Cette étude se propose de rendre compte du conflit qui opposa Plotin aux Gnostiques. Uneintroduction met en scène les protagonistes et décrit les circonstances de leur l’affrontement.Une première partie étudie la forme de cette polémique exceptionnelle dans les traités dePlotin, la rapproche de celle des hérésiologues chrétiens à l’encontre de ces mêmesGnostiques et fait l’hypothèse qu’elle ne fut pas ignorée de Plotin. Les parties suivantesprésentent la philosophie de Plotin pour l’opposer à la doctrine gnostique dans les domainescosmologique, théologique et anthropologique. Elles présentent et étudient, en chacun de cesdomaines, les critiques de fond que Plotin adresse aux thèses de l’adversaire, lui reprochant deméconnaître la nature des réalités dont il traite, de tenir des discours dépourvus de logique, dene proposer aucune méthode pour réaliser ses objectifs (le salut). Les critiques de Plotin àl’encontre des Gnostiques constituent une défense du platonisme et de la philosophie elle-même,ainsi que de toutes les valeurs sur lesquelles se fonde toute la pensée de Plotin. / This study accounts for the conflict between Plotinus and the Gnostics. The introductionportrays the protagonists, and describes the circumstances of their confrontation. The first partstudies the form of this exceptional controversy in the treaties of Plotinus, draws a parallelwith the controversy between the Christian Heresiologists and the Gnostics, and hypothesizesthat the later was not unknown to Plotinus. The subsequent parts explain the philosophy ofPlotinus and contrast it with the Gnostic doctrine in the cosmological, theological andanthropological domains. They present and analyse, in each of these areas, the fundamentalcritiques that Plotinus addresses to his opponents, accusing them of misunderstanding thenature of the realities that they deal with, of making speeches devoid of logic, and ofproposing no method to achieve their aims (salvation). The critiques of Plotinus against theGnostics constitute a defense of Platonism and of philosophy itself, and also of all the valuesthat underlie the thought of Plotinus.

VELES SLAVIC DEITY IN COMPARATIVE PERSPECTIVE Bc. Michaela Šebetovská ABSTRACT The thesis deals with Slavic god Veles. The emphasis is put on primary textual sources about him. With regard to their fragmentary nature, there is a need to make use of comparative material. Informations about other Indo-European gods and beings from Slavic folklore similar to Veles are used as well. The purpose is not only to understand isolated functions, but also connections between them. This seems as the best way how to gain the idea of the whole character of Veles as the Slavs before Christianity could see it.

Cette recherche se constitue comme un parcours généalogique dans la pensée naturelle et politique de Giordano Bruno autour de la notion de « vinculum » ‘lien’ ou ‘relation’, à travers la reconstruction de son origine et de son élaboration à partir des écrits magiques jusqu’aux dialogues italiens et aux premiers ouvrages latins. L’exigence est de retracer dans l’œuvre ainsi que dans l’expérience intellectuelle et biographique du Nolain, quelle est la relation entre philosophie naturelle et politique et comment elle se constitue. En d’autres termes, il s’agit de comprendre si l’analyse du politique pourrait être déliée ou réellement distinguée de l’étude de la nature ou si elle prendrait plutôt son point d’origine et se développerait au cœur de la connaissance de la physis : isoler et analyser quel que soit le rôle et la fonction que la notion de « vinculum » assume entre la réflexion métaphysique et anthropologique de Bruno. Ces questions constituent le problème de fond qui anime ce travail et auquel j’ai essayé de répondre dans ces pages, bien que conscient du caractère jamais définitif et ouvert de cette réponse comme pour chaque recherche. / This research is a genealogic study of the natural and political thought of Giordano Bruno, about the notion of «vinculum», ‘bond’ or ‘relation’, by the reconstruction of its origin and development from the magic writing to the Italians dialogues and the firsts Latins works The necessity of this work is to track down the Bruno’s opera and in his intellectual and biographic experience which is the relation between natural and political philosophy. In others words, the work lies in understanding if is possible to separate and distinguish the analysis of the politic from the nature; or the political thought is originate and it is inseparable from the reflection about the physis: isolating and analyzing which is the role and the function of the notion of «vinculum» between the metaphysical and anthropological reflection of Giordano Bruno. Those questions constitute the problem of this research and to which I try to respond in theses pages, even if conscious of the character never complete of this answer, as well as every research.

The aim of this paper is to inspect the work of Louise Erdrich with the optics of semiotics, literary theory and cultural anthropology and to find topics related to the cultural conflict of Native American and Christian tradition. The theoretical part is devoted to the theories of the ontological definition of the fictional world, its relation to culture and its construction within a literary piece. In the practical part, we will deal with the cultural features associated with nature, religion, space and social ordering, as they are illustrated in the novels. The paper is not an anthropological material dealing with Native American culture as such. Here we perform a literary analysis and examine the anthropomorphic dimension of the unique fictional world.

