Until now, for George Sand scholars, two main images of the Sand corpus have been dominant, “un grand fleuve d’Amérique” and “une grande oeuvre multiforme.” While both images evoke the strength and diversity of styles, approaches and genres in Sand’s literary production, they also suggest a certain vagueness in regards to the contours of this oeuvre. Moreover, when speaking about the author’s novelistic writing, scholars and the larger reading public alike often refer to her work as the “eighty or so” novels and short stories she wrote, giving the impression that her work knew no boundaries. In place of this relative sense of unruliness, I propose the vision of an oeuvre unified by a strong theory of the novel and suggest how this corpus is structured by both intertextuality and polyphony. For this purpose, I borrow from Riffaterrian theories of textuality while proposing my own theory of intertextuality in regards to its function in the Sand corpus. I explain how George Sand hands us an actual key to deciphering her entire literary production and how one can understand the theoretical implications of this literary gesture. This key is what I call the author’s “Jacques cycle,” the series of rewritings of her 1834 novel Jacques that she highlights in her 1866 novel Le Dernier Amour. There, the author speaks about Jacques and its rewritings as key novels that have followed the evolution of her thinking as a writer in addition to her reflections on societal concerns. Viewed from this perspective, Sand places intertextuality, rewriting, and metaliterary reflection at the very heart of her conception of literature on the same plane as her societal preoccupations. My dissertation consists of an Introduction, four chapters and a Conclusion. Chapter One presents George Sand's engaged stance in her "Essai sur le drame fantastique" theorizing on intertextuality. Chapter Two demonstrates how her rewriting of La Nouvelle Héloïse in Jacques enters in dialogue with the horizons d'attente associated with women's writing, while constructing what has been called a textual masculinity. Chapter Three analyzes Sand's defense of the autonomy of literature in Jacques and her article, "À propos de Lélia et de Valentine." Chapter Four theorizes on the concept of a Jacques cycle and investigates Sand's Valvèdre and Le Dernier Amour as novels rewriting Jacques in light of the movement of "l'art pour l'art." Theory is thus central in shaping the Sand corpus.

This dissertation avers that the circulation of manuscript copies and printed editions of the works of Ramon Llull had a key role in Iberian cultural history and signaled a shift from a Christian logic of conversion to a universal key for organizing all the disciplines of knowledge. As copies of Ramon Llull’s manuscripts traveled from the Black Forest, Majorca, and Paris to be housed in the libraries of early modern institutions, such as the Colegio de San Ildefonso and the Monastery of El Escorial, they formed what I call portable archives of the Art. By reading the inventories of the libraries of these institutions, along with copies of the works of Ramon Llull preserved at the Escorial, the Biblioteca Nacional de Madrid, and the University of Freiburg, my dissertation combines the study of the place of Ramon Llull in the medieval history of ideas and the material features of said portable archives. My dissertation contributes to history of the book studies as it examines a unique case among medieval traditions and shows that the compilation of manuscripts and the elaboration of printed editions repurpose the original idea of the Art. I work with primary sources in Latin, Catalan, Spanish, and Portuguese, attributed to Ramon Llull and to other authors, to trace his influence on early modern authors, such as Pedro de Guevara, Juan de Herrera, Diego de Valadés, and João de Barros.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Tennessee, Knoxville, 2002. / Title from title page screen (viewed on Oct. 2, 2002). Thesis advisor: Patricia Davis-Wiley. Document formatted into pages (xi, 147 p. : ill.). Vita. Includes bibliographical references (p. 129-135).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Missouri-Columbia, 2003. / Typescript. Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 99-110). Also available on the Internet.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Missouri-Columbia, 2003. / Typescript. Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 99-110). Also available on the Internet.

This thesis considers the problem of how to bring foreign language students with a limited vocabulary knowledge, consisting mainly of high-frequency words, to the point where they are able to adequately comprehend authentic texts in a target domain or genre. It proposes bridging the vocabulary gap by first determining which word families account for 95% of the target domain's running words, and then having students learn these word families by reading texts in an order that allows for the incremental introduction of target vocabulary. This is made possible by a recently developed computer program that sorts through a collection of texts and (a) finds texts with a suitably high proportion of target words, (b) ensures that over the course of these texts, most or all target words are encountered five or more times, and (c) creates an order for reading these texts, such that each new text contains a reasonably small number of new target words and a maximum number of familiar words. A computer-based study, involving the sorting of 293 news texts, resulted in the finding that all three of these conditions could be met for the majority of texts tested, provided two key changes were first made to the sorting algorithm. A potential problem with the computerized approach is also addressed. The approach takes for granted that a reader must be familiar with 95% of a text's tokens in order to adequately comprehend the text, but a recently published study challenges this assumption by claiming that 98% is a more accurate figure. A close analysis of the study, however, points out a serious methodological flaw which undermines this result.

This thesis deals with the curricular development of modern languages in the schools of England between 1864 and 1918. At the beginning of the period, modern languages were fringe curricular subjects; by the end of the period, they had achieved full curricular status in the secondary schools. The vehicles for investigating the curricular development of modern languages are the reports of the Royal Commissions and Board of Education. This thesis shows that modern languages became an integral part of the liberal curriculum and hence were taught chiefly in the secondary schools as instruments of cultural and mental formation for the upper and middle classes. Their definition as secondary school subjects was due largely to their promotion as liberal subjects by the Royal Commisions and Board of Education. The elitist views expressed in these reports were highly influential in determining the curricular status of modern languages, and the aims, methods, and content of their teaching.

Thesis (MEng(TelecommunicationsbyResearch))--University of South Australia, 2003.

Thesis (M.S. in Operations Research)--Naval Postgraduate School, December 2004. / Thesis advisor(s): Samuel E. Buttrey. Includes bibliographical references (p. 51-52). Also available online.

Typescript, etc.