Au début du XIXe siècle s’amorce, en réponse à l’instabilité du monde, une crise de la représentation. Elle se traduit, dans les milieux romantiques, par une écriture de l’ambiguïté que l’on a coutume de désigner sous le nom de fantastique. En marge des visions grotesques ou dissonantes qui caractérisent de nombreux textes hoffmanniens, les récits de Charles Nodier, Joseph von Eichendorff, mais également, en partie du premier Gautier ou de Tieck, mettent en place un fantastique onirique, tirant sur le merveilleux. Touchant à l’intime et révélant les désirs cachés du sujet, cette modalité du fantastique sera appréhendée, à rebours d’une tradition critique qui privilégie l’étude de l’événement, sous l’angle du personnage. L’analyse comparée d’un corpus synchronique composé de contes et nouvelles de l’époque romantique se propose ainsi de contribuer à une poétique du fantastique et d’éclairer la relation qu’entretiennent les romantismes français et allemands .Ce travail fait tout d’abord ressortir la présence de rôles récurrents et de modalités de construction communes. Le récit est centré sur la relation unissant une figure fantastique et un sujet, autour duquel gravitent deux types, l’un donnant corps à l’interprétation surnaturelle, l’autre la rejetant. Le fantastique ne naît cependant pas uniquement de caractéristiques ontologiques, mais résulte d’une manipulation, qui joue sur l’évolution des interactions entre les personnages et sur les liens qui se tissent entre les différents niveaux narratifs. Cette manipulation sert un discours anthropologique et esthétique, qui révèle des points de convergence entre les romantismes français et allemands, esthétiques notamment, mais aussi des divergences profondes, quant à l’évaluation du rêve et de la folie ou des rapports entre littérature et religion. / At the beginning of the 19th century, the instability of the world lead to a crisis of representation and to the development of what Todorv called the fantastic genre. Unlike Hoffmann's grotesque or discordant visions, Charles Nodier's and Joseph von Eichendorff's stories are characterised by a dreamlike fantastic that is close to the supernatural.This kind of fantastic is connected with the intimate life of the subject and reveals their hidden desires. Contrary to traditional criticism, it will not be analysed through the prism of the event, but through the prism of the characters and their relations. By analysing romantic short stories, we aim to contribute to a general fantastic poetry and to shed a new light on the relations between French and German romanticisms. The first part of the study brings out the presence of typical roles and recurrent modalities of character construction: their names, their physical and psychological traits, their idiosyncraties. The fantastic story focuses on the relationship between a fantastic figure and a subject. Two stereotypes evolve around the latter: a character that defends a supernatural interpretation of the facts and a character that questions their reality. The fantastic effect not only results from ontological characteristics, but also from the interactions between the characters and between the various diegetic levels. The study of these interactions reveals a form of manipulation which serves an anthropological and esthetic aim. This is how, it reveals similarities but also differences between French and German romanticisms concerning the relation between literature and religion or the consideration of dreams or madness.

This dissertation is focused on phenomenon of madness in French surrealism and genre called "écrits bruts". The main theme is confrontation of surrealism aesthetics madness with written production of psychotic and mostly schizophrenic patients. The primary outcome is presented by analysis and interpretation of two chosen literary works, which are collection of experimental poetry by André Breton and Paul Éluard called L'Immaculée conception (Immaculate Conception, 1930) and diary entries, known as Premier Cahier: de l'ordre des messages, mai 1935, written by one of the most significant French women representatives Jeanne Tripier,. The aim of this analysis is on one hand to identify and characterize forms through which simulated and "real" madness in texts presented are, and on the other hand to describe its poetic function. The methodology part is based on structural and genre analysis of both aforementioned movements and moreover is formed on outcomes of the phenomenologically oriented psychiatry and psychoanalysis.

