The purpose of this dissertation is to redress the literary academy’s view of Pulp Literature as an inconsequential form, which does not merit serious contemplation, or artistic recognition. Although it is true that recent literary criticism has attempted to elevate the importance of Pulp by positing it as the natural postmodern “other” to ‘high’ literature, the thesis demonstrates how this dichotomy has proven to be counter-productive to its aim. That is, although this theoretical approach does invite legitimate investigation of the form, many academics simply use this technique to reinforce their claims for the superiority of so-called ‘canonic’ texts. Therefore, rather than continuing along this downward path, this thesis focuses more on the subversive machinations of Pulp Literature as a social, economic, political, and theoretical force with its own strategies and agendas, opening with an investigation of the history of Pulp Literature as a cultural form. I argue that, from its very conception with the invention of the printing press in the fifteenth century, Pulp has always offered a radical alternative to the mainstream by providing a voice for the marginalised and the oppressed in the societies of the world. The thesis traces this political role as the aesthetic evolves into the new forms and technologies of a contemporary culture, where many academics still refuse to acknowledge Pulp as an important agent for the transmission of ideological views, and an impetus to instigate social change. The concluding arguments move away from the quantitative, to the more theoretically evaluative section of the thesis. This consists of a discussion of the conceptual boundaries surrounding the aesthetic of Pulp, broaching such subjects as literary evaluation, canonicity, and canon formation. This debate ultimately revolves around the question, ‘if literary theorists cannot ‘objectively’ determine what literary ‘quality’ is, then how can we hope to define Pulp?’ In an attempt to answer this question, the thesis juxtaposes the criteria of a number of literary theorists from this field of inquiry, namely, Thomas R. Whissen, Clive Bloom, Thomas J. Roberts, Harold Bloom, Andrew Calcutt and Richard Shephard, to formulate an aesthetic that is not only markedly different to their’s, but more significantly, one which situates Pulp Literature at the head of the literary academic table.

This thesis is a selective study of Postmodern literature, focusing on the work of Alasdair Gray and Salman Rushdie. Postmodern literature is an expression of and response to the profound uncertainty that characterises the late-twentieth century. The works of many diverse authors attempt to come to terms with the Postmodern situation, which Jürgen Habermas has described as `the legitimation crisis'. The Enlightenment metanarratives that legitimise Western, industrial societies, have been undermined by Capitalism and events. We no longer accept general metanarratives and this generates profound uncertainty. As Postmodern literature challenges the incomplete certainties of grandnarratives, such as religious and political ideologies, it adopts uncertain forms. Texts create series of debates because these dramatise our conflicting uncertainties and our reluctance to accept, set positions, and answers that erroneously claim to be universal and absolute. By presenting issues in conflict without offering a set conclusion, fiction is able to bring its readers actively into the arguments and find a role for itself within society. The uncertainty of the present has contributed to an impression that we have lost a sense of connection with the past and future and therefore continuous identity. Postmodern novels tend to concentrate upon the struggles of the present in order to free the future from both restrictive traditional visions and the paralysing present. The future finally emerges as the direct product of the past and present, but we can also begin to imagine it as something radically different. Postmodern literature does not create new metanarratives, it legitimises a tense and provisional relationship with society that helps peoples to live in an uncertain world while not surrendering to it.

Suniti Namjoshis short work St. Suniti and the Dragon, found in the authors fabulist collection of the same name, is a formally amorphous text that alternates among allusion and alteration of Western canonical myth. The story, in which the journey of the aspiring hero St. Suniti is detailed, alludes primarily to Beowulf and the legend of St. George and the Dragon in a manner similar to, but expansive upon, the feminist revisionist project of the last few decades. While Namjoshi navigates feminist politics, she also examines the postmodern impulse to consider identity as subjective experience. In so doing, she deconstructs notions of canonical character archetypes while suggesting that identity politics must involve a multiplicity of archetypes that is, the self is seldom archetypal in the singular, but rather an amorphous and discontinuous series of mythic archetypes. Thus, the form of Namjoshis text generically ambiguous and varied mimics the authors suggestion for the composition of identity. The result is a story that transgresses prescribed social conventions and archetypes while simultaneously invoking their mythic sources as means of argumentation.

