Proefschrift--Letteren--Leiden, 1980. / Bibliogr. p. 221-230.

Thesis (M.A.)--University of Hong Kong, 2000. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 62-68).

Thesis (M.A.)--University of Hong Kong, 2000. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 62-68). Also available in print.

The characters of Genet's drama live in a world which is inadequate to certain basic emotional needs. The shortcomings of this world can be compensated for only in imagination, and so Genet's characters fantasize modes of living and social roles and gestures denied to them in real life. The identities and attitudes they create in fantasy are therefore the opposites of the same factors in life. Thus all the polarities in Genet's drama stem from the basic dichotomy between reality and illusion. The average man tries to keep reality and illusion distinct, but Genet deliberately confounds the two so that the identities he creates are continuously in a state of flux. When these identities become indefinable, contraries coincide. Genet's significant contribution to modern drama is accomplished in his deft exploitation of the interchange-ability of reality and illusion by which he gives theatrical expression to his view of the unity of opposites. This thesis is a study of four of the most closely related sets of polarities in Genet's drama: the central duality of reality and illusion and the three related dualities of life and death, love and hate and anarchy and order. It is demonstrated that while Genet recognizes these conflicting absolutes as unalterable facts of existence, he also shows them as providing the equilibrium necessary in turbulent human relations. The three major plays of Genet - The Balcony, The Blacks, and The Screens -are analysed from both a dramatic and a theatrical perspective. Although the examination of these plays in chronological order does not reveal any remarkable change in Genet's outlook as a dramatist, we do see a marked progress in his crafsmanship from The Balcony to The Screens. In the course of these three plays he develops and refines the dr&matic and theatrical expression of his fundamental concern with the dialectic of dualities, moving closer to this ultimate resolution of these dualities into a philosophy of nothingness. / Arts, Faculty of / Theatre and Film, Department of / Graduate

Ce travail de recherche étudie la déstabilisation de la hiérarchie entre l’abject et le sublime dans les oeuvres [textes de théâtre, récits et essais] de Georges Bataille, Jean Genet et Samuel Beckett. L’étude part de la constatation effectuée par Jean-François Lyotard selon laquelle la question du sublime se pose à chaque fois qu’une crise de la représentation a lieu [âges de la poétique et de l’esthétique, âge actuel] afin de confronter l’art à ce qui l’excède, lui permettant ainsi de se renouveler. Elle montre que la notion de sublime tend également, lors de chacune de ses réapparitions, à se rapprocher davantage de la notion d’abject, sensée lui être diamétralement opposée. C’est ce qui apparaît dans les oeuvres de Bataille, Genet et Beckett où la doxa qui organise le monde et les valeurs à partir de paradigmes purement antithétiques est déconstruite. Cette redéfinition du rapport entre les notions est analysée aux niveaux stylistique, poétique, esthétique, empirique, psychanalytique, moral et éthique. Un chapitre est dédié à l’étude du phénomène dans l’oeuvre de chaque auteur. Bataille remet en question la hiérarchie entre les notions en définissant un nouvel humanisme « noir » – ou « hyperhumanisme » – grâce à un terrorisme notionnel et littéraire pensant la communication comme un sacrifice. Genet se fait le chantre de l’abject en empruntant les moyens du sublime et en retournant chaque notion en son contraire, au point de ne plus pouvoir les distinguer. Beckett met en place une poétique de la Vanité, déclinée sur les modes classique et postmoderne, permettant de rendre compte de l’inhérente proximité et complémentarité des notions grandissant à travers les siècles. À défaut de proposer une solution au problème posé par Lyotard, ce travail montre la nécessité de prendre en considération le lien unissant le sublime à l’abject lors de toute tentative de renouvellement artistique. / This thesis examines the destabilization of the hierarchical relationship between the abject and the sublime in the works [i.e. plays, prose narratives and essays] of Georges Bataille, Jean Genet and Samuel Beckett. Its starting point is Jean-François Lyotard’s observation that the question of the sublime is raised each time there is a crisis within representation [in the age of poetics, of aesthetics, or in the present day] in order to set up a confrontation between art and that which exceeds art, permitting art to renew itself. Subsequently, it is argued that whenever the notion of the sublime appears it moves in proximity to – and sometimes merges with – its opposite : the abject. This is the case in the works of Bataille, Genet and Beckett, in which a doxa that understands the world and organizes values in terms of purely antithetical paradigms is deconstructed. This redefinition of the relationship between the sublime and the abject is analysed on a poetic, stylistic, aesthetic, empirical, psychoanalytic, moral and ethical level in the work of each author. Bataille can be said to interrogate the hierarchical separation of the two notions in defining a new « black » humanism – or « hyperhumanism » – through the use of a notional and literary terrorism which conceives of communication as sacrifice. Genet makes himself the eulogist of the abject in using sublime means and by changing each notion into its opposite, to the point that it is impossible to distinguish between the two. Beckett introduces a poetics of the Vanitas, understood in both its classical and its postmodern aspects, revealing the developing proximity and complementarity of the two notions. Rather than provide definite answers to the questions Lyotard poses, this thesis demonstrates the need to consider the links and affinities between the sublime and the abject in all attempts at artistic renewal.

No description available.

No description available.

Thesis (doctoral)--Université Paris 7-Denis Diderot, U.F.R. Sciences des textes et documents, 1997-1998. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 401-420).

Thesis (M. A.)--University of Hong Kong, 2005. / Title proper from title frame. Also available in printed format.

Th. 3e cycle--Lett.--Paris 3, 1983.