La Galatée et le Persiles de Cervantès ont fréquemment suscité des difficultés d’interprétation car ils n’établissent pas le même rapport avec la réalité que les ouvrages situés au centre de la création cervantine : en effet, ils explorent des espaces imaginaires frôlant parfois l’invraisemblance et s’éloignent, ce faisant, de ce qui nous semble être le fondement du roman moderne. C’est donc à partir de ce premier constat que le présent travail s’est progressivement construit cherchant à comprendre les raisons de ces particularités décelables dans les oeuvres liminaires d’un auteur dont l’« ingenio » a si souvent été loué. Aussi s’agira-t-il de déceler des similitudes entre ces deux romans, mais surtout de les replacer dans leur contexte d’écriture : l’imagination et l’imaginaire constitueront les fils directeurs de cette étude qui tentera de montrer la capacité de ces ouvrages à répondre aux attentes d’un lectorat et des théoriciens sans pour autant négliger l’entreprise consistant à élaborer une écriture libre et libérée : une écriture de l’imaginaire / La Galatea and Persiles, two romances written by Cervantes, are frequently misunderstood because they do not establish the same relation with reality as in Don Quixote. They explore an imaginary space and seem to work in contradiction with the rule of verisimilitude and what we consider to be the foundation of the modern novel. After this assessment, the present study has been elaborated in order to understand the reasons for these special features in Cervantes's first and last books, a writer whose “ingenio” has often been praised. That is why, for a start, I will focus on the similarities between them and, first and foremost, I will contextualise them: the imagination and the imaginary will be the guiding principles. This work tries to show how these books are able to meet the readership's and the theoreticians' expectations. At the same time they explore an imaginary space, proving that it is possible to invent a free writing

La présente thèse propose d’aborder l’oeuvre perecquienne sous le prisme de la mise en abyme, procédé a priori éculé de la littérature du XXe siècle, dont l’efficacité narrative semble toutefois avoir séduit un écrivain préoccupé à la fois à fonder son écriture dans un système et à entretenir le plaisir illusoire de la fiction. En raison de l’aporie d’une apparition pure du procédé, le champ d’étude est élargi aux mouvements plus amples qu’il implique : l’inclusion et la répétition. Ces deux mouvements, qui stimulent une tension entre le tout et ses parties, peuvent également servir à décrire le geste d’écriture de Perec, profondément animé par une recherche d’adhésion au monde. Un horizon narratif spécifique se profile, complété de l’imaginaire du procédé en soi. D’une part, la mise en abyme est considérée dans sa proximité avec la dimension métatextuelle des récits, aux effets souvent métaleptiques. D’autre part, par la figurabilité du procédé, lui permettant d’agir comme sujet et objet d’une réflexion, l’écriture perecquienne est appréhendée dans sa plasticité. Enfin, cet horizon narratif est confronté à l’idée que Perec formule autour d’un possible « narratème », une unité narrative minimale qui contiendrait en germe un univers de fiction. L’effet local de la mise en abyme s’ouvre à la dynamique générale des récits, entre condensation et extension. Des seuils narratifs ou textuels émergent où se négocie l’inscription de l’auteur dans ses récits : raconter et se raconter. Outre le corpus perecquien, la pertinence de cet élargissement de la mise en abyme est vérifiée au sein des oeuvres des écrivains francophones luxembourgeois : Jean Portante et Jean Sorrente. / This PHD thesis approaches Perec’s work through the prism of the mise en abyme, an a priori overused process of 20th century literature, whose narrative efficiency seems nevertheless to have attracted a writer set on basing his writing in a system and maintaining the illusory pleasure of fiction. Due to the aporia of a pure appearance of the process, the area of the study is broadened to the more wide et #8208;ranging movements it implies: inclusion and repetition. These two movements, which initiate a tension between the whole and its parts, can also be used to describe Perec’s gesture of writing, animated by the wish to be part of the world. A specific narrative horizon emerges. On the one hand, the mise en abyme is considered in its closeness to the metatextual dimension of the narratives, whose effects are often metaleptical. On the other hand, because of the process’ figurability, which enables it to act as subject as well as objet of a reflection, Perec’s writing can be apprehended in its plasticity. Finally, this narrative horizon is confronted with the idea that Perec voices about a possible “narratheme”, a minimal narrative unit that would contain the seeds of a fictional world. The local effect of the mise en abyme opens to a more general dynamic of the narratives, between condensation and extension. Narrative or textual thresholds appear, where the inclusion of the author in his writings is negotiated: to narrate and to narrate oneself. Besides the perecquian corpus, the relevance of the enlargement of the mise en abyme is demonstrated in the works of Luxembourgish authors writing in french: Jean Portante and Jean Sorrente.

