Les premiers romans de John Dos Passos s’inscrivent dans le courant moderniste et sont caractérisés par une organisation originale des mots sur la page. Le texte n’est pas un bloc monolothique mais il est découpé en sections et ponctué d’épigraphes. Il contient également une multitude de collages présentés dans des styles et des polices variés. Cette observation est le point de départ de cette étude qui propose d’analyser la matérialité du texte dans les premiers romans de John Dos Passos, Manhattan Transfer et la trilogie USA, publiés entre 1925 et 1938. Ces ouvrages interrogent le regard du lecteur sur le texte, en montrant ce qui est placé devant, autour de l’oeil de celui qui regarde. Ils invitent le lecteur à prendre conscience de ce qui influence sa vision. Le roman exhibe son armature et ses divers seuils, laissant soin à celui qui lit de poursuivre ou non sa lecture, de revenir en arrière et de faire les liens entre les différentes zones de texte. Le roman expose son mode de fabrication, soulignant qu’il est le produit d’un réagencement de textes antérieurs. Cette armature visible est autant faite de pleins que de vides et reflète la tension entre l’ambition de tout dire, tout contenir et la reconnaissance de la difficulté même de raconter. Le jeu avec les espaces blancs, la ponctuation et les indications phonétiques renforcent la dimension écrite du texte tout en essayant de de le faire sortir hors de la page et de résister à toute clôture. / The early novels of John Dos Passos are part of the modernist literary movement. They are characterized by an original organization of the words on the page. The text is no longer a monolithic block, but is divided into sections and its separations are highlighted by a vast paratext. It also contains a variety of collages presented in various styles and in different fonts. These observations are the starting point of this research, which focuses on the materiality of the text in the early novels of John Dos Passos, Manhattan Transfer and the trilogy USA, published between 1925 and 1938. These novels question the gaze of the reader on the text, showing what is placed in front of and around the eye of the observer. The reader becomes aware of what influences his vision. The novel displays its internal structure and various thresholds, allowing the reader to continue or to stop reading, to go backwards and to create connections between the different sections of the text. The novel displays how it has been constructed, highlighting that it is the product of the rearrangement of previous texts. This visible internal structure is also built out of gaps and empty spaces. It reflects the tension between the ambition to be exhaustive, to contain everything and to acknowledge the difficulty to tell a story. The interplay with the blank space on the page, the use of punctuation and phonetic indicators reinforce the written aspect of the text, while at the same time making the words stand off the page and resistant to closure.

Inaugural-Dissertation Heidelberg.

Esta tese procura compreender de que modo a elaboração modernista da colagem e da montagem no romance Manhattan Transfer, de John Dos Passos, expressa e ilumina processos sociais e políticos de seu tempo. Publicada em 1925, essa obra é a primeira a investigar as transformações pelas quais passava Nova York, desde a virada do século XX até o início dos anos 1920, por meio de uma experimentação formal então única na literatura dos Estados Unidos. Além disso, defende-se a especificidade do romance de 1925, o qual não seria apenas uma preparação para a trilogia U.S.A. (1930-1936), mas configuraria um retrato singular do espírito de sua época. A sua forma se revelaria, então, não ruptura, mas continuidade do projeto realista de interpretação da sociedade. Propõe-se igualmente desenvolver uma discussão sobre a complexa interação entre modernismo e cultura periférica no começo dos anos 1920, com base em certa tradição da crítica literária brasileira (da qual os grandes nomes são Antonio Candido e Roberto Schwarz) atenta às relações contraditórias entre o processo de modernização e a forma literária. Nesse sentido, busca-se entender de que maneira a cultura dessa ex-colônia refletiu, pela obra de Dos Passos, sobre a sua própria condição periférica no período em que os Estados Unidos cresciam como potência econômica e militar. Por fim, procura-se mostrar como Manhattan Transfer foi capaz de formular literariamente e tornar visíveis os nexos na época, nada evidentes entre a urbanização de Nova York, a industrialização, a guerra e as novas tendências imperialistas que começavam a despontar. / This thesis looks at how the modernist use of collage and montage in John Dos Passos Manhattan Transfer expresses and sheds light upon the social and political processes of its time. Published in 1925, the book is the first to investigate the transformations undergoing New York from the turn of the 20th Century to the beginning of the 1920s by means of a formal experimentation hitherto unique in the literature of the United States. Moreover, this thesis argues for the specificity of the 1925 novel, which should not simply be understood as groundwork for the U.S.A trilogy (1930-1926), but rather as a singular depiction of the spirit of its time. Its form, accordingly, would prove to be not a break, but rather an unfolding of the realist project of interpretation of society. The complex interaction between modernism and peripheral culture in the early 1920s is likewise addressed here through a discussion based on a certain tradition of Brazilian literary criticism (featuring, among its major authors, Antonio Candido and Roberto Schwarz) particularly attentive to the contradictory relations between the process of modernization and the shifts in literary form. In this regard, the analysis carried out seeks to grasp in what way the culture of this former colony reflected, though the work of Dos Passos, on its own peripheral condition during the period marked by the rise of the United States as an economic and military power. Lastly, this thesis aims to show how Manhattan Transfer was able to formulate literarily and render visible the links far from evident, at the time connecting the urbanization of New York, the process of industrialization and the new imperialist tendencies that were beginning to emerge.

