This thesis offers a new perspective on the cultural contribution of Louis Aimé-Martin, best known as the principal editor of Bernardin de Saint-Pierre. The thesis begins in chapter 1 with a critical analysis of the posthumous edition of Bernardin’s Essai sur J.-J. Rousseau. This text, singled out by the scholar, Maurice Souriau, as an exemplar of Aimé-Martin’s editorial negligence, introduces a theme sustained throughout chapter 2. This study of part of the Correspondance de J.-H. Bernardin de Saint-Pierre, in revealing Aimé-Martin’s emotive handling of the manuscripts he works from, leads to a necessary consideration of other, more objective editorial ventures in chapter 3. Attention turns from Bernardin’s legacy to an investigation of Aimé-Martin as a reputed authority on the lives and works of a host of French personalities from across the centuries. In light of those undertakings independent of Bernardin, the following chapters go on to broaden our understanding of Aimé-Martin, revealing some of his own literary endeavours. Reflections on the Lettres à Sophie sur la physique, la chimie et l’histoire naturelle (1810) in chapter 4, and Raymond (1811) in chapter 5, testify to Aimé-Martin’s interest in contemporary issues from feminine pedagogy to the moralisation of the peasant class. Such concerns eventually culminate in the philosophy of the Education des mères (1834), considered in chapter 6. It is this œuvre, with its promotion of a new, more accessible spirituality and its proposed revisions of the educative system, which truly sees Aimé-Martin engage with the socio-political agenda of his day. Chapter 7 looks further, then, at Aimé-Martin’s immersion in the cultural community of his time, drawing in particular on the revelations of his correspondence with Alphonse de Lamartine. The renowned editor is thus shown to be a transitional figure, holding a torch for the memory of an eighteenth-century icon while also shining a light of hope and inspiration for the people of the early decades of the nineteenth.

The aim of this work is to examine the pastoral theme in literature, including its origin, the main characteristics, and its transformation from ancient times until the Renaissance, with particular focus on the author's originality, cultural environment, and social progress. This work is divided into five chapters and the conclusion. The second chapter deals with the origin of this genre and analyses idyllic poetry of the Greek poet Theokritos and his Roman follower Vergilius who introduced the pastoral tradition in literature. The third chapter focuses on the persistence of this tradition during the Middle Ages, and the manner in which the theme was incorporated into Christian literature. The Boccaccio's stories of nymphes and shepherds will be analysed. The fourth chapter explores the arrival of humanism and introduces the figure of Lorenzo de'Medici whose pastoral compositions carry on the tradition of mythic Arcadia wherein the shepherds suffer repeatedly the anguish of unhappy love. The popularity of this genre exceeds the limits of humanism and impacts the renaissance poets as well. The fifth chapter presents the life and work of Jacopo Sannazaro. The sixth chapter is dedicated to the analysis of Sannazaro's pastoral novel Arcadia. The conclusion compares the influence of ancient literature...

The farm in South Africa is an ideologically laden but also ambivalent concept, associated with pastoral ideals and the hierarchy of the colonial past; but also with fear and insecurity. The representation of the farm in the South African farm novel has been subjected to larger processes of development, dissolution and replacement in accordance with changing socio-historical contexts. Accordingly, the farm novel's contribution to the conceptualization of space, place and identity within the South African and postcolonial literary context, needs to be traced and related to the pastoral tradition as well as its mutations and deviations. This dissertation investigates how Olive Schreiner's The Story of an African Farm (1883) and J.M. Coetzee's Disgrace (1999) as anti-pastoral farm novels, in different ways and degrees, rewrite and transcend the pastoral farm novel tradition by rejecting and subverting the inherent ideological assumptions and pastoral values exemplified by this genre. Specific focus is given to the role of space and place in the identity formation of the female protagonists and the conceptualization thereof in a postcolonial society. / Thesis (M.A. (English))--North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2005

The farm in South Africa is an ideologically laden but also ambivalent concept, associated with pastoral ideals and the hierarchy of the colonial past; but also with fear and insecurity. The representation of the farm in the South African farm novel has been subjected to larger processes of development, dissolution and replacement in accordance with changing socio-historical contexts. Accordingly, the farm novel's contribution to the conceptualization of space, place and identity within the South African and postcolonial literary context, needs to be traced and related to the pastoral tradition as well as its mutations and deviations. This dissertation investigates how Olive Schreiner's The Story of an African Farm (1883) and J.M. Coetzee's Disgrace (1999) as anti-pastoral farm novels, in different ways and degrees, rewrite and transcend the pastoral farm novel tradition by rejecting and subverting the inherent ideological assumptions and pastoral values exemplified by this genre. Specific focus is given to the role of space and place in the identity formation of the female protagonists and the conceptualization thereof in a postcolonial society. / Thesis (M.A. (English))--North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2005