My thesis presents my novella, The Diary. I explore psychological conflicts that arise in a person when he is not at ease with his way of thinking and acting. My plot depicts the main character Shadi’s inferiority complex, his guilt and his conscience. The twin sister, Shadia, is the other or feminine self in which Shadi, the male writer, mirrors himself since his childhood. Shadi becomes a con man in order to explore themes for his plays through a fraudulent business plan in real life. Shadi’s male ego is something constructed by patriarchy. My approach, in analyzing The Diary, is primarily psychoanalytical. I use The Mad Woman in the Attic by Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar, to support my story’s main theme. The male writer in my story imprisons his sister Shadia in his plays as he wants to fight his inferiority complex resulting from his twin sister’s intelligence. Shadia steps out of the male writer’s text to talk to the male author in a state of dissociation. Sigmund Freud’s works contribute in explaining Shadi’s madness. The female writer is the unconscious part of Shadi’s mind. She is his super-ego as she is his conscience. I also use Louis A. Sass’s Madness and Modernism to delve into my male protagonist’s psychosis. Thus, I portray him as someone who seeks “a wakening” (Sass 3) through the loss of reason. Simone de Beauvoir states that the woman is considered to be the Other in The Second Sex. I use the Other in psychosis as a positive concept although it invokes feelings of terror. Harold Bloom’s The Anxiety of Influence helps me to depict my male protagonist’s rebellion against his precursors. Helene Cixous’s “The Laugh of Medusa” explains the importance of l’écriture feminine in Shadi’s poems written in a state of madness. / Ma mémoire présente ma nouvelle «The Diary». J’explore les conflits psychologiques qui surgissent chez une personne lorsqu'il n'est pas à l'aise avec sa façon de penser et d'agir. Mon histoire représente le complexe d'infériorité de Shadi, sa culpabilité et sa conscience. Sa soeur jumelle, Shadia, est le soi de l'écrivain, Shadi. Il se cherche en elle depuis son enfance. Shadi devient un escroc pour explorer des thèmes pour sa nouvelle pièce de théâtre. L'ego de Shadi est une résultante du patriarcat. Dans l'analyse de «The Diary», mon approche est principalement psychanalytique. J'utilise The Mad Woman in the Attic par Sandra Gilbert et Susan Gubar pour soutenir le thème principal de mon histoire. Shadi emprisonne sa soeur Shadia dans ses écrits car il veut se battre contre son complexe d'infériorité provenant de l'intelligence de sa soeur jumelle. Shadia sort du texte de l'écrivain pour parler à l'auteur. Les travaux de Sigmund Freud contribuent à expliquer la démence de Shadi. La soeur est la partie inconsciente de l'esprit de Shadi. Elle est son super-ego alors qu'elle est sa conscience. J'utilise aussi Madness and Modernism de Louis A. Sass pour la étudier la démence de mon protagoniste, Shadi. Simone de Beauvoir déclare que la femme est considérée comme l'autre. J'utilise l'autre en psychose comme un concept positif bien qu'il invoque des sentiments de terreur. The Anxiety of Influence de Harold Bloom m'aide à décrire la rébellion de mon protagoniste masculin contre ses précurseurs. «The Laugh of Medusa» d’Hélène Cixous explique l'importance de l'écriture féminine dans les poèmes de Shadi qui les écrits dans un état de démence.

The purpose of this thesis is to examine Michelle Cliff’s No Telephone to Heaven (1996), and to scrutinize, through Christopher’s mental illness, the couched, unspoken, and deeply embedded presence of imperial hegemony in the Caribbean. I shall argue that Christopher’s mental illness is not, as one might have it, an inexplicable lapse into insanity, but both a fitting, polyrhythmic expression of longstanding postcolonial/neocolonial abuse, and a dynamic form of counterhegemonic resistance. Thus, my use of the term, imperial illness, refers to colonial impacts on the Caribbean, and how those impacts continue to play a significant role in postcolonial/neocolonial societies and, concurrently, the strategies imagined by postcolonial subjects to resist. Christopher’s mental illness, then, is the result of sustained imperial socio-psychological torment, which produces, quite ironically, the conditions that make possible his acts of resistance.

