In a atemporal space where the real and the fantastic intertwine, the heroes of Chretien de Troyes represent projections of an ideal personality. Their symbolic quest is but means of individuation, since, through voyage, the heroes undertake a task of double exploration: that of the exterior and that of the interior world. The confrontation with Evil is the expression of the hero's internal struggle and his adventures translate into initiatic terms. The plot of Chretien de Troyes' works evinces a mythical structure: the voyage of the hero into the "Other World" and his triumphant return. His characteristics of "the chosen one", of the champion of order, as well as his newly acquired status will be acknowledged by the community. Redeemed either by a religious experience or by submission to a lady and/or to the code of conduct, the hero reconquers his place in the world. An approach based on parallelism and juxtaposition has allowed this study to look into the archetypal nature of Chretien de Troyes' heroes, to interpret the recurrent motifs and patterns, which lend the hero an archetypal dimension. Structured around the hero's identity crisis and quest this study explores the relationship between myth, tale and romance.

The influence of French thought on the American academy in the past thirty years is unquestionable. The philosophical concept of the territory, as it is elaborated by Gilles Deleuze offers a powerful tool for explaining this influence, particularly as it is related to the thought of his contemporaries, Jacques Derrida and Michel Foucault The Deleuzian concept of the territory deploys a creative and affirmative notion of difference which also permits a critique of the "groundings" or "territorializations" of thought in the form of socio-historic or metaphysical "images" (the images deployed by contemporary capitalism and by certain readings of psychoanalysis and literature). A close reading of the work of Derrida and Foucault reveals the conceptual limits of their work in comparison to Deleuze's creative and affirmative notion of difference. When the thought of these former thinkers is expressed within the American academy (specifically within the work of Jonathan Culler, Paul de Man, Hubert Dreyfus and Paul Rabinow, and Judith Butler), one may trace a Deleuzian re-territorialization of thought that is based on the critique Deleuze makes of socio-historic and metaphysical images of thought.

In Don Quixote, Cervantes presents a detailed portrayal of Golden Age Spanish society. Although this aspect of the novel has been noted throughout the centuries by various authors, we feel that there are new commentaries to be made on this subject, particularly with regards to how Cervantes criticizes society. He accomplishes his criticism through parody, especially in the form of comical episodes and humorous dialogue made by the characters in Don Quixote. Since humor is usually constructive in parodying society, the unique humor found in Don Quixote enables Cervantes to inform his readers of examples of society's ills and the desires of many people to promote themselves to a higher social status. Contrary to the pessimistic reactions against society's ills found in the works of his contemporaries, Cervantes manages to show a humorous and more optimistic response. This is evident since he reveals the redeeming qualities of the Spanish people.

Odilon Redon looked to Flaubert's novel, La Tentation de Saint Antoine, as inspiration for much of his oeuvre during the 1880's and 1890's. Redon and Flaubert shared a stylistic taste noted for destabilized meaning and deliberate ambiguity. To understand how Redon accomplished the disruption of a single meaning in his artistic productions, I will use a semiotic analysis of several of the lithographs from his Temptation albums to examine the verbal and visual sign systems, as well as the semiotic potential of the medium of lithography. The third part of the paper will focus on issues not previously addressed in art historical literature: the thesis that Redon empathized with St. Anthony to such an extent that he was continually drawn back to Flaubert's novel for inspiration for both his works in charcoal and lithography that he called his "noirs" and, later his works in color.

The Livre de vieillesse pertains to the field of study concerning late medieval Humanism, where the first royal patronage of translations from ancient Latin texts proved to be of enormous consequence for the French language, and especially for the formation of its vocabulary. / Our critical edition of the Livre de vieillesse presents the text of the first French translation of Cicero's De senectute , completed in 1405 by Laurent de Premierfait and dedicated to the Duke Louis de Bourbon. This text is unpublished. / We possess the bilingual copy of the translation, which constitutes a privileged component of authentication of variants. / The choice of the manuscript to edit was simple, for, of the twenty-six copies of the translation, two only bear the Latin original: Paris, B.N., lat 7789 (P) and Milan, Trivulz., 693 (T), where T presents itself as a copy of P. We thus follow the text of P, collated to T, and we adopt Bedier's method of text editing.

The creative section of this thesis is a translation of five (5) short stories drawn from the anthology Cuentos de Bloomsbury by the Spanish author Ana Maria Navales. This book is a free literary recreation of the life of some of the artists and intellectuals, in particular Virginia Woolf, who made up the Bloomsbury Group. This translation is meant to be more source-oriented than target-oriented; however, even though it is rather true to the source text, our priority consists above all in creating a translation possessed of its own literary unicity. In this way, we attempt to show that the translated work is another work, autonomous and separated from the original version, but still linked to the latter by means of their respective literary unicity, rendering the fundamental signifiers of the original in the translation. / In recognizing the literary unicity of both authors and in receiving inspiration from the thoughts of Octavio Paz and Antoine Berman, we try to bring the literary unicity of our translation to light, and at the same time, to experience an open-mindedness towards that which is "other". (Abstract shortened by UMI.)

