La présente thèse de doctorat est consacrée à la problématique du Néant dans les œuvres romanesques de Georges Bataille et Raymond Queneau. Une lecture comparée de ces deux auteurs ne semble pas a priori évidente tant leurs œuvres sont éloignées, aussi bien d’un point de vue thématique que d’un point de vue stylistique. Pourtant, les deux auteurs entendent faire du roman, et de la littérature en général, le lieu d’une expérience de pensée leur permettant d’envisager les problèmes fondamentaux de l’homme. C’est à ce titre qu’ils se confrontent au néant de l’existence, sujet d’angoisse qui suscite volontiers le vertige. Nous nous intéressons dans un premier temps à la constitution de cette expérience du Néant, en soulignant qu’elle relève d’une configuration de pensée aussi bien variée qu’hétérodoxe, reflétant l’émulation intellectuelle qui caractérise l’amitié de Bataille et Queneau. Dans une deuxième partie, nous nous interrogeons plus spécifiquement sur l’intérêt de l’écriture romanesque pour traiter de la question du Néant, en particulier au regard de la philosophie. La dernière partie aborde la problématique de la lecture qui permet de faire du Néant inscrit dans les textes une véritable expérience. Tout au long de ce travail, nous montrons ainsi la singularité d’une pensée littéraire dans le rapport problématique qu’elle entretient avec la philosophie. / This PhD work is devoted to the subject of Nothingness in the fiction works by George Bataille and Raymond Queneau. A comparative reading of those two authors is far from obvious in theory because their works are so remote from each other, from a thematic point of view as well as from a stylistic point of view. However, both authors are intent upon turning the novel, and literature in general, into a thought provoking place enabling them to face the fundamental problems of Man. It is for that reason that they address the nothingness of life, a source of anguish prone to provoke vertigo. In a first part, we will reflect upon the building of that experience of nothingness, by underlining that it derives from a frame of mind as varied as heterodox, mirroring the intellectual emulation that is a key feature of the friendship between Bataille and Queneau. In a second part, we will more specifically wonder about the interest of fiction writing to deal with the subject of nothingness, in particular in relation with philosophy. The last part focuses on the question of reading which enables to turn Nothingness inscribed in the texts into a real experience. Throughout this work, we thus show the uniqueness of a literary thinking in its problematic relation with philosophy.

This thesis combines a philosophical interpretation of Epicurean attitudes to language with literary analysis of the language of DRN. Chapters 1-2 describe Epicurean attitudes to diachronic and synchronic linguistic phenomena. In the first chapter I claim that the Epicurean account of the first stage of the development of language involves pre-rational humans acting under a ‘strong’ form of compulsion. The analogies with which Lucretius describes this process were motivated by a structural similarity between the Epicurean accounts of phylogenetic and ontogenetic psychology. Chapter 2 explores the Epicurean account of word use and recognition, central to which are ‘conceptions’. These are attitudes which express propositions; they are not mental images. Προλήψεις, a special class of conception, are self-evidently true basic beliefs about how objects in the world are categorized which, alongside the non-doxastic criteria of perceptions and feelings, play a foundational role in enquiry. Chapter 3 offers a reconstruction of an Epicurean theory of metaphor. Metaphor, for Epicureans, involves the subordination of additional conceptions to words to create secondary meanings. Secondary meanings are to be understood by referring back to primary meanings. Accordingly, Lucretius’ use of metaphor regularly involves the juxtaposition in the text of primary and secondary uses of terms. An account of conceptual metaphor in DRN is given in which the various conceptual domains from which Lucretius draws his metaphorical language are mapped and explored. Chapter 4 presents a new argument against ‘atomological’ readings of Lucretius’ atoms/letters analogies. Lucretian implicit etymologies involve the illustration, via juxtaposition, of language change across time. This is fully in keeping with the Epicurean account of language development. Chapter 5 describes Lucretius’ reflections on and interactions with the Greek language. I suggest that the study of lexical Hellenisms in DRN must be sensitive to the distinction between lexical borrowing and linguistic code-switching. I then give an account of morphological calquing in the poem, presenting it as a significant but overlooked strategy for Lucretian vocabulary-formation.

Mémoire numérisé par la Division de la gestion de documents et des archives de l'Université de Montréal.

