MS Glasgow Hunter 252 is the sole surviving manuscript copy of the 'Cent Nouvelles Nouvelles'. The present PhD thesis, funded by a Glasgow University Scholarship and supervised by James Simpson and Peter Davies, explores the language of this collection of bawdy tales, attributed to the court of Philippe III de Bourgogne (1396-1467). Most existing studies on the language of the 'Cent Nouvelles Nouvelles' have offered a literary (e.g. stylistic, narratological) perspective, and very few have considered the document within the wider context of French historical linguistics. The present thesis aims to fill this gap by: •Presenting elements of linguistic interest within the document (dialectalisms, archaisms, rare features, cultural references, etc.), through a comprehensive survey of phonology, morphology, syntax and vocabulary. •Expanding and reassessing existing theories on orthographic standardisation and dialectal input in written and, more speculatively, spoken Middle French. •Providing scriptological evidence towards the localisation of other textual resources within the online 'Dictionnaire du moyen français (1330-1500)'. •Investigating the authenticity of the mise-en-scène of the 'Cent Nouvelles Nouvelles'; reflecting on linguistic practices and note-taking at the Court of Burgundy. •Exploring spoken language as rendered by direct speech passages, with special consideration of linguistic variation and stereotyping. •Publishing textual databases for future analysis (tables of main spelling variants, alphabetical list of words, etc.).

Albert Camus' 40. Todestag ist Anlaß, die literarische, kulturelle und politisch-soziale Bedeutung des Autors für die ehemals sozialistischen Länder zu dokumentieren. Camus' Interesse für diese Länder und die Unbestechlichkeit seines Urteils konnten von den oppositionellen Kräften als wirksame Unterstützung wahrgenommen werden; das belegen die Beiträge von acht LiteraturwissenschaftlerInnen, ÜbersetzerInnen und Kulturschaffenden, die an der Rezeption Camus' maßgeblich beteiligt waren und sind. Dabei wird deutlich, daß sich in der Auseinandersetzung mit Camus' Werk eine politische Haltung kundtat, die nicht selten eine Lebenshaltung und -entscheidung war.

In mainstream literary histories, Aloysius Bertrand (1807-1841) is still remembered as the canonical inventor of the prose poem in France. The established classification of Gaspard de la Nuit (1842) within the realm of the prose poem inevitably involves a retrospective appreciation of Bertrand’s work in light of the better-known authors that succeeded him in the history of this genre, such as Baudelaire and Mallarmé. The result is that Bertrand is often viewed as the inventor and/or the precursor of this genre; an important but, ultimately, minor contributor to its development. This hindsight brings with it a risk of critical anachronism against which Bertrand's contribution is often downplayed, especially because his thematic choices are seen to be outmoded, when compared to works by poets writing decades later. This thesis is a re-examination of Bertrand's Gaspard de la Nuit, incorporating an analysis of the cultural context that contributed to its production. The central argument is that in order to fairly assess Bertrand’s work, it is crucial to consider the poet’s contribution to, as well as his position in, the wider cultural exchange typical of his time. Using this contextual and historical approach, this thesis examines and challenges some of the main traditional considerations of Bertrand, such as his being a petit romantique, his provincialism, his unoriginality, and his role as the precursor and/or inventor of the prose poem. The overall aim is to assess fairly Bertrand’s unique synthesis of contemporary cultural and literary material with his own original work. By emphasising the crucial role of cultural exchange at the time of Gaspard de la Nuit’s production, we are thus able to begin to understand Bertrand in his own terms, rather than those of his successors, ourselves included, challenging commonly-held views and opening up new avenues for research.

In this thesis I suggest that the work of the four contemporary poets studied manifests the vital role perceptual experience plays in the creation of literary texts. I engage primarily in the analysis of particular texts in order to argue for a shift in critical focus away from the explicit manipulation or exteriorization of the physical aspects of poetry (for example versification and explicit visual presentation) in order to concentrate on the role sensory aspects of thought play within it. Emphasis is therefore put on the way these poets draw from sensory experience, and the effect this has on the way their poetry functions. A shift away from traditional critical vocabulary is considered necessary in part due to the fact that discussions of the physical aspects of poetry often carry with them a variety of preconceptions concerning the nature of language, thought and the thinking subject. The tendency to pose dividing lines between mind and body, word and image, the physical and non-physical aspects of language has characterized the history of Western thought, and neither literature nor literary criticism have been exempt from the conceptual presuppositions inherent in such binary systems. Here, I consider how the work of Pierre Alferi, Valère Novarina, Anne Portugal and Christophe Tarkos transcends such dualisms, using the analysis of specific works to develop a critical approach that reflects their exploration of the ambiguity of the boundaries that separate different sorts of experience and means of expression. The thesis is therefore structured around the development of three concepts, ‘pensée-vue’, ‘pensée-voix’ and ‘pensée-toucher’, inspired directly by the texts studied, that are intended to indicate the vital role different forms of perception play in both the creation and experience of poetic texts. It is hoped that the development of an approach that emphasizes the connection between thought, perception and creativity will suggest the fertility of a shift in critical focus in domains beyond that of contemporary French poetry.

