, intertextual references, poetic devices, and a deliberate blurring of the dividing line between clear and obscure.

Spiritual, mystic and natural boundaries haunt the writings of Henri Bosco. Critics such as Bachelard have studied Bosco's interpretation of the natural elements and noted his sensitive portrayal of the protagonists with a focus on their unconscious desires by the use of this device. In Le Mas Theotime Bosco has unleashed his artistic and poetic creativity in addition to his passion for nature. Indeed, of all of Bosco's novels, perhaps this one exemplifies the quintessential harmony of man with nature. As suggested by Jean-Claude Godin: " ... il n'y a que dans Le Mas Theotime oil elles soient veritablement au coeur du recit ... La reverie de la terre debouche alors sur toutes les images de l'intimite heureuse." (Godin 176) It is also the essence of Provence, its legends and its natural beauty that plays an integral role in this novel. Not only does Bosco explore the natural elements, but he also explores the religious myths that so influence our society. This thesis will explore, through a symbolic and religious interpretation, the boundaries which prevail throughout. Le Mas Theotime incorporates Bosco's true genius as a writer who brings to his reader the possibility of a personal rendition and view of the story. His is not a straightforward and evident recollection of events, but rather a voyage through and involvement in the lives and minds of the characters.

This Master's Thesis examines what happens when African and Caribbean characters in France or in their own country meet the Other in Francophone literature. How do interracial relationships construct/deconstruct the concept of an intertwined identity? This comparative project explores three 20th century Francophone women writers from Sub-Saharan Africa, North Africa and the West Indies in order to show how their novels construct or deconstruct the identities of migrated female characters through their interracial erotic and amorous relationships. Starting with Plato's Banquet which describes the origin of love as a splitting of identity and the quest of love as a quest to make that identity whole again, I problematize that notion through the intercultural encounters between the female main character and the white male in a postcolonial context. The study focuses on how the Other influences the female character and intervenes in the construction of the self, and looks at otherness as both an exterior force (the lover, the physical other) and an interior force (recognizing part of the self as other). It also explores how love and desire act as filters and motivators that influence the perception of the other and the self. My hypothesis is the following: the "ethnic woman" turns her foreigner status from a fragile one into one of strength and uses the Other for her integration into the Western society. Through otherness, she grasps a better understanding of the Other but also of herself. That encounter in all three novels pushes the ethnic female to return to her roots. Identities are not just hybrid but rather in a constant process of construction, a shift in self-construction in the globalized contemporary world. The female characters reflect the tendency to rethink not only what this new identity is but also the process of identity construction itself. By studying how women authors write on race and interracial relationships, this thesis offers a new understanding of the relation between love and identity and the female in Postcolonial Studies. Through her romantic relationships with the white male, the female has ultimately the power to decide for herself, which includes deciding to leave the relationship and leave for the sake of her newly found identity.

Following their independence in the 1960s the new governments of such French-speaking, African nations as Togo, Ivory Coast, Congo and Chad (to name only few), for the most part embraced policies that were authoritarian. A direct upshot socially of the lack of free speech imposed by certain African regimes was the migration of a large number of intellectuals from the black continent, yearning to rediscover their voices in more developed, democratic countries. Many, while living in exile, turned to writing or continued to write in such a way that the painful stories of the Africa they left behind could unfold before the eyes of the larger world and somehow bring a positive change to the leadership in Africa. One of these committed Francophone African writers of the Diaspora was Mongo Béti. In my dissertation, I explore the effects of an exile’s life on this writer's journalistic work by a careful analysis of the articles he published from 1978 to 1991 in the bimonthly review, "Peuples noirs, peuples africains", which he co-founded with his wife, Odile Tobner. My approach is to focus on the dual causality in Béti’s literary efforts through a better acquaintance with his review: the migratory factor that conveys, on the one hand, the notion of cultural integration and the creative spirit in perpetual exile and, on the other hand, the neocolonial factor that constantly connects the protagonist to his origins as he radically refutes poor governance and dictatorship in his home country and in the so-called independent francophone Africa, or to the ex-colonizer reluctant to give up its ill-fated 'mission civilisatrice'. Through later research, I hope to develop my work by thematically analyzing three formative periods of the author's life: the period before his exile, the time during his thirty two years of exile, and the period after his exile, in order to better contextualize factors of influence and their varying degree over time in his writing, both journalistic and novelistic.

