Dans ce travail, l‟objet de notre étude a été la série de romans néo-policiers de l'écrivain Leonardo Padura - le plus grand représentant de ce type de textes à Cuba - dont les oeuvres, tout en conservant les traits qui permettent au lecteur de les reconnaître comme des romans policiers, révèlent une profonde transgression générique à tous les niveaux - modal, thématique et formel. Avec ces textes, Padura est parvenu à démanteler le canon du roman policier révolutionnaire, dont la pratique s‟est perpétuée à Cuba jusqu‟au milieu des années quatre-vingt, subventionnée par le régime révolutionnaire. Nous avons tenté de démontrer que la transformation générique entreprise par cet écrivain sur les modèles traditionnels du roman policier lui permet d'actualiser le genre et de l'utiliser comme instrument pour questionner l'ordre établi d‟un régime qui a prétendu uniformiser une société conçue comme multiple et hétérogène par l'auteur. En même temps, cette transformation lui permet d‟entrer dans la discussion sur la question générique, de revendiquer la nature systématiquement modificatrice des genres littéraires et de polémiquer sur le dogmatisme normatif qui se propose de classifier les genres en compartiments étanches et d‟enfermer le roman policier dans le cadre isolé de la « sous-littérature ». / The aim of our research is to study a series of neo-crime novels by the writer Leonardo Padura - the leading exponent of this genre on the island of Cuba-, whose works, while upholding the traits that enable them to be read as detective stories, feature a profound generic transgression at all levels - modal, thematic and formal. He sought to breathe new life into the genre Ŕwhich had been thoroughly exhausted on the island since the mid 1980sŔ and show that by relieving it of its entire political-ideological burden and treating it from a literary perspective, it could attain high artistic merit. In this way, and as we have set out to show, Padura has managed to revitalize the genre and use it as an instrument for questioning the order established by a regime that has sought to bring uniformity to a society that the author considers to be multiracial and heterogeneous. Furthermore, by transforming the formulas and the narrative structures of the crime novel in his own writings, which include and invert the genre‟s traditional models, Padura has managed to challenge the regulatory dogmatism that seeks to classify genres into watertight compartments and relegate the crime novel to the confines of “sub-literature”.

Thesis (Ph.D. (English studies)) -- University of Limpopo, 2011 / This thesis explores the theme of identity in Es’kia Mpha-hele’s fictional and autobiographical novels, with special attention given to the quest for the lost identity of Afri-can cultural and philosophical integrity. In other words, the revival of the core African experience and the efforts to preserve and promote things African. Mphahlele wrote most of his novels during the time when Africa was under colonial influence. His native land was under the abhorred apartheid system which sought to relegate the African expe-rience to the background. In this sense, he was the voice of the people, reminding them of their past and giving them direction for the future. Chapter One of the thesis outlines the background to the study, defines concepts and gives a survey of African lit-erary identity. It also probes salient aspects which have influenced Mphahlele’s perspective on African identity dur-ing his early years as a writer and socio-cultural activ-ist. Approaches and methodology employed to examine Mphahlele’s writings are also outlined. Chapter Two synthesises the theoretical underpinnings of the study. The thesis adopts Afrocentricity as the basis of analysis, looking at aspects such as the African worldview, humanism (ubuntu) and collectivism. Views by different Af-rican literary critics on what African literature should entail in its distinctive definition are also discussed. Two main literary traditions, orality and the contemporary tradition, which give African literature its unique charac-ter as well as its phases are identified and brought to the fore.Identity in African literature is discussed in detail in Chapters three and four where Mphahlele’s literary works are closely examined. Chapter Five concludes the study and recommends that in order for Africa to forge ahead in her attempt to reclaim and promote her cultural identity, a new perspective must be cultivated and Mphahlele proposes hy-bridity, which is a harmonious co-existence of two or more cultural beliefs without one oppressing the other. / The University of Limpopo