Suniti Namjoshis short work St. Suniti and the Dragon, found in the authors fabulist collection of the same name, is a formally amorphous text that alternates among allusion and alteration of Western canonical myth. The story, in which the journey of the aspiring hero St. Suniti is detailed, alludes primarily to Beowulf and the legend of St. George and the Dragon in a manner similar to, but expansive upon, the feminist revisionist project of the last few decades. While Namjoshi navigates feminist politics, she also examines the postmodern impulse to consider identity as subjective experience. In so doing, she deconstructs notions of canonical character archetypes while suggesting that identity politics must involve a multiplicity of archetypes that is, the self is seldom archetypal in the singular, but rather an amorphous and discontinuous series of mythic archetypes. Thus, the form of Namjoshis text generically ambiguous and varied mimics the authors suggestion for the composition of identity. The result is a story that transgresses prescribed social conventions and archetypes while simultaneously invoking their mythic sources as means of argumentation.

La fin du 20e siècle a vu l’émergence de la Chine comme puissance économique, mais le monde francophone connaît l’influence culturelle de la Chine depuis bien plus longtemps. Depuis les années 80, plusieurs écrivains d'origine chinoise ont publié en France des romans écrits directement en français qui ont rencontré un vif succès. Certains d’entre eux comme Dai Sijie, Ya Ding, Wei-Wei, Ying Chen et Shan Sa sont nés en Chine où ils ont vécu toute leur enfance, leur adolescence et parfois une première partie de leur vie adulte. Ils ont réussi à percer dans la littérature francophone grâce au parfum délicatement exotique qui s’est exhalé de leurs romans. Chargées de bagages historiques et traditionnels chinois, leurs œuvres convergent sur des thématiques telles que la mémoire collective de la Chine mouvementée au XXe siècle, le contact voire le choc des cultures chinoise et occidentale, la mise en avant des pensées taoïste, bouddhiste et confucianiste, etc. Avec ces voix originales, la langue française s’ouvrait à de nouvelles poétiques et témoignait de sa capacité à dire la réalité complexe du monde actuel. Partant de cette situation nous allons développer dans cette thèse trois grands axes de recherche qui chacun soulèveront leurs différentes problématiques : Quelle est la position adoptée par ces écrivains migrants chinois dans un contexte littéraire occidental ? Quel est l’impact de la mouvance postmoderne sur leur écriture ? Quelles sont les techniques esthétiques choisies par ces écrivains pour s’adapter à la situation de mixage culturel ? Quelle est l’influence des religions asiatiques (Bouddhisme, Taôisme, Confucianisme) sur les écrivains migrants d'origine chinoise ? Par quelles voies l’esprit des écrivains chinois est imprégné de pensées orientales ? Comment ces écrivains se situent-ils par rapport à l’héritage ancestral ? Quel rôle les pensées chinoises jouent-elles dans leur création littéraire ? La quête de l’identité des écrivains migrants. Existe-t-il un itinéraire commun pour les écrivains migrants d’origine chinoise? Où en sont-ils dans le processus de la reconstruction identitaire ? Quelles sont leurs démarches littéraires pour une quête identitaire ? En conclusion nous verrons en quoi certains des auteurs du corpus que nous avons étudiés sont restés ancrés à leurs origines dans le cadre de leur œuvre littéraire, et a contrario comment certains autres ont su et ont même mis un point d'honneur à mettre une distance la plus importante possible entre leurs origines et leur travail littéraire. D'autre aussi, sont à la lisière de ces deux conceptions et ont un positionnement moins claires voir même parfois cycliques. / The late 20th century saw the emergence of China as an economic power, but the french-speaking world knows the cultural influence of China for much longer. Since the 80s, many Chinese writers have published in France novels written directly in French that have met a great success. Some of them as Dai Sijie, Ya Ding, Wei-Wei, Chen Ying Shan Sa were born in China, where they have lived all their childhood, their adolescence and sometimes the first part of their adult lives. They managed to break into the french literature through the delicately exotic perfume that was exhaled from their novels. Responsible for Chinese traditional and historical baggage, their works converge on topics such as the collective memory of China's turbulent twentieth century, the contact or the collision of Chinese and Western cultures, the emphasis of Taoist thought, Buddhist and Confucianist, etc. With these original voices, the French language was open to new poetic and showed his ability to tell the complex reality of today's world. Based on this we will develop in this thesis three major research areas, each of which will raise their various problems : What is the position of these chinese migrants writers in a western literary context? What is the impact of the postmodern movement on their writing? What are the aesthetic techniques chosen by these writers to adapt to the mixed cultural situation? What is the influence of asian religions (Buddhism, Taoism, Confucianism) on chinese migrant writers? Through what channels the spirit of chinese writers is steeped in oriental thoughts? How these writers stand in relation to the ancestral heritage? What role the chinese thoughts play in their literary creation? The quest for the identity of migrant writers. Is there a common route for migrants writers of chinese origin? Where are they in the process of identity reconstruction? What are their literary approaches to a quest for identity? In conclusion we will see how some of the authors of the corpus we studied remained anchored to their origins as part of their literary, and on the contrary how some others knew and even made a point to put the largest possible distance between their origins and literary work. Also some others are on the edge of these two concepts and have a less clear positioning, sometimes even a cyclical one.