This thesis examines how madness has been used in post-Yugoslav cinemas to facilitate thinking about experiences of the break-up of the SFRY throughout the 1990s and 2000s, its consequences and implications for the future. The study conceptualises post-Yugoslav film cultures as public spheres in which artistic and industrial practices are often combined to create meaning around the core themes of trauma and identity in post-Yugoslav cultures. Working with seven feature-length titles from a range of post-Yugoslav successor states (Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia, Macedonia and Kosovo) I illustrate how images of madness have been essential in the cultural processing of events of the 1990s. Whilst featuring individuals suffering mental instabilities and disturbances, and sometimes asylums or mental health institutions, I contend such films are not ultimately concerned – on a thematic level – with mental health, but instead focus on the use of such characters in a metaphoric capacity for engaging core themes of Yugoslav break-up, conflicts, and difficulties of subsequent transition. Using the semantic/syntactic approach to genre, I identify two common ways in which madness is used on a textual level to engage these core themes. The first of these, the ‘inside-out asylum trope of madness’, is concerned with the use of the asylum in films which assess critically the dominant political ideologies of the successor states in question at a time when political pluralism was not yet established by the transition process. Films discussed include Burlesque Tragedy (Marković, 1995), Marshall Tito’s Spirit (Brešan, 1999), and Kukumi (Qosja, 2005). The second trope is the ‘multiple realities trope of madness’ in which the presentation of diegetic reality on screen is adapted to reflect various conceptualisations of trauma and loss arising from Yugoslav break-up and transition. Here the films include Loving Glances (Karanović, 2003), Fuse (Žalica, 2003), Mirage (Ristovski, 2004) and Land of Truth, Love and Freedom (Petrović, 2000). Across the films selected, it is madness which ultimately provides a diverse pool of metaphors and images for an assessment of Yugoslavia’s traumatic demise and the ensuing process of picking through the debris of its ideology, cultural practices, values and ways of living for precisely what might be salvageable and what should be discarded.

Os processos de transformação das formas de compreender a loucura sempre imprimiram seus reflexos e expressaram-se na materialidade do espaço construído, determinando os lugares da loucura, os espaços da diferença. A contemporaneidade é testemunha de um processo de grande ruptura com o paradigma moderno manicomial e tem a Reforma Psiquiátrica como um marco das transformações que se deram nas formas de conceber a loucura e nas formas de cuidado e assistência ao sujeito-louco. O presente trabalho realiza um percurso histórico dos espaços arquitetônicos dedicados à loucura ao longo do tempo e em diversas sociedades, e investiga os espaços arquitetônicos dedicados à atenção em saúde mental que surgiram após o período de reformas e a ruptura com o sistema asilar e hospitalocêntrico. Apresenta-se o Centro de Atenção Psicossocial como um dos lugares possíveis da loucura na contemporaneidade, a partir de um ponto de vista arquitetônico sobre o desenvolvimento de um desses equipamentos na cidade de Porto Alegre, através de um estudo de caso realizado no CAPS Cais Mental Centro. O trabalho analisa as respostas imediatas da arquitetura às demandas da Reforma Psiquiátrica, e problematiza as diversas soluções espaciais de acordo com a sua apropriação pelos usuários do espaço. O estudo privilegia as análises qualitativas, considerando a complexidade do objeto de estudo, a fim de identificar os novos conceitos e práticas produzidos nestes espaços que se diferenciam dos modelos assistenciais excludentes que o precederam e, consequentemente, as formas e elementos arquitetônicos que os acompanham. O trabalho também considera a relação entre loucura e espaço urbano, apresentando o Acompanhamento Terapêutico (AT) como uma clínica que se desprende da clínica tradicional e se lança numa imersão pelo território da cidade acompanhando o sujeito-louco em seus percursos, buscando criar, junto com ele, vínculos com os serviços de saúde mental e demais equipamentos sociais e culturais oferecidos pela cidade, criando novas possibilidades de existência para o louco e questionando a cidade em sua capacidade de acolher a diferença. / The processes of transformation in the ways of understanding madness always mirrored their reflections and expressed itselves on the materiality of the built space, determining the places of madness, the spaces of difference. The contemporaneity is witness to a process of great disruption from the asylum modern paradigm and has the Psychiatric Reform as a mark of transformations that occurred in the ways of conceiving madness and forms of care and assistance to the mad subject. This work performs a historical journey of architectural spaces dedicated to madness through time in different societies and investigates architectural spaces dedicated to mental health care that emerged after the period of reformation and rupture with asylum and hospitalocentric system. The Psychosocial Care Center (CAPS) is presented as one of the possible places of madness nowadays from an architectural point of view on the development of these equipments in the city of Porto Alegre, through a case study in CAPS Cais Mental Centro. The work analyzes the immediate responses of architecture to the demands of the Psychiatric Reform and discusses the various spatial solutions according to its appropriation by users of the space. The study focuses on the qualitative analysis, considering the complexity of the object of study in order to identify the new concepts and practices produced in these spaces that differ from the exclusionary care models that preceded it and, consequently, the forms and architectural elements that accompany them. The work also considers the relationship between madness and urban space, introducing the Therapeutic Accompaniment (AT) as a clinic that detaches from traditional clinic and launches into a immersion through the territory of the city accompanying the mad- subject in their paths, seeking to create, along with him, connections with mental health services and other social and cultural equipments offered by the city, creating new possibilities of existence for the mad-subject and questioning the city in its ability to embrace the difference.