The work builds on the scientific production on the theme of the resettled Czechs from areas of the former Soviet Union, which is continued treated on the soil of the Institute of Ethnology of the CAS, v.v.i., and introduces the latest conducted grant project, in which I focused on the area of health and folk medicine. The text deals with a specific group of the Czech populations predominantly from Ukraine and Kazakhstan (partially also Belarus and Russia), whose ancestors set out in the second half of the 19th century to seek a better living in the direction to the east from the borders of then Austro-Hungary. Through the use of commemorative narrations and life trajectories of the participating actors, the work maps the background of the arrival in new destinations, life in the 20th century, the change of the political and social conditions and the subsequent remigration to the Czech Republic. With a few exceptions, all of the actors figuring in this work became part of the resettlement processes - in the case of the Volyn Czechs after World War II in 1947 within the controlled exchange of the populations and in the case of the Chernobyl Czechs (and partially also some of the Czechs from Belarus and Russia) in the 1990s within the state-controlled resettlement after the accident at the Chernobyl...

Das Hauptanliegen meines Forschungsprojektes war die erneute Untersuchung der aus dem späten 3. bis 7. Jahrhundert n. Chr. stammenden griechischen medizinischen Papyri, die zwischen 1913 und 1914 hauptsächlich an einem Ort in der ägyptischen Stätte von Antinoopolis gefunden wurden. Antinoopolis bietet die Gelegenheit, diesen Dokumenten einen archäologischen Kontext zu geben, zumal die vorliegende geographische und chronologische Kontinuität einen detaillierten Vergleich der durch diese Quellen konservierten Daten begünstigt. Das Interesse an Antinoopolis aus medizinhistorischer Perspektive ist durch die diversen Heilpraktiken begründet, die von den dokumentarischen, literarischen und archäologischen Beweisstücken bezeugt werden, und deren Quantität und Bandbreite für ein ägyptisches Dorf außergewöhnlich sind. Das Ziel meiner Forschung an den Papyri ist sowohl philologischer als auch kulturhistorischer Natur. Erstens habe ich versucht, die Manuskripte wissenschaftlich zu präsentieren und ihre Eigentümlichkeiten, Charakteristika und Funktionen zu diskutieren. Ich wollte unser Verständnis dieser Fragmente durch die Identifizierung neuer Textabschnitte, die Integrierung von Textzusätzen und eine genauere Untersuchung ihrer formellen Struktur verbessern, was zu einer überarbeiteten Edition einiger ausgewählter Papyri führte. Darüber hinaus habe ich versucht, zum besseren Verständnis des allgemeinen Umfeldes dieser ägyptischen Gemeinschaft, besonders in Bezug auf religiöse Heilpraktiken im Zusammenhang mit der heiligen Stätte des Collouthus beizutragen, und die historischen und kulturellen Gegebenheiten zu untersuchen, in denen diese Texte genutzt wurden. Schlussendlich untersucht meine Forschung die Entwicklung des Kodex im Allgemeinen über den Zeitraum der späten Antike, die an verschiedenen Aspekten beobachtet werden kann. Eine der interessantesten Fragen dabei ist, wie die Texte gesammelt und präsentiert wurden, d.h. der Zusammenhang von Aufbewahrung der Papyri und ihrem Textinhalt. / The main aim of my research project was to re-examine the Greek medical papyri from the Egyptian site of Antinoopolis dating between late 3rd up to 7th century AD, discovered mostly in a single area between 1913 and 1914. Antinoopolis offers the potential for putting documents into an archaeological context, and this geographical and chronological consistency facilitates a close comparison between the data preserved in these sources. The interest in Antinoopolis, as far as the medical tradition is concerned, lies in the diverse healing practices attested by documentary, literary and archaeological evidence whose quantity and range is altogether exceptional among Egyptian villages. The objective of my research is both papyrological-philological and cultural-historical. Firstly, I have tried to present the manuscripts and discuss their peculiarities, characteristics and functions. I have sought to improve our understanding of these fragments through the identification of new portions of text, the integration of supplements and a better assessment of their formal arrangement, which resulted in the revised edition of a few outstanding papyri. In addition to this, I have tried to contribute to the evaluation of the general context of this Egyptian community, particularly as regards religious healing practices connected to the sanctuary of Collouthus, and to explore the historical and cultural circumstances in which these texts were used. Finally, my research investigates the development of the codex throughout late Antiquity, which can be observed in a number of respects. One of the most significant concerns how the texts were assembled and presented, namely the interplay between container and content.

Mikhail Afanasievich Bulgakov was a Russian novelist and playwright active in the first half of the twentieth century. The work of this author is unforgettable for the modern Russian literary art of the fist half of the twentieth century. Known by writings with very strong plots and engaging storyline, he did not fear confrontation or conflicts within individual works. His dialogs are masterfully constructed and his feel for humorous vision of life and description of the world is regarded as unreachable. A fascinating and almost unbelievably inspiring Bulgakov's novel The Master and Margarita has become the model for this diploma thesis. Due to its multi-layering, broad topical range, two intersecting storylines and the content, the thesis has been named The Novel "Universe". It contains everything that makes life life: love, death, betrayal, courage and cowardice, generosity and envy… Bulgakov's success received thanks to this work is rooted in the masterful connection of the two parallel stories (ongoing in Moscow in 1930 and in Jerusalem at the beginning of our era), in fantasticality and in the view of the contemporary social situation, which are depicted in the novel, and lastly in the description of the human characters constancy. Due to these arguments, the thesis focuses on the following...

