Among the various studies written on the voluminous artistic production relating to the clownish figure in the XIXth century, more specifically on its melancholic form in the second half of the century, very few have carried interest to the novel. The objective of this master's thesis is to study the clown as a novel character, through Gavroche (Victor Hugo, Les Miserables ), Kenwell and Cox (Jules Claretie, Le Train 17) and the brothers Zemganno (Edmond de Goncourt, Les Freres Zemganno ). We will focus on the way those hyperbolic figures spread out their marginality, their laughter and their illusions within the novel, thus providing information on this one. Our analysis of the clown's passage through the novel, which always deploys in three phases (the marginal entrance, the ascension and the fall), demonstrates the incompatibility between the realistic material from the XIXth century and this nevertheless infinitely novelistic being.

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Mémoire numérisé par la Direction des bibliothèques de l'Université de Montréal.

This project explores how literary authors used religious discourses in the sociointellectual climates of late nineteenth-century Catholic cultures. It takes its premise from a tacit paradox of Western European modernization: unlike other Western European nations, nations such as France and Spain modernized without adopting Protestantism or doctrines of anti-Catholicism or anticlericalism--and, thus, without a strict break into national secular discourses. Addressing how various religious discourses were used in modernizing France and Spain (respectively, from 1848 and from 1868 to the early twentieth century), I take a cultural-historical approach to representative religiously themed novels and short fiction of the periods. I contend that non-institutionalized traditional Catholic culture (a culture's “religious imaginary” or “Catholic imaginary”) offered authors a plural and, thus, strategic source for making cultural critiques. These critiques would have resonated widely with contemporaneous readerships, and often without overt confrontations (as anticlericalism has historically done). I point to the presence of such critiques specifically in canonical authors’ religious works--works often considered to be aberrational or “too Catholic” to be valued as modern vis-à-vis the landmarks of Western literature. Taking as my key example a novel by the “father of the modern Spanish novel,” Benito Pérez Galdós’s Misericordia or Compassion (1897), I unfold progressive readings of this text based on discourses borrowing historical, thematic, and stylistic elements from the archives of a Catholic imaginary. Thereafter, I broaden my argument by considering how comparable, but distinct, discourses inform social-critical readings of Victor Hugo’s Les Misérables or The Underclass (1862), Gustave Flaubert’s “Un Coeur simple” or “A Simple Heart” (1877), and Emilia Pardo Bazán’s “Un destripador de antaño” or “The Heart Lover” (1900). Overall, the project challenges a critical status quo that has chosen to identify canonical literature in reference to a secular aesthetic program, without allowing for the possibility that cultural-religious discourses might also carry weight for cultures that were modernizing. Additionally, it re-characterizes the modernizing intellectual, seen typically as spiritually cynical or atheist, as one acknowledging the populist force of the religious imaginary freed from church limits. / text

Made available in DSpace on 2015-04-14T13:37:52Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 418243.pdf: 1534461 bytes, checksum: 963bca97503dd29aee82c441ea002b4d (MD5) Previous issue date: 2009-09-30 / Esta disserta??o apresenta um estudo descritivo e cr?tico do drama hist?rico Lucr?cia Borgia, de Victor Hugo, ? luz de teorias desenvolvidas por Anne Ubersfeld, Patrice Pavis, Constantin Stanislavski, Grotowski, Pierre Albouy, Jurij Alschitz. Escrita sob a perspectiva do ator, a disserta??o objetiva evidenciar que, a partir da leitura do texto dram?tico, com o conhecimento dos signos c?nicos, os temas presentes na obra emergem, produzindo novos sentidos. Eles constituem as potencialidades contidas no texto. A obra de Victor Hugo ? compreendida pelo escritor como um todo indivis?vel. Por isso, a pesquisa abrange a hist?ria de vida e a obra de Hugo, fatores fundamentais para se realizar o cotejo com Lucr?cia Borgia e para efetivar a tradu??o do drama hist?rico, escrito originalmente em l?ngua francesa.

Ce mémoire étudie les œuvres poétiques des Hydropathes, cercle de poètes de la bohème parisienne de la fin du dix-neuvième siècle. Historiquement placés entre Parnasse et Décadence, les Hydropathes constituent un moment charnière de l'évolution de la poésie vers sa modernité, mais leurs œuvres demeurent à l'ombre des légendes de la vie de bohème auxquelles ce cercle est associé. En abordant d'abord l'étude détaillée d'un poème exemplaire de la pratique parodique du cercle, cette étude exhume divers éléments capables de contribuer à l'appréciation des singularités créatrices de ces poètes par-delà le rire auquel on réduit généralement leur production. Trois éléments majeurs deviennent constitutifs des chapitres subséquents de ce mémoire : l'influence ambivalente de Victor Hugo et des principes du romantisme, modèle convoité autant que dépassé; la modélisation des œuvres sur celle de Charles Baudelaire, influence admise du mouvement décadent qui émerge sans toutefois faire l'unanimité; et la prégnance d'une mémoire politique de la bohème comme dilemme motivant le rictus des Hydropathes à l'égard de ces avenues et de leurs apories quant à la portée politique du poème. ______________________________________________________________________________ MOTS-CLÉS DE L’AUTEUR : Fumisme, bohème, décadence, parodie, ironie, rires poétiques, Victor Hugo, Charles Baudelaire, Émile Goudeau, hydropathes, Chat Noir.

Thesis (doctoral)--Université de Paris III, 1999. / Originally presented as the author's thesis (doctoral)--Université Paris III, Sorbonne Nouvelle. Includes errata. "Diffusion ANRT." Includes bibliographical references (p. [550]-573).

From 1831 to 1836, Victor Hugo and Louise Bertin collaborated on an opera titled La Esmeralda. For Hugo, it would be the only opera libretto he would ever write, a mere footnote to his collection of widely admired novels, plays, and poetry; for Bertin, however, it would become her most important work, yet seemingly destined to fade into obscurity like so many great pieces of art. Using Schenkerian analysis, this thesis uncovers the tonal and voice-leading structure of the first act of La Esmeralda. A study of this nature, which operates from the premise that forms as large and complex as opera can be examined in terms of a large-scale structure, is valuable because it sheds new light on the correlation of tonal structure and dramatic organization. Through these methods, Act I of La Esmeralda is read as a background progression from D major (with F# kopfton) to F major, composing-out an F#/F♮ dichotomy introduced in the overture. With reference to several musical-symbolic ideas - including the representation of virtue through the pitch F#, the key of Notre-dame's bells - it is shown how the musical structure of Act I expresses the Hugolian themes of fate and decay.