<p><p>Following World War II, the network emerged as both a major material structure and one of the most ubiquitous metaphors of the globalizing world. Over subsequent decades, scientists and social scientists increasingly applied the language of interconnection to such diverse collective forms as computer webs, terrorist networks, economic systems, and disease ecologies. The prehistory of network discourse can be traced back to descriptions of cellular formations in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and the invention of the electrical telegraph in the nineteenth century. Even so, it was not until the 1940s that researchers and writers began to rely on a more generalized network vocabulary to reflect fledgling material modes of interlinked organization and construct a new postwar vision of the world.</p></p> <p><p>Since the 1970s, the field of network science has given rise to an even wider range of research on complexity, self-organization, sustainability, group interactions, and systemic resilience. Scientists such as Albert-Laszlo Barabasi have studied network design and new media critics such as Alexander Galloway have addressed network ontology. This dissertation contends that to grasp the effects of networks on globalization, we must also look at the fears, hopes, and affects that they generate. While network scientists have been less concerned with the cultural fears, political investments, and changes in human subjectivity signaled by networks, my study of American literature focuses on writers, filmmakers, and media innovators who have captured the deep transformations of the era of interconnection. These artists have achieved insights about networks not through scientific analysis, but through aesthetic, narrative, and media-specific experimentation.</p></p> <p><p><italic>Network Aesthetics</italic> examines how contemporary American literature, film, television, and new media dramatize the affects -- alternatively terrifying and thrilling -- of interconnection. This interdisciplinary project combines numerous methodologies, including literary analysis, media studies, cultural criticism, and political theory. Given the importance of networks to representation, communication, and computing, these structures serve as an ideal hinge for operating intermedia exchanges. Using varied tools, I analyze terrorist networks (Stephen Gaghan's <italic>Syriana</italic>), financial systems (Don DeLillo's <italic>Underworld</italic>), computer webs (Marge Piercy's <italic>He, She, and It</italic>), neoimperial networks (Thomas Pynchon's <italic>Gravity's Rainbow</italic>), social networks (David Simon's <italic>The Wire</italic>), and interactive game networks (Persuasive Games' <italic>Killer Flu</italic>). In the end, I argue that obsessions with abstract network threats and solutions reveal a change in the most dramatic social protocols of our connected world. Understanding how networks have formally come to evoke fear can help us grow less susceptible to an American politics of terror and more able to act justly as we negotiate our interconnected world.</p></p> / Dissertation

Summary: The aim of this paper has been to analyse and categorize Patrick Süskind’s short story Die Geschichte von Herrn Sommer (English title: The Story of Mr Sommer (1991)). To this end, the distinctive features of two categories of literature, children’s literature and postmodern narration for adults, have been examined. The formal elements of the text, narrator, structure and language, as well as the thematical elements of the text, have been analysed using a hermaneutic method and concepts of narratology. The analysis has shown that Die Geschichte von Herrn Sommer presents several elements representative of the two catagories of literature – literature for children and literature for adults. As a result, it can be ascertained that this short story should be regarded as a text of hybrid structure, thus placing it, not in one of these categories, but in both.

