For the past twenty years, there has been a growing trend in translation studies to follow a deconstructionist philosophy and give translators authorship of their work. Translation, in this sense, is no longer a target language equivalence of an 'original' text by an author, but rather a creative process of 're-writing.' In this regard, translators have the possibility of showing their own voice in the translation. The purpose of this thesis is to examine whether either of the French or English translators (Albert Bensoussan and Suzanne Jill Levine, respectively) of the Cuban novel Tres Tristes Tigres (Barcelona: 1967) intervened in the text to show their own voices; and in Levine's case, whether this intervention corresponded to a declared ideology of 'subversion.' A systematic analysis of the wordplay in Chapters 16, 17 and 18 of the two translations reveal significant differences. Whereas the French translation has only minor adjustments, the English translation shows a large number of alterations to existing source text wordplay as well as additional instances of wordplay. In the final tally, there are almost twice as many instances of wordplay in Levine's English translation than in the Spanish source text. From the results of the analysis and from Levine's own self-portrayal in her book The Subversive Scribe (St. Paul: 1991), it would appear that her extensive intervention in the text is ideologically motivated. However, closer examination of circumstances surrounding the actual translation process reveals that the author, Guillermo Cabrera Infante, greatly influenced the final 're-writing.' Therefore, Levine's translation was not so much subversion as it was a sub-version of the original.

La relation épistolaire entre Jean-Jacques Rousseau et la comtesse d'Houdetot a ceci de particulier qu'elle se transforme en échange mortifère. Cette correspondance met en évidence la potentialité démiurgique de l'écriture épistolaire et sa dimension solipsiste. La lettre confère à l'épistolier des pouvoirs déréalisants qui lui permettent de transformer l'autre et la réalité à l'image de ses désirs. Cependant, les créations générées par l'écriture s'avèrent plus satisfaisantes. L'épistolier en vient donc à préférer l'écriture à la vie, la fiction à la réalité. L'échange fait disparaître le destinataire au profit de son double d'ancre et de papier, ce qui revient à dire que le scripteur dialogue avec lui-même par le détour d'un être fantasme. Au terme de cette double métamorphose, celle de l'autre et celle de la réalité, il ne reste plus au moi que lui-même comme partenaire et, croyant à la maîtrise parfaite de l'autre et du monde, il se suffit à lui-même comme Dieu.

Le foisonnement des oeuvres historiques dans le panorama littéraire témoigne d'une véritable "vogue du roman historique". Or l'analyse des formes plus contemporaines du genre met au jour une modification des paramètres traditionnels de construction de l'Histoire. C'est ce postulat qui nous a incité à consacrer notre étude au roman L'enfant de Bruges (1999) de Gilbert Sinoué. Quelle place et quelle fonction le roman assigne-t-il aux personnages attestés et fictifs? Quelle est la nature des procédés de représentation du personnel et de la société du roman et quelles sont leurs répercussions sur la construction de l'Histoire? Quel est l'impact de l'importation des techniques propres au genre policier sur le mode de composition? Quelle est la validité d'une telle approche sur le plan historique? Notre réflexion s'attardera à dégager les composantes narratologiques et discursives qui président à la construction du passé dans le roman de Gilbert Sinoué.

Helen Fielding's Bridget Jones novels are popular with countless readers all over the world. They are "ripe for feminist interpretation and investigation" because they are "contemporary women's novels" that discuss the everyday lives of women, particularly unmarried women in the West (Whelehan 2004, 38). Imelda Whelehan argues that if the Bridget Jones novels do not "offer a 'true' reflection of contemporary single life for women, they perhaps present its tensions more boldly than ever" (2004, 30). This thesis is a feminist study of the Bridget Jones novels and the film adaptation of Bridget Jones's Diary, focussing on how discourses of feminism and otherness appear in Fielding's texts and in the film, and how the major women characters use them to interpret their own lives. Chapter One investigates the ways in which Bridget, Sharon, and Pam Jones understand feminism and employ feminist language in Fielding's Bridget Jones's Diary (1996). Chapter Two explores how characters who are Other---those who are racially and ethnically different from Bridget, her friends, and her family---create barriers between the white, heterosexual couples in Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason (1999). Finally, Chapter Three turns to the 2001 film adaptation of Bridget Jones's Diary in order to demonstrate how prevalent themes in the first novel, including feminism, go missing in the adaptation.