Il existe un théâtre des pensées, un espace de création et de jeu où se révèle l’activité pensante. Dans leurs essais, Péguy, Valéry, Artaud et Michaux ont pratiqué un tel théâtre. Par-delà leurs différences, leurs pensées sont remarquables en ce qu’elles cherchent à se représenter à elles-mêmes à travers un modèle théâtral, lequel se configure au point d’intersection de trois théâtres. Le premier renvoie au théâtre réel du premier XXe siècle, qui voit se développer des expérimentations de mise en scène. Les lieux de spectacles et les milieux artistiques dans lesquels évoluent les quatre auteurs abordés participent à la diffusion de ces formes modernes de théâtralité, qui constituent de nouvelles possibilités de représentation dont s’imprègne leur imaginaire. Dans cet imaginaire se déploie un deuxième théâtre, théâtre intérieur auquel diverses voies – mystiques, poétiques (Baudelaire et Mallarmé) et philosophiques (Freud et Bergson) – donnent accès. Un troisième théâtre s’ouvre dans les textes, en se réalisant dans les formes et les valeurs de l’essai. La généalogie du genre, qui passe par Montaigne et Nietzsche, révèle comment, au cœur de l’écriture essayistique, interagissent théâtralisation des pensées et théâtralisation du texte. Une poïétique théâtrale se fonde que les quatre auteurs mettent en œuvre. Les pensées théâtralisées, faisant appel à des figures et des dispositifs qui rappellent ceux qui s’inventent sur les scènes modernes, sont mises en espace, en mouvement et en voix. Les textes veulent donner à voir ce théâtre des pensées où gestes, costumes, décors, éclairages, chœurs, etc., forment des compositions signifiantes. / There is such a thing as a theatre of the mind, a space for creation and play, in which the process of thinking is revealed. Péguy, Valéry, Artaud and Michaud have all experienced this in their essays. Beyond the differences that distinguish their works, their thinking processes are remarkable as they seek to reveal themselves through a model that finds its origin at the intersection of three forms of theatre. The first is the actual theatre of the early 20th Century, in which many experiments occur in the art of mise en scène. The stages and artistic settings in which these four authors evolve are vessels for the transmission of new and modern forms of theatricality ; they present the authors with new possibilities as far as performance is concerned, possibilities from which their minds take inspiration. On this inner stage of the mind, a second form of theatre unfolds to which various paths – mystical, poetic (Baudelaire and Mallarmé) and philosophical (Freud and Bergson) – give access. A third type of theatre can then be found in the four authors’ works, through the various shapes and values of essayistic writing. The genre’s genealogy, from Montaigne to Nietzsche, reveals, at its very core, an interaction between dramatizations of the mind and the text. In other words, a theatrical poietic emerges, which the four authors employ. The dramatized thoughts, calling on devices and mechanisms reminiscent of those being invented on modern stages, are put into place and pushed into movement, given a voice. The texts seek to show this theatre of the mind in which actions, costumes, décor, lighting, chorus, etc., intertwine, forming meaningful compositions

This thesis argues that tasting appears as an act of creative empathy and of knowledge acquisition in Virginia Woolf's writing. First contextualising my discussion within Woolf's own reading of the aesthetic and literary history of ‘taste', I then use Cixous' essay ‘Extreme Fidelity' (renamed ‘The Author in Truth') as a theoretical entryway to passages from The Voyage Out, Jacob's Room, A Room of One's Own, Mrs Dalloway, To the Lighthouse, The Waves, and Orlando which centralise the role of gustatory pleasure in creativity and epistemology. Cixous elaborates an oral, ‘poetic' and feminine ontology rooted in a receptivity to sensual pleasure, a concept that assists my reading of Woolf in several aspects. I suggest that in Woolf, both literal and figurative experiences of taste contribute to physical and psychic repletion, consequently eliciting empathy with the other (Cixous' term). This empathy which originates in the body constitutes an epistemological source distinct from intellectual or emotional intelligences, but one equally integral to the creative process. I assert that empathy features in Woolf as an extension or enlargement of the imagination through which a subject incorporates knowledge of alterity, but without consuming the other - as in the act of tasting. This ideation differs from notions of empathy as an analogical mapping or projection of self onto other. I discuss the ways in which a ‘gustatory epistemology' informs Woolf's approach to her craft, shapes the interrelationships of her characters, and materialises stylistically in her development of a ‘poetic' prose language.

