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

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La Méditation sur la liberté inspirée de Kierkegaard et de Kundera s’interroge d’un point de vue existentiel sur la liberté. Elle cherche à comprendre pourquoi face à un choix un individu ne considère pas tous les possibles comme possibles. Sa première partie est basée sur Le concept d’angoisse, simple éclaircissement psychologique préalable au problème du péché originel par Kierkegaard et sa deuxième partie, ayant pour base théorique la première, s’appuie sur deux romans de Kundera : L’Immortalité et L’insoutenable légèreté de l’être. C’est à travers ces trois textes que la réflexion se développe autour de l’angoisse, qui rend possible la liberté, et de la légèreté, qui est un terme employé pour désigner le moment où l’homme se retrouve face à tous les possibles qui s’offrent à lui.

My dissertation focuses on an analysis of postmodern narrative strategies in Milan Kundera's The Unbearable Lightness of Being (ULB) and The Book of Laughter and Forgetting ( BLF) . By analysing the postmodern ab/use of narrative strategies, I argue that postmodern fiction marks a decided shift from both classical realism and modernism. My dissertation has predominantly been motivated through my contention that postmodern fiction is not elitist as it has been perceived to be. Rather, I suggest that postmodern fiction ab/uses narrative strategies to deconstruct the ontological boundaries between the political and private and fiction and 'fact'. Consequently, postmodern fiction interrogates the contrived intelligibility of History. A further argument that I raise is that postmodern fiction through its (re) appropriation, subversion and use of parodic structures creates.narrative space for the Other. In order not to canonize Kundera's texts, I situate both ULB and BLF as 'nodes' within a diffuse network of intertextual discourse. My analyses of the postmodern narrative strategies in ULB and BLF, attempt to interrogate the diffuse 'nature' of postmodern fiction which resists both authorative analysis and closure. In exploring the relationship between recuperation and postmodern narrative strategies in ULB and BLF and other works and/or texts of fiction, I argue that postmodern fiction does not revel in its narrativity, it constitutes, instead, a political strategy / Afrikaans and Theory of Literature / M.A. (Theory of Literature)

My dissertation focuses on an analysis of postmodern narrative strategies in Milan Kundera's The Unbearable Lightness of Being (ULB) and The Book of Laughter and Forgetting ( BLF) . By analysing the postmodern ab/use of narrative strategies, I argue that postmodern fiction marks a decided shift from both classical realism and modernism. My dissertation has predominantly been motivated through my contention that postmodern fiction is not elitist as it has been perceived to be. Rather, I suggest that postmodern fiction ab/uses narrative strategies to deconstruct the ontological boundaries between the political and private and fiction and 'fact'. Consequently, postmodern fiction interrogates the contrived intelligibility of History. A further argument that I raise is that postmodern fiction through its (re) appropriation, subversion and use of parodic structures creates.narrative space for the Other. In order not to canonize Kundera's texts, I situate both ULB and BLF as 'nodes' within a diffuse network of intertextual discourse. My analyses of the postmodern narrative strategies in ULB and BLF, attempt to interrogate the diffuse 'nature' of postmodern fiction which resists both authorative analysis and closure. In exploring the relationship between recuperation and postmodern narrative strategies in ULB and BLF and other works and/or texts of fiction, I argue that postmodern fiction does not revel in its narrativity, it constitutes, instead, a political strategy / Afrikaans and Theory of Literature / M.A. (Theory of Literature)

The subject of this thesis is an examination of the acquisition in language of a new country for three Eastern European writers exiled in France. For such writers, art and life become inseparable: just as the experience of geographical displacement liberates the writer so it liberates his language. This new language becomes a field of experimentation, in which the conflicts that precipitated exile are resolved. Departure necessitates the abandonment of the mother tongue: for Cioran, Romanian; for Kundera, Czech; for Makine, Russian. For each of these three writers, studied in this thesis, the adoption of French as the language of literary expression was a decisive act. Geographically and spiritually he and his text are redefined. Separated from familiar landmarks, each finds a new terrain in the language of the creative text, a place, a private space, in which to express the realities of his new self. On the one hand this new paradigm is the expression of a rejection of a past and a tradition; on the other hand it is essential in the process of coming to self-understanding. For Cioran, Kundera and Makine the French language provides a foil to their own ruptured, fragmented, traumatised or guilt-ridden native identities. In each case the adoption of French with its concomitant stereotypical qualities and values constitutes a dialectical process of coming to a clearer sense of self.