The political characterization of Algerian literature under the era of colonialism has been widely discussed. Nevertheless, due to its major political dimension more sensed than debated scholars have focused primarily on rigid categorization and interpretive templates, at the exclusion of concepts within the texts deviating from the colonial credo. The objective remains to broaden the scope of the Algerian Interwar novel by proposing a reading cognizant of its literary fundamentals (aesthetic, tone, style, rhetoric) and subsequent interaction with ideological agendas, not necessarily in terms of a historical reinterpretation. The ambiguity inherent in the Algerian novel precludes its classification as solely a thesis novel and demands rigor in its perception as multifaceted in nature. Stemming from this, one questions the concept of a thesis novel, presupposing that intrinsic polyphony will conceive not only one, but multiple theses. Without this presupposition, the Algerian Interwar novel becomes a novel of allegiance with disregard to the subtlety and complexity of the colonial environment from which the novel evolved, leading to deprivation of its essence as a literary piece. Indeed, under the colonial regime, the novels were conscripted into the appareil idéologique dÉtat (Althusser). Despite apparent endorsement of the colonial ideology, the novels themselves generate their own internal mechanisms of subversion, via the creation of an intellectual movement (Algérianisme) which undermines the state-sponsored politico-artistic body. If the novel can be considered at the least as a breaking point of any univocal interpretation (as characters were not created to be the voice of the author), then one must know that a text is not simply a line of words, yielding a sole meaning in a theological sense (the message of the Author/God), but rather exists as a multidimensional space where varied writings join and compete but yet none can be perceived the original source. (Roland Barthes). The intention of this work is to render justice to these texts by a literary analysis of the writings of Robert Randau and Abdelkader Hadj Hamou. In so doing, various facets and modalities will emerge from the colonial novel which will reject the traditional interpretative readings.

Henri Michauxs trip to the Far East in 1930-1931 became a point of departure for his career-long inquiry into the relation between language and image which led him to combine the poetic and the pictorial as a way to relieve tensions within his divided self. For over sixty years, the Belgian-born (1899-1984) poet-painter created text-only, image-only, and over twenty text-and-image works. The merging of language and image in Michauxs text-and-image projects breaks down divisions between these two arts and consequently moves away from G. E. Lessings separation of the arts. This departure from the modernist view of literature and art positions Michaux as a transitional figure: as a practitioner between arts, cultures, and period styles. Just as Michauxs divided self came together to a certain degree from his creative work, so too did his work obtain a unity of the poetic and the pictorial that blended into one kind of expression. Although Michaux combined words and images to explore the self, this activity led to the parallel development of Michaux as a poet-painter and to a merging relation between the verbal and the visual. This dissertation explores Michauxs transformation into a hybrid artist and the works he produced between 1922 and 1984. The initial chapter approaches the biographical features contributing to Michauxs career as a poet-painter and how mixing media was essential to his practice. The following chapter frames the relations of words and images in a theoretical context, focusing on Lessings separation of the sister arts and on W. J. T. Mitchells opposing view, in which he considers language and image not as separate forms of expression but instead as overlapping forms. This framework serves as the methodology for approaching Michauxs corpus and this analysis situates his mixed-media work in relation to writers and artists like Guillaume Apollinaire and René Magritte. The final chapter presents case studies of the verbal-visual overlap in Michauxs text-and-image projects and his poetic inquiry into his own visual art and that of other artists. These constructions illustrate the diversity within Michauxs work while showing the unity within his text-and-image corpus.

My dissertation is an investigation of the two masterpieces of medieval, allegorical literature from the perspective of the Latin moral tradition of their time. Discussing Jean de Meun and Dantes obsessive concern with the sinfulness of speech, I relate the numerous verbal transgressions treated in the Romance of the Rose and the Divine Comedy to what historians of moral philosophy have called the golden age of the sins of the tongue (1190-1260), a time span during which moralists, theologians and canonists wrote a great number of Latin texts on peccata linguae. I argue that the radical inclusion of the sins of speech among the other classes of sins treated in the Romance of the Rose and the Divine Comedy is to be accounted for in light of the major thirteenth-century treatises on peccata linguae. While Jean de Meun, in the wake of Alain of Lille, treats the sins of the tongue in a dispersed manner, without regard to a classification based on the gravity of the sins, Dante follows a scholastic approach and assigns most of the sins of tongue he is dealing with to the infernal area of Fraud, in a hierarchical order. Taking up elements from William Peraldus's Summa vitiorum and Thomas Aquinas's Summa Theologica, both very popular at the time, Dante constructs his own micro-system of peccata linguae, a system within a system. Written shortly after the golden age of the sins of the tongue, the Romance of the Rose and the Divine Comedy extend this cultural period and transfer the preoccupation with sinfulness of human speech from the exclusive sphere of Latin moral tracts to the realm of vernacular poetry.

