Thèse (M.A.)--McGill University, 1998. / Comprend des réf. bibliogr.

My study is an investigation of the discourse of madness in Timothy Findley's fiction, where madness is defined as a discursive element that is both structural and thematic. The work encompasses Findley's short stories, novels, a work of non-fiction, and personal archival material. I argue that what has been called a diverse body of work (Hunter) is, in fact, solidly cohesive in its use of the discourse of madness that systematically subverts patterns of authority. My purpose is to reveal a discursive structure that both supports and subverts narrative coherence, locating its degree of disruption within a psychodynamic exchange. / My theoretical model situates the reader as the recipient of and participant in the initiating text's psychodynamic discourse, and so implicates the reader in the subversion of authority. The study amalgamates psychocriticism and reader response theory to demonstrate that Findley's writing actively engages the reader in a visceral exchange that I liken to that encountered within the psychoanalytic interview (Bollas). With the addition of the psychoanalytic component, my research moves substantially beyond the position taken by Wolfgang Iser on reader response and by Norman Holland, both of whom acknowledge the value of psychocriticism but maintain a dualistic (reader/text) model. While Iser and Holland assign the status of co-production of the text to the activity of reading, both neglect to address specific production value to the activity of writing which, in effect, leaves the reader as lone producer. / By introducing the "idiom" of the author my theoretical model becomes triadic so that my reading can move beyond the simple oscillation between text and reader to engage the author in a way that amplifies important questions of status raised by the psychodynamic model, such as: "Who is reading whom?" "Who is the analyst and who the analysand? Who is maintaining or manipulating authority?" These, in turn, raise further questions regarding subject/object relations and the ways in which transference-countertransference between selves and others, subjects and objects, conscious and unconscious states take place. In addressing these questions in terms of the triadic process of reading, which re-instates the initiating author, the value and originality of this study becomes apparent in its investigation of biographical material to literary production.

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What might it mean to attempt to figure theatre as thought? More specifically, what possible relations hold between theatre and epistemology - that area of philosophy concerned with theories of knowledge? This study is a series of cross-disciplinary engagements that seek to articulate some of the relations between theatre, performance, and epistemology, to investigate performance as a 'deployed logic' in relation to those disciplines concerned with discovering and generating knowledge. For some thinkers in the continental tradition, the very thought of writing about the relations between performance and the anachronistic; hasn't the idea of 'performance' undermined most of the central tenets of the discourse concerned with knowledge and the Real, with truth and falsity? This, of course, remains an open question, one pursued in this work. The thesis draws on a diverse series of wide-ranging examples in order to relate the inquiry to current work being done in philosophy and performance studies, but notes the theoretical incompleteness of studies relating theatre and performance to conceptions of knowledge.It attempts to fill a void in the literature by offering analyses that think the relations between dramatic and philosophical activity. In short, it hopes to re-open the dialogue between performance and epistemology by showing how philosophy regularly attempts to expunge its foundational elements from its imaginary. / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

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This thesis proposes a general overview of the three principal critical approaches to images of female madness in the work of Andre Breton, more specifically in his narrative Nadja. Grounded, respectively, in a Freudian, a feminist and a mythocritical perspective, these approaches tend to present a negative vision of Nadja's madness. After examining the arguments made by proponents of each approach, this study seeks to lay the foundations for positive analyses which will allow for the rehabilitation of female madness and the foregrounding of the link between insanity and female identity. Breton at once desired and fostered this feminine condition, which he deemed to be essential to creation and the discovery of the secret meaning of life: the marvelous. While it may convey disconcerting qualities, female madness is portrayed as noble and exceptional in this unique book whose title is the Russian word for hope.

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Thesis (Ph. D.)--Lehigh University, 1996. / Includes vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 178-189).