The problem with which this thesis is concerned is the relationship between literature and politics. By means of a biographical and historical study two significant writers of the 1930s/40s I examine the ways in which the pressures of Depression, the threat of fascism and the onset of war influenced Australian writing. In particular, I ask whether the political issues of the period affected what these authors wrote and how they wrote it. My conclusion is that pressure of political concern caused significant personal, philosophical and political changes in Barnard and Davison, and that it affected both the genre in which they wrote and the content of their fiction. They turned from fiction to cultural commentary, historical writing, political pamphleteering and activism. They utilised short fiction as a means of discussing their worries about the state of the world and in order to promote values they felt threatened. When they returned to longer fiction their work bore, to differing degrees, in its ideas, arguments and imagery, the influence of their political engagement. More generally, I conclude that liberal humanism was the major animating philosophy of writers in the 1930s and that their concern with political issues grew from their conviction that western liberal democracy was the most fruitful soil for the production of art, a climate of freedom which they felt threatened by both fascism and war. This anxiety is the most important factor in both their politicisation and the work they did under the latter???s influence.

This project considers ways mid-Victorian fictional autobiographies created new models for women's spiritual formation, testing Nancy Armstrong's theory that novels are antecedent to the cultural conditions they describe. I pair three mid-Victorian fictional texts Jane Eyre, Aurora Leigh, and The Mill on the Floss with three later non-fictional autobiographies written by women near the end of the Victorian Era: Annie Besant (1847- 1933), Mary Anne Hearn (1834-1909) and Frances Power Cobbe (1822-1904). These women came to spiritual maturity during the same time period in which the fictional heroines Jane Eyre, Aurora Leigh and Maggie Tulliver became prominent in the popular imagination and informed the cultural dialogue about women's roles and spirituality. With the advantage of hindsight, Besant, Hearn and Cobbe are able to offer perspective on cultural and religious trends that these novelists predicted, and they are also able to show how the models presented in novels did or did not correspond with the realities of women's spiritual lives in Victorian England. To draw attention to ways that both the fictional and non-fictional autobiographies use the genre to convert readers to new beliefs about how and what women believe, I focus on the persuasive elements of the conversion narrative and read these texts through the lens of classical rhetorical appeals. By identifying the conversion experience as the common denominator in these diverse texts, I bring these examples of fictional and non-fictional autobiographies onto a level playing and demonstrate both the flexibility of the conversion narrative and the artistry of the non-fictional autobiographers in revising it. I find that the fictional autobiographers employ models of private introspection and substitute scenes of domestic reconciliation for traditional reconciliation with God; however, the three real-life autobiographers must reconcile their personal spiritual transformations with their public personae. Hence they replace the novels' domestic allegories of reconciliation with accounts appropriate to their own new spiritual identities, ranging from Evangelical Christian, to Theist, to Theosophist.

This thesis is a queer analysis of two graphic novels by writer Alan Moore: The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen series (art by Kevin O’Neill, 1999-Present) and Lost Girls (art by Melinda Gebbie, 1992-3). These two works re-contextualize familiar characters such as Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Mina Murray, and Alice to uncover both the liberating desires and the sexist, homophobic, and imperialistic anxieties underlining historically popular fiction. Focusing on three characters utilized in Moore’s work, this thesis argues that the ideological associations with those chosen characters and the reconstructions of queerness in their narratives offer contemporary subjects resistance to limiting cultural tendencies and create an alternative space that call attention to phobic societal constructs. Both Lost Girls and the League series redefine discursively constituted identities and offer the potential to re-write normative codes of sex and sexuality.