Les études nabokoviennes témoignent de la tendance à laisser de côté la possibilité de l’influence de la culture allemande sur l’œuvre de Nabokov. Ce principe est surtout né des propos mêmes de l’écrivain qui insista à maintes reprises sur le fait que, bien qu’il vécût en Allemagne, il ne savait pas parler allemand et évitait tout contact avec l’univers allemand. Il est vrai que l’émigration russe à Berlin représentait un État dans l’État. Cependant, les frontières entre les mondes russe et allemand n’étaient pas si étanches. Nabokov passa quinze ans à Berlin et ses livres furent traduits et publiés en allemand par une maison d’édition allemande. Des projets d’adaptation à l’écran de ses œuvres se présentèrent plusieurs fois, en particulier pour le roman Roi, dame, valet. Parmi ses œuvres composées à Berlin se trouvent au moins deux romans, Roi, dame, valet et Chambre obscure ainsi qu’une série de nouvelles décrivant l’univers allemand. Tout cela contribue à supposer que le principe établi au sujet de l’ignorance de l’influence allemande sur son œuvre n’est pas si incontestable. Notre travail a pour objectif de lire l’œuvre de Nabokov dans le contexte de l’art allemand contemporain, notamment de l’esthétique expressionniste dont nous étudions trois thèmes majeurs : la déformation du psychisme humain conduisant au dédoublement de soi, l’ambivalence de l’image féminine et la représentation de la grande ville. Un examen approfondi permet de découvrir des liens avec le cinéma muet et la peinture. Le présent travail vise à introduire un nouveau niveau de lecture des œuvres de Nabokov et à reconstruire le contexte culturel berlinois dans lequel ces dernières furent créées. / The Nabokov studies have tended to ignore the possible influence of the German culture on Nabokov’s works. This position springs from the writer’s often quoted words, which stress that, although he lived in Germany, he could not speak German and avoided any intercourse with the German world. Russian emigration certainly constituted a state within the state but the borders between the Russian and German worlds were not so impenetrable. Nabokov spent fifteen years in Berlin and his books were translated and published in German by a German publishing house. There were several projects for screen adaptations of his works, in particular for the novel King, Queen, Knave. While in Berlin, he wrote at least two novels, King, Queen, Knave and Kamera Obskura (Laughter in the Dark for the revisited version by Nabokov), and a series of short stories which describe the German world. All this undermines the principle established about the ignorance of German influence.Our thesis aims at reading Nabokov’s works in the context of the German contemporary art, in particular Expressionist aesthetics. We consider three major issues, namely the distortion of the psyche, which leads to an inner division of the self, the ambivalence of the female figure and the representation of the big city. Thus an extensive analysis allows us to reveal links with German silent cinema and with painting which had eluded researchers so far. The present work aims at introducing a new dimension in the reading of Nabokov’s works and at restoring them to the cultural context of Berlin in which they were created.