Les œuvres de John Dos Passos [1896-1970] sont souvent étudiées à l’aune – ou à l’ombre – de son parcours politique. L’enjeu de cette thèse est de revenir sur ce lien entre fiction et politique, en partant non plus des positions politiques de l’auteur mais des œuvres elles-mêmes, pour analyser si et en quoi la fiction peut se faire politique. Des romans de jeunesse aux œuvres de la maturité [notamment Manhattan Transfer et la trilogie U.S.A.], Dos Passos construit sa critique politique, fondée sur la remise en cause du récit linéaire. Il remplace la « destinée manifeste » de l’Amérique par le portrait des « deux nations » qui la composent, et travaille le genre du roman pour le défaire de sa dimension providentielle. En mettant à l’épreuve l’intrigue, le protagoniste et la temporalité, il inscrit cette critique politique au cœur même de l’écriture, et invite à porter un nouveau regard sur les œuvres politiques de l’entre-deux-guerres, et sur les liens entre modernisme et radicalisme, dénoués par la critique de la Guerre Froide. Ses œuvres mettent en scène la difficulté de construire une littérature protestataire dans un pays fondé sur des idéaux démocratiques. Plutôt qu’un perpétuel retour au mythe des origines, cependant, elles mettent en place un véritable dialogue avec les textes fondateurs, dialogue au sein duquel la fiction fait peu à peu émerger, entre les lignes, le non-dit du politique / The novels of John Dos Passos [1896-1970] are often analyzed with reference to his politics. This dissertation aims to recast the link between politics and fiction in his work, starting from the texts themselves rather than from the author’s political pronouncements, to see how fiction itself can become political. Dos Passos’s political criticism built up progressively throughout his career, from his early fiction to the crowning success of U.S.A., and rested on a criticism of linear narrative. He went against America’s “manifest destiny” to portray a divided country, made up of “two nations", and rooted his political criticism within the genre of the novel itself. By undermining the concepts of plot, protagonist and temporality, he created a form of political fiction where politics are an integral part of writing, rather than an imposition upon it. Dos Passos thus invites us to cast a new glance at the interwar period, and at the links – severed by Cold War criticism – between modernism and radicalism. His works bear witness to the difficulty of writing protest in a land of consensus; however, rather than resorting to a tempting return to the myth of origins, they enact a dialogue with the founding texts, through which fiction progressively reveals how the nation’s political – and textual – foundation rests on gaps and omissions