This thesis represents the first comparative study of Leonardo Sciascia and Antonio Tabucchi. It examines their literary engagement with socio-political concerns in a climate coloured by the scepticism and uncertainty of postmodernism and post-structuralism. This thesis seeks to counter current literary criticism, which suggests that engagement in Tabucchi's writing is confined to certain key texts, and to' instead show that committed writing underpins all of his work, including texts currently held to deal solely with literary concerns. Previous research asserts that Sciascia's work aims to engage with society, often employing the anachronistic term impegno to describe his writing. This thesis seeks to examine the ways in which Sciascia's engagement counters the political and literary challenges which led to the collapse of impegno by the 1970s. The thesis is structured in five parts. Part one charts the course of committed writing from the post-war era to its problematization during the 1950s and 1960s. It examines the relevance of Sciascia, Tabucchi, and the importance of 1975 as a starting point for this study. It goes on to explore direct engagement with specific events in their writing, and their employment of fictional lenses to factual writing. Part two examines ways in which the writers use the representation of geographical, historical and border spaces to engage with society. Part three considers ways in which Sciascia and Tabucchi view notions of uncertain truths and the inability of language to fully communicate ideas, as means of strengthening, rather than undermining, engagement. Part four investigates ways in which intertextuality, another barrier to engagement, is used by the two writers to dialogue with society as well as with literature. Part five studies the value with which Sciascia and Tabucchi imbue literature, as compared to journalism, and assesses the extent to which they view literature as a valid means of engagement.

<p> This dissertation analyzes the prose of Jos&eacute; Manuel Caballero Bonald and Fernando Qui&ntilde;ones, and the cinema from Late-Francoism to Post-Transition, paying especial attention to the flamenco films by Carlos Saura. Their shared historical Andalusian background provides an opportunity to examine the shift from Francoist centralism to the quasi-federalism of Spain's "Autonomous Communities" (<i>la Espa&ntilde;a de las Autonom&iacute;as </i>), as well as their notion of Andalusian identity within the framework of Andalusia as a newly minted Autonomous Community since 1981. Drawing on anthropology, Colonial Studies, history, and social theory, the study adopts an interdisciplinary approach as it examines the issue of Andalusian identity from the above-mentioned perspectives using a diverse corpus of texts from literature, film and the performing arts. The first two chapters focus on the rise of Andalusia as an <i>Autonom&iacute;a,</i> and Caballero Bonald and Qui&ntilde;ones' attempt to purge Andalusia's stereotypical image. They review the history of the colonization of the Iberian Peninsula by the Phoenicians and the Arabs, as well as the arrival of Gypsies during the Middle Ages &ndash;which contributed to the consolidation of flamenco&ndash; and the ensuing cultural mix that was the basis for Caballero Bonald and Qui&ntilde;ones' concept of Andalusian identity. The third chapter analyzes the symbols they chose to represent their identity: the bull, the horse, and wine. The last two chapters explore the role of Andalusians as colonizers of the New World, who are in turn "colonized" as certain components of Latin American cultural production make their way into Andalusian aesthetics with an emphasis in the (Neo)Baroque and the "marvelous real" (<i>real maravilloso</i>). I find that, in the given context, both Caballero Bonald and Qui&ntilde;ones reflect on their identity, concluding that its particular essence is based on both <i>mestizaje</i> -the intermixing of Oriental, European and American cultures-and the dual status of the Iberian Peninsula as both colonizer and colonized.</p>

<p> This dissertation examines representations of the family in art and literature of the Spanish court during Philip IV's reign. I contend that depictions of royal and noble families in court settings&mdash;and by artists who resided at court&mdash;spoke to the monarchy's social and political concerns at a time of imperial crisis. Family is understood here not as a fixed entity, but as a mobile cultural construct that bent, in Golden Age Spain, to address a variety of needs. The emotional and theological intricacies of a prince's marriage indicated the preparedness or ineptitude of a king to be; a noblewoman's marriage abroad to a foreign prince embodied Spain's struggles to contain the Thirty Years' War; the depiction of an artist's family in a royal palace demonstrated the ambitions of the courtier-artist. </p><p> Chapter 1 examines V&eacute;lez de Guevara's play <i>Reinar despu&eacute;s de morir</i> (1635). I propose that the play's thematic interest lies