Journaliste, essayiste, prosateur, poète, romancier mais aussi à ses heures réalisateur, photographe ou architecte, Curzio Malaparte (1898-1957) reste, malgré un succès public durable qui dépasse largement les frontières italiennes, un oublié de l’histoire littéraire du XXe siècle. S’il suscite actuellement un regain d’intérêt c’est surtout dans la mesure où sa participation aux deux guerres mondiales ainsi que sa trajectoire du fascisme au communisme et au catholicisme en font le miroir des contradictions de son temps. Or, est-ce bien là son principal mérite ? La présente étude propose un parcours à la fois chronologique et thématique dans l’œuvre malapartienne en s’appuyant sur l’analyse du rapport entre l’univers et la page écrite. La curiosité insatiable que l’écrivain projette sur le monde qui l’entoure dégénère, au contact de l’événement-guerre, en plongée macabre dans les atrocités de l’histoire. Les pages cruelles et hallucinées de Kaputt (1944) ou de La pelle (1949) marquent l’apogée d’une écriture qui voudrait rendre compte de la réalité tout en refusant de s’en satisfaire. Face au visage décevant de l’histoire, Malaparte échafaude un rêve de « recommencement » à la fois individuel (grâce au « mythe de l’auto-engendrement ») et collectif (dans une perspective eschatologique), mais ne renonce jamais définitivement à poursuivre dans le monde cette quête désespérée de sens qui nous le rend si proche. / Curzio Malaparte (1898-1957) was not only a journalist, essayist, prose writer, poet and a novelist but also a director, photographer and architect when time permitted. Yet despite his success both in Italy and beyond, he remains largely unknown in 20th century literary history. If he is enjoying a resurgence in popularity today it is due to his involvement in two world wars as well as his trajectory from fascism to communism and onward to Catholicism, a mirrored contradiction to his era. Or does his significance lie therein ? This thesis follows both a chronological and thematic path through his work focusing on the relationship between the universe and the written page. The insatiable curiosity the writer projects on the world around him disintegrates into history’s most gruesome atrocities following the onset of war. The cruel and uncanny pages of Kaputt (1944) and La Pelle (1949) mark the culmination of a style of writing that tries to both account for and interrogate reality. In the disappointing face of history, Malaparte constructs a dream for a new beginning that is at once individual (thanks to the « myth of self-generation ») and collective (from an eschatological perspective), yet he never renounces definitively the pursuit of this desperate quest for meaning that brings him so close to us.

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The thesis is a comparative and multidisciplinary study of legendary genealogies in the historical writing of northern England and Iceland c. 1120 – c. 1241. Historical writing was produced in abundance over this period in both areas and the frequent contact between England and Scandinavia, as well as shared use of early medieval insular sources make them especially suitable for comparison. The Viking invasions and settlement in England had a significant impact on English culture, language and literature and changed attitudes to their own legendary past. The Danish conquest of England in the early eleventh-century also brought the insular and Scandinavian worlds closer together, and even after the Norman Conquest in 1066, England and Scandinavia engaged in scholarly and textual exchange The theoretical framework for the thesis combines approaches from religious history, art history, political history, literature history and gender history. The main research questions of the thesis consider the dissemination, development, and purpose of legendary genealogies. The sources are a collection of Durham related manuscripts with illuminations of the pagan god Woden (c. 1120–88) in two historical works De Primo Saxonum Aduentu and De Gestis Regum; Genealogia Regum Anglorum (Rievaulx, 1153x54) by Aelred of Rievaulx; two works attributed to Snorri Sturluson’s Prose Edda (Iceland, 1220s) and Heimskringla (Iceland, 1225x35). Common to the sources is the inclusion of genealogies that stretch from legendary generations to living individuals at the time of writing. Thus, genealogies connected dynasties and civilisations in mutual descent from pagan, Trojan and biblical ancestors. By analysing textual dissemination as well as political contexts, literary patronage and mechanisms in legitimisation of power, the thesis address amalgamations of origin myths, the use and significance euhemerised pagan gods, and female generations in genealogies.