This study of Stendhal and the Bildungsroman extends theoretical work by John Smith that draws attention to the relationship between the idea of bildung as it is established by its critics and the construction of masculine identity in the male subject. Inflected by gender theory, my investigation does not attempt to contribute to genre studies, but rather to strengthen a theoretical approach to texts dealing with formation and coming-of-age narratives that exposes their rapport with gender socialization and normalization. I implement this approach to perform a reading of three of Stendhals major novels that ultimately intends to identify their dismantling of the Bildungsroman through their problematization of idealized French heteronormative masculinity. In order to accomplish this task, I first examine a classic work of scholarship on the Bildungsroman by Jerome Buckley, and I then move on to an analysis of more recent critical studies of bildung, all of which contribute to the establishment of a general idea of the outline of the genre while acknowledging its contradictions and instabilities. I examine parallels between the oscillating construction of the genre as a coherent type constantly under threat of collapsing into itself, and the tenuous formation of its protagonist as a uomo universale. Finally, I am concerned with questioning the Bildungsroman theorists conflicted yet confirmed incorporation of three of Stendhals novels into the genre, proving that, in fact, Stendhal rejects the idea of bildung. My new readings of these narratives incorporates important advances in gender theory by Judith Butler and Eve Sedgwick to demonstrate how Beyle refuses to construct idealized boy- iv becomes-man masculine fictions, even while creating narratives that are extremely similar in content to what are considered typical Bildungsromans. Stendhal challenges idealized masculinity itself in his representations of the young male protagonists in three of his major novels. I describe these works as non-Bildungsromans that problematize the goals of bildungs supportive critics and their aspirations for the category that they struggle to construct.

This dissertation examines the largely dismissed nineteenth-century tradition of Romantic poetry in Haiti from the 1830s to the 1890s. I synthesize the conclusions of various studies prompted by the 2004 Haitian bicentennial in order to challenge the claims that nineteenth-century Haitian poems are banal parodies of French texts and simple preludes to twentieth-century Haiti literature. I argue that imitation becomes an impossible label with which to understand the complexities of Haitian poetry and national sentiment. Considering Haitis ambiguous relationship to modernity and the clairvoyance with which Haitian poets expressed national concerns, Haitian poetry constitutes a deliberate practice in the construction, legitimization and expression of national identity. In each of the three chapters I rely on historical context in order to situate the poetry and examine it through textual analysis. I explore in an initial chapter how political changes in Haiti in the 1820s, along with recognition of independence from France, coincided with the subsequent birth of Haitian Romanticism in the 1830s. The poetry of Coriolan Ardouin and Ignace Nau documents the development of poetic subjectivity and the inaugurating of national history which make this a pivotal period in Haitian poetry. A second chapter focuses on Haitis most prolific nineteenth-century poet, Oswald Durand, whose collection Rires et Pleurs includes poetry from the 1860s through the 1880s. Haitian theories of racial equality are expressed in Durands corpus and set within the thematic and aesthetic norms of French Romanticism, but the effort to inscribe a national and racial specificity enriches as much as it complicates his poetic project. In the final chapter, I document the shift that occurs for the last Haitian Romantic poet, Massillon Coicou. In his 1892 collection Poésies Nationales, the confident project of asserting national identity gives way to the sense of national failure due to an increasingly triumphant imperialism and internal corruption. On the eve of the Haitian centennial, Coicous verse demonstrates the ways in which political crisis in Haiti are inherently tied to the notion of poetry. He ultimately turns to political activism, and his assassination in 1908 symbolizes the demise of poetry as a viable, national project.

