Le théâtre de Fabien Cloutier suscite abondamment le rire chez les spectateurs, mais ce rire est, très souvent, accompagné d'un sentiment de malaise qui investit la salle. Quel rôle joue le comique dans les pièces de Fabien Cloutier et quelle est la fonction du rire des spectateurs lors des représentations ? Ce mémoire postule que le rire, tel que provoqué par le théâtre de Fabien Cloutier, joue un rôle fondamentalement critique. À partir des dynamiques à la fois d’identification et de distanciation mises en œuvre par le théâtre de Fabien Cloutier, ce mémoire propose d’étudier la fonction critique du rire dans les pièces Scotstown, Cranbourne, Billy [Les jours de hurlement] et Pour réussir un poulet à la lumière de la théorie bergsonienne du rire, qui conçoit le rire comme un correctif social. / Fabien Cloutier’s plays spark copious laughter in spectators, but said laughter is often accompanied by a sense of discomfort which takes over the theatre. What part does the comic play in Fabien Cloutier’s work, and what is the function of audience members’ laughter during performances? This paper argues that laughter, as provoked by Fabien Cloutier’s theatre, serves a fundamentally critical purpose. Using the dynamics of both identification and distanciation at play in Fabien Cloutier’s theatre, this paper proposes that the critical function of laughter in plays Scotstown, Cranbourne, Billy [Les jours de hurlement] and Pour réussir un poulet be studied in light of the Bergsonian theory of laughter, which conceives of laughter as a social corrective.

L'ironie atteint au plus complexe par le plus simple, à la raison par l'irrationnel, à la puissance par la douceur, au sérieux par la raillerie. C'est l'éclosion de l'art de subversion ironique. Dans la tradition rhétorique, nulle mention n'est faite d'une forme d'utilisation littéraire de l'ironie qui permettrait au sein d'une oeuvre romanesque, dramatique ou poétique l'intrusion de la figure de l'auteur. Dans la période d'après-guerre, on voit un nouveau Giono qui renouvelle l'édifice de son oeuvre sur une sorte de vertige : l'ironie, les sous-entendus, l'implicite, les vides narratifs aussi bien dans le style que dans la conception du monde. Les oeuvres qui paraissaient au moment où naît cette ère du soupçon qui a divisé l'oeuvre et a changé l'esthétique de l'écrivain, sont les plus marquées par l'ironie. Giono assigne l'ironie à un foyer de production fictionnelle qui ne saurait bénéficier de quelques immunités philosophiques, esthétiques, techniques. L'ironie c'est aussi l'effet des procédés typographiques. Dans cet univers, toute authenticité risque d'être pervertie dans un roman. Mais l'ironie de Giono est avant tout une vision tragique du monde. Elle est également une interprétation de la condition humaine. Le romancier est donc celui qui nage dans les eaux troubles de la contradiction. Il examine le monde en dévoilant les ambiguïtés. / The irony achieves to the most complex by the simplest, to the reason by the irrational, to the power by the sweetness, to the seriously by the mockery. It is the hatching of the art of the ironic subversion. In the Rhetoric tradition, no mention was made of a shape of a literary use of irony which would allow within a novelistic, dramatic or poetic work, the intrusion of the figure of the author. In the post-war period, we see a new Giono who renews the building of his work on a kind of dizziness: the irony, the allusions, the implicit and the narrative emptiness, in the style and in the conception of the world as well. The works which appeared as is born this era of suspicions which divided the work and changed the esthetics of the writer, are the most marked by the irony. Giono assigns the irony to a home of fictional production which could not benefit philosophical, esthetical, and technical immunity. Irony is also the effect of the typographic processes. In this universe, any authenticity risks to be perverted in a novel. But the irony of Giono is primarily a tragic vision of the world, a form of belonging to this world and a way of participation in its mockeries and its delights. It is also an interpretation of the human condition. The novelist is thus the one who swims in shady waters of the contradiction. He examines the world by revealing the ambiguities.

