Scholars describe fin-de-siècle Paris as a city of dualities, and examine its past as a series of crises or a tale of burgeoning optimism and opportunity. Historians of women and gender have noted the limitations of this dualistic approach, and have explored new avenues of interpretation. Specifically, they have shown how the combination of positive and negative impulses created a dynamic space in which women could re-imagine and re-articulate themselves. While this approach illuminates the possibilities that existed for women in a complex urban landscape, it also indicates that fin-de-siècle Paris was a contested city, one fraught with challenges for women living in the French capital. If the mingling of crises and belle époque culture had stimulating results for women’s emergence into urban spaces, it had confusing and conflicting effects as well. My thesis shows how fin-de-siècle Paris was a contradictory city for women artists, at a time when both opportunities and constraints in their profession were at a premium. I examine the ways in which several notable women in the arts – painters Gwen John, Suzanne Valadon, and Romaine Brooks, sculptor Camille Claudel, and writer Rachilde – traversed this unsettling path, and evaluated their experiences through artistic representations of private life. Far from portraying the traditional sphere of domesticity, however, which was considered an important form of artistic expression among women at this time, I argue that their depictions of intimate spaces, bodies, children, and female selfhood, were complex and often ambiguous, and part of a larger attempt to grapple with the shifting nature of identity, both as women, and as professionals. John and Claudel created interiors that were signs of independence and artistic innovation, but also reflections of hardship; Valadon and Brooks invested images of the female and child’s body with strength and power, but also with pain and suffering; and Rachilde developed heroines who were unsuccessful in their attempts to create a unique sense of self. Taken together, these representations demonstrate that women artists did not easily articulate a vision of modern female identity at the turn of twentieth century, but rather, highlighted the inconsistencies of this experience. / Thesis (Ph.D, History) -- Queen's University, 2008-11-28 10:48:28.537

After the Rwandan genocide in 1994 which irrefutably imposed itself as a reference in history, many books (researches and fiction) were published exposing varied opinions and views. It is an important source which is studied by different fields of knowledge, such as linguistics, literary studies, sociology, psychology and politics. Our study aimed to analyse ties between post-genocide fictional novels on Rwanda and the history of Rwanda. The main objectives of this dissertation (La réécriture de l’histoire du Rwanda à travers la littérature post-génocide. Etude de cas de trois romans africains d’expression française) are to study how knowledge of the history can help to understand these narratives and how these narratives can shed new light on history. In order to analyse this, we did a case study of three representative novels from Francophone Africa which we analysed confronting them to some historical sources. The novels are: - Ndwaniye, Joseph, (2007), La Promesse faite à ma soeur. Bruxelles: Les impressions nouvelles; - Monénembo,Tierno, (2000), L'Aîné des orphelins. Paris: Seuil, and - Diop, Boubacar Boris, (2000), Murambi, le livre des ossements. Paris: Stock. This study is a literary analysis and used a qualitative research method though an interpretive paradigm. As a main output and an answer to one of our research questions about common points between the post-genocide literature on Rwandan and the History of Rwanda, we discovered that in fact by the treatment of time and other writing processes used by the writers, they actually rewrote six important periods in the history of Rwanda: Pre-colonial absolute monarchy, the colonialism, the first and second Republics, the genocide and the post-genocide. These periods are clearly represented in the three novels, even if this may not be the intension of the writer and may be independent to his point of view on history. Matching the present with the past helps to revisit history. It shows how the historical context plays an important role in understanding post-genocide literature on Rwanda, and seen that this literature is discussing the genocide, it ends up delivering some points of view which are important for historians. This may assist in using literature for historical purposes and vice-versa. / Thesis (M.A.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Pietermaritzburg, 2012.

This study aims to produce a positive assessment of the Franciade, by viewing Ronsard's epic venture in the context of works by Ronsard himself and by poets such as Baïf and Belleau. The com- positions considered extract single episodes from an epic whole, and are united by their structural and rhetorical techniques, forming a group dominated by the Franciade. The first chapter examines the question of genre raised by the fragments, and reviews classical models utilized by the French poets, placing particular emphasis upon the Alexandrians. It re- veals how the sixteenth-century poets long to produce a full-scale epic . Chapter 2 groups the fragments according to theme, highlighting Argonautic poems, notably Ronsard's Hymne de Calais, et de Zetes, Hymne de Pollux et de Castor, and Hylas. Chapter 3 examines the structure of the fragments in terms of contraction and expansion. Some poets circumscribe their material with a prelude and conclusion; others extend its temporal and spatial perspectives, by such means as retrospection, prophecy, and descriptions of ornate objects. The rhetoric of the fragments is seen in Chapter 4 to reflect the expansive urge: simile, circumlocution, and preterition all widen the poetic vistas. Chapter 5 studies Ronsard's approach to the problem of inven- ting an original framework for his epic, how he tries to lend it coherence by structural and rhetorical means. Yet the techniques Ronsard practised in the fragments finally prevail: the Franciade breaks up into a series of vivid miniatures: Ronsard repeatedly returns to material made familiar by classical epics. The conclusion emphasizes that the 'accidental' fragmentation of the Franciade should be viewed alongside the voluntary frag- mentation of the sixteenth-century heroic miniatures. The Franciade should, especially, be considered in conjunction with other Ron- sardian productions, such as the Argonautic hymns. Together with these, it forms an intricate fretwork of epic motifs.