Contemporary cultural practices sometimes appear dispassionate, distant and clinical—committed to conceptualism or formalism. Yet works by Jacques Roubaud and Jacques Jouet (both members of the Oulipo, a group of experimental writers in France that use formal and mathematical constraints to generate new literary forms) suggest a complex relationship between epistemology and affect. This thesis argues that contemporary literary and artistic projects that appropriate the tropes of clinical procedure and experimental constraint, suggest alternative forms of knowledge that implicate the body and emotions of the experiencing subject. In these projects, affect and emotion travel through reason, logic, system and constraint and are transformed in the process. Therefore any analysis of forms of affect in these works must also consider the procedural and scientific aspect, that which makes them "projects". My research, drawing on recent work that places emphasis on affect, considers these projects as test cases often mediating between a series of dichotomies such as reason/emotion and mathematics/poetry. Curiously it is in the encounter with epistemological systems that the value of affect, embodiment and subjectivity is underscored, and this thesis interrogates the various ways that contemporary projects articulate affect almost despite themselves. By passing through a scientific impulse to inquire about and test the validity of epistemological systems, these projects underscore the role of affect in producing knowledge. This thesis insists on the continued importance of the Oulipo in contemporary culture and seeks to provide a larger, interdisciplinary context for oulipian experimentation by analysing similar works in the visual arts. This thesis has four chapters, each based on the materials that the projects themselves investigate: 1) numbers and mathematics, 2) lists, collection, and census-data, 3) itineraries and travel, 4) weather and meteorology. Projects bear witness to what the poet Lyn Hejinian has called the romance of science: its rigor, patience, thoroughness and speculative imagination (Mirage, 1983, 24) In so doing, these projects reveal forms of affect that only emerge through this 'weird science' as literary and artistic experiments.

The Bible serves as a source for Celestina, but biblical references and reminiscences in the text do not derive from the Scriptures themselves, but from secondary and even tertiary sources. These represent the typical medium of access to the Bible of laymen and, in the case of Celestina, of a very specific group of laymen: university members, which formed the original audience of the work and shared a same way of reading it. Therefore, biblical intertextuality in Celestina is defined by the relation of university members to these sources. When analysed from the perspective of university readers, Celestina becomes a pseudo-contemplative work to which the principles of visual mental representation of affective meditation apply. If read making use of these principles, the didactic and moralising message of the preliminary texts is confirmed and Celestina reveals itself as an admonitory tale against carnal love. Moreover, it appears as a counterfeit sentimental romance, concretely, a reply to "Cárcel de amor", to contemporary love habits and to courtly customs. In addition, reading Celestina from the perspective of an university audience offers a new view on the misuse of biblical references. Instead of being representative of a heterodox attitude toward the Scriptures, these function as a condemnation of the bad use of auctoritates in dialectic contexts. As a result, Celestina can be related to a reformist current in the university world, which was particularly critical to Scholasticism and its teaching methodology. In this sense, Celestina aligns itself with Humanism and, specifically with Christian Humanism. Finally, analysing Celestina from the point of view of university readers explains why a work, which had been originally conceived as a didactic and moralising text, was criticised in the sixteenth century for being inmmoral: audience and times had changed.

Voltaire's role in the luxury debate, the controversy about civilisation, capitalism, and progress which accompanied the birth of modern consumer society in the eighteenth century, is generally limited to his Mondain and its Défense, and reduced to a hedonist apology for luxury. The thesis sets out to re-examine and refute this. It analyses Voltaire's discovery of commercial societies in Holland and England, and, focussing on the latter, it finds that the apology for commerce became a centralising theme in the Lettres philosophiques, explaining its purpose and coherence. The thesis then turns to Voltaire's apology for luxury in the 1730s, analysing how du Châtelet and Voltaire, having recourse to classic Epicureanism and deist voluntarism, transformed Mandeville's Fable of the Bees into a justification of commercial societies. Close readings of the Mondain and its companion pieces provide further proof that Voltaire's position on luxury was more nuanced than previously assumed. The Siècle de Louis XIV and the Essai sur les moeurs demonstrate the importance of luxury in Voltaire's view of civilisation, which in turn serves to explain the shift in Voltaire's appreciation of Montesquieu. The thesis opposes the claim that in later life Voltaire adopted a Rousseauian view of luxury. Examining Voltaire's later poetry on luxury in light of the analyses offered in the previous chapters, it concludes that his position remained consistent and showed no Rousseauian influence. Concluding with Voltaire's last defence of luxury, his entries 'Luxe' in the Dictionnaire philosophique and the Questions sur l'Encyclopédie, the thesis explains, with the help of the Fragments sur l'Inde, why and how his attitude to luxury seemed ambiguous in the latter work. The thesis thus proves that Voltaire's contribution to the debate was not only sustained, independent, and carefully nuanced, but that the debate itself played a crucial rule in Voltaire's thought and writing.