“Between Floors: The Ups and Downs of Mediated Narrative” and the accompanying creative remediation project, “Between Floors: Love and Other Blood Related Diseases,” meld theory and practice of print with electronic literature and installation art. I argue that as the medium changes, the narrative is transformed. The narrative can be reconstructed and pieced together as the reader or viewer becomes increasingly involved, even embodied within the work. This embodiment is what Nathaniel Stern calls “Moving and thinking and feeling” (1) and can result in a more direct emotional experience. The form, structure, and medium (sjužet) rely on authorial intention, yet as a narrative becomes more interactive and experiential the feedback loop shifts, placing meaning, message, and construction of narrative (fabula) between media and reader/viewer. This necessarily complicates the notion of authorship, yet within an embodied space, such as the installations included in this analysis, there is a potential for greater emotional understanding between author/artist and reader/viewer. In the print story “Between Floors: Love and Other Blood Related Diseases,” the protagonist, June, visits her father in a hospital after a tragedy and ends up spending the rest of her life there. The metaphor of an elevator throughout the print, electronic, and installation versions furthers the trapped, claustrophobic feeling of the narrative as well as the ups and downs of relationships and grief. Pieces of the narrative remain recognizable through the electronic literature and installation, yet as the reader/viewer is increasingly immersed in the narrative, it becomes his or her own—a more subjective and overwhelming emotional experience. The elevator metaphor extends through the analysis—an emblem of traditional linear narratives and the narrative arc and technological immersion. The analysis explores theories of language, medium, authorship, nonlinearity, interactivity, and embodiment through existing narrative, new media, and installation theorists such as Peter Brooks, Marshall McLuhan, and Nathaniel Stern. This dissertation and to an extent, experiment, uses theory and practice to illuminate narrative using a recombination of existing theory and an original remediation in three distinct forms, to further the understanding of the nature of narratives, media, authors, and readers, while blurring boundaries between disciplines.

Ce travail se propose d’étudier la représentation du masque et l’influence de ce concept dans l’œuvre d’Amélie Nothomb, notamment pour lever le voile sur la monstruosité supposée de son écriture. Après avoir décrit le champ littéraire belge francophone et les différents courants littéraires dans lesquels semble évoluer la romancière, il s’intéresse tout d’abord aux masques utilisés par ses personnages pour tromper leur entourage et se tromper eux-mêmes, ainsi qu’à la vision du monde conjointement proposée au lecteur. Dans un second temps, il présente le masque comme une constance de la voix nothombienne, qu’elle se manifeste au travers de l’écriture thématique et stylistique de la romancière ou des émissaires constitués par ses personnages littéraires ou son personnage public. Enfin, il examine l’esthétique proprement caricaturale et grotesque des masques nothombiens, apte à faire basculer l’intrigue dans un cycle de type carnavalesque. / This thesis proposes to examine the representation of the mask and the influence of this concept in Amélie Nothomb’s work, in particular to throw light on the unproven monstrousness of her writing. Before the description of the Belgian French languaged literature and the different literary currents in which the novelist seems to belong to, it takes an interest in masks used by her characters to deceive their surroundings or deceive themselves, and in the world vision that is proposed to the reader. Secondly it describes mask as a permanent feature of the Amélie Nothomb’s voice, in the novelist’s thematic and stylistic writing or in her public or literary characters. Then, it examines the caricatural and grotesque aesthetic of the Amélie Nothomb’s masks, which can make the story beginning a carnival cycle.

