Les ailleurs géographiques recherchés et célébrés dans l'oeuvre de Marguerite Yourcenar, en particulier dans les contes, les romans, les chroniques familiales et les essais, témoignent de la mise en scène d'une inextinguible quête de mobilité. L'analyse stylistique, sociologique et philosophique de cet éloge du mouvement physique et de l'élan intellectuel dont il est indissociable permet d'appréhender la création et l'écriture yourcenariennes sous un angle nouveau. Une éthique du voyage, expression privilégiée d'un mode de vie en mouvement, est diversement développée dans l'oeuvre en fonction du choix générique opéré : si le voyager est accès à une forme de sagesse dans la perspective didactique du conte, les bénéfices du déplacement en termes de connaissances sont plus amplement déclinés dans l'espace polymorphique du roman, et sont associés à l'apprentissage intellectuel et existentiel dans les textes à caractère autobiographique. Si le péril de l'immobilité hante irrémédiablement l'écriture de Yourcenar, le dépassement de la fixité, qu'elle soit strictement spatiale ou davantage sociale, met parallèlement en lumière une vision de l'épanouissement humain. Parmi ces incarnations rêvées de la mobilité, la femme s'impose comme une figure emblématique du mouvement. Dans les récits et les essais, dont l'une des finalités est précisément de s'interroger sur le dynamisme féminin, la capacité émancipatrice de personnages littéraires ou d'êtres réels peut alors se lire au regard de l'audace de leurs trajectoires spatiale ou mentale. Si la mobilité est en soi un acte signifiant, déceler la présence d'une symbolique des espaces parcourus qui ont abondamment nourri l'oeuvre permet de dresser une carte géographique existentielle qui éclaire le parcours artistique et spirituel de l'écrivain, en révélant les facettes qu'a revêtues son désir de connaissance du monde et de soi. / The distant geographical areas looked for and celebrated in Marguerite Yourcenar's works, in particular in tales, novels, family chronicles and essays, reveal the elaboration of a quest of mobility. The stylistic, sociological and philosophic analysis of this praise of physical movement and intellectual vigour with which it is linked , allows to conceive Yourcenar's creation and writing in a new way. A philosophy of travelling, as a privileged expression of lifestyle in movement, is variously developed in these texts according to the choice of the literary genre : if travelling is devoted to a form of wisdom in the didactic prospect of the tale, the profits of movement in terms of knowledge are more emphasized in the polymorphic space of the novel, and are associated to the intellectual and existential learning in texts with autobiographical character. If the danger of immobility, strictly in a spatial or more social meaning, has haunted the writing of Yourcenar, the way to overcome this danger shows a vision of human self-fulfillment. Among these fantasized embodiments of mobility, the woman stands out as an iconic figure of movement. In narratives and essays, in which the intention is to wonder about feminine dynamism, the liberating ability of literary characters or real persons can then be read in the light of their spatial or mental trajectories. If mobility is in itself a meaningful act, it may also reveal the importance of symbolic spaces that inspired Marguerite Yourcenar and draw an existential map which lightens the artistic and spiritual route of the writer, by revealing different aspects of her search for knowledge.

