Mémoire numérisé par la Direction des bibliothèques de l'Université de Montréal.

This comparative study of the theatre of Helene Cixous and Marina Tsvetaeva proposes a reading of their plays as a coherent corpus engaged specifically with the representation of poetic identity. Tsvetaeva's and Cixous' plays present a diverse range of characters who can be identified as poet-selves and who struggle to assert their identity in hostile environments. An inherent link is established between the thematic and the generic. Cixous' and Tsvetaeva's adoption of the theatre as genre in which to develop their conceptualisations of poetic identity is shown to be important to the thematic contexts in which the poet-selves are constructed. This study defines four elements: language, exile, sexual difference and Greek mythology, which are shown to be common to the representation of poetic identity in Tsvetaeva's and Cixous' plays. Each element is addressed in turn in Chapters Two to Five and its role in both writers' constructions of poetic identity in their individual plays is explored and problematised. The conclusion evaluates the radical nature of Cixous' and Tsvetaeva's dramatisations of poetic identity in the context of the representation of the female poet and discusses the evolution of this theme in a chronological approach to their theatre.

This thesis addresses the contribution of Francesc Payarols and Andreu Nin to the Catalan literary system between 1928 and 1937 via the introduction of unmediated translations from Russian into Catalan. This contribution has been studied by comparing it to previous translation activity from Russian into Catalan, to translations in literary systems that due to prestige and geographical proximity can be considered neighbouring systems to the Catalan system (the French, the British and the Spanish), and by reviewing some of the critical reception that these publications gathered in the Catalan press of the time. Selected terminology and theoretical concepts of Polysystem Theory (PST) have been used critically in the methodological framing. This study occupies the gap of knowledge in current scholarship around the work of Payarols, whilst also building on previous and contemporaneous research on Nin. The evolution of translation from Russian into Catalan is contextualised from its introduction in 1879 until the establishment of Edicions Proa in 1928, the platform from which Payarols and Nin published the majority of the texts studied. The role of the translators as agents of the system is particularly highlighted, given both the influence of their translations in creating examples of models of prose that autochthonous novelists could use, and the power of their textual choices outside of the primary authors (Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Chekhov). Joan Puig i Ferreter’s agency is also explored, as the figure behind Proa’s success and one of the main promoters of the reintroduction of novels into the literary repertoire in Catalan from the late 1920s. This research studies the unmediated Catalan translations of Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Chekhov, and a selection of nineteenth and twentieth century authors carried out by Payarols and Nin, and reviews some of the impact that these had upon Catalan writers such as Mercè Rodoreda, Sebastià Juan Arbó and Joan Sales. Overall, these translations largely exceeded the previous available items of Russian literature in Catalan, and in cases such as Dostoevsky and Chekhov, they established a textual presence to go with their already existing literary fame. This process establishes that power dynamics were in operation between these translators, and that Nin had higher esteem from the literary milieu, which in turn affected the prestige of the texts he was commissioned to translate. I then contribute to the debate on the mythologisation of Nin’s work by suggesting a revision of his texts, supported by a comparison with the recently revised versions of some of Payarols translations.

This study focuses on P.I. Tchaikovsky's last completed work, the richly symbolic Six Songs, Opus 73. It demonstrates for the first time how Tchaikovsky's significant literary talents impacted on his song output in general, and on this cycle of songs in particular, providing us also with new insights into his personality. The composer selected and sequenced the poems used for the Opus 73 set to form the cycle of texts himself. The resulting songs are underpinned by a network of internal connections, which parallel the techniques used in the original poems in remarkable ways and link subtly with coded fate messages found elsewhere in the composer's output. The study presents evidence which enhances Pyotr Il'ich's reputation as a skilled manipulator of words, ideas and music.