Cette thèse en création littéraire comprend deux parties. La première partie propose un recueil de poèmes, Fragments d'autobiographies, dont certains "empruntent" des vers au poète portugais Fernando Pessoa et à ses hétéronymes. Sa présence se manifeste de trois façons: des emprunts tels quels, des emprunts parfois modifiés et des allusions. Cette intertextualité explicite et implicite m'a permis d'agrandir la perspective de mon écriture poétique. Après trois recueils de poèmes publiés, il m'a semblé qu'une thèse en création littéraire était le lieu le plus propice à ce type de création expérimentale. La deuxième partie offre une réflexion sur l'influence protéiforme de l'emprunt dans le processus de création littéraire. Dans le premier chapitre, je mets en relief les théories d'Annick Bouillaguet sur l'emprunt et d'Yzabelle Martineau sur le plagiat, ainsi que les expériences d'Oulipo (l'Ouvroir de littérature potentielle) au sujet de l'écriture sous contraintes. Suit un chapitre où je présente Fernando Pessoa et ses trois principaux hétéronymes: Alvaro de Campos, Alberto Caiero et Ricardo Reis, tout en précisant pourquoi je me suis intéressé à ce poète portugais. Dans le dernier chapitre, j'analyse les différents types d'emprunts que j'ai utilisés pour mieux comprendre comment l'intertextualité a influencé mon processus d'écriture. Je conclus en indiquant comment ce travail sur la poésie---celle de Pessoa et la mienne---m'a amené à changer mes habitudes de lecture ainsi que ma façon de concevoir l'écriture.

The First World War caught Europe's military establishments largely unprepared for a conflict that exceeded contemporary expectations of length, scale and advances in technology. The British Army was no exception. The British Expeditionary Force (BEF) may have entered the war as one of the most professional forces in the field, but throughout the war British generalship suffered from a distinct lack of imagination in their attempts at coping with the realities of modern warfare. Indeed, the names of such battles as Loos, Arras, the Somme, and Passchendaele evoke images of tragic and unnecessary waste of thousands of lives. Amongst all the major protagonists, Britain alone possessed a truly extensive catalogue of experience pointing to what a future conflict on continental Europe might entail, courtesy of the many colonial wars Britain fought during the nineteenth century. During the Omdurman campaign (1898) and the South African War (1899-1902) in particular, the brutal effectiveness of the machine gun, smokeless gunpowder, quick-firing artillery, trench warfare, and the complexities of organizing large formations were clearly demonstrated. These lessons seemed mostly forgotten or ignored, despite the existence of substantial reform sentiment and current criticisms of the Army's performance in Africa prior to 1914. Why had the British military failed to capitalize on its experiences in its African campaigns and bring those lessons with them into the First World War? Almost the entire British Army High Command from 1914 to 1918 had participated in the Sudanese and South African campaigns, yet virtually to the man they proved remarkably resilient in rejecting the lessons on modern warfare learned by the lower ranks at a very high human cost. Even when these lessons were reinforced by the observations of British officers during the Russo-Japanese War (1904-1905), they went largely ignored or misinterpreted. What prevented the senior British officers from heeding the voices of commonsense? Experiences during the South African War were considered anomalous and it was suggested impossible to apply to a European context. There was also a general trend of imparting more emphasis on personal training and qualities of elan as the best method of dealing with advanced battlefield technology. Britain's social hierarchy also played a part in this process, abetted by the fact that the majority of senior officers were from the Cavalry Arm, perhaps the most resistant to any sort of change or reform and comprised mainly of members of Britain's elite class. In addition, the British Army, like any other army in history, suffered from an institutional unwillingness to adopt new ideas and technology. A notoriously spendthrift British peace time government compounded the situation by ensuring that not only would there be substantial resistance to reform but that any reform would be constrained by tight fiscal considerations of Parliament and His Majesty's Treasury. This thesis will examine the reasons why the lessons of imperial and African conflicts were largely dismissed by military strategists on the eve of the Great War and reveal how such thinking lay in a long running conflict between the Victorian outlook on life and the new realities of the world ushered in by Industrialism. With the rise of Industrialism in Britain, this clash began to take form as the established British elite class saw a host of social ills residing within the movement that threatened their perceived order of society, especially their place at the top of that order. This clash of "progress versus nostalgia," a term coined by Martin J. Weiner in his book English Culture and the Decline of the Industrial Spirit 1850-1980, was a driving force behind the British High Command's struggle to undo the reform efforts of men such as Field Marshal Roberts and Richard Haldane as the Victorian/Edwardian elite class sought to bring this conflict to a resolution. The end result was that in 1914, the British Army, having only partially benefited from its African experience, was still in a state of transition and even those small gains had vanished along with most of the original BEF by early 1915.

