This short story collection consists of twenty short fictions and a novella. A preface precedes the collection addressing issues of craft, pedagogy, and the post Program Era literary landscape, with particular attention paid to the need for empathy as an active guiding principle in the writing of fiction.

Merry-Go-Round is a realistic adolescent novella that looks at true problems young adults can face. The protagonist, Amy, is ten-year-old girl who meets a boy, Ben, of the same age at the hotel where her mother works. Amy and Ben become fast friends. Amy's mother is involved in an abusive relationship and Ben's mother is dying of cancer. Through the relationship formed between the children, they learn how to survive by sharing their difficulties and working them out. The realistic, troublesome situations faced by the main characters of Merry-Go-Round will help readers graduate smoothly on the next level of reading.

The leitmotif of Stuffmobile, a modern day Florida-based novella, is that of relational healing: a son with his father, ex-lovers with one another, and, even more challenging perhaps, a son making peace with his dead mother. New beginnings are explored, both as resurrection of long dead feelings and as starting afresh after loss. A husband finds distraction in a covert project after his wife’s death, so much so that his preoccupied isolation worries his two adult children. The son comes to investigate, and his malfunctioning car leads to a reunion and the beginnings of reconciliation. Hours later, an accident nearly derails the relationship once more. The characters here struggle to understand and be understood, to avoid hurting others and avoid being hurt, all while searching for respect and love—just another normal day of the human experience.

Lucidity is a novella set in the near future of a man living in a city in the United States as a successful businessman. The novella criticizes the idea of consumerism through Aurora, a character who believes that a drug is being introduced into the water and food supply by the corporate-backed government. Characters find advertising to be almost irresistible, experience strange cravings for things like cheap beer, and are generally preoccupied with the latest products. James Simmons, the protagonist of the novella, finds himself in the lap of luxury. He has a job that pays well, a penthouse apartment, a fast car, and women. Even though he has the material riches that society tells him he needs to be happy, he knows that something is missing, something is wrong with the world in which he lives. For reasons unknown to him at the time, James is fired from his job and sets out on a journey to discover why. Over the course of his journey, he is finally able to begin piecing together the nature of deeper questions about himself that he never had a chance to answer.

Ce travail se compose de deux parties. La première décrit et évalue, dans les premiers deux chapitres, l’interprétation du Décaméron de Boccace dans les travaux de Schlegel, Hegel, Lukács, Bakhtine et Auerbach. Ensuite, à partir de cette opération de comparaison, un troisième chapitre analyse des nouvelles perspectives interprétatives et historiques sur le roman, et pose les bases herméneutiques pour une nouvelle lecture du Décaméron.La deuxième partie aborde, dans un premier chapitre, la réécriture boccacienne de l’épisode de Paolo et Francesca de la Commedia de Dante (Enfer V). Dans le cadre de ce même chapitre, on analyse la théorie de la « fable » développée par Boccace dans les Genealogie deorum gentilium en montrant surtout les aspects liés aux d’allégorie, de connaissance et de consolation. À cela fait suite une analyse de la structure narrative du Filocolo et une hypothèse sur la fonction de l’épisode des « Questioni d’amore » dans l’économie globale de l’œuvre. Le deuxième chapitre propose une lecture du Décaméron qui prend appui sur la notion de « compassion » et qui offre une analyse du récit-porteur à partir d’instances éthiques et philosophiques. Les sous-chapitres centraux explorent les modalités de mise en jeu des croyances. Le chapitre se termine par une analyse de la notion de « fortune », sa théorisation et sa représentation dans le Décaméron. Le troisième chapitre est consacré à l’interprétation individuelle d’un groupe de cinq nouvelles (IV, 4 ; V, 1 ; II, 7 ; II, 9 ; X, 10). / This work is composed of two parts. In the first one, I critically analyze how Boccaccio was read by the main theorists of the novel (Schlegel, Hegel, Lukács, Bakhtine, Auerbach); once described individually, these authors are later confronted with each other. A third chapter deals with new perspectives in the theory of the novel, which provide the foundation for a new interpretation of Boccaccio’s Decameron.The second part is devoted to Boccaccio’s works in themselves. First, I analyze Boccaccio’s rewriting of the dantean episode of Paolo and Francesca (Inf. V). In the same chapter I also discuss Boccaccio’s theory of the fabula as it is developed in his Genealogie deorum gentilium, by focusing on crucial issues such as allegory, knowledge and consolation. I conclude the chapter with an inquiry on the Filocolo’s narrative framework; particular attention is devoted to the episode of the «Questioni d’amore» and to its functions in the economy of the whole work. The second chapter puts forward a new reading of the Decameron, based on the notion of ‘compassion’; I analyze the Decameron’s narrative framework on the ground of philosophical and ethical categories. I also explore how the beliefs’ device is shaped by Boccaccio; the chapter ends with an enquiry around the concept of fortune, its theorization and representation in the Decameron. The third and final chapter is devoted to the individual interpretation of five novellas (IV, 4; V, 1; II, 7; II, 9; X, 10).

This thesis works towards establishing a legacy of influence between George Eliot’s “The Lifted Veil” and Henry James’ “The Beast in the Jungle.” Through an exploration of James’ relationship to Eliot’s oeuvre and a close study of the two works in tandem, it will become apparent the influence Eliot’s slight Gothic story held on James’ celebrated short story. Furthermore, this thesis will introduce another chapter of the growing critical tradition of studying the relationship between George Eliot and Henry James.