This thesis examines the crucial diagnostic and productive roles that the concepts of minor and major practice, two interrelated modes of cultural production set out by Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari in Kafka: toward a Minor Literature (1975), have to play in the present era of ubiquitous digital technology and informatics that Deleuze himself has influentially described as the control society. In first establishing the conditions of majority and majority, Deleuze and Guattari's historical focus in Kafka is the early twentieth century period of Franz Kafka's writing, a period which, for Deleuze, marks the start of a transition between two types of society – the disciplinary society described by Michel Foucault in Discipline and Punish and the control society that is set apart by its distribution, indifferent technical processes and the replacement of the individual with the dividual in social and political thought. Because of their unique conceptual location, at the transition between societies, the concepts of majority and minority present an essential framework for understanding the impact of ubiquitous digital technology and informatics on cultural production in the twentieth century and beyond. In order to determine the conditions of contemporary major and minor practice across the transition from disciplinary to control societies, the thesis is comprised of two interconnecting threads corresponding to majority and minority respectively. Drawing on the theoretical work of Deleuze and Guattari, Friedrich Kittler and Fredric Jameson alongside pioneering figures in the historical development of computation and informatics (Alan Turing, Claude Shannon and others), material observation on the technical function of digital machines, and the close examination of emblematic cultural forms, I determine the specific conditions of majority that emerge through the development of the contemporary control era. Alongside this delineation of the conditions of majority I examine the prospective tactics, corresponding to the characteristics of minority set out by Deleuze and Guattari in Kafka, which emerge as a contemporary counter-practice within the control-era. This is carried out through the close observation of key examples of cultural production in the fields of literature, film, video, television and the videogame that manifest prospective tactics for a control-era minor practice within the overarching technical characteristics of the control-era major. Through an examination of these interrelated threads the thesis presents a framework for both addressing the significant political and cultural changes that ubiquitous computation effects in constituting the contemporary control society and determining the ways in which these changes can be addressed and countered through cultural production.

名古屋大学博士学位論文 学位の種類 : 博士(医学)(課程) 学位授与年月日:平成6年4月5日 西田佳弘氏の博士論文として提出された

This thesis examines imagery of the subconscious throughout the works of Fedor Mikhailovich Dostoevskii and how it can be used to analyse the psychology of his characters and the author himself. While studies exist on the role of, for example, dreams in Dostoevskii’s works, this thesis aims to comprehensively examine the author’s experience and use of subconscious phenomena as a whole, and their most important role in his texts: their effect on the characters who experience them. In each chapter, one form of this imagery in Dostoevskii’s works is explained and analysed with respect to individual characters or themes, and then Dostoevskii’s own experiences of the relevant subconscious phenomenon are explored. Chapter 1 looks at imagery arising through characters’ daydreams, while the author’s recurrent theme of childhood memories is also analysed as a type of nostalgic daydream. Chapter 2 examines the ‘greyer’ area of dreamlike reality, which in itself operates at two poles: confusion between dream and reality; and reality so intense as to appear unreal. The role of the ‘unreal’ city of St Petersburg is also analysed, as well as Dostoevskii’s narrative mode of ‘fantastic realism’. Chapter 3 looks at characters’ hallucinations, while Chapter 4 focuses on the character of Goliadkin in Двойник and his decline into split personality. Chapter 5 analyses the imagery of dreams, be they of anxiety and warning, of catharsis and peripeteia, or those featuring Dostoevskii’s recurring motif of the ‘Golden Age’ of mankind. The final chapter differs slightly in form by focusing on the overarching condition of epilepsy. Analysis of the author’s principal epileptic character, Prince Myshkin in Идиот, reveals the ‘deepest’ point of subconscious imagery, the ecstatic aura. Upon examining the condition’s recorded effects on Dostoevskii, epilepsy is ultimately discerned as the origin of many of the author’s experiences of subconscious phenomena and, in turn, the imagery of the subconscious used in his works. Moreover, experiences of subconscious phenomena are found to be a vital source of literary inspiration and motivation for Dostoevskii; so the correlating imagery of the subconscious is thus able to reveal fictional characters’ deepest drives and can be used as a means to glean vital, otherwise unseen, insights into their psychology.