L'oeuvre d'Émile Zola, Les Rougon-Macquart, offre au lecteur une vaste critique du Second Empire et des réalisations effectuées sous l'empereur Napoléon III. Son proche collaborateur, le Baron Haussmann, est par extension une cible. Les transformations de Paris permettent l'émergence d'une nouvelle classe de bourgeois enrichis par les spéculations tandis qu'elles ébranlent le monde politique et refaçonnent la société parisienne. Zola, tout en rêvant à un monde meilleur, trouve de nombreux arguments qu'il met en avant pour dénoncer les irrégularités d'une ville qui n'a plus de place pour tous. Bien qu'une large part de l'entreprise romanesque soit consacrée à dénoncer les failles du régime napoléonien, une lecture attentive permet de mettre en évidence certains aspects des réalisations architecturales et urbanistiques appréciés par l'auteur. Trois romans attestent particulièrement ce phénomene: La Curée, Le Ventre de Paris et Au Bonheur des Dames. Cette thèse permettra de préciser la conception zolienne de l'architecture et de l'urbanisme du Second Empire.

This study documents the problematic translator-publisher relationship in the case of the English translation of Simone de Beauvoir's Le deuxieme sexe. The socio-historical investigation of the case study demonstrates that the 1953 translation was complicated by several factors: the translator's lack of philosophical knowledge, the editor's demands to cut and simplify the text, the publisher's intention to emphasize the book's scientific cachet, and Beauvoir's lack of cooperation. The investigation focuses on two aspects: the translator's subservience and the involvement of multiple actors. Primarily concerned with the interaction between the translator and other actors, this study seeks answers that require investigation into historical documents and the work of other scholars critical of The Second Sex . In this enquiry, more than one hundred letters between the translator, H. M. Parshley, and the publisher, Knopf, are thoroughly analyzed. The study combines Bruno Latour's and Pierre Bourdieu's sociological concepts in order to provide a more detailed and encompassing examination within the context of Translation Studies. The letter correspondence is the primary evidence on which the study's conclusions are based.

The 1968 Hollywood film Planet of the Apes is an adaptation of the 1963 French novel La Planet des singes and the strategy used to transform the book into an American film reveals some contradictory tendencies. On one hand, the film effaces any evidence of the story's French roots, thus suggesting colonialist objectives. On the other hand, its subversive message, a reflection of the tumultuous political and social climate of the U.S. in the 1960s, seems to support the theory of antropofagia, a radical Brazilian approach based on the metaphor of cannibalism developed to counteract economic and cultural colonialism in Brazil. The inclusion of certain aspects of each of these two translation strategies creates a paradox that says a great deal about American hegemony, Hollywood's treatment of foreign works and marginalization.

This dissertation attempts to stage a creative encounter between a Deleuzian theory of the event and postmodern fictional narratives. More specifically, it situates subjectivities represented in postmodern texts in relation with concepts of chance, choice, and change. I aim to demonstrate how works by Don DeLillo, Paul Auster, Edmund White, and Nicholson Baker approach the subject as an "encountering" at the surface between self and other, inside and outside, and before and after. The postmodern imperative of interconnectivity dramatizes a potentialization of subjectivity through what Brian Massumi calls the event's "openness to being otherwise" ("Like a Thought" xxxiv). Accounting for such openness, particularly in novels rife with repetition, requires a critical appraisal of the present as a changeful operation, where subjectivities are properly expressive of their singular becomings along the lines of their capacities to affect and be affected. It is ultimately my project's contention that chance and choice themselves need to be rigorously theorized in order that we better understand the mechanisms of containment and resistance, but most importantly the conditions for emancipatory change within the postmodernism of a new millenium, and beyond.