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According to the structuralist Claude Levi-Strauss, all myth has but one same structure. The purpose of this study is to expose the mythico-initiatory edifice that informs Vendredi ou les limbes du Pacifique, Le Roi des Aulnes, as well as Les Meteores, Michel Tournier's "trilogy". / To write, according to Tournier, cannot be a matter of literary creation, but simply of literary renewal. Vendredi ou les limbes du Pacifique, Le Roi des Aulnes and Les Meteores represent literary reflections on the primordial importance of Myth, for the Artist and above all, for Man; it is this mythic dimension that makes Tournier's entire oeuvre an "autobiography", or rather an autohagiography, according to Tournier's neologism. The three protagonists, Robinson, Tiffauges and Paul Surin, literary avatars of Tournier as Author, embark on a Quest for this lost mythic Unity; we will see that the voyage each makes is but one and the same, an allegorical odyssey toward the light$ ...$ of the City of the Sun.

The child appears in Michel Tournier's literary work as an opposites resolving principle. These contraries are the cause of the disharmony within the protagonists: Robinson Crusoe, Abel Tiffauges and Paul Surin, the three main characters of, respectively, Vendredi ou les limbes du Pacifique, Le Roi des Aulnes and Les Météores. The destiny of those three heroes is to resolve this duality. The fulfillment of that destiny is characterized by its progression in time. The variation in the time dimension is actually the main characteristic of this duality with which the protagonists hâve to deal. As a matter of fact, they switch between historic and atemporal states according to regular and specific conditions. A real or symbolic child appears with angelic and solar features when the protagonists fulfill their destiny, reaching a state where neither historicity nor eternity exist. The child, to which Tournier gives a synthesizing power, represents the recovered unity, the perfect plenitude. / L'enfant, dans l'oeuvre romanesque de Michel Tournier, agit comme principe de résolution des contraires, qui sont à l'origine de la disharmonie existant chez les protagonistes: Robinson Crusoé, Abel Tiffauges et Paul Surin, les trois personnages principaux de Vendredi ou les limbes du Pacifique, Le Roi des Aulnes et Les Météores respectivement. Leur destinée consiste justement à résoudre cette dualité. L'accomplissement de ce destin est caractérisé par une progression à travers le temps. D'ailleurs, la dualité présente chez ces trois héros se manifeste surtout dans la variation de la dimension temporelle. En effet, ils alternent, dans des conditions régulières et spécifiques, entre un état historique et un état atemporel. Lorsque les protagonistes atteignent une sphère où ni l'historicité ni l'éternité n'existent, accomplissant de la sorte leur destin, un enfant, concret ou abstrait, apparaît sous des signes angéliques et solaires. L'enfant, à qui Tournier confère un grand pouvoir de synthèse, symbolise alors l'unité retrouvée, la parfaite plénitude. fr

According to Julia Kristeva, abjection is an unconscious process (a cut) every human being has to operate to be able to autonomize her or himself from the dyadic relationship with the mother. An autonomous subject then has access to what « sémiotique tensive » (influenced by the phenomenology of perception andstructuralism) calls « field of presence » from where she or he can enunciate and thus enter the Symbolic order. In this thesis, I posit that the field of presence changes from modernity to postmodernity, and that some avant-garde authors, such as Michel Butor in the 1960's, are articulating the shift from one to the other and modifying the relationship between subject and abject. My textual analyses focus on two of Butor's most innovative books : Mobile. Étude pour une représentation des États-Unis (published in 1962) and 6 810 000 litres d'eau par seconde. Étude stéréophonique (usually referred to by critics as Niagara, the title of its English translation, published in 1965). My hypothesis is that, on the level of enunciation, Mobile shows traces of a modem field of presence, where the margins are highly dysphoric (abject), while Niagara tends to represent a more postmodern one, using différent discursive stratégies to defuse the abject threat. I close with a reflection on the state of abjection as a subjectivity inducing process, the subject it exhausts in postmodern times, and the new relationship to the body (therefore, to perception and enunciation) it imposes.

I intend, with this thesis, to investigate how Michel Foucault's concept of ???a positive unconscious of knowledge??? can be illustrated by overlapping narrative segments. I have coined the term ???friction???, as a writing practice, to describe the space in-between narrative conception and conscious, ordered reflection upon that narrative. Thus, the thesis comprises an exploration of Foucault's intersecting marginal zone, which is an integral aspect of his philosophic concept of ???positive unconscious???. The ???positive unconscious??? is where the overlapping sections of what Foucault calls, a ???table??? (creative narrative) and ???tabula??? (the ordering of the narrative) are situated. The frictional form is synonymous with Foucault's concept. It is as a developing narrative conception that becomes an ordered practice, and also aims to be what Jacques Derrida calls ???a new writing???. Hence, Foucault's ???positive unconscious???, Derrida's ???new writing???, and the frictional narrative process all comprise, along with and through the multiple inclusions of myriad theorists, philosophers, fiction writers, lyric poets, etc., an amalgamated whole ???new??? narrative (the frictionalised thesis). The paradox of the ???new??? (frictional) narrative is that through mimesis comes characterised difference - a ???new??? hybridised space is opened up which both fascinates and appals, railing as it does against fixed, constraining and systematised linguistic and discursive structures. Yet this is a stimulating space that ultimately brings new focus to stifling self-conformity. It is a frictional space comprised of a profusion of literary ???voices??? made singular, a singularity that is also mutiplicitous in its composite origin. It is a frictional observance that refutes the injunction of needing definite closure given its inclusion of potentially unlimited sources.

Thesis (B.S.)--Butler University, Magna Cum Laude, 1971. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 55-56).

Zugl.: Münster (Westfalen), Univ., Diss., 2007

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Washington, 1995. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves [335]-346).

Thèse--Paris.

Thesis (doctoral)--Université de Paris III, 2001. Thesis (doctoral)--University of Sydney, 2001. / At head of title: Université de Paris III--Sorbonne nouvelle. UFR de littérature et linguistique françaises et latines. Includes bibliographical references (p. [323]-339) and index.