Thesis--University of Pennsylvania. / Description based on print version record. Bibliography: p. 73-75.

Thesis--Greifswald. / Cover title. Vita. Includes "Textprobe" of manuscript 2757 from the Riccardiana Library in Florence. Includes bibliographical references.

No description available.

No description available.

Th. doct.--Theol.--Rome--Pontificia universitatis Lateranensis, 1989.

Dissertação. / Bibliogr. p. 235-258.

No description available.

No description available.

Yves Girard est un moine cistercien québécois né le 12 mai 1927. Entré à l'abbaye d'Oka à l'âge de 24 ans, il vit maintenant avec sa communauté monastique installée à l'abbaye de Saint-Jean-de-Matha. Il a animé plusieurs sessions d'intériorité qui ont inspiré ses 17 volumes en spiritualité chrétienne. Son langage est à la fois philosophique, biblique et poétique. Son approche anthropologique de la spiritualité et sa lecture de l'Évangile se rejoignent. Il est avant tout un accompagnateur spirituel qui a été, entre autres, aumônier des cisterciennes pendant 18 ans. Nombre de laïques se sont aussi confiés à lui. Les propos spirituels de Girard peuvent surprendre. Pour lui, le péché est d'abord une faute contre soi parce que le péché entrave les « exigences de l'être¹ » qui tend à son accomplissement. Selon lui, le pécheur est fautif parce qu'il n'arrive pas à s'aimer suffisamment pour « abandonner son péché à la surabondance de la miséricorde² ». Autre propos pouvant étonner : les œuvres (méritoires) sont à proscrire, car elles peuvent donner l'impression que nous pouvons faire notre salut nous-mêmes. Girard accorde beaucoup d'importance à la souffrance, considérant que c'est un passage inévitable sur le chemin du salut. Il semble trouver dans la parabole de l'enfant prodigue l'essentiel de son enseignement, soulignant que le Prodigue a trouvé le salut après avoir connu une extrême pauvreté, et avoir accepté la miséricorde qui lui était offerte. Selon lui, la souffrance est difficilement contournable avant de connaître le salut. La relation à soi permet de prendre conscience du désir souffrant qui tenaille l'être, souvent inconsciemment. Chez Girard, le désir d'absolu et l'appel de Dieu ne font qu'un. Malheureusement, ce désir connaît des égarements, que ce soit dans les œuvres jugées méritoires ou dans les plaisirs relatifs qui ne permettent pas d'accéder à un bien supérieur. Une conversion est nécessaire, sous la mouvance de l'Esprit, pour prendre conscience de l'impuissance de l'humain à connaître le salut par lui-même et accueillir la miséricorde de Dieu. C'est uniquement la rencontre du désir d'alliance de Dieu et du désir d'absolu de l'humain qui peut nourrir la relation aux autres et à l'environnement. La première partie de la thèse, une introduction à l'étude des œuvres de Girard, justifie, entre autres, la perspective relationnelle choisie pour analyser ses propos spirituels. La deuxième partie souligne la relationnalité dans les écrits de Girard, particulièrement dans son interprétation de la parabole du Prodigue et du cheminement spirituel. La troisième partie est consacrée aux composantes du salut - le désir d'absolu, le péché (œuvres méritoires et plaisirs relatifs) et la conversion - que je dégage de ses propos, des composantes qui peuvent être vues comme une structure du salut. La quatrième partie, une mise en perspective de la proposition spirituelle de Girard, présente d'abord une synthèse des résultats de la recherche : l'essentiel de sa proposition, une schématisation de cette proposition, les enjeux théologiques qu'elle soulève et la façon dont elle peut être reçue. Ensuite, la proposition de Girard est comparée avec la Déclaration luthéro-catholique sur la justification, la théologie spirituelle de Charles-André Bernard et les « trois voies » de la vie spirituelle.(¹Yves Girard, Lève-toi, resplendis !, Sainte-Foy, Éditions Anne Sigier, 1983, p. 46. ²Yves Girard, Les injustices de l'amour, Québec, Éditions Anne Sigier, 1996, p. 58.) / Yves Girard, a Quebecer born on May 12th 1927, entered Oka abbey when he was 24 years old. He is now living with his monastic community at Saint-Jean-de-Matha. He wrote 17 books concerning Christian spirituality. His language is both philosophical, biblical, and poetic. His anthropological approach and his interpretation of Gospel respond to one another. He can be considered as a spiritual guide. He acted as chaplain for 18 years at the abbey of the Cistercian nuns. He met number of lay people in a mystagogic counselling relationship. Girard's comments may sometimes surprise and are often provocative. According to him, sin is a fault against the requirements of the self because sin hinders the « exigences de l'être ». According to him, the sinner is faulty because he does not manage to love himself enough to open his soul to God's mercy. Another surprising assertion : meritorious good works should be avoided because they imply that we can do our salvation by our own means. Girard sees the great turning point of a spiritual progression in the passage from « agir » to « subir », for which many are not prepared. Girard pays particular attention to suffering, considering it is necessary in a spiritual progression. He finds in the parable of the prodigal son the essential of his teaching, emphasizing the fact that Prodigal found salvation having been reduced to extreme poverty, and after accepting God's offered mercy. He explains that we must be conscious of the suffering desire inside us, often unconsciously, a suffering judged inevitable, even necessary in some ways on the salvation way on the path to salvation. According to Girard, the desire of an absolute and the call to being coming from God tend to meet. Unfortunately, the human desire makes mistakes, sometimes in meritorious works, sometimes in pleasures which deprive of the best. So, conversion must be done, with the help of Holy Spirit, to recognize and confess the human inability to get salvation on its own. Relation to God feeds the relationship to others and to world. The first part of the thesis is an introduction to the study of Girard's work, explaining why a relational angle has been taken to analyse his writings. The second part presents the relationality in his spiritual proposal, especially in his interpretation of the parable of the prodigal son and of spiritual progress. The third part concerns what I see as the main components of salvation in the Girard comments which form a structure : desire for an absolute, sin (meritorious works and limited pleasures) and conversion. The fourth part - Girard's spiritual proposal put in perspective - presents the results of the research : the core of his proposal, a schematization of his proposal, the theological issues involved and the reception of this proposal. It is then briefly compared with the Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification, Charles-André Bernard's spiritual theology and the threefold way spirituality.