In this article, I investigate the video game BioShock for its political and cultural work and argue that it offers a popular platform to discuss the politically charged question of choice, both inside and outside the realm of video games. In a first section, I introduce the game’s basic plot and setting, propose a way to study how video games operate narratively, and briefly discuss the ‘political’ dimension of games in general. Afterwards, I look at how BioShock is influenced by Ayn Rand’s philosophy of objectivism, a philosophy that emphasizes the importance of individual choice and self-interest, and I trace this influence specifically in the game’s main antagonist, Andrew Ryan, and its setting, the underwater city of Rapture. With these elements as a basis, I analyze how BioShock engages with the politics of choice, focusing on a major twist scene in the game to demonstrate how BioShock deals with the question of choice on a metatextual level. Reading this scene in the context of the game’s overall narrative, specifically of moral choices in the game that lead to different endings, I argue that the game metatextually connects the political question of choice inherent in objectivism to the narrative and the playing of the game, pointing to the ambivalences inherent in questions of choice, agency, and free will.

No presente trabalho, estudamos as relações passíveis de ser estabelecidas entre três obras à primeira vista muito diferentes: as Bucólicasde Virgílio, Paludesde André Gide e Manderre, de Georges Perec. Nosso objetivo é mostrar uma espécie de percurso potencial de um personagem, Títiro, por meiodos textose as transformações por ele sofridas. Por meio de uma análise que leva em consideração o ponto de vista intertextual, tentamos compreender a apropriação feita por cada um dos autores, e as implicações causadas pelos diferentes contextos literários nos quais o personagem se insere. / In this research, we study the relations that can be established between three works at first sight very different: Virgils Eclogues, André Gides Paludesand Georges Perec Manderre. Our aim is to show some sort of potential path followed by acharacter, Tityrus, through the textsand the transformations undergone by him. Through an analysis that considers an intertextual point of view, we try to understand the appropriation made by each author, and the implications caused by different literary contexts in which the character is inserted.

Centrée sur la matérialité de la contrainte littéraire en tant que programme heuristique, cette thèse propose une analyse de cinq thèmes majeurs de La Disparition de Georges Perec : celui du travail « artisanal » régi par des règles conscientes, s’opposant aux explorations dadaïstes et surréalistes du hasard ou de l’inconscient ; celui de la dignité accordée au ludique, voire au « gratuit », dans le droit fil de la pensée pataphysique ; l’introduction volontaire d’erreurs dans l’application de la contrainte, autrement dit du « clinamen », dont il n’est pas juste de faire remonter l’origine, ainsi qu’on le dit souvent, à La Vie mode d’emploi ; la genèse de La Disparition, éclairant l’élaboration lipogrammatique à partir de l’écriture de soi ; l’application « sociologique » de la contrainte, enfin, dont la fonction heuristique se réoriente vers l’exploration du monde, dans le cadre de nouvelles tentatives de Perec étroitement liées aux recherches alphabétiques du roman sans e. Nous établirons ainsi une comparaison entre La Disparition et d’autres œuvres ou projets perecquiens, et introduirons une perspective historique fondée sur une réflexion sur plusieurs mouvements d’avant-garde du vingtième-siècle (Dada, Surréalisme, Internationale Situationniste, Tel Quel, etc.), pour démontrer l’originalité de ce roman fondé sur les principes de l’Oulipo / Focusing on materiality of literary constraint as a heuristic program, the following dissertation offers an analysis of five major themes of Georges Perec’s A Void: the notion of “craftsmanship” governed by conscious rules, as opposed to Dadaist and surrealist explorations of chance or of the unconscious; the dignity granted to playfulness, even to “gratuitousness”, in line with pataphysical thought; the voluntary introduction of errors in the application of constraints, in other words the “clinamen”, whose origin is often mistakenly located in Life A User’s Manual; the genesis of A Void, whose study will shed new light on the link between lipogrammatic constraint and the writing of the self; lastly, the “sociological” application of constraint, whose heuristic function is reoriented towards the exploration of the world, in the context of Perec’s later experiments, which derive from the alphabetical structure of the novel without e. In this way, we will compare A Void with other Perecquian works and projects and introduce a historical perspective based on a reflection on several avant-garde movements of the twentieth century (Dada, Surrealism, Situationist International, Tel Quel, etc.), in order to demonstrate the radical originality of this novel based on the principles of the Oulipo