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The Algerian war of 1954 to 1962 is generally acknowledged to have been the apogee of France's uniquely traumatic retreat from overseas empire. Yet, despite the war's rapid establishment as the focus for a vast body of literature in the broadest sense, the experience of those years is only now beginning to be acknowledged by the French nation in anything like a balanced way. The present study seeks to contribute to the continuing elucidation of this historical failure of assimilation by considering the specific role played by prose fiction in contemporary and subsequent perceptions of the relevant events. Previous research into this aspect of the Franco-Algerian relationship has tended either to approach it as a minor element in a larger conceptual whole or to attach insufficient importance to its fundamentally political nature. This thesis is conceived as an analysis of the images of the Algerian war communicated in a representative sample of French literature produced both during and after the conflict itself. The method adopted is an ideological one, with particular attention being given in each of the seven constituent chapters to the selected texts' depiction of one of the principal parties to the conflict, together with their attendant political mythologies. This reading is primarily informed by the Barthesian model of semiosis, which is drawn upon to explain the linguistic foundations of the systematic literary obfuscation of this period of colonial history. By analysing points of ideological tension in the fictional imaging of the war, we are able to identify and to evaluate examples of both artistic mystification and demystifying art. It is argued in conclusion that the former category of narrative has never ceased to predominate, thus enabling French public opinion to continue to avoid its ultimate responsibility for the war and its conduct.

Analyses of Eighteenth-century French translations of English literature have often been reduced to criticizing so-called "belles infideles". Thus, the complexity of translation and ideological issues has been ignored. The first translations of works by Swift and Pope partake in this tradition as inherited from the Eighteenth century, but they also lay down the groundwork for the Enlightenment. Translating Swiftian satire in Gulliver's Travels , Pope's "badinage" in The Rape of the Lock, Clifton's medical history in the context of Newton's ideas, or social satire in Joseph Andrews, regardless of the degree of "fidelity", is never an innocent process. These issues are coupled with formal ones, translational as well as esthetic, when poetry or the Eighteenth-century novel-style texts are translated. / The importance of the Abbe Desfontaines (1685--1745) is undeniable. As a journalist, he comments, criticizes, and analyses not only the translations of English texts, but also the movement along which English ideas are translated within the French system. His numerous satirical texts also reveal him positioning himself before of the issues of the time. Allowing himself more freedom as a translator, he belongs to the first ones to proceed to the translation of English literature between 1727 and 1743. / In his translations, he adapts, imitates, or censors some elements seen as unacceptable in French. He has therefore been considered to be an "unfaithful translator", a position that does not account for his translation project which it is described in the important paratextual apparatus of his translations. His title pages, and especially his dedications, forewords, and introductions, reveal him as being aware of the most polemical aspects of these texts. So as to avoid the impasse encountered in criticizing the "fidelity" of his translations, I have focused on his paratextual apparatus in order to define his translation project and poetics.

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The Mill on the Floss, by Victorian novelist George Eliot, is a polylinguistic novel in Bakhtine's sense of the word in that it integrates the linguistic diversity of the society which it depicts. This novel published in 1860 was translated six times into French but never enjoyed a great reception in France. We examine three translations in this thesis: the first is by Francois D'Albert-Durade (1863), the second is by Lucienne Molitor (1957) and the last is by Alain Jumeau (2003). / D'Albert-Durade's translation evacuates the linguistic diversity in order to shape the novel to the requirements of the target literary polysystem. Molitor, by homogenising the eliotian prose, turns the canonised English novel into a French popular novel. Jumeau, for his part, by rehabilitating the peasant sociolect in his translation, marks the beginning of a rehabilitation movement of George Eliot in France. This study, through the analysis of the voice of a few key characters, attempts to follow the French "translative journey" of The Mill on the Floss.

Includes facsim of 1572 imprint of first title; and of 1573 imprint of second title. / Also submitted by the editor as part of application for candidature for the degree of Doctor of Letters, University of Adelaide, School of Humanities, Discipline of European Studies and Linguistics, 2006. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 169-174) and index. / lxxix, [183] p.: / Title page, contents and abstract only. The complete thesis in print form is available from the University Library.

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