Esta tese procura compreender de que modo a elaboração modernista da colagem e da montagem no romance Manhattan Transfer, de John Dos Passos, expressa e ilumina processos sociais e políticos de seu tempo. Publicada em 1925, essa obra é a primeira a investigar as transformações pelas quais passava Nova York, desde a virada do século XX até o início dos anos 1920, por meio de uma experimentação formal então única na literatura dos Estados Unidos. Além disso, defende-se a especificidade do romance de 1925, o qual não seria apenas uma preparação para a trilogia U.S.A. (1930-1936), mas configuraria um retrato singular do espírito de sua época. A sua forma se revelaria, então, não ruptura, mas continuidade do projeto realista de interpretação da sociedade. Propõe-se igualmente desenvolver uma discussão sobre a complexa interação entre modernismo e cultura periférica no começo dos anos 1920, com base em certa tradição da crítica literária brasileira (da qual os grandes nomes são Antonio Candido e Roberto Schwarz) atenta às relações contraditórias entre o processo de modernização e a forma literária. Nesse sentido, busca-se entender de que maneira a cultura dessa ex-colônia refletiu, pela obra de Dos Passos, sobre a sua própria condição periférica no período em que os Estados Unidos cresciam como potência econômica e militar. Por fim, procura-se mostrar como Manhattan Transfer foi capaz de formular literariamente e tornar visíveis os nexos na época, nada evidentes entre a urbanização de Nova York, a industrialização, a guerra e as novas tendências imperialistas que começavam a despontar. / This thesis looks at how the modernist use of collage and montage in John Dos Passos Manhattan Transfer expresses and sheds light upon the social and political processes of its time. Published in 1925, the book is the first to investigate the transformations undergoing New York from the turn of the 20th Century to the beginning of the 1920s by means of a formal experimentation hitherto unique in the literature of the United States. Moreover, this thesis argues for the specificity of the 1925 novel, which should not simply be understood as groundwork for the U.S.A trilogy (1930-1926), but rather as a singular depiction of the spirit of its time. Its form, accordingly, would prove to be not a break, but rather an unfolding of the realist project of interpretation of society. The complex interaction between modernism and peripheral culture in the early 1920s is likewise addressed here through a discussion based on a certain tradition of Brazilian literary criticism (featuring, among its major authors, Antonio Candido and Roberto Schwarz) particularly attentive to the contradictory relations between the process of modernization and the shifts in literary form. In this regard, the analysis carried out seeks to grasp in what way the culture of this former colony reflected, though the work of Dos Passos, on its own peripheral condition during the period marked by the rise of the United States as an economic and military power. Lastly, this thesis aims to show how Manhattan Transfer was able to formulate literarily and render visible the links far from evident, at the time connecting the urbanization of New York, the process of industrialization and the new imperialist tendencies that were beginning to emerge.

This thesis investigates the rise of aviation and its influence on modernist literature in the first half of the twentieth century, arguing that the emergence of heavier-than-air flight facilitated experimentation and innovation in modernist writing in order to capture the new experience of flight and its impact on the modern world. Previous critical discussions largely focus on militarist and nationalist ideas and beliefs regarding the uses of the aeroplane, and in doing so overlook the diversity of attitudes and approaches towards aviation that had greater influence on modernist thought. Through a historicist reading of a selection of modernist texts, this study extends scholarly debates by linking alternative views of aviation and modernist literary and narrative experimentation. I begin my study by exploring how H.G. Wells's calls for the establishment of a world government (necessitated by the emergence of aviation) led to an increasingly assertive and urgent tone in his later writings. His works serve as a useful starting point to read the more experimental, modernist prose forms that follow in his wake. While Wells's texts were affected on a pragmatic level, those of the modernists were affected in a more imaginative, perceptual, and sensory way, which highlights the deeper extent to which aviation influenced modernist thought. For Virginia Woolf, the all-encompassing aerial view offered a new way of seeing the connections between living things, leading to an expanded narrative scope in her later writings. For William Faulkner, flight as aerial performance and spectacle was a liberating experience and became a metaphor for escape from an increasingly capitalistic and creativity-deprived world. John Dos Passos, in contrast, saw the effects of air travel as harmful to the human senses and perceptions of the world around, leading him to incorporate aspects of flight into his fast-paced, multi-modal narratives in order to convey and critique the disorienting and alienating experience of flight. Collectively, these chapters show that as much as the aeroplane was capable of causing mass destruction, it was also constructive in the way that it enabled these new ways of thinking, and it is this complex and paradoxical nature, this thesis proposes, that makes the aeroplane an important modernist symbol.

Thesis (M.A.), English--University of Central Oklahoma, 2009. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 87-91).

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