In Alain Robbe-Grillet's La Jalousie and Marcel Proust's Sodome et Gomorrhe, semantic duality of "jealousy" makes it both a realistic objective architectural element (the shutter in the window) and an abstract subjective element (the feeling of jealousy). Architectural jealousy constitutes a metaphor of romantic jealousy, which is a formalization of jealous love in the text. The romantic environment makes jealous love appear a part of "natural" reality. Some techniques are used to colorize the decor according to an "interior universe." Fragmentation of space and the delineation of text into borders contribute to illustrate the paradoxical jealous space in which one can see the object of one's jealousy, but where one always meets only oneself. The closing of the text into borders allows displacement by way of analogy, description and understatement, processes that force the reader to explore the allegorical narrative and the jealous space, a textual space. In a metaphorical place, the distortion of the narrative instance's point of view brings on analogical displacement. In La Jalousie, the traces revealing the presence of the narrator in the narrative can be observed. The motifs reflect his own image, in a jealous space. The narrator of La Recherche displaces the object of his jealousy who is not Albertine but the text itself. The text is the jealous object. The characters, as per Bakhtin's theories, try to escape the dictatorial point of view of the jealous narrator; they hide in folds of text where there exist blind spots, shades and reflections. They use the romantic fallacy to represent to the narrator the image he wishes to see. The socio-semiotic paradigm illustrates the narrator's masculine voice, which only suggests the recipient of jealousy, the "she" object. Romanticism renders dictatorial jealousy obscure; it then appears as jealous love. Jealousy constitute a metaphor of the untold in the narrative.

No description available.

No description available.

This thesis presents a list and analysis of the prophecies in the Commedia of Dante Alighieri. The prophecies are then broadly considered under two headings, ante eventum and post eventum, although these elements are frequently mixed together. They are used by Dante for various purposes, including the reinterpretation of the meaning of his own exile, and different programmes of moral and political critique. The foresight shown by the inhabitants of the three parts of the after-life is also examined, and philosophical and literary explanations found. The prophetic ability of the souls in the Inferno especially is found to have an antecedent in classical literature, and in particular in Lucan’s Pharsalia.  The role of the post eventum and ante eventum prophecies in the truth claims of the Commedia is considered, and the meaning of Dante Poeta’s silence on them is examined.

This thesis (395 pp.) is an edition of a XIVth century transcription of a chronicle in French prose compiled in the early part of the XIIIth century. This compilation is a résumé of all or part of at least five Latin chronicles which recount the history of the dukes of Normandy and kings of England, starting with their mythical origins in Troy and finishing in 1217 with the end of civil strife and foreign intervention in England during the first year of Henry III's minority, and the departure of the Fifth Crusade from all Christendom. The edition comprises an introduction dealing with the general subject area, manuscript classification, authorship, place and time of creating manuscripts and printed editions consulted, description of the base manuscript, language notes, establishment of the text, and ending with a detailed synopsis in English. This introduction contains pp.i-lxxix. There follows the edited base text (pp. 1-108) and critical apparatus (pp. 109-316): variants, rejected readings and emendations, scribal emendations, notes, bibliography, index of proper names, and glossary.

This thesis analyses twelfth- and thirteenth-century French texts from a range of genres to demonstrate how the inter-relation of narrative and place is a catalyst for the production of vernacular literary works. Rooted in close criticism of the texts in question (the Roman d’Eneas, lives of the martyrs Christina of Tyre and Catherine of Alexandria, the Voyage de saint Brendan, lives of the ascetics Alexis and Mary of Egypt, and the Roman de Brut), this study examines the ways in which narration both generates and delimits place. In tandem with this it interrogates the representations of, and disturbances to, the spatial organization of these texts, encompassing such themes as empire-building, genealogy, travel and exile. This juxtaposition of diverse materials opens up mutually illuminating spaces, demonstrating the instability of the entrenched generic categories applied to them and prompting consideration of the ambiguous principles of medieval poetic craft. Hagiography is a particularly pertinent crossing-point for multiple thematic concerns, from the tension between revelation and concealment of the body to the relationship between a state and its citizens. Its location at the confluence of liturgy, lay spirituality and entertainment makes it an apt focus for a study such as this. The thesis also considers questions of cultural and political appropriation and re-appropriation of place, drawing on medieval writers’ and thinkers’ conflicted relationship with their classical antecedents and non-Christian ‘others’. The many and varied journeys undertaken in these texts, meanwhile, offer critical meeting points between practices of writing about place across a range of modes, and they invite consideration of the historical contexts for their production. Foremost in this study, however, is a concern with the ways in which medieval narratives reify story; through close attention to how narratives are produced, preserved and transmitted in these texts, I examine the ethics and efficacy of storytelling as a means for creating place. Whether they re-present foundation myths, the trials of saints, or the fantastical journeys of adventurers, these stories are both container and content for reflections on how authors can relate to their world, and it this sense of the two faces of narrative that underpins my interpretation of these texts and their representations of places and spaces.