This thesis analyses the background in folk music, folk literature and folk art of Rimsky-Korsakov's sixth opera Sadko (1897). Attention is especially focused on the folk genre of the bylina, or Russian legendary and mythical oral epic narrative, from the field of which, uniquely in Russian opera, the plot of the opera is drawn. Furthermore, many incidental details of libretto and staging are derived from these epics, and, too, lengthy vocal extracts declaimed in the style of a typical Russian peasant bard. Rimsky-Korsakov also drew, however, on many other genres of folk music and folk art for his opera, and this thesis demonstrates that there is hardly one detail of this work, including cast list and stage directions, which does not derive from the Russian folk tradition. However, some critics have maintained that the measured oral unfolding of an epic narrative does not lend itself readily to adaptation for the stage, and that there are long periods of stasis in the action of the opera. The thesis rebuts this assertion by examining Rimsky-Korsakov's artistic and aesthetic conceptions, and by demonstrating that, through his adaptation of such epic material for the musical theatre, the composer was attempting to create a new genre of stage art, in which the conventional dramatic canons were to be set aside. This thesis, therefore, firstly analyses the genre of the bylina in detail, then studies Rimsky-Korsakov's background in the culture of his period, which led to his profound immersion in Russian folk culture. Subsequent to this, the other major sources of the opera Sadko are examined, as are Rimsky-Korsakov's collaboration with Mamontov's Private Opera Company, which premiered this work, owing to the composer's difficulties with the Imperial Theatres. Following an analysis of the score and libretto to ascertain how the composer incorporated his sources into his work, the thesis concludes with an evaluation of the alleged dramatic weakness and static quality of the score, and an analysis of whether the attempt to transfer an oral linear narrative to the stage was in fact successful.

Nabokov once said that "reality" is "one of the few words which mean nothing without quotes." He has often expressed his scepticism as to whether it is ever possible to know a thing: all one can do is to collect as many facts and data about a thing as possible, accumulate information about it and thus try to get nearer its reality. But even though one may know a lot about an object, one can never know everything about it: "It's hopeless", Nabokov says and concludes, "... we live surrounded by more or less ghostly objects." What applies to things applies in an even higher degree to persons. More often than not the complexities of their souls and characters escape us and we see not real persons, but "phantoms": images of people that are the products of our own minds and that are shaped by our own interests and expectations. Nabokov's questioning enters the provinces of metaphysics when he inquires into the nature of space and time, when he asks whether life may not be an illusion, a dream; whether life is just a succession of meaningless coincidences, or whether it has some sensible and meaningful pattern. Finally he inquires into the nature of death and poses the question whether death is indeed the end of everything. According to Nabokov, it is only the artist who, through his art, can penetrate to the true reality of things and who can answer these philosophical questions, since it is he who approaches the world free from all preconceived ideas which are imposed upon ordinary minds by custom or science or even philosophy. By using comic devices, most notably parody, Nabokov frees the reader's mind from all conventional ideas and stock responses, making it possible for him to follow his depicted artists in their exploration of true reality.

Three related elements of Nabokov's art are introduced at the beginning of the study: Nabokov's monist philosophy and the self-contained structures of his art, the necessity of the co-operation of the reader to bring the 'objective existence' of the novel into being and lastly the development of the consciousness as the measure of his characters in relation to the master consciousness Nabokov. All three of these elements are shown to depend on a law of unfulfilment operating in his work, which always seeks to match one mode with its provisional opposite. The abstract basis of this idea is then explained in terms of Nabokov's use of mirror images which (it is shown) educates the reader by teaching him what not to do before he can fully experience Nabokov's deeper structures. The three-fold mirror basis of his work (the artist - the work - the reader) is next related to the tripartite Hegelian method of philosophy. Hegel's ideas are shown to be explainable in mirror terms and the accordance between both writers is demonstrated. The unfulfilling theme is identified with the antithetic phase of the syllogism. These Hegelian and mirror insights are then applied to two novels: The Gift and The Real Life of Sebastian Knight. The conclusion seeks to define the experience of the reader's apprehension of Nabokov's art using the Hegelian vocabulary that has been developed. This study demonstrates that Nabokov evolved an informal yet developed metaphysic which must be understood as an avenue to the meaning of his art. The three-fold Hegelian formula, arrived at through the discovery of the role of unfulfilment in his work, provides the Nabokov reader with an indispensable key to the solution of Nabokov' s "riddles with elegant solutions".