This thesis studies the differences in the cultural expectations of parents between the United States and France and examines how these cultural differences affect the behavior of children. Split into three parts, the first part of the thesis outlines behavioral theory of anthropologist, Erving Goffman. The second part discusses the parent-child relationship as outlines by American author, Pamela Druckerman and French psychologist, Francoise Dolto. The last part examines three different French children's books and discusses the behavior of each protagonist. Ultimately it is argued that behavior is culturally conditioned, even in young children.

This thesis focuses on the problematic nature of art valuation, more specifically concerning the ideas of use-value and exchange-value in Honoré de Balzac’s Le Cousin Pons and Donna Tartt’s The Goldfinch. Written in nineteenth-century France, Balzac’s novel paints a bleak portrait of what he believes to be a morally corrupt society obsessed with the lesser things in life such as money and status rather than what is truly important: culture and art. In her novel, which bears a striking resemblance to Balzac’s, Tartt presents her perception of present-day United States, also plagued with moral corruption and disregard for the cultural significance of art, but ultimately attempts to convey the message that art will prevail and transcend not only time but human weakness as well. This analysis will attempt to trace the evolution of the value of the collections of art in these two novels. Through the examination of the themes of legitimacy, surrogacy and betrayal, I will analyze the paradoxes of value of both art and family structure.

The numerous ontological and epistemological paradoxes found within La Démonomanie des sorciers, a demonological treaty of the 16th century, are studied within the context of demonic corporality: exploiting a rich philosophical and theological intertextuality as well as, more generally, a confessional model of logic, La Démonomanie (1580) constructs a linguistic world of demonic bodies capable of copulation, transformation, and imbuing humans with the power to practice magic. Following in the footsteps of the demonologists who precede him, Bodin constructs a system of the real and of knowledge which is as much dependent upon the authoritative ethos of his intellectual forefathers as upon the increasingly abundant demonological confessions of his own time. Despite the certainty of Jean Bodin’s tone and his fastidious deployment of internal logic, the problematics of such demonic corporality, both with regards to its theological justification as well as to its lack of direct, observable evidence, lead ultimately to an anxious appeal to the political in the text in an attempt to mitigate these aforementioned demonological contradictions and appease those who seek material reassurance. To this end, this orientation from the theological towards the political in the text, which provides a physical anchoring of Bodin’s demonological vision in a protective realm of harmonious, yet divinely necessary opposites to counter the inherent abstraction of its subject matter, certainly provides us with an insight into the divisive and anxiety-laced intellectual landscape of the late French Renaissance, insofar as it illuminates the increasingly prominent naturalist objections to established spiritual orthodoxy. However ultimately efficient this shifting orientation may be in its capacity to mitigate direct concerns, the immediate resolution of the demonic paradox in the text fails to find its complete realization, given that the specter of its own weight is not only a theoretical concern to reasoned away, but also an impossibly elusive, spiritual one—as La Démonomanie becomes as much an apparent political praxis as a demonstration of faith, its ostensibly resolved struggle with demonic corporality still betrays, even at its close, a man’s journey of faith to rid the demonic shadows from an ambiguous reality that even prescribed fire may not be capable of exorcising.

This paper conducts a critical comparison of the correspondence of Madame de Sévigné, Empress Marie-Thérèse of Austria and Joséphine Bonaparte. These women instruct their daughters through a writerly exchange that implements a remarkably similar use of language that indicates a “performance” of her maternal role, meant to implement a personal or political agenda that requires the daughter’s acknowledgement and reciprocation. This project explores theories of speech acts and subjectivity to conduct a literary analysis of the construction of the maternal figure in a historical context, its representation in the letters of each woman with their daughters, the motivations for a “performance” of the maternal role, and the subsequent characterization, reaction, and liberation of the daughter’s voice.

The thesis seeks to explore the didactic application of French science-fiction during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries for the portrayal and dissemination of their respective philosophical theories. Studying science-fiction novels during these centuries will allow a comparison of seventeenth and eighteenth-century dissemination methods, to determine if the foundational seventeenth-century methods were retained or modified to more accurately represent the change in philosophical attitudes. Exploration of this topic will contribute to a greater understanding of French Enlightenment theory, analysis of relatively unstudied novels in the science-fiction genre, and a novel approach to “proto” science-fiction literature by connecting the previously separate genres of science-fiction and philosophy during the Enlightenment. The trends within the seventeenth century show dominant authoritative representations through analogical examples, authoritative ideological figures, and an emphasis on logically sustained arguments. The eighteenth-century trends focus on logical passionate attitudes, burlesque scenarios, and authoritative actions to exemplify the Enlightenment ideologies. Therefore, these five analyzed œuvres show conservation of didactic and authoritative dissemination methods during this philosophically evolutionary time period.