Containing over forty portraits, the frescoes by Domenico Ghirlandaio in the cappella maggiore of S. Maria Novella provide the opportunity to investigate the function and context of Quattrocento portraiture. Burkhart’s famous notion of Renaissance “individualism,” usually seen as a sufficient explanation for the rise of this genre, is rejected in favour of corporate, especially family, motivations and modes of address. This necessitates an examination of consorterial traditions and patterns of patronage which are registered in the Tornaquinci chapel and enabled the acquisition of patronage rights to the chapel by the entire consorteria in October 1486. A biography is also supplied of Giovanni Tornabuoni, the man who paid for the decoration of this, his family monument, and closely supervised its progress.

La figure du mage charlatan et imposteur constitue, dans la littérature du XVIe siècle, un topos qui reflète la confiance communément accordée à la magie et aux arts hermétiques. Il s'agit d'un personnage novateur, qui apparaît à un siècle où la lutte contre les pratiques magiques se fait progressivement plus intense. Le but de cette recherche est d'analyser les personnages magiques dans différents genres littéraires comme les nouvelles et les comédies, en se concentrant sur la caractérisation linguistique, sur la description du charlatan et de ses complices et les lieux dans lesquels apparaissent le plus fréquemment les imposteurs. En outre, une comparaison est effectuée avec la littérature magique et juridique du XVIe siècle, afin de reconstruire le climat culturel dans lequel les textes étaient produits et diffusés. La représentation du mage-charlatan subit les fréquentes ingérences du pouvoir politique, inquiet du fait qu'une nouvelle hérésie puisse compromettre le fragile équilibre social. Les procès intentés contre les acteurs, dont les pièces vont au-delà du canevas fait de dérision et de moquerie à l'encontre du nécromancien, semblent témoigner de la conviction, enracinée dans le monde intellectuel du XVIe siècle, que les arts hermétiques pourraient nuire aux coutumes des hommes. Cette recherche se propose de trouver des textes littéraires où apparaît la figure du mage escroc et de montrer la précarité de la division entre charlatans et sorciers dans la littérature de l'époque. / The character of the charlatan and impostor magician constitutes in the Renaissance a tòpos who reflects the commonly granted trust to the magic and to the hermetic arts. It deals with an innovative personage, who appears in a century when the struggle against the magician practices was becoming progressively more intense. The aim of this research is the analysis of the personages who represent the magician and the charlatan, focusing on the linguistic and psychological characterisation of the « cerretano » and of his victims. Moreover, a comparison is carried out with the magic and judicial literature of the 16th century in order to reconstruct the cultural atmosphere in which the texts were composed and diffused. The representation of the magician-charlatan was influenced by the usual interferences of political power, worried for the social dangers of a new heresy. In fact, the trials of the actors, whose pieces went beyond the canvas made by derision and mockery of the necromantic, would seem to testify the conviction whereby the hermetic arts could damage the morals. This research aims to find some literary texts where there is the character of the swindler magician and to show the fragility of the division between charlatans and sorcerers in the Renaissance literature.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Melbourne, 1985. / Includes bibliographical references (vol. 2, leaves [2]-26).

Le présent travail explore un ensemble de textes peu étudié. L’hétérogénéité générique et chronologique de cet ensemble étant évidente, l’objectif visé est d’aller au-delà des différences formelles et de se concentrer sur les interférences entre les deux grands genres narratifs du XVIIe et du XVIIIe siècle : le roman, premièrement, et l’histoire, en tant qu’élément constitutif de la codification du sous-genre des Vies, secondement. À ce titre, les outils analytiques de la théorie de l’écriture romanesque et de l’historiographie y sont mobilisés simultanément et, parfois même, se recouvrent. Ainsi, au lieu de privilégier une étude thématique, philologique ou historico-biographique, l’analyse menée consiste en une étude parallèle des deux genres narratifs, des principes de leur composition et de leur rapport avec la tradition écrite antique. Car il n’y a pas de doute que ce qui est homogène dans les textes tient essentiellement à leur ascendance gréco-romaine, voire à leur attachement à une vision du monde « traditionnelle » et « héroïque » – d’où, finalement, leur qualification en tant que « narrations héroïques ». Autosuffisants au niveau sémantique et symbolique, les protagonistes des textes étudiés obéissent à une vision du monde selon l’idée, accueillante à leur héroïsme ontologique. C’est la raison pourquoi, même si les Philippe, Épaminondas et Scipion mis en récit ne se fixent pas les mêmes objectifs, ils remplissent la même fonction. / The present work explores a corpus of texts that has been very little studied. The generic and chronological heterogeneity of these texts being evident, the objective of this study is to go further than the mere formal differences and to focus on the interferences between the two prominent narrative genres of the 17th and 18th centuries: on the one hand, the novel and on the on the other, history as a constituent element of the codification of the subgenre of Lifes. For the accomplishment of this task, the analytical auxiliaries of Romanesque writing theory and historiography are simultaneously mobilised, in some cases overlapping each other. Hence, instead of a thematic study, philological or historico-biographical, the analysis followed consists in a parallel study of the two narrative genres, of their composition principles and their relations with the ancient writing tradition. For, most probably, what is homogeneous in these texts derives essentially, from their Greco-Roman ascendance, and more precisely from their attachment to a “traditional” and “heroic” vision of the world – from which their qualification as “heroic narratives” is finally derived. Self-sufficient as far as the semantic and symbolic levels are concerned, the texts studied here present heroes who obey to a vision of a world based on the idea of their ontological heroism. This is the reason why even though the tales of Philip, Epaminondas and Scipio do not set the same objectives, the heroes nevertheless do fulfil the same functions.