The thesis examines the religious topography of Arcadia through two particular aspects: the built and the natural landscape, and how each relates to human communities, their places of living, and their understanding of the world around. It relies on the assumption commonly made in the field that, since ritual practice was of prevalent importance for the Greeks, cult sites are the most important places for the communities, and therefore they can tell us a lot about the people who built, visited and looked after them. The first part rests on the acknowledgement that sanctuaries are places of interaction for a certain community of cult (which can but need not overlap with a given polis) and explores how they can be indicators of social change, defined here as responses to changes with large impact on the human milieu. These changes and their response articulated in sacred space are identified in four chapters. The first sets the stage and surveys the known sacred sites of Arcadia at the end of the Bronze Age and during the Early Iron Age. The second looks at how the building of temples after the eighth century indicates a significant change in the way communities were structured in Arcadia. The third looks at how Arcadian sanctuaries responded to the increased religious mobility of the Classical and Hellenistic period. Finally, chapter four evaluates the impact of the Roman conquest on Arcadian religious sites. The second part explores how myths and rationalising discourses allowed the Greeks to make sense of the salient characteristics and numen of their surrounding natural landscape. Each of the three chapters departs from a situation observed in Arcadia by ancient sources and examines the responses articulated to explain it. Among the variety of topics to pursue, three have been selected because they exemplify a typical characteristic of Arcadia: its wetness. They also allow spatial areas that were less prominent in part one to be explored. The first chapter investigates the attribution of Mycenaean waterworks in Arcadia to Herakles in myth. The second chapter examines the connection made in ancient sources between Poseidon's lordship over the Peloponnese, earthquakes, floods and cults of Poseidon Hippios in Arcadia. Finally, the last chapter explores the apparent contradiction of having infernal rivers observable in the world of the living, such as the Styx flowing in the Aroania Mountains.

The purpose of this thesis is to defend Athenian democracy against a long-established suspicion that the Athenian government, with its radical form of popular participation, was not only incompetent but also dangerous. There are two serious misunderstandings in this traditional view; one is the myth of the decline of Athens after the death of Pericles, the other being the outright denial of Athenian democracy by its philosophers, Xenophon and Plato. These two common presumptions about Athenian history and philosophy are therefore examined. The historical examination focuses on three important events: the law reform, the reconciliation and the trial of Socrates. All of them were conducted by Athenian democracy at the end of the fifth century B.C., a period of time that is often cited for the failure of democracy. However, it is found that the democracy demonstrated its excellent ability to manage political conflicts through the laws and the reconciliation. As to the infamous trial of Socrates, there were reasons for the popular suspicion of the Philosopher’s way of life. Following what we have learnt in the historical survey, we search for responses to the three events in the works of Xenophon and Plato. There are passages, though often dismissed by scholars, which indicate remarkable recognition of the democratic achievements in domestic politics. As regards the trial of Socrates, there are also signs of second thoughts in their works that reveal understandings of the democracy’s condemnation of philosophy. The works of Socrates’ pupils show mixed evaluation rather than outright denial of Athenian democracy. The traditional suspicion of Athenian democracy is therefore problematic due to its misconception of Athenian history and philosophy.

