La tenture de la 'Dame à la licorne' est le plus souvent interprétée comme une allégorie des sens physiques, mais son iconographie se distingue par le registre héraldique. Chaque composition s’organise tel un emblème héraldique de sorte que les personnages principaux remplacent l’écu tant du point de vue visuel que fonctionnel. Si cette tenture est fréquemment citée comme un monument à la réussite socioprofessionnel du commanditaire, on n’a jamais cherché à comprendre comment le registre scénique contribue à la représentation du commanditaire. Autre lacune dans le corpus de littérature, l’importance de la figure féminine dans cette image est restée jusqu’alors ignorée. La présente étude propose donc d’étudier la 'Dame à la licorne' et sa fonction représentative en analysant les traditions culturelles, littéraires et iconographiques, ainsi que les réalités sociohistoriques, qui sous-tendent l’image d’excellence sociale que le commanditaire souhaite rattacher à sa personne et à sa famille. / The 'Lady and the Unicorn' tapestries are most often interpreted as an allegory of the physical senses, but their iconography is remarkable for its integration of armorial elements. Each composition is organized like a heraldic emblem, such that the main figures replace the coat-of-arms in its position and its function. Though this work is frequently identified as a monument to the patron’s socio-professional success, no effort has been made to understand how the scenes contribute to his personal representation. The lack of interest for the decidedly female character of this iconographic programme is another weakness in previous studies of these tapestries. This doctoral dissertation proposes to examine the 'Lady and the Unicorn' and its representative function by analysing the cultural, literary and iconographic traditions, as well as the socio-historic realities, that shape the image of social excellence the patron constructs in order to represent himself and his family.

Doctorat en philosophie et lettres / info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished

Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) / The fragmented bodies and lives of postcolonial Caribbean women examined in Caribbean literature beget struggle and psychological ruin. The characters portrayed in novels by postcolonial Caribbean writers Edwidge Danticat, Michelle Cliff, and Shani Mootoo are marginalized as “Other” by a Western patriarchal discourse that works to silence them because of their gender, color, class, and sexuality. Marginalization participates in the act of fragmentation of these characters because it challenges their sense of identity. Fragmentation means fractured; in terms of these fictive characters, fragmentation results from multiple traumas, each trauma causing another break in their wholeness. Postcolonial scholars have identified the causes and effects of fragmentation on the postcolonial subject, and they argue one’s need to heal because of it. Danticat, Cliff, and Mootoo prove that wholeness is not possible for the postcolonial Caribbean woman, so rather than ruminate on that truth, they examine the journey of the postcolonial Caribbean woman as a way of making meaning of the pieces of her life. This project contends that fragmentation – and the fracture it produces – does not bind these women to negative existences; in fact, the female subjects of Danticat, Cliff, and Mootoo locate power in their fragmentation. The texts studied include Danticat’s "Breath, Eyes, Memory" (1994) and "The Farming of Bones" (1999), Cliff’s "Abeng" (1984) and "No Telephone to Heaven" (1987), and Mootoo’s "Cereus Blooms at Night" (1996) and "He Drown She in the Sea" (2005).