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

La littérature est une source d’où jaillissent les flots intarissables du paradoxe ; c’est dans cet entrelacement de dichotomies que nous nous sommes immergées pour percevoir l’unité sous-jacente derrière l’oxymore que constitue le titre de notre thèse : « une poétique de l’abjection dans la littérature gothique américaine postmoderne. » Si nous nous sommes tournées vers Stephen King, Peter Straub et Chuck Palahniuk et avons mis l’accent sur trois de leurs œuvres précises, notre démonstration se veut être transposable à l’ensemble de leurs écrits. Nous nous sommes interrogées sur la nature de l’abjection et sur sa prééminence dans une société américaine portant le sceau du puritanisme. Marqués par le Romantisme et le Gothique anglais, nos auteurs ont su donner aux thématiques caractérisant ces mouvements une voie nouvelle. Situer nos œuvres dans la lignée du gothique postmoderne nous permet d’osciller sur le paradigme de l’excès et de l’incomplétude, de la déconstruction et de l’unité. Le thème de la fragmentation apparaît comme l’un des fils d’Ariane permettant aux auteurs de tisser autour des lecteurs leur toile arachnéenne. Ce démantèlement qui affecte à la fois la dimension narrative et thématique des récits contribue à leur effet patchwork et subversif, nous liant à notre problématique postmoderne. Les paradoxes engendrés par nos récits leur donnent leur force et expliquent leur fascination sur le public. Nos pérégrinations menant à l’ouverture des différentes portes de l’interprétation révèlent que l’abjection devient source d’une nouvelle esthétique. Le laid peut véhiculer de la beauté et du sublime. L’harmonie qui existe dans le monde de la déchéance qui nous est dépeint explique l’emprise hypnotique de la littérature de l’abjection sur le lecteur. Source de poétique, celle-ci procure un plaisir de la lecture quasi jouissif pour ceux qui se laissent transporter par la magie créatrice de nos auteurs. / Literature is a stream from which gush forth the inexhausting flows of paradoxes; we have immersed ourselves in this entertwining of dichotomies to perceive the underlying unity behind the oxymoron constituting the title of our thesis: “a poetics of the abjection in American postmodern gothic literature.” If we have chosen Stephen King, Peter Straub and Chuck Palahniuk and have focused on three specific novels, our demonstration intends to be transposed to the whole range of their works. We wondered about the nature of abjection and its pre-eminence in an American society bearing the seal of Puritanism. Marked by Romanticism and the English gothic, our authors have been able to convey to the themes characterizing those movements a new direction. Setting our novels in the wake of postmodern gothic is a way for us to oscillate on the paradigm of excess and incompleteness, deconstruction and unity. The theme of fragmentation appears as one of Ariadne’s clues allowing the authors to weave their gossamery web around the readers. This dismantling which both affects the narrative and thematic dimension of the novels contributes to the patchwork and subversive effect engendered, linking us to our postmodern problematic. The paradoxes engendered by our novels give them their strength and account for their fascination on the audience. Our peregrinations leading to the opening of the various interpretative doors reveal that abjection becomes the source of a new aesthetics. Ugliness can convey beauty and sublime. The harmony which exists in the world of discrepancy depicted to us explains the hypnotic ascendancy of the literature of abjection on the reader. Source of poetry, it brings about a pleasure of reading verging on climax for those who let themselves be carried away by the creative magic of our authors.

To open a different perspective on the still-discussed difference between Christian religion and magic is the task of this work. In order to reach the end successfully, that is, the fourth part of this thesis, which deals with the principle of sanctity in the Catholic Church, it was necessary to first develop the following three blocks. 1) Religious-anthropological analysis of magic ? in this part we summarize basic anthropological views on magic according to the individual researchers J.G. Frazer, E.B. Taylor, R.R. Marett, B. Malinowski, and E. de Martino. The subject of this section was the analysis of animism and the inner power of creation. 2) Magic as a part of religion ? in which we analysed the content of the concept of magic, the area where it came from, and how it was perceived in the environment of the Mediterranean European culture of ancient Rome, and how magic was discredited in the ancient "pagan" and Christian environment. 3) The interest of the sages in the phenomenon of magic ? has created a space for the issue of the magic of "barbaric" tribes, whose faith traditions have become a legitimate part of the Catholic faith. This section has also developed a "story of overly" peculiar magic adepts of the "restored" Renaissance Platonic Academy, in which M. Ficino and P. della Mirandola worked. We paid more attention to their life stories and work, for they themselves stood at the birth of an "institutional" association in the area of a sort of "applied" magism in the form of esoteric neoplatonism, hermetism, and theururgy. At this point we also found the historical model of the later Czech hermetic society Universalia, which we mentioned at the end of the work. 4) Ex opere operato et ex opere operantis ? it represents the peak of our work, opening a whole new discussion in the critique of magic and religion. Magic and Christian religion have a common root, they co-exist side by side, complement each other, and even blend in some areas of universal piety as conditions of one and the same Catholic faith.