Morocco was under French protectorate between 1912 and 1956 when it gained its independence. This colonization left traces in literature, notably the beginnings of a Moroccan literature written in French. However, while written in French these works include specifically Moroccan features that reflect the diversity and complexity of that nation. I argue that the works written by Moroccan authors such as Abdellatif Laâbi, Mohammed Khaïr-Eddine, Mohammed Choukri, Mohammed Leftah, Ahmed Sefrioui and Tahar Ben Jelloun, post-independence, have significantly contributed to building a decolonized identity for Moroccans. By focusing on the literary tools deployed by these authors the research highlights aspects previously overshadowed when concentrating on the post-colonial context in which they were written. My dissertation research briefly overviews the historical and sociolinguistic context in which Post-independence literature was written. The first chapter presents the process undergone by authors in Morocco, after the independence, to rebuild a literary discourse free of colonial influence. It highlights the role of the journal Souffles, created by Abdellatif Laâbi, in paving the way for future authors. The second chapter details the authorial strategies deployed to renew styles of writing. These strategies include translation, the use of folklore and oral cultural heritage. Drawing from these sources has allowed Moroccan authors to create original works that are hard to categorize following western literary genres and disrupt western rhythms of writing. The final chapter illustrates the subversive nature of these works, in part because they present an alternative image of Morocco. By focusing on the literary attributes of Moroccan works the research highlights its significance for Morocco, as well as for research in the Post-colonial field in general. This focus draws light upon the importance of Amazigh culture and oral literature in making Moroccan literature a decolonized literature. It also draws attention to the importance of understanding Moroccan works as deeply marked by intertextuality. This work explores the role literature has played in stimulating a political conversation about national identity and cultural future, thus addressing the trauma of colonial occupation in a cathartic way. This work opens avenues of studies that move away from the Post-colonial paradigm to concentrate on the cultural project countries such as Morocco envisioned for themselves.

The goal of this study is to understand the role that honor represents for warriors through certain conflicts from the XIIIth to XVth century. The Christian ethic was in opposition to the Feudal ethic, and the opposition between the two provoked several changes in the way honor was perceived in warfare throughout the centuries. The notion of honor depends on the thoughts and the context into which individuals or groups belong. It implies reciprocity; measured by norms often recognized by an other entity. The chivalrous ideology was born out of the social rise of the milites and through the simultaneous dissemination of the aristocratic and chivalrous ideology of royal origins, which advocated for protecting the weak and the downcast. This cultural event confirmed the solid status of the dominant class, which allowed it to dominate the lower ones with ease through the knights and nobles at the helm. During battles such as Bouvines, duels between knights occurred often surrounded by troops who were forbidden to intervene. Settling differences was a business conducted amongst gentlemen even if the footmen around could have altered the course of the fight. These knights challenged each other on the battlefield without trying to kill one another because these soldiers of high birth during that time fought as if they were jousting. The battle of Crécy brings back into question what was considered an honorable fight. The honor code followed by knights rejected the use of bowmen. Those troops were not used against nobles. The British however, had many archers and used a new technology with devastating effect: the « longbow ». That technological breakthrough impacted the battlefield in ways never seen before. It changed everything on the ethical, tactical but also the military aspect of warfare. The knights place was redefined as well as war itself. The old code of chivalry got lost little by little. Military Strategists managed to adapt to the enemy thanks to technological advances and new ethical principals. An openness of mind expanded the space for critical thinking, which allowed combatants to be more flexible. The nature of conflicts change but mens aptitude to adapt to their environment does not.

Édouard Glissant (1928-2011) is a world famous poet and novelist from French Island Martinique who, following the footsteps of Aimé Césaire, tried to heal the traumatic disruption and resolve the identity crisis of Creole people after the abominations of slavery and colonization by poetic sublimation and engaged thoughts. How is Glissant a philosopher? How does he articu-late poetry and philosophy together? What does he understand by Relation, why is it central in his thought and how does the articulation of all his concepts around it make a philosophical en-semble? How original and cohesive is this ensemble? Also, as we know that many of his concepts come from Deleuze and Guattari, and we will notice that most of his other concepts have been abundantly used by contemporary thinkers (like Heidegger, Levinas, Nancy, Morin), what is the specificity of their articulation? We will see how Glissant has a very specific way of putting things together because of this Caribbean and Creole culture and that he has the ambition of recreating a new philosophy and a new History that will be more considerate with the legacy of minorities, especially the Cre-ole people. Explicitly relating his philosophy to his life in a very poetic way, he believes the ex-ample of the Antilles constitutes a perfect model for the world we live in and as such its quest of identity can be extended as a model for mankind. He therefore ambitions to move the pre-Socratic debate from the archipelago of Greece to the archipelago of Antilles based on different answers, especially recusing Plato and his rejection of poetry as a way to knowledge. From this new foundation, he ambitions on creating a new History and hopes to renew the arts and politics. However, in what does his prevention against totalitarian regimes and system of thoughts suc-cessful? How can his thought of the Whole World (Tout-Monde) be exempted from it? What are his relationships with thinkers considered totalitarian like Plato and Hegel?