Contrairement à ses homologues occidentaux (le detective novel britannique, le roman de détection français, le roman noir anglo-américain, le giallo italien), le récit policier grec est une terra incognita pour la recherche universitaire.Cette thèse ambitionne de combler cette lacune en s’intéressant à un genre qui, plus que tout autre, a eu mauvais genre en Grèce. Les deux questions qui constituent le fil d’Ariane de notre réflexion tournent autour de l’hellénité du genre (existe-t-il un roman policier grec doté de caractéristiques intrinsèques ?) et de son évolution en diachronie (y a-t-il continuum ou rupture entre l’ancienne et la nouvelle production policière hellénique ?). Notre thèse est construite en trois temps. Notre première partie s’intéresse aux raisons de la naissance tardive du genre en Grèce et à son histoire sur six décennies, de 1953 à 2013. Notre deuxième partie se penche sur la poétique du nouveau roman policier grec (1995-2013) en prenant pour point de comparaison l’ancienne production policière hellénique (1953-1967), celle de Maris et de ses épigones : Chairopoulos, Kakouri, Marakis, Markakis, Papagéorgiou. Au cours de cette deuxième partie, il est surtout question de l’identité générique du nouveau « polar grec » (roman de détection, roman noir, thriller, « polar méditerranéen » ?), des personnages qu’il met en scène et de la thématique de la ville. Enfin, notre troisième partie ambitionne de montrer que le nouveau roman policier hellénique mène une investigation sur l’histoire, la société et l’identité grecques. Plus qu’à l’anatomie d’un crime, le lecteur assiste en effet, dans la nouvelle production policière hellénique, à l’anatomie d’un pays. / In opposition to Western crime fiction (British and French detective novels, American hard-boiled crime fictions, Italian giallo), Greek crime fiction is totally unknown in the field of academic research (both in Greece and France).This thesis aims to fill this gap by focusing on a literary genre which, more often than not, has been badly seen by the Greek literary establishment. The two questions which drew our attention revolved around the Hellenic dimension of the genre (is there something as such as Greek crime fiction?) and around the evolution of Greek crime fiction over time (is there a continuity or a major shift between former and recent Greek crime fiction?).Our thesis is divided into three parts. The first part focuses on the belated emergence of the genre in Greece and on the history of Greek crime fiction from 1953 to 2013. The second part analyses the poetics of recent crime fiction production in Greece (1995-2013), in comparison to the novels or short stories of Greek writers of the fifties and sixties (authors such as Yannis Maris, Christos Chairopoulos, Athina Kakouri, Andronikos Markakis, Takis Papageorgiou). In our second part, we also try to identify the genre in which Greek crime fiction expresses itself (detective story? Hard-boiled story? Thriller? Mediterranean Noir?). Finally, we analyse the main characters who appear in the plot and the theme of the city. The third part aims at showing that contemporary authors of Greek crime fiction lead an investigation on the history of Greece (and its society) and on Hellenic identity. In a nutshell, recent Greek crime fiction is more focused on the anatomy of a country than on the anatomy of a crime.

This thesis draws on Freud to understand the innate human need to create boundaries and argues that ambivalence is an inescapable dilemma in their creation. It argues that a re-reading of Freud’s major thesis in Totem and Taboo via an engagement with the Dionysos myth and cult scholarship allows for a new understanding of dominant forms of hegemonic psychic and social formations that attempt to keep in place a false opposition of polis and phusis, self and Other, resulting in the perpetuation of oppressive structures and processes. The primary methodological claim of the thesis is that prior psychoanalytic engagements with cultus scholarship have suffered from being either insufficiently thorough or diffused in attempts to be comparative. A more holistic and detailed approach allows us to ground a psychoanalytic interpretation in the realities of said culture, allowing us to critique Freud’s misreading of Dionysos regarding the Primal Father and the psychic transmission of the Primal Crime. This thesis posits that Dionysos needs to acknowledged as a projection of the Primal Father fantasy linked to a basic ambivalence about the necessity of boundaries in psychosocial life. Using research from the classics and psychoanalysis alongside Queer and post-colonial theory, as well as extensive fieldwork and primary source analysis, this thesis provides a grounded materialist critique of psychoanalysis’ complicity in reproducing a false dichotomy between polis and phusis, a dichotomy that furthers the projection onto marginalised groups whose othering is linked to a fear and desire of a return to phusis and denial of its constant presence in the psyche and polis. This re-reading of Dionysos challenges the defensive structures, which are organised around ideas of subjectification that posit that phusis must be severed from polis/ego and projected onto Dionysos and all groups that threaten the precariousness of these boundaries.