The purpose of this thesis is to reveal some of the behavioral characteristics of a specific type of laughter that I term "feigned laughter," and how it is used in the context of face-threatening-utterances (FTUs), or utterances that threaten the face needs of an individual.

The subject of this paper is the philosophy of comedy. It is an orientation through history of laughter and its connection to the essence of comedy. This investigation tries to pinpoint some characteristics of the comedian and the task of the comedian today, focusing primarily on comedy in the public sphere. This paper concludes that comedy could be something physical and biological, but also something political. Humor is general and something very common but also culturally unique. The purpose of this thesis is to investigate comedy as something highly spiritual, absolute human and animalistic. It also aims to connect comedy to the philosophical discipline and strengthen its bond to the academic field. This paper includes some theories of humor, from both an evolutionary, scientific perspective to a more philosophical and theological view. It also includes a political discussion of how one can joke about everything and why comedy is important today.

Bibliography: leaves 221-234 / This research explores the humour and laughter in Howard Barker's Theatre of Catastrophe in the light of Mikhail Bakhtin's theory of the carnivalesque against the backdrop of the postSecond-World-War British (post-WWII) society and cultural tendencies and problems thereof. In this research, which explores the different stages of Barker's work – namely plays written in the seventies, the eighties and early nineties – I argue that comedy and laughter are pivotal to Howard Barker's theory for theatre which ultimately shaped his Theatre of Catastrophe as a tragic theatre. Howard Barker forged the appearance of a unique theatrical practice, the Theatre of Catastrophe, not only through the revival of pain, death and tragedy but also through the juxtaposition of the carnivalesque and death/tragedy. This research therefore, studies transformation in Barker's art of theatre in a period of twenty years and demonstrates how the playwright deviates from tenets he set for his tragic theatre without necessarily betraying its tragic spirit. It is worth highlighting the observation that, the marriage of catastrophe and the carnivalesque remains the most significant achievement of Barker's art of theatre. Chapter Two of the research explores Bakhtin's theory of the carnival through the elaboration of crucial concepts such as the grotesque imagery, laughter and the marketplace. Bakhtin's thoughts on laughter root in Henri Bergson's theory of laughter. Definitely the realm of laughter somewhere in between art and life, both Bergson and Bakhtin also emphasise on the negative aspect of laughter. The engagement of individuals in the marketplace creates the concrete presence which is crucial to the carnivalesque. Taking into account the tenets of the Bakhtinian carnivalesque, this second chapter also concisely studies the challenges posed to the carnival theory by philosophers such as Umberto Eco and Terry Eagleton. The chapter finally investigates the revival of the concept of the carnival in the post-war British drama by studying David Edgar's advocacy of Augusto Boal's thoughts on the theatre and the necessity of the carnival. Chapters Three and Four offer close analyses of the plays written by Barker in the seventies, eighties and early nineties with the primary aim to show the turns and shifts that he takes in the development of his career as an oppositional playwright in search of a remedy to the cultural malaise of his day. The plays selected for these chapters are the ones which the playwright has categorised as his best plays, namely, Claw (1975), Stripwell (1975), The Love of a Good Man (1978), The Power of the Dog (1984), The Castle (1985), The Europeans (1987), (Uncle) Vanya (1992). Chapter Five sums up the findings on the research and concludes that Barker's comic sense goes beyond the comic sense ascribed to many tragic playwrights. The comedy which permeates his theatre of catastrophe shares affinities with the carnival leading to a carnivalisation of catastrophe in Barker's tragic theatre despite the claims by the Barker and his downplaying of the comedy which exists in his oeuvre. / English Studies / D. Litt. et Phil. (English Studies)