The main aim of this thesis is to demonstrate how interdisciplinary research into the cultural background of Senegalese women writers can impact upon the strategies of the translator of their works into English. It also proposes to illustrate how Translation Studies theories can be applied to the practice of translation, by analysing previously translated works as well as examples from texts that have not been translated before. In this way, the thesis tests the hypothesis that a broad knowledge of Senegalese history, languages and modern day realities is essential in the translation of Francophone Senegalese women’s literature. Literature and culture are analysed under four key themes – Change, Power, Mediation and Orature, drawing upon issues of language and gender where appropriate, and using extracts from texts and translations to support arguments. Theoretical material is analysed from a number of different disciplines, some of which was collated whilst studying at the Université Cheikh Anta Diop in Dakar. Interviews with writers and academics supplied rare insight into Senegalese literature and society, and time spent living with Senegalese families provided first-hand experience of local cultures, as well as an opportunity to learn Wolof for the purpose of textual analysis. This thesis contributes knowledge to a number of different fields of study due to its multidisciplinary approach. It also redresses the gender and geographical bias of much previous research into postcolonial African translation, as well as expanding critical work on Senegalese writers. By analysing a range of text types, this thesis progresses many previous studies of Senegalese women’s literature that only focus on novels, and it uniquely analyses the influence of the native language upon Francophone African translation. This thesis supports the hypothesis that cultural research can amend the way a translator works, but progresses beyond previous strategies for cultural translation by promoting complete submersion in source text languages and cultures. And through analytical debate it demonstrates how previously translated texts may be rewritten differently today due to changing theories of translation.

This study sets out to explain the importance of Emmanuel Mounier (1905-1950), taking it to be ideological, that is, operating simultaneously on a social and a conceptual level. It therefore stresses economic, social, political and cultural forces in addition to personal and philosophical ones. It attempts to show the processes involved in the creation of an ideology and an ideologist, and the factors governing their relationship. Chapter one examines Mounier's formation as a member of the catholic intellectual élite, tracing his early studies, experiences and patrons in Grenoble and Paris. Chapter two analyses the situation and events which led to the foundation of the review Esprit, which Mounier directed until his death, his first attempts to formulate a political ideology and his response to the political and social crises of the 1930's. Chapter three traces the philosophical roots and evolution of Mounier's personalism, showing its function as an intellectual matrix and method of analysis. Chapter four shows Mounier's reactions to the war, his activities under the Vichy regime and his place in the Resistance, emphasising the importance of this period for his later ideological position. Chapter five studies Mounier's initial aspirations to establish personalism as a major political ideology of liberated France, and traces the erosion and eventual collapse of his hopes to the point where his political position became scarcely tenable. Chapter six examines Mounier's confrontations with existentialism and Marxism in his attempts to maintain and extend the ideological power of personalism and, with it, catholicism. It also critically assesses Mounier's main post-war philosophical works. The conclusion analyses the contradictions implicit in Mounier's work and his relative success and failure as an ideologist. The bibliography includes a full list of Mounier's known works.

There is a pervasive tendency, in Machaut scholarship, to read his poetry as having value only insofar as it speaks to our postmodern age: either it is fragmented and riven with ambiguities, or it celebrates eroticism and the things of this world for their own sake; in any case, it resists religious and moral orthodoxy. Such readings, while often valuable in themselves, fail to take sufficient account of the influence which Boethian and Neoplatonic ideas had upon Machaut, and thus misunderstand his work on a fundamental level. By paying attention to the Boethian content in the narrative dits, and by analysing Machaut's verse more thoroughly than has been done before, my thesis demonstrates not only this author's moral orthodoxy, but also his extremely sophisticated didactic methods. I begin with the Confort d'ami, Machaut's most overtly moral work. The Confort engages with the supposed 'worldly' perspective of its imprisoned addressee, adapting biblical and classical exempla in order to coax Charles of Navarre towards a deeper understanding of worldly fortune. In Chapter 2 I show how, in the Prologue and the Dit du vergier, the ambiguity so beloved of critics can serve as a moral commentary on the carnality and self-absorption of the erotic and artistic points of view. Having established, in the preceding chapters, that this author's approach to his subject is ambiguous and critical, in Chapter 3 I explore the extremes of his pessimism, and show how his love poetry can incorporate sophisticated philosophical ideas, through my analysis of the Jugement du roy de Behaigne. The thesis culminates in a detailed reading of the Remede de Fortune. Through his deliberately idealised statements about education, through his application of these views to the art of courtly love, through his composition (and setting to music) of a sequence of virtuoso lyrics, and through his explicit invocations of and borrowings from Boethius, Machaut develops an empathic but ultimately, as I argue, deeply sceptical vision of earthly love.

The thesis provides a reading of Umberto Eco's three novels, The Name of the Rose, Foucault's Pendulum, and The Island of the Day Before, that, while it acknowledges the importance of the Italian literary tradition in which they stand, also seeks to explain why their author appeals so frequently to literary models outside Italy, and in particular the Anglo-American detective genre. Chapter One explains Eco's relationship to the development of Italian literature through his lifetime. It is noted that Eco is beginning, both in his semiotics and his fiction, from a position where post-structuralism has been extensively explored by neo-avant-gardew riters. Eco positions himself alongsides uchw riters as Italo Calvino and Jorge Luis Borges, who wish to explore the ludic possibilities of working within structures, while all the time acknowledging the epistemological limitations of so doing. Eco's chosen structure, more often than not, is the highly defined genre of the detective story. From here, the following chapters engage in close readings of the three novels, with particular emphasis on The Name of the Rose and Foucault's Pendulum, demonstrating that they explore problems of interpretation central to the detective narrative. In doing this, they display an intimate knowledge of generic developments within the detective tradition, and of the philosophical and aesthetic uses made of the genre by other writers. The embedding of intertextual references to other detective narratives within Eco's novels is an important factor, as they come together to form a narrative of epistemological inquiry that itself follows Eco's philosophical progress through the years. In short, the novels, inter alia, map a systematic inquiry into the possibility of systematic inquiry. They reserve the space to engage in such an ironic and self-referential project precisely through their fictionality.