This study focuses on the emergence of two trio relationships during and after the Second World War in France. The first work, a piece of literature written by Simone de Beauvoir in 1943 entitled LInvitée, illustrates the story of a trio relationship between two women and a man that ends in murder. The second work, a film directed by François Truffaut entitled Jules et Jim, gives the account of another fatalistic trio relationship (however, this time between two men and a woman). In both of these works, the trios become the loci of a reflection on the ways in which the chaos and confusion of war enter into the lives of the individual characters. The asymmetry present in the trio relationships perpetuates violence, and the specific kinds of struggles for power coincide in antagonistic ways as the characters strive to re-invent love. The triangular relationships are observed in relation to three main elementsdesire, identity, and power. Chapter one explores how several mechanisms of desire function in relation to crises of identity and the confusion of the individual in French society: this includes an examination of aspects such as marriage, games of seduction and rejection, and platonic conceptions of love and unity that are marked by hostility and destruction. Chapter two examines several ways in which bonding manifests itself in relation to war, male homosexuality, and male homosociality in Truffauts film. Namely, the chapter explores how two sites of powerone, the physical location of a gymnasium, and the other, the conceptual place of warillustrate a kind of violence displayed towards women and homosexuals that is made particularly visible through male bonding and several kinds of patriarchal allegiances. Chapter three focuses on the ways in which the third body itself in the trio comes to represent a kind of spectacle in Beauvoirs LInvitée. Through an analysis of scopophilia and voyeurism, the third body becomes the focal point of the characters own fantasieshowever, these fantasies carry out and engage in destructive forms of masochism and sadomasochism. The emergence of these two works in France symbolizes a kind of resistance against bourgeois values during mid-century France. Yet, although the two triangular relationships attempt to subvert normative social values that constrain the individual within societyconstraints that surround the family unit, love, sexuality, gender roles, homosexuality, and identitythe trios represent instead the symbol of different forms of loss in a war-torn France where political upheaval disturbed the nation and the individual.

This thesis explores the intertwining (and often competing) identities of Jew and Frenchman that play out across the landscape of Shoah (Holocaust) literature in France. The study seeks to tease out aspects of individual identity and to explore the nature of Jewishness in the context of trauma. This is achieved through a reading of survivor narratives written in French and (primarily) for a French audience. Because the narratives studied are all first-hand accounts, the portrait that is analyzed is that which the author chooses to present to his audience (for better and worse). The texts which will inform this study are Charlotte Delbos trilogy Auschwitz et après, David Roussets lUnivers concentrationnaire, Paul Steinbergs Chroniques dailleurs, and Joseph Joffos Un sac de billes. By reading a diverse group of French authors, both Jewish and non-Jewish, this project attempts to study the relationship between ones Jewishness and their environment, both hostile and welcoming, in order to develop a better understanding of an individuals concept of self. The last section will be an exploration of the continued impact of the Shoah on French Jewish identity and post-memory, as explored through Claude Lanzmanns film SHOAH. The readings of all of these texts will be grounded in a consideration of the unique historical factors that contributed to the formation of French Jewish identity (i.e. the French Revolution, the emancipation of French Jewry, the secularization of the state, etc.).

This dissertation provides a framework in which to consider how collective memory, national identity, and literature insist on a political vision of the nation. The works in question are examples of the enduring impact of pivotal events on the French literary tradition. This study takes a diachronic approach to studying literature written during moments of crisis in France. It examines works dealing with the Revolutionary Terror (1793-1794), the Franco-Prussian War (1870-1871), and World War IIs drôle de guerre (1940). The writers chosen for this dissertation all use the rhetoric of literature as a way to think through the crisis and imagine ways to respond to it. In particular, this study explores how fear, power, and indoctrination are used to represent ideals of French national identity and the chaos surrounding earth-shattering events. Theories of historical representation, nationalism, and event fidelity provide the framework to reveal underlying political perspectives in the works studied. The chapters of this dissertation are organized chronologically, beginning with the Terror. Within the first chapter, the focus is on the Marquis de Sades La Philosophie dans le boudoir, particularly its fabricated political pamphlet, Français, encore un effort si vous voulez être républicains. Sades work is juxtaposed with that of a virtually unknown émigré writer, Louis de Brunos Lioncel, ou lÉmigré, nouvelle historique. The next event studied is the Franco-Prussian War, and the resulting Paris Commune. Victor Hugos Quatrevingt-Treize and Jules Vernes Le Chemin de France are both set during the Revolutionary War, but address events taking place in nineteenth-century France. The last chapter deals with the initial period of defeat and occupation in World War II. Both Jean-Paul Sartres Nativity play, Bariona ou le fils du tonnerre and Marc Blochs wartime testimonial LÉtrange défaite encourage Frenchmen to continue the fight against foreign aggressors. The authors in question attempted to give the nation cultural roots, or shared lieux de mémoire, in the aftermath of traumatic events. This study shows how writers use texts to mediate chronological and ideological distance between events and to recreate what no longer exists, in hopes of defining a new way forward for the nation.

