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The purpose of this interdisciplinary study was to answer the question, "What is the meaning of the transformative dream for people who do not experience resolution of their problem immediately upon awakening?". Existential-phenomenology from the perspective of a story was used to describe the meaning of the experience for ten individuals, nine women and one man, whose ages ranged from 23 to 48. From transcripts of the interviews, ten individual accounts of the experience were constructed. These accounts included a construction of the structure of each dream story and its relationship to the person’s description of the experience. Significant statements of the experience were also extracted from the transcripts and formulated into twenty common themes which were then woven into a common story. Each person checked and validated the transcript, individual account, common themes, and common story for any omissions or distortions. The study also included responses to a questionnaire given to psychology students, asking them if they had ever had a dream which revealed a solution to a problem. Out of 305 students, 103 (34%) had experienced one of these dreams. Forty-three (42%) knew the answer immediately, 58 (56%) found the answer later, and two were not sure. These results suggest that the prevalence of dreams which reveal solutions to problems could be much higher than expected. The findings support the general contention that these dreams are preceded by a desire for resolution and a search for answers. The dreams were vivid and emotional with the dreamer alert and actively participating in the drama. People experienced a felt sense of change without understanding the meaning of the dream. The dreams were complete stories with a beginning, middle, and end. The findings demonstrate that viewing these dreams within the context of people's lives is essential in order to understand the meaning of the experience. The description is a beginning and can become the basis for future research on dreams which resolve problems.

The aim of this thesis is at once simple and complex. It consists of explaining the modes of expression and the prevalent idioms of the experience of la promenade, the contemplative experience of a leisurely stroll, in the works and notebooks of Philippe Jaccottet. Far from focusing solely on the dynamic aspect of walking, the aspect to which the majority of literary critics have for so long limited themselves, it consists as well of defining the movement of la promenade as a practice of l'entre-deux (the in-between), through the sensorial dimensions of the work as well as through is writing practices. The objective of this thesis is to focus on the passage from the experience of movement to the experience of writing in the works of Jaccottet, in order to demonstrate that walking, in the context of la promenade, is not only an extra-diagetic experience, but that it possesses as well a diagetic status meant to be understood through the use of a particular form. / My analytical framework used here is founded on the hypothesis that la promenade, at least in the works of Philippe Jaccottet, is in fact an issue of the "in-between"; a problem which is first and foremost a way of formulating a vision of the world which comes from a particular poetic sense of measure, accuracy and balance. For Jaccottet, l'entre-deux denotes a way of inhabiting the outside world, of seizing the contrasts and contradictions in the tension between the known and the unknown, the near and the far, inside and outside, visible and invisible. In this sense, l'entre-deux denotes being at once within oneself and being in the world without, as if the poet himself wandered between two extremes, between two opposite poles of thought and knowledge. / In line with the procedures of traditional literary criticism, this thesis thus attempts to define the development of the poetic subject, its relation to the world, to writing and to language. (Abstract shortened by UMI.)

Sharon Pollock's plays have made a significant contribution to Canadian drama over the last three decades; however, the majority of scholarly research on her work has concentrated on one particular play-Blood Relations-and for the most part these studies focus on feminism and metadrama. My thesis examines Pollock's use of the memory play and how within this genre the playwright metaphorically places one (or more) of her characters under investigation. The notion of memory is present in practically all of her plays, but to focus my argument I select dramatic works where a rememberer distinctly guides the audience from the play's present into the past. Because several of her memory plays are based on historical events I use an historiographical approach to illuminate her texts. In the six Pollock works that I examine a crime or social wrongdoing has taken place in the past, and one of the central characters needs to revisit the injustice from the play's present. Through memory, the past is restaged and the character who experiences the inquiry tries to understand, justify, and/or defend his or her position in the events. Instead of determining if the characters are legally responsible for the crime or wrongdoing, my investigation focuses on their level of moral responsibility in the social injustice. I propose to examine the moral inquiries within Pollock's work in the context of three types of memory plays, and these form the basis of my three main chapters: third-person memory (Walsh, The Komagata Mam Incident), first-person memory (One Tiger to a Hill, Moving Pictures), and multi-person memory (Doc, Fair Liberty's Calf).