Key Words: Comparatistics, Intertextuality, Essayism, Esem, Milan Kundera, Ričardas Gavelis, Laughter, Kitsch, Vulgarity, Carnevalism, Thanatos, Sexuality This comparativist thesis discusses the intelectual novel of the end of the 20th century. The study objects chosen for this paper were the works of Ričardas Gavelis and Milan Kundera. Due to the differences in the poetics of the works, it was chosen to analyze four works of each writer's large prose. In the case of Gavelis they are as follows: Vilnius Poker (Vilniaus pokeris, novel, 1989), Vilnius Jazz (Vilniaus džiazas, novel, 1993), The Last Generation of People on Earth (Paskutinioji Žemės žmonių karta, novel, 1995) and Six Ways of Suicide (Septyni savižudybės būdai, novel, 1999). From Kundera's works we picked out The Farewell Party (Valčík na rozloučenou, novel,1972), The Book of Laughter and Forgetting (Knihou smíchu a zapomnění, novel, 1978), The Unbearable Lightness of Being (Nesnesitelnou lehkostí bytí, novel, 1984) a Immortality (Nesmrtelnost in french, 1990, in czech 1993). One of the main aims of this study is to introduce the Czech reader to Ričardas Gavelis: one of the most important and influential writers of Lithuanian literature of the late 20th century. The works of this writer are not yet properly evaluated even in his native...

Notre mémoire se veut une lecture de la version américaine de la série à succès The Office (NBC, 2005-2013) à travers la métaphore dramaturgique du sociologue Erving Goffman (1922-1982). Ce rapprochement permet une riche analyse, puisque la série comme le penseur placent le malaise au cœur de leurs projets respectifs. En ayant comme prémisse fictive d’être un documentaire, ainsi qu’en se faisant une satire de l’auto-spectacularisation des participants de télé-réalité, The Office explicite la métaphore dramaturgique goffmanienne. Les personnages de la série, et particulièrement le protagoniste Michael Scott, rendent constamment sensible le fait qu’ils sont en représentation. Le malaise étant une émotion fondamentalement désagréable, la série semble désigner les règles qu’elle considère comme essentielles à la cohésion du groupe en nous faisant subir leur transgression. Le malaise que nous éprouvons deviendrait l’occasion pour nous d’expérimenter les conséquences sociales de transgressions, nous apprenant du même coup l’importance de respecter les normes. D’abord, nous essayerons de déterminer si la série permet quelque chose comme un apprentissage par la négative des règles sociales. Dans un deuxième temps, nous tenterons de prouver que certains épisodes présentent un discours différent de celui de Goffman sur la transgression des normes sociales, présentant des moments où le malaise peut être vécu par les personnages comme des opportunités d’approfondir certaines relations interpersonnelles ou de faire des gains politiques. / Our study is intended as a reading of the American version of the successful series The Office (NBC, 2005-2013) through the dramaturgical metaphor of sociologist Erving Goffman (1922-1982). This rapprochement allows for a rich analysis as both the series and the sociologist place social embarrassment at the heart of their respective projects. With the fictional premise of being a documentary, as well as satirizing the self-spectacularization of reality TV participants, The Office makes Goffmanian dramaturgy explicit. The characters in the series, especially protagonist Michael Scott, constantly make us sensitive to the fact that they are in performance. Embarrassment being a fundamentally unpleasant emotion, the series seems to point to the rules it sees as essential to group cohesion by making us suffer their transgression. The discomfort we feel could become an opportunity for us to experience the social consequences of transgressions, teaching us the importance of upholding norms. First, we'll try to determine if the series allows for something like "negative learning" of social norms. Second, we will try to prove that some episodes convey a different narrative than Goffman's on the transgression of social norms, presenting moments when embarrassment can be experienced by the characters as opportunities to deepen some interpersonal relationships or to make political gains.