This thesis examines the interweaving metaphorical and material aspects of shipwreck in Renaissance French writing. In a period marked by proliferating transatlantic and other exploration on the one hand, and, on the other, by religious civil wars, the ship was freighted with new political and religious, as well as poetic, significance. This rich symbolism reaches its height in the moments where ships—both real and symbolic—are threatened with disaster. The thesis demonstrates that shipwreck does not function merely as an emblem or poetic motif, but as a part, or the whole, of significant modes of narrative. Shipwreck in this period is rarely, if ever, recounted as a purely aesthetic embellishment: the ethics of spectatorship and of co-operation are of constant concern. I argue that the possibility of ethical distance from shipwreck—imagined through the Lucretian suave mari magno commonplace—is constantly undermined, not least through a sustained focus on the corporeal. Examining the ways in which the ship and the body are made analogous in Renaissance shipwreck writing, I show how bodies are allegorised in nautical terms, and, conversely, how ships themselves become animalised and humanised. Secondly, in many of the texts in my corpus it is shown or anticipated that the description, narration and dramatisation of shipwreck has an impact not only on the bodies of its victims, but on those of spectators, listeners, and readers, too. This insistence on the physicality of shipwreck is also reflected in the dynamic of bricolage that, I argue, informs the production of shipwreck texts in the Renaissance. The dramatic potential of both the disaster and the processes of rebuilding is exploited throughout the century, culminating, as I show, in a shipwreck tragedy. By the late Renaissance, shipwreck is not only the end of a story; it forms, more often than not, its beginning.

The aim of this thesis is to explore the comic art of Molière through the lens of empathy and narcissism, and reciprocally, to show that Molière nourishes Western thought about these phenomena, which can be viewed as opposite ends of a continuum. Every personality has some of each, but the unbalanced egoist has excessive self-love and cannot put himself in another's place. The narcissist is omnipresent in Molière's theatre, but has been heretofore unidentified as such in criticism. This work attempts to fill this gap, and accordingly, my corpus encompasses his 33 extant plays. Furthermore, these psychological concepts are inherently theatrical, especially with respect to whether or not spectators recognize themselves in characters on stage. There is a dialectic relation between reconnaissance and empathy or antipathy, and, therefore, laughter. Hence, empathy and narcissism provide a way of looking at characters on stage and at the interaction between the dramatic action and the audience. To explore the former, I investigate endogenous words Molière uses to convey empathy and narcissism; how he portrays empathizers and narcissists visually through their adherence to and breaking of social codes; and how cognition influences their ability to change. For the latter, I demonstrate how early modern querelles surrounding Molière's plays involve these notions; and how his metatheatrical discourses reveal that Molière transports his spectators 'hors de soi': a state that mirrors romantic love and provides pleasure. Taken in this framework, I argue that Molière's work can be seen as anti-narcissistic; if his spectators knew themselves in the mirror he held up, laughing was a means of precluding blind empathy. Thus, employing tools from modern psychology and neuroscience and notions from the seventeenth century, this thesis evaluates how Molière's characters provide us, today, with a means for better understanding the place of narcissism in our occidental world.

This thesis examines the eight issues of Stéphane Mallarmé's 1874 fashion magazine, La Dernière Mode, focussing on ideas of process. On the one hand, it views La Dernière Mode as a vital phase in the evolution of Mallarmé's aesthetic and, on the other, it sees the discourse of fashion itself as being in a continual state of trial and re-definition. The thesis begins with a citation from Mallarmé's 1886 article, 'Mimique'; this passage showcases the complex relationship between the interpenetrating themes of Time, Drama and Fiction, which form the three main chapter headings. Taking a thematic and linguistic approach, the thesis will explore literary, theoretical and philosophical mechanisms in La Dernière Mode, assessing ways in which these can be seen to have evolved from ideas established in Mallarmé's early verse and prose writing, and tracing their evolution over the course of the poet's later works. This study will also acknowledge the importance of crisis, both personal and social, and its influence on Mallarmé's aesthetic, showing La Dernière Mode to be part of a dynamic process by which the parameters of literature are tested and re-defined. My study aims to contribute to the development of recent scholarship of Mallarmé, which acknowledges and celebrates his engagement with the material world and his interest in the aesthetic value of the practices of everyday life. Challenging views of Mallarmé as the 'ivory-tower poet' and destabilizing distinctions between his poetic and 'alimentary' works, this thesis thus makes a case for seeing La Dernière Mode as a testing ground for fundamental aspects of the poet's aesthetic with significant implications for the direction his œuvre would take in the 1880s and 1890s. The fashion magazine can thus, I contend, be considered as having a dynamic relationship with the poet's unattainable ideal of the 'Livre'.