"Avis de Recherche: Valentine Penrose, vie et uvre dune artiste surréaliste" presents a new appreciation of the work of French artist, poet and novelist Valentine Penrose associated with the Surrealist Movement. This research offers the first detailed and accurate version of Valentine Penroses biography, which shows her relationship with artists and writers of her time, and her engagement during the Spanish Civil War and WWII. It compiles and publishes for the first time all her unpublished and forgotten works with accompanying analyses for each piece. It demonstrates through the recording of her life and the exploration of her poetry how she exceeded different concepts such as that of the Unconscious, automatic writing, and the use of dreams established by André Breton in his Manifeste du Surréalisme, and how her deep interest for Eastern Philosophies modified her understanding of life, love and the artists way of creation. Because of the diversity and quality of her literary production poetry, collages, historical novel / essay, short story, epistolary novel and theater play this work aims to give to Valentine Penrose a place that has been for too long denied: a place in the History of French Literature.

More often than not, the linguistic research of Cajun French rests primarily at the morphological and syntactic level or focuses on aspects of culture and identity. It was thus my goal here to examine Cajun French at the phonological level. More specifically, I examined two phonological phenomena in Cajun French: assibilation and affrication. Both of these features may result when the dental consonants /t/ and /d/ precede either of the high vowels /i/ and /y/. Under these constraints, therefore, words such as petit (small) and dire (to say) are pronounced as [pitsi] and [dzir] when assibilated and [pitʃi] and [dʒir] when affricated. Affrication of dental stops is a well-attested feature of Acadian French in Canada and is a purported feature of Cajun French, while a high rate of assibilation is common in Quebec French. Assibilation, furthermore, is rarely mentioned when discussing Cajun French. I used recorded interviews of 60 individuals from the Cajun French corpus, created by Dubois in 1997, to analyze the presence and variation of these features in four Louisiana parishes. My first goal was to determine where in Louisiana one finds these features. Secondly, I analyzed which linguistic factors affect assibilation and affrication. I found that voicing context plays a role in determining variant production in certain settings, particularly with assibilation. For affrication, I found that syllable position is actually an indicator of lexicalization in Cajun French. Nowhere is this lexicalization more evident than in the categorical affrication of cadien (Cajun). Thirdly, I examined the effects of certain social factors on variant usage. Results showed that gender affects variant use, with women generally preferring the occlusive norm while men demonstrated greater variation. Location was the most significant factor to the production of both assibilation and affrication. St. Landry and Avoyelles had higher rates of both features than Lafourche and Vermilion, for example, where the features were extremely rare. Finally, variant rates increased among younger speakers despite an overall attrition and leveling of Cajun French occurring in these communities due to language shift and language death.

The figure of the zombie is a recurring trope for writers in the French Antilles. Two of the most influential and popular authors in modern French-Antillean literature are Patrick Chamoiseau from Martinique and Simone Schwarz-Bart from Guadeloupe. Both of these authors use the figure of the zombie as representations of colonization and the lingering trauma of slavery in Antillean society. In this thesis, I examine two of the most well-known works by these authors, Chamoiseaus Chronique des Sept Misères (1986) and Schwarz-Barts Ti Jean Lhorizon (1979), and how these texts use the nature of the zombie in an effort to define Antillean identity. I argue that it is through the use of the zombie in these texts that Schwarz-Bart and Chamoiseau are able to create a portrait of Antillean culture which, as well as illustrating the importance of history, also proposes a plan to strengthen Antillean identity and literature in the future.

Reunion Island and its literature both reflect a unique world of métissage unveiling a hybrid culture and population. Through centuries, Reunionese authors have used their writings as a means to portray the reality of their complex métisse society. Uninhabited until the seventeenth century, Reunion became a focal point for many nations and peoples who brought their own cultures and traditions. Such diversity, linked to the economic needs of the colony, led to the creation of a new creole language along with a new culture. In the novel Le Nègre Blanc de Bel Air, the Reunionese author Jean-François Samlong focuses on the problems of a hybrid identity through his depiction of the events of December 20th, 1848, a key date in the islands history as it represents the official end of slavery. Based on Samlongs novel, this thesis addresses the construction of a Reunionese hybrid identity. Using Claire de Duras novel Ourika and Alexandre Dumas work Georges, along with Le Nègre Blanc, the first chapter examines education as a process leading to the development of a confused and antagonist identity. Thus, the individual becomes a composite of knowledge, traditions and cultures. Such a mixing does not allow him (her), to belong to a specific class as (s)he represents a new type of individual: the hybrid. Therefore, the second chapter emphasizes La Reunions hybridity and confused identity. Samlong uses his novels protagonist, Songol, as a symbol of the islands hybridity and métissage in order to highlights the contemporary problems of the Reunionese.