The entrance of women into ordained ministry positions is a relatively new phenomenon in the North American Christian church, and has yet to be given adequate scholarly attention. This thesis probes the experiences of several pioneering women, presenting both the substantial and theoretical contributions emerging from a qualitative study of female pastors ministering in Protestant congregations across Canada. Data collection and analysis were approached through the lens of symbolic interactionism and grounded theory. The main findings emerging from 44 qualitative, in-depth interviews have been organized into three distinct papers to constitute a sandwich dissertation. The first paper outlines how some women experience a “call” to ministry and how this change in trajectory impacts their identity and constructions of the past, while the second two papers address different facets of performing the pastoral role once within it. Paper 2 explores the dilemmas women encounter in the area of clothing and appearances, a concern many of the women identified as influencing their performance of the pastoral role. Paper 3 explores in greater depth the ways women feel they perform the pastoral role differently than their male counterparts, and raises questions about the impact this may have on changing the role in the future. Taken together, the three papers contribute to a broad range of debates in the theoretical literature about key facets of the human experience, including: changing career trajectories, role making and performance of self, and microlevel influences on institutional change. The dissertation also encourages a new direction for sociological research – human interactions with the divine. / Thesis / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) / This thesis investigates what it is like to be a female pastor in the Christian church in Canada, as women have only recently been able to be fully ordained in most Protestant denominations. Three themes are explored: (1) how women decide to enter into Christian ministry, (2) how they navigate dilemmas around clothing in the pastoral role, and (3) how they feel they do pastoral ministry differently than their male counterparts. On a more theoretical level, this thesis also helps us understand the experiences of women entering traditionally male occupations, illuminating how they – and perhaps anyone who undergoes a career transition – navigate changes in work roles and identities, how clothing can help them achieve legitimacy in a role, and how women may be changing the professions they enter into in large numbers by doing their work differently.

The present dissertation investigates similes and their importance in Eichendorff’s narrative work. The sources of the investigation consist of seven of Eichendorff’s narratives. Their 734 similes make up the corpus, which is presented in its entirety in the appendix. The context of the similes is partly included as well. Initially, I define the concept of “simile” more precisely, partly distancing myself from the definitions found in classical dictionaries of literary terms. After this, I describe my procedure for analysis in detail. This turned out to be necessary, since there was no similar study to be found on this topic in the extensive literature on Eichendorff. The search for models of types of similes brought me back to antique rhetoric as well as to Middle High German epic poems. In the first analysis, the types of similes occurring in the corpus are presented. The syntactic structures of image receivers and image givers are used as criteria. Four structures of similes occurred: a) classical similes and b) similes with image givers, which represent adverbial clauses and c) as / as if – clauses or are d) subject-related. The frequency and the development of frequency of types of similes are presented as well. In the second step of the thesis, I investigate whether similes tend to depict conditions/qualities or procedures/actions. It turned out that similes reflecting conditions/qualities, i.e. epic similes, dominated strongly. The high number of similes could possibly be explained by the functions carried out by epic similes in narrative texts. In the third part, I concern myself with the question whether the similes of the corpus are imaginative representations only and what kind of sensorial perceptions they express. Admittedly, the dominating percentage of the similes proved to be images, but more than fifteen per cent consist of sounds and other sensorial perceptions. Furthermore, imaginative similes, but also sounding similes express motion, so that they illustrate pictures in motion and sounding motion respectively. These come close to synaesthesia, whereas only five similes illustrate „pure“ synaesthesia. In contrast, subject-related similes are perceptions of different sensations and feelings, illustrating the inner life of a character not shared by any other character. Finally, the semantic content of the similes is investigated in order to determine the metamorphosis, i.e. the trope transfer from proprium to improprium. It turned out that only the classical simile originating in antique rhetoric is suitable for a semantic analysis. Above all, there is great variation in the trope transfer. The metamorphosis human being → nature dominates strongly, which makes the narrative text appear as a palimpsest, in which yet another world glimmer in front of the human being behind every character. However, the many trope transfers that convey reality → unreality could be interpreted as transitions and as a “magical code” of Eichendorff. Furthermore, the semantic analysis uncovers content and motives of classical similes. It becomes clear that pre-constructed – and only pre-constructed - content is imitated here. Consequently, it can be asserted that Eichendorff’s great number of similes constitute or at least contribute to the formulaic manner (according to Kohlschmidt) and the intertextuality (according to Nienhaus) in Eichendorff’s narrative work. Above all, the subject-related simile type turns out to be a typical representative of Romanticism because of its subjectivism. Together with its preformed semantic content, it constitutes the “romantic formula” of Eichendorff’s work.