Notre objectif est de simuler des comportements multimodaux expressifs pour les agents conversationnels animés ACA. Ceux-ci sont des entités dotées de capacités affectives et communicationnelles; ils ont souvent une apparence humaine. Quand un ACA parle ou rit, il est capable de montrer de façon autonome des comportements multimodaux pour enrichir et compléter son discours prononcé et transmettre des informations qualitatives telles que ses émotions. Notre recherche utilise les modèles d’apprentissage à partir données. Un modèle de génération de comportements multimodaux pour un personnage virtuel parlant avec des émotions différentes a été proposé ainsi qu’un modèle de simulation du comportement de rire sur un ACA. Notre objectif est d'étudier et de développer des générateurs d'animation pour simuler la parole expressive et le rire d’un ACA. En partant de la relation liant prosodie de la parole et comportements multimodaux, notre générateur d'animation prend en entrée les signaux audio prononcés et fournit en sortie des comportements multimodaux. Notre travail vise à utiliser un modèle statistique pour saisir la relation entre les signaux donnés en entrée et les signaux de sortie; puis cette relation est transformée en modèle d’animation 3D. Durant l'étape d’apprentissage, le modèle statistique est entrainé à partir de paramètres communs qui sont composés de paramètres d'entrée et de sortie. La relation entre les signaux d'entrée et de sortie peut être capturée et caractérisée par les paramètres du modèle statistique. Dans l'étape de synthèse, le modèle entrainé est utilisé pour produire des signaux de sortie (expressions faciale, mouvement de tête et du torse) à partir des signaux d'entrée (F0, énergie de la parole ou pseudo-phonème du rire). La relation apprise durant la phase d'apprentissage peut être rendue dans les signaux de sortie. Notre module proposé est basé sur des variantes des modèles de Markov cachés (HMM), appelées HMM contextuels. Ce modèle est capable de capturer la relation entre les mouvements multimodaux et de la parole (ou rire); puis cette relation est rendue par l’animation de l’ACA. / Our aim is to render expressive multimodal behaviors for Embodied conversational agents, ECAs. ECAs are entities endowed with communicative and emotional capabilities; they have human-like appearance. When an ECA is speaking or laughing, it is capable of displaying autonomously behaviors to enrich and complement the uttered speech and to convey qualitative information such as emotion. Our research lies in the data-driven approach. It focuses on generating the multimodal behaviors for a virtual character speaking with different emotions. It is also concerned with simulating laughing behavior on an ECA. Our aim is to study and to develop human-like animation generators for speaking and laughing ECA. On the basis of the relationship linking speech prosody and multimodal behaviors, our animation generator takes as input human uttered audio signals and output multimodal behaviors. Our work focuses on using statistical framework to capture the relationship between the input and the output signals; then this relationship is rendered into synthesized animation. In the training step, the statistical framework is trained based on joint features, which are composed of input and of output features. The relation between input and output signals can be captured and characterized by the parameters of the statistical framework. In the synthesis step, the trained framework is used to produce output signals (facial expression, head and torso movements) from input signals (F0, energy for speech or pseudo-phoneme of laughter). The relation captured in the training phase can be rendered into the output signals. Our proposed module is based on variants of Hidden Markov Model (HMM), called Contextual HMM. This model is capable of capturing the relationship between human motions and speech (or laughter); then such relationship is rendered into the synthesized animations.