No presente trabalho, estudamos as relações passíveis de ser estabelecidas entre três obras à primeira vista muito diferentes: as Bucólicasde Virgílio, Paludesde André Gide e Manderre, de Georges Perec. Nosso objetivo é mostrar uma espécie de percurso potencial de um personagem, Títiro, por meiodos textose as transformações por ele sofridas. Por meio de uma análise que leva em consideração o ponto de vista intertextual, tentamos compreender a apropriação feita por cada um dos autores, e as implicações causadas pelos diferentes contextos literários nos quais o personagem se insere. / In this research, we study the relations that can be established between three works at first sight very different: Virgils Eclogues, André Gides Paludesand Georges Perec Manderre. Our aim is to show some sort of potential path followed by acharacter, Tityrus, through the textsand the transformations undergone by him. Through an analysis that considers an intertextual point of view, we try to understand the appropriation made by each author, and the implications caused by different literary contexts in which the character is inserted.

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

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

In this article, I investigate the video game BioShock for its political and cultural work and argue that it offers a popular platform to discuss the politically charged question of choice, both inside and outside the realm of video games. In a first section, I introduce the game’s basic plot and setting, propose a way to study how video games operate narratively, and briefly discuss the ‘political’ dimension of games in general. Afterwards, I look at how BioShock is influenced by Ayn Rand’s philosophy of objectivism, a philosophy that emphasizes the importance of individual choice and self-interest, and I trace this influence specifically in the game’s main antagonist, Andrew Ryan, and its setting, the underwater city of Rapture. With these elements as a basis, I analyze how BioShock engages with the politics of choice, focusing on a major twist scene in the game to demonstrate how BioShock deals with the question of choice on a metatextual level. Reading this scene in the context of the game’s overall narrative, specifically of moral choices in the game that lead to different endings, I argue that the game metatextually connects the political question of choice inherent in objectivism to the narrative and the playing of the game, pointing to the ambivalences inherent in questions of choice, agency, and free will.

The diploma thesis concerns the questions of hybrid literature, especially the novel HHhH by Laurent Binet. Even though history and fiction can impact and enrich each other, their relationship is quite problematic. Therefore philosophers, historians and literary critics are trying to answer the questions of how to write (about) history. Laurent Binet tackles this in his novel HHhH, in which two storylines keep alternating. In the first one narrator constantly addresses the reader, expressing his doubts if it is even possible to give a faithful account of an historical event. In the second storyline he portrays the events that led to the assassination of deputy Reich Protector of the Bohemia and Moravia Reinhard Heydrich. The goal of the thesis is to analyse the relationship between history and fiction, as this relationship has during the 20th century undergone rapid changes, which are also apparent in the analysed text. The thesis is divided in two parts. The first, which serves as a theoretical base for the subsequent analysis of HHhH, depicts the historiographical approaches, which have changed and evolved significantly in the 20th century. The second part tracks the reflections of the particular historiographical approaches in HHhH and examines, which conclusions has the author reached in his...