This thesis attempts to answer the following questions: What is the relationship between the American social system and its depiction in American fiction, principally in Moby-Dick and Absalom, Absalom!? and How can one disentangle the workings of race, gender, and sexuality in the American social system, when such a knot depends upon queer desire for its strength and energy to an exaggerated degree? Ultimately, I argue that one way to pull these threads apart is to implement a queer deconstructive approach informed by narrative theories of desire, but to begin to answer this question, I contend that the Romantic version of Satan is inherently queer and that as Byronic heroes, Ahab and Sutpen’s queerness deconstructs the binaries that would ensure the “success” of their designs by magnifying and critiquing the ways in which race, gender, sexuality, and socioeconomic class are predicated on socially constructed and interlocking binaries to assure the supremacy of (those who at least appear to be) powerful white, wealthy, heterosexual, cisgender men like Ahab and Sutpen. In my analysis of the queer impulses of Ahab and Sutpen, I draw on Jaime Harker’s model of the Southern social system as predicated on an “unholy trinity” formed by the “whore,” “nigger,” and “queer” to advance a new approach to interpreting triangular relationships of power and desire in the in the American novel (Harker 112). In my analysis of Sutpen, I layer romantic triangles inspired by the work of René Girard in Deceit, Desire and the Novel (1961) over the triangle of the “whore,” “nigger,” and “queer” to explore the ways in which mediated desire between “whores,” “niggers,” and “queers” disrupts cultural hegemony. Queer erotic dynamics involving Ahab are more often bivalent than triangular, but both Moby-Dick and Absalom, Absalom! feature queer erotic desire across racial boundaries, that reveal deep racial fantasies. I maintain that both novels are palimpsests of queer desire and that as Byronic heroes Ahab and Sutpen, though not the characters most frequently discussed in queer readings of Moby-Dick and Absalom, Absalom!, produce, benefit from and blend back into the queer milieu of each text. I end by arguing that Sutpen’s Hundred metonymically stands in for the American South and that the Pequod represents The American Project in its entirety. It is my view that these novels model a hermeneutic (part: whole) relationship that makes them especially apt choices for probing this uniquely American matrix of social power and for highlighting the transformative potential of partially unearthed counter-narratives.