Ce travail se propose d’interroger le sujet pris sous le joug des discours de la post-modernité, à partir de ce que nous repérons comme la désacralisation de la croyance mythique. Ce remodelage symbolique fait basculer le lien social vers une société de la technique, une techni-cité, gouvernée par de nouvelles puissances économiques GAFAtisantes. Le sujet contemporain s’assujetti ainsi aux injonctions a-surmoïques d’un Père 2.0 qui le pousse toujours davantage dans la dégringolade subjective d’une jouissance absolue et massifère. Cette nouvelle organisation sociale fait alors éclore de nouvelles représentations de la folie. C’est ce qui nous pousse à réinterroger cette notion qui éclaire l’ensemble de notre propos. La clinique contemporaine témoigne de quelques formes de résistances du sujet. Celui-ci, ayant besoin de renouveler son rapport à l’Autre, se tourne vers de nouvelles formes de spiritualités qu’il prélève dans d’autres cultures. Il espère à partir de la mise en pratiques de ces traditions pouvoir extraire un savoir sur sa propre condition. Ce faisant, il technicise ces croyances importées qui aussitôt arrachées à leur socle symbolique virent à l’imaginaire et s’assignent à la logique capitaliste. Les nouvelles pratiques qui en émergent relèvent alors d’une post-traditionnalité qui offre un compromis au sujet cherchant à se renouveler subjectivement.La post-modernité ne connaissant aucune frontière, nous mettrons ces questions en jeu dans d’autres sociétés, notamment en Amazonie, au Sénégal et au Vanuatu. Nous constaterons que la folie demeure intimement liée au désordre social et que la contamination du discours économico-techno-scientifique contemporains produit des effets au-delà de la culture occidentale. / This research proposes to question the subject taken under the yoke of the discourses of the post-modernity, from what we see as the desecration of mythic belief. This symbolic remodeling shifts the social link towards a society of technology, a “techni-cité”, governed by new « GAFA » economic powers. The contemporary subject is thus subject to the a-parametric injunctions of a Father 2.0 which pushes him ever further into the subjective tumble of an absolute and massive enjoyment and « massifere ». This new social organization then gives rise to new representations of madness. This is what drives us to re-examine this notion that sheds light on our whole subject. This new social organization then gives rise to new representations of madness. This is what drives us to re-examine this notion that sheds light on our whole subject.The contemporary clinic shows some forms of resistance of the subject. The latter, needing to renew his relationship with the Other, turns to new forms of spirituality that he takes from other cultures .He hopes from the putting into practice of these traditions to be able to extract knowledge about his own condition. In doing so he technicizes these imported beliefs, which are immediately torn from their symbolic base, turn to the imaginary and take up capitalist logic. The new practices that emerge from it are part of a post-traditionalism that offers a compromise to the subject that seeks to renew itself subjectively.Since post-modernity knows no boundaries, we will put these issues at stake in other societies, particularly in the Amazon, Senegal and Vanuatu. We will find that madness is closely linked to social disorder and that the contamination of contemporary economic-techno-scientific discourses produces effects beyond occidental culture.

This is an investigation on writing, through writing, with writing, on and in thinking with Julia Kristeva’s theory on abjection. This paper aims to research the subject of abjection as writing and does so by reading the meaning of solitude in the writings of Maurice Blanchot, Marguerite Duras and primarily the work Aqua Viva by Clarice Lispector. This paper wishes to establish a philosophical framework for future research within writing as an artistic practice.

My partner Zoë was killed in October 2013. We worked together as arts educators, mostly with people involved in the Canadian mental healthcare system. This thesis explores social conceptions of madness, drawing on theorists such as Tobin Siebers, Sara Ahmed, Lynne Huffer and Ann Cvetkovich, and engaging with works of art by people who have been involved in mental healthcare in some way. There is a simultaneous exploration of my process of grieving Zoë's death, drawing on the tradition of autocritique by writers such as bell hooks, Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, and others. Chapter one looks at poetry produced by the Workman Arts Group and a zine by Anna Quon, investigating the impact of diagnoses of mental illness on the reception of art and artists, as well as the history of silencing and confinement of mad bodies. Chapter two explores the memoirs of Bobby Baker and Merri Lisa Johnson, emphasizing the impact of diagnosis on those not already marginalized by society, and drawing attention to the kinds of communities that memoirs produce, as well as the connection between community, capitalism, and the grievability of life. Chapter three looks at the paintings, performance art and installations of Yayoi Kusama to complicate the connection between madness and celebrity power, as well as Kusama's own engagement with death and infinity. I conclude by looking briefly at the deaths of Michael Brown and Robin Williams, and again at my own grief one year after Zoë's death. / Thesis / Master of English