The body of writing collectively referred to as third generation or contemporary Nigerian literature emerged on the international literary scene from about the year 2000. This writing is marked by attempts to negotiate contemporary identities, and it engages with various developments in the Nigerian nation: Nigeria’s past and current political and socio-economic state, different kinds of cultural hybridization as well as the writers increasing transnational awareness. This study argues that contemporary Nigerian fiction obsessively returns to the period from 1985-1998 as a historical site for narrating the individual and collective Nigerian experience of the trauma of military dictatorship, which has shaped the contemporary reality of the nation. The study builds on existing critical work on contemporary Nigerian fiction, in order to highlight patterns and ideas that have hitherto been neglected in scholarly work in this field. The study seeks to address this gap in the existing critical literature by examining third-generation Nigerian writing’s representation of this era in a select corpus of work spanning from 2000-06: Okey Ndibe’s Arrows of Rain (2000), Helon Habila’s Waiting for an Angel (2002), Sefi Atta’s Everything Good will Come (2005), and Chimamanda Adichie’s Purple Hibiscus (2006). The four novels chosen were written in response to military rule and dictatorship in the 80s and 90s, and they all feature representations of state violence. This study finds that, despite variations in the novels aesthetic modes, violence, control, silencing, dictatorship, alienation, the trauma of everyday life and resistance recur in realist modes. Above all, the study argues that contemporary Nigerian fiction’s insistent representation of the violent past of military rule in Nigeria is a means of navigating the complex psychological and political processes involved in dealing with post-colonial trauma by employing writing as a form of resistance.

Cette thèse est consacrée à la réception de la figure et de l’œuvre de Béla Bartók (1881-1945) en Italie, dans la première moitié du XXe siècle. Opérée depuis un point de vue musicologique, l’analyse de l’influence bartókienne dans les œuvres de nombreux compositeurs italiens (d’Alfredo Casella à Bruno Maderna) invite à reconsidérer l’évolution du modernisme artistique en Italie, ainsi que les fondements de la poétique du musicien hongrois – informée par le nationalisme magyar, la « pureté » du folklore paysan et l’utopie de la « musique nocturne ». Par ailleurs, l’étude des formes de transmission et de critique de l’un des compositeurs canoniques du siècle dernier soulève des enjeux plus généraux, qui relèvent de l’histoire culturelle : la continuité entre modernisme artistique et totalitarisme, les formes et les significations de la résistance culturelle, les rapports entre musique et diplomatie, la construction du mythe antifasciste de Bartók. À bien des égards, la « vague bartókienne » qui s’affirma en Italie pendant la période de la guerre froide fut l’aboutissement de la fusion entre le mythe de Bartók – ce « musicien de la liberté » dont parlait le critique Massimo Mila – et le mythe de la renaissance nationale. Une fusion qui avait ses origines dans le paysage sonore de la dictature fasciste et de la Resistenza. / This thesis focuses on the reception of Béla Bartók’s music and figure in Italy during the first half of the twentieth century. From a musicological standpoint, the analysis of Bartók’s influence on the works of several Italian composers (from Alfredo Casella to Bruno Maderna) invites us to reconsider the evolution of artistic modernism in Italy, as well as the foundations of Bartók’s poetics – which is informed by Hungarian nationalism, the “purity” of peasant folklore, and the utopia of “night music”. Furthermore, the study of the forms of transmission and criticism of one of the canonical composers of the last century raises broader issues concerning cultural history, such as: the continuity between artistic modernism and totalitarianism, the forms and meanings of cultural resistance, the relation between music and diplomacy, and the construction of the antifascist myth of Bartók.This thesis argues that the Bartókian Wave, which emerged in Italy during the early Cold War period, was the result of the fusion between the Bartók myth – i.e. the “musician of freedom” celebrated by the critic Massimo Mila – and the myth of national regeneration: a fusion that had its origins in the soundscape of Fascist dictatorship and the Resistenza.