This thesis focuses on the underlying mechanisms of Sciascia's writing, especially on its social destiny and literary scope. Beyond realism, Sciascia's writing comprises important information regarding the author's conception of the intellectual's work in the political and social domains. Sciascia had to develop writing techniques that enable him to efficiently merge his essayist bent and narrative inspiration, his penchant to document facts and his capacity to create them artistically. These are the origins of his unusual narrative technique--an amalgam of the eighteenth century essay and contemporary detective novel, locked in a crossroads of reason and non-reason. Sciascia's cultural background, a section between illuminism and Marxism, is the reason behind his need to ignore the traditional divisions between literary genres in order to originate a text which vehicles both his social and political engagement and his artistic creation. Although Sciascia's works reflect this unique pattern, critical studies to date have overlooked it, mislead, as they may be, by the polemic impact of the text and the man behind it.

Two characteristics prevail in the works of Natalia Ginzburg: the tendency towards reduction and the tendency towards repetition. Reduction and repetition resemble each other; they are analogous, complementary; both are efficient and dramatic means to express a reality which is partial and incomplete and to underline the inherent obscure suffering which results from that reality. Although Natalia Ginzburg does not belong to any of the various literary trends (and, in particular, not to neo-realism which coincides chronologically with the beginning of her career), she interprets a sorry and limited world and bears sensitive witness to its loneliness, to its "male di vivere". In this sense, Natalia Ginzburg's works, although not in the mainstream of literary currents, touch the heart of modern literary sensibility. / This is, in brief, the thrust of my thesis.

The evolution of the fantastic short story has followed a similar path as contemporary short story and also took inspiration from many literary forms. As a result, it has undergone profound changes since the 19$ rm sp{th}$ century. And yet, studies of this genre are just beginning to break away from the thematic interpretation originally designed to provide a temporary solution to an experimentation problem. The study of a selection of short stories by Julio Cortazar, very representative of these neo-fantastic tangents allows us to observe the techniques which the fantastic genre can now be based upon. / The second part of this thesis is made up of an anthology of short stories based for the most part on the fantastic. Certain writing techniques were inspired by Cortazar.

This thesis is dedicated to the work of one of the most brilliant representatives of the Soviet (Russian) literature of the past decades---Chinges Aitmatov. / In this thesis I concentrate on Aitmatov's short stories which I consider to be one of the most important aspects of his work. / What is so particular about Aitmatov's short stories? How does he manage to condense in his short stories such a deep meaning such a refined and sensitive world of heroes, together with the very essence of being? His pure and sometimes naive stories characterized by deep philosophical thought lead us to ponder over both contemporary and eternal problems of humanity and cultural consciousness. / I will be analyzing a few short stories which, in my opinion, best reflect how perfectly Aitmatov mastered the art of shaping material into an original text with peculiar structure and plot. / My work consists of an introduction, three chapters and conclusion where I define in detail the concepts of "structure", "plot", "fable" and other elements of prose, architechtonics, material organization, etc., and how these concepts are treated in Aitmatov's short stories.

Focusing on the entire literary works of Fernand Ouellette, that is to say all the writings published in collections from 1953 to 2000, the present thesis studies the evolution of his poetical writing in comparison with his writing of the essay, from a perspective both philosophical (development and evolution of concepts) and rhetorical (poetics and the form of thought). A chronological approach allows to draw three stages within the evolution of his works: (1) the period of lightning (1955--1973), which is linked to the poetics of revelation; (2) the period of wandering (1974--1986), when the poetics of relation is developed; (3) the mask of the augur (1987--2000), when occurs the meeting of the poetics of revelation and relation. / Fernand Ouellette is one of the most important writers of his generation (the so-called generation of l'Hexagone) as well as of Quebec's literary history. Owing to romanticism and existentialism, he belongs to a humanistic and idealistic movement which advocates the total commitment of the artist. Alternately poet, essayist, autobiographer, biographer, literary critic and novelist, his production is remarkable not only because of its literary quality but also because of its intellectual and spiritual requirements. His works foster a filiation relationship with many artists and philosophers, mostly European. / Centered between the desire of unity which sees an absolute in poetry, and the need of uniqueness which commands to take part in history, Ouellette's literary production, from the very first titles, is articulated on a dynamics, initially dual and then dialogical, establishing a relation between the lyrical subject, literally poetic, and the dialectical subject, corresponding to the figure of the essayist. By his commitment to fiction and self-portrait, two forms that are both privileged not only in autobiography but also within the novel and literary criticism, a dialectic is gradually developed, putting side by side poetry and essay without confusing them; it is through this dialectic that the figure of the subject is allowed to take shape. The result is an open literary production in which the function of the essay is essential to the poetical drive forward, while writing, based on movement, is both present to the World and oriented towards a mystical quest.

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