Victorian scholars of fiction have hitherto largely overlooked that fiction was an important site for Victorian authors and readers to engage in open discussion of religious issues in the Victorian period, often known, even to itself, as the "Age of 'Faith and Doubt.'" Along with sermons and religious tracts, which often directly addressed popular audiences, fiction became one of the most popular arenas for debating theology and religious practices. My project aims to revive interest in the religious novel genre by defining the genre, positioning it within its cultural context, and looking at how it engages in active and reciprocal conversations with other genres, fictional and nonfictional. This new approach reveals how the religious novel, long derided or ignored by critics, often leads the way with narrative innovations. Most interestingly, the religious novel, whose alternative name is tellingly the "theological romance," embraces and adopts one of the most popular plot lines of the Victorian novel tradition, namely the marriage/courtship plot, and develops it into the post-marriage plot, a plot that focuses on and examines marital life. The marriage plot serves, for many of these novels, in place of detailed theological arguments as a way of producing and embodying conversion. The religious novel actually anticipates changes in the nineteenth- century novel by expanding the plot beyond courtship and marriage.

Last spring I did a study where I studied how young girls where being depicted in Swedish novels of 2010. My ambition with this exam is to study how young teenage boys are being depicted in Swedish novels of 2010 and to compare this study and the results with the results from my study last spring. Throughout history we can see that boy’s novels have had the purpose to bring up boys into being adventurous. In the novels of 2010 we can see that boys now are being depicted in another more modern and contemporary way. From my analysis we can see that all the books have many things in common. One of them is the young boys search for identity and for finding who they really are. They all are struggling with their trust to themselves and their self-confidence. We can see that all the books show how young boys today are struggling to find the courage to stand up for themselves and their identity. In my comparison with the results of both of my studies we can see many similarities. Both studies shows young teenagers search for identity and for finding the courage to show how they really are and for standing up for themselves. We can that despite gender the young teenagers are all having the same reflections and feelings.

This thesis seeks to examine the Kurdish novel, The Flower of Shoran (1998) by Iranian Kurdish author, ‘Atā Nahāyi in the context of Kurdish identity search and nationalism and struggle to build a nation state. Considering that the setting of the novel is between the two World Wars which is arguably the most critical phase of Kurdish nationalism, the present study tries to give a brief overview of the historical events that shaped and oriented Kurdish nationalism. Subsequently, Nahāyi’s perspective on the question of Kurdish identity and nationalism in Iran which are the underlying themes of the novel is discussed. Also a detailed summary has been provided along with the translation of the first two chapters of the novel to illustrate how a fairly successful Kurdish novel such as The Flower of Shoran has dealt with the Kurdish question of identity and nationalism in the context of Kurds' struggle for autonomy and recognition as a distinct nation. / text

В магистерской работе прием пародии рассматривается как основной,центральный в "повестях Белкина".Кроме этого,мы формурлируем принципиально иное понятие пародии.Если изначально многие исслелователи выделяли такую породию,которая обладала"опрокидывающеей" и "аннулирующей функцией сент��менталисткие и романтические штампы и клише,то мы,исспользуя данное понятие,отталкиваемся от его понимание в пушкинское время,где пародия не "уничтожает" что-либо,а служит средс��вом создания нового текста. / Magistro darbe parodijos priemone nagrinejama,kaip pagrindine,centrine "Belkino apysakose'.Tuo paciu mes formuojame visai kitą parodijos sąvoka.Jeigu iš pradžių daugelis tyrinėtojų išriškindavo tą parodija,kuri turėjo"apverčiančia" bei "anuliuojančia"sentimentalius ir romantinius štampus ir klišę funkcija,tai mes,naudodami šią sąvoka,atsistumiame nuo jos suvokimo Puškino laikais,kur sį priemone"nenaikina"bei "išjuokia" kažrą,o suteikia nauja prasmę naudojant senas konstrukcijas. / The masters thesis considers the devise of parody as a basic and central in"The Belkins novels".For all this,we an absuliuteli different concept of parody.Whail the parody exposed by many investigators involvd the funksion refusing and termiminating of sentimental and romantic stamps and clishe,so we whail using the previous concept departed from its comprehension in the Pushkins time when te previous device wasnt considered as destraction,derision of something,but as device of creation of new sense at the expense of the old construction.

Mémoire numérisé par la Division de la gestion de documents et des archives de l'Université de Montréal