A tese se dedica ao estudo das relações entre o poético e o político na escritura de Paul Valéry entre 1940 e 1945, anos arrasados pela segunda guerra e também os últimos da vida do escritor. O período estudado começa, assim, no verão de 1940, quando a França perde a batalha contra os alemães, Paris é ocupada pelos nazistas e Valéry, abrigado no norte do país, põe-se a escrever o terceiro Fausto que ele há tempos desejava compor. A pesquisa se estende até maio de 1945, pleno apogeu da Libération Française, quando o escritor publica em jornal gaulista (aquelas que [não] deveriam ser) as Ultima Verba do vencedor do conflito, e termina o poema em prosa LAnge depois de duas décadas de trabalho sobre esse texto. Seguindo a escritura diária dos cahiers de Valéry e as notas do curso de poïética ministrado pelo poeta no Collége de France naqueles anos, a tese busca apreender como as estratégias poéticas das obras analisadas Ultima Verba, LAnge e Mon Faust são concebidas para enfrentar os acontecimentos esmagadores daquele período. Com efeito, elas modulam recursos sensíveis, significativos e formais do ato poético, pondo em contradicção as forças heterogêneas do discurso e sua dicção, da voz e do pensamento (lógos e foné), ser e convenção, estabelecendo uma implicação recíproca do poético e do político: o poeta como político profundo, entre as majorités do som e do sentido. Essa implicação põe em jogo a autonomia e a soberania da linguagem poética, os modos de circulação do discurso numa sociedade democrática e o gesto do poeta frente às aporias do processo de escrita. Desse modo, procura-se menos revelar a política de suas escolhas (as vias que o escritor abre ou fecha; ainda que isso seja parte do problema, não é o principal) do que pensar na política de sua poética, perceptível na modulação das diferentes maneiras de ver que compõem o poema, uma modulação que cala ou interrompe, escuta ou prolonga suas hesitações. Assim, veremos que os dilemas da fiducia política e da ciência moderna elaborados nos brouillons do ciclo fáustico e nas notas do curso de poïética reencontram a hesitação prolongada, o inacabamento e infinitização contínua do ato poético, sempre em curso de driblar injunções fiduciárias e técnicas, num momento em que a Europa moderna tinha mais do que nunca carência de repensar os pactos, moedas, projetos e o próprio para, [vencedor, nesse] momento em curso na literatura e na comunidade. / The thesis aims to study the relations between the poetic and the political in the writings of Paul Valéry from 1940 to 1945, a time crushed by the war and the last years of the poets life. This study covers a period that goes from the summer of 1940 during the last weeks of the Battle of France, when Paris was occupied by the germans and the poet, sheltered in the countrys north, starts to write the third Faust that for a long time he wished to write up to may 1945, in the pinnacle of the Libération Française, when the writer publishes in a gaullist journal (those that should [not] be) the ultima verba of the wars winner, and completes, after two decades of writing labour, the prose poem LAnge. By following the the cahiers daily writings and the Collège de Frances course in poetics lesson notes of those years, we seek to understand the strategies conceived to confront the periods crushing events, specially in the analysed texts Ultima Verba, LAnge and Mon Faust. In fact, they modulate the aesthetic infinitys sensible, significant and formal resources in the contradiction of the heterogeneous forces of the discourse and its diction (its elocution), voice and thought (logos and phone), being and convention, thus establishing a reciprocal implication of the poetic and the political: the poet as a profound politician who works between the majorities of sound and sense. This implication reflects upon the poetic languages autonomy and sovereignty, the discourse circulation modes in a democratic society and the poets act in relation to the writing process issues. Thus, this gesture would be put in place less for revealing the politics in Valérys choices (the paths he opens or closes; this is also part of the problem, but it is not the main question) than for thinking about his poetics own politics, one deployed in the modulation of the different manners of seeing implicated in the poem, a modulation that silents or stops, listens or prolongs their hesitations. Then, we shall see that the fiducias politics and modern science dilemmas elaborated by the faustic cycle drafts and by the course in poetics lesson notes find theirselves in the company of the verse as prolonged hesitation, of the poetics act incompleteness and infinitization, always in the process of dribbling the fiduciary and technical injunctions, in a time when modern Europe had more than ever to rethink the pacts, currencies, projects and even the stop, [winner, in this] moment that had currency in literature and community.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of California, Los Angeles, 2004. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 222-229). Also available on the Internet.

Thesis (Ph. D. in German)--Vanderbilt University, May 2007. / Title from title screen. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas at Austin, 2000. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 271-277). Available also in a digital version from Dissertation Abstracts.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of California, Berkeley, 2000. / Includes abstract. Typescript. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 341-362).