Bachelors, Bastards, and Nomadic Masculinity: Illegitimacy in Guy de Maupassant and André Gide Robert M. Fagley, PhD University of Pittsburgh, 2009 This dissertation is a thematic exploration of bachelor figures and male bastards in literary works by Guy de Maupassant and André Gide. The coupling of Maupassant and Gide is appropriate for such an analysis, not only because of their mutual treatment of illegitimacy, but also because each writer represents a chronologically identifiable literary movement, Realism and Modernism, and each writes during contiguous moments of socio-legal changes particularly related to divorce law and womens rights, which consequently have great influence on the legal destiny of illegitimate or natural children. Napoleons Civil Code of 1804 provides the legal(patriarchal) framework for the period of this study of illegitimacy, from about 1870 to 1925. The Civil Code saw numerous changes during this period. The Naquet Law of 1884, which reestablished limited legal divorce, represents the central socio-legal event of the turn of the century in matters of legitimacy, whereas the Franco-Prussian War of 1870 and the First World War furnish chronological bookends for this dissertation. Besides through history, law, and sociology, this dissertation treats illegitimacy through the lens of various branches of gender theory, particularly the study of masculinities and a handful of other important critical theories, most importantly those of Michel Foucault, Eve Sedgwick and of Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari. Bachelors and bastards are two principal players in the representation of illegitimacy in Maupassant and Gide, but this study considers the theme of illegitimacy as extended beyond simple questions of legitimate versus illegitimate children. The male bastard is only one of the counterfeit characters examined in these authors fictional texts. This dissertation is divided into three parts which consider specific thematic elements of their bastard narratives. Part One frames the representation in fiction of bachelor figures and how they contribute to or the role they play in instances of illegitimacy. Part Two springs from and develops the metaphor of the counterfeit coin, whether represented by a bastard son, an affected schoolboy, a false priest, or a pretentious littérateur. Part Three explains the concept of nomadic masculine practices; such practices include nomadic styles of masculinity development as well as the bastards nomadism.

This dissertation illustrates the ways cinema intervenes into questions of history, politics, immigration, and national identity and community through the films of contemporary French filmmaker Yamina Benguigui (1957-). This study traces these interventions from her earliest films in the mid-1990s to her most recent productions in 2008. France, and the way it is represented to and by its people, has been undergoing significant transformations in recent decades as a result of an increasingly multicultural population and external pressures due to globalization and European unification. Benguiguis corpus reflects these tranformations and the evolution of these debates while also contributing to them, thereby consolidating her status as a cinéaste engagée. A range of theoretical texts inform the analyses of Benguiguis films. Colonial theory, as articulated by Frantz Fanon and Albert Memmi, illustrate to what extent the colonial dynamic continues to structure contemporary French society decades after decolonization. Jacques Rancières La mésentente (1995), a rethinking of the concepts of democracy and politics, provides the framework for an examination of Benguiguis cinema as political practice. Benguiguis films intend to open an imaginary space for immigrants and their descendants in French national narratives; Benedict Andersons theory of imagined communities is therefore particularly relevant to her cinematic project. This dissertation is organized thematically, beginning with an analysis of the ways Benguiguis films address colonial history and its consequences in the latter half of the twentieth century. The second chapter is an examination of her preferred genresthe documentary and tragicomedyand how they serve her cinematic and political project. Her films are situated within the documentary tradition as well as within French and Italian comedic conventions. The relationship between politics and cinema is studied in chapter three. Benguiguis most recent films, treating social unrest and inequalities in French society, have assumed an overt political cast, but a political project can be traced throughout her cinematic corpus. Yamina Benguigui advocates for a more inclusive and egalitarian society; this study illustrates the role art can and must play in these struggles.