Introduktion: Arbetsrelaterad stress är ett ökande folkhälsoproblem i Sverige och kan leda till allvarliga sjukdomar som hjärtinfarkt och depression. Detaljhandeln är särskilt utsatt på grund av förändringar i butiksmarkanden, vilket bland annat leder till ökat ensamarbete. Skratt kan vara en kostnadseffektiv hälsopromotion som minskar stressnivåerna i kroppen. Syfte: Studien syftar till att undersöka om det finns ett samband mellan att skratta och minskad arbetsrelaterad stress bland anställda inom detaljhandeln. Samt att undersöka skillnaden mellan benägenhet att skratta i förhållande till upplevd arbetsrelaterad stress utifrån kön, befattningsgrad, ålder och anställningstid. Metod: En tvärsnittsstudie genomfördes på anställda inom detaljhandeln (n =76). Enkätundersökningen utformades för att mäta självrapporterat skattad nivå av arbetsrelaterad stress och benägenheten att skratta på jobbet. Data analyserades i SPSS med hjälp av Chi-två-test för att undersöka sambandet mellan skattad stress och skrattbenägenhet. Samt T-test och ANOVA-test för att undersöka skillnaden mellan grupper. Resultat: Resultatet av Chi-två-testet visade att det finns ett signifikant samband mellan hur ofta individer skrattar på jobbet och upplevd arbetsrelaterad stress hos anställda inom detaljhandeln. Vidare analyserades skillnader i benägenhet att skratta baserat på kön, befattning och ålder, varav inga signifikanta skillnader observerades. Slutsats: Slutsatsen av undersökningen är att skratt på arbetsplatsen kan ha positiv inverkan på upplevdarbetsrelaterad stress hos anställda inom detaljhandeln. Implementering av skrattyoga som hälsofrämjande promotion kan minska långtidssjukskrivningar som beror på stressrelaterade sjukdomar och därmed förbättra folkhälsan i Sverige. / Introduction: Work-related stress is an increasing public health problem in Sweden that can lead to stress-related diseases such as heart attack and depression. The retail sector is particularly vulnerable due to changes in the retail market, which includes increased solitary work. It appears that laughter can be a cost-effective health promotion strategy that reduces stress levels in the body. Aim: The study aims to investigate whether there is a correlation between laughter and decreased work-related stress among retail employees. The study also aims to examine the difference between the propensity to laugh in relation to perceived work-related stress based on gender, position level, age and length of employment. Method: A cross-sectional study was conducted on retail employees (n=76). The survey was designed to measure self-reported levels of work-related stress and propensity to laughing at work. Data was analyzed in SPSS by using a Chi-square test to examine the correlation between perceived stress and laughter propensity, as well as a T-test and a ANOVA- test to examine the differences between groups. Results: The result of the Chi-square test showed that there is a significant correlation between how often individuals laugh at work and perceived work-related stress among retail employees. Furthermore, difference in laughter propensity based on gender, position and age were analyzed, of which no significant difference was observed. Conclusion: The conclusion of the study is that laughter in the workplace can have a positive impact on perceived work-related stress among retail employees. Implementing laughter yoga as a health-promoting intervention can reduce long-term sick leave due to stress-related diseases and thus improve public health in Sweden.

Cette étude se fixe un triple objectif. Il s’agira d’abord de décrire les représentations textuelles du rire dans Le Roman comique de Scarron, en établissant d’une part les conditions de possibilité du comique et, d’autre part, en montrant la dette qu’a contractée le genre de l’histoire comique du XVIIe siècle auprès de la poétique de la comédie classique. Nous préciserons ensuite la nature et le sens à donner aux stratégies dramaturgiques mises en œuvre par Scarron pour rendre compte de l’humanité comique, tantôt disqualifiée, toujours remise en question. Nous mettrons enfin en évidence l’originalité de la structure du roman de Scarron qui accueille contradictoirement des esthétiques ennemies. Expérience de l’insubordination et affirmation d’une conscience critique, le rire de Scarron, en même temps qu’il brouille les hiérarchies culturelles, littéraires et idéologiques de l’âge classique, induit une rhétorique de la lecture comique et délivre une vision sceptique du monde. Innervée par ce rire protéiforme et ambivalent, notre étude propose donc une interprétation globale du roman scarronien à partir de l’analyse détaillée de sa poétique. / The following study has three main goals. We will first describe the textual representations of laughter in Scarron’s Le Roman comique, establishing on the one hand the conditions of possibility of the comic and by showing, on the other hand, the debt that the seventeenth century’s comic novels have contracted towards the poetics of the comedy. We will then identify the nature and meaning of the dramaturgical strategies used by Scarron to represent his comical characters, sometimes disqualified but always questionned. Finally, we will highlight the originality of Scarron’s novel structure that hosts contradictory aesthetics. While it blurs the frontiers of cultural, literary and ideological hierarchies, Scarron’s laughter, an experience of insubordination and an affirmation of a critical consciousness, induces a certain way of reading comedy and delivers a skeptical view of classical age’s world. Animated by this protean and ambivalent laughter, our study proposes a global interpretation of Scarron’s novel based on a detailed analysis of his poetics.