My dissertation De lAutre Coté du Periph: Les Lieux de lIdentité dans le Roman Féminin de Banlieue en France examines the writings of young female authors from the French suburbs, known as the banlieues. Not to be confused with their American counterparts, French suburbs have recently emerged as spatialized emblems of violence, poverty and social unrest. Their perception as sites of massive immigration furthermore fueled fears of national identity loss. The riots of fall 2005 violently brought to the foreground tensions that had been simmering and illustrated the increasing division between the banlieues and the rest of French society. Using an approach that combines the study of space, an examination of media, feminist theory and language analysis, I demonstrate that far from being a menace to postmodern Frances imagined community, banlieues are the laboratory of new multiethnic and transnational beings. In my dissertation, I look at writers from the banlieues whose novels feature female protagonists, born in immigrant families and engaged in a quest to redefine self. In this pursuit, the characters of the texts attempt to negotiate their position between the culture at home and the French culture, often symbolized by the powerful école Républicaine. This search is rendered more arduous for female characters within a space that has been constructed as masculine. I argue that through the evocation of non-hegemonic visions, the novels present the banlieues as dynamic spaces allowing for a new discursive practice of identity and citizenship. Chapter one starts with an analysis of public and media discourses and their role in crafting of the banlieue as a lieu du ban. In Chapter two, I show through a reading of Habiba Mahanys Kiffer sa race and Faïza Guènes Kiffe kiffe demain how the characters conjure these images of a marginalized space. Chapter three explores the generational differences between female protagonists and the impact of the quest for self on mother-daughter relations. A side-by-side analysis of Leila Sebbars Fatima ou les Algériennes au Square, Tassadit Imaches Une Fille sans histoire and Habiba Mahanys Kiffer sa race brings light to the influence of the maternal figure on the daughters representation of self. Finally, the fourth chapter looks at the linguistic manifestations of these métissages. A close examination of the writing and linguistic features of my corpus will reveal the critical position of language as a shelter for polyphonic voices calling on France to reexamine its position vis-à-vis these marginalized citizens.

At a time when francophone women writers are hardly published, the Senegalese author Ken Bugul becomes the talk of the town with her 1982 novel Le baobab fou. At that point, not only is she becoming a francophone literary precursor to other francophone writers, she also imposes a style which explores and contradicts traditional views. Indeed from the beginning of the story in rural Senegal where the mother is traditionally defined and held responsible for educating her children so that the tradition can endure, Ken has to face her mothers disappearance when she is just a child. The lack of a maternal figure pushes Ken to seek comfort in the French colonial system and to choose self-exile in Europe. The first part of the novel La préhistoire de Ken points out the birth of Kens confused identity with the mothers abandonment acting as the principal trigger. My first chapter therefore analyzes the traditional role of the mother and Kens hybrid identity. This leads to the second chapter which discusses Kens exile in Lhistoire de Ken, the second part of the novel. Kens maternal quest ends up being a disillusioning journey where she falls into total decline, exploring many taboos including prostitution and drugs. My second chapter demonstrates that the absent mother is what defines Le baobab fou. Thus, it is interesting to look at a different novel from Ken Bugul Mes hommes à moi to examine once again the mother/daughter relationship. The third chapter compares the similarities and differences of this relationship as portrayed in the two novels but also includes the father figure to whom Bugul gives a bigger part in her latest work.

In their 2007 manifesto, Quand les murs tombent: lidentit&236; nationale hors-la-loi, &200;douard Glissant and Patrick Chamoiseau propose that the nation-state is a stumbling block to global solidarity as it emphasizes cultural division. In order to achieve international community across borders, people must find common bonds that link them across traditional lines of conflict. My thesis applies this notion within the context of la Francophonie, an organization that has struggled with its goal of cultural rapprochement as its member nations continue to perceive each other as foreign entities rather than as like components of a larger community. I assert that la Francophonie is connected by a series of historical and literary experiences that go beyond the organizations stated unities of language and humanistic values, and that these experiences are rooted in conflict. To understand what is common across nations, one need first look at what is uncommon within them. In examining lines of division that disrupt national unities, I uncover international ones, highlighting trans-historical and transnational trends in the types of conflict that revolve around specific contentious subjects, as well as the similarities of conditions, motivations, and actions that mark these battles. My first chapter addresses the issue of language, detailing the ways in which multilingual societies struggle to cope with coexistence. I show that speakers of various languages are confronted with consistent social imbalances, attempts to regulate language usage, and questions of national affiliation. In my second chapter, I analyze religious divides that have plagued numerous civilizations, positing that religions become embroiled in two archetypical relationships: an uneasy relationship with the state marked by interference, and a paradigm in which minority religions are transformed into archrivals. My third chapter brings a different perspective to the notion of national conflict, using literature to highlight tensions between individuals and the urban environments they call home. I establish a common antagonistic relationship with the city as diverse authors struggle against the psychological strains of losing their emotional connections, their freedom, and their moral fiber. I conclude by demonstrating the contemporary relevance of establishing new imaginaires in light of evolving conceptions of global connections.