Mêlant réalisme et merveilleux, temps de la nature et celui de la vie sociale, les textes d’El-Mahdi Acherchour détruisent les frontières entre l’espace sauvage et domestique, rattachent, dans un continuum, le monde des vivants à celui des morts, les temps anciens au présent, les oralités aux pratiques scripturales. Ils s’inscrivent ainsi dans le sillage de l’esthétique postmoderne en ne présentant pas une seule intrigue, mais d’infinis récits enchâssés. Pour ces raisons premières, nous proposons d’interroger ces textes dans une perspective qui croise poétique des textes littéraires et anthropologie du symbolique. Dans la première partie consacrée à l’étude du dernier roman de cet auteur, Moineau (2010), nous avons tenté de souligner les problématiques qui s’y posent. Depuis le paratexte jusqu’aux chronotopes structurant ce roman, en passant par les configurations des personnages qui y évoluent, quelques réflexions sur la mise en écriture de logiques plus au moins hétérogènes (une hétérologie culturelle) se sont (im)posées d’elles-mêmes. Des questions liées au sauvage et au domestique, au familier et à l’étrange(r), à l’écriture et à l'oralité, etc. Autant de logiques que l’écriture acherchourienne tend à métisser. Dans la seconde partie, nous avons interrogé, dans la même perspective, les deux autres romans d’El-Mahdi Acherchour : Pays d’aucun mal (2007) et Lui, le livre suivi de l’Autre, l’autre livre (2005). Deux romans qui convoquent les mêmes lieux imaginaires et font appel à cette même figure du folklore berbère (Zalgoum), dans un élan esthétique qui « fait le procès de l’Unité ». La dernière partie a été consacrée à une lecture des cultures mises en œuvre dans la poésie d’El-Mahdi Acherchour, notamment dans L’Œil de l’égaré (1997) et Chemin des choses nocturnes (2003). Au carrefour de la (des) culture (s) du Même, de la culture et de la langue de l’Autre, l'écriture d'El-Mahdi Acherchour prend une position d'entre-lieu, d’entre-deux entre des cultures, érigeant toute l’œuvre poétique et romanesque en géographie de l'ambivalence et de la cohabitation. En faisant siennes la langue et la culture de l’Autre, elle-même composite et hétérogène, les vers et la prose d’El-Mehdi Acherchour proposent une vision du monde centrée sur sa réalité syncrétique / Combining realism and the sublime, time in nature and in social life, the texts of El-Mahdi Acherchour destroy the boundaries between wild and domestic spaces and continuously link the world of the living to that of the dead, the ancient times to the present, and oral traditions to writing practices. His texts are inscribed in the wake of postmodern aesthetics, presenting not only one plot, but infinite inserted narratives. For these major reasons, we propose to analyze these texts from a perspective that takes into consideration literary texts poetics and symbolic anthropology. In the first part of this research, devoted to the study of Acherchour’s last novel, Moineau (2010), we have endeavored to shed light on the problematics that are posed in the text. Moving from the paratext, to the chronotopes that structure this novel, and through the representation of the different characters that evolve in the narrative, some reflections on the writing of heterogeneous consistencies ( cultural heterology) have imposed themselves. Some questions linked to the wild and to the domestic, to the familiar and the strange(r), to writing and oral tradition, are varied consistencies that “Acherchourian” writing tries to hybridize. In the second part of this work, we have questioned, from the same perspective, two other novels of El Mahdi Acherchour: Pays d’aucun mal (2007) and Lui, le livre followed by l’Autre, l’autre livre (2005). These two novels address the same fictional settings and appeal to the same berber folklore figure (Zalgoum) in an aesthetic surge, which makes “le procès de l’unité”. The last part of this research deals with reading the established cultures in the poetry of El Mahdi Acherchour, notably in L’Oeil de l’égaré (1997) and Chemin des choses nocturnes (2003). At the crossroads of the culture(s) of the Self, and of the culture and language of the Other, the writing of El-Mahdi Acherchour takes an ‘entre-lieu’ position, in -between cultures, establishing his poetic and fictional oeuvre as a setting for ambivalence and coexistence. By appropriating the language and the culture of the Other, which is varied and heterogeneous, the verse and prose of El-Mahdi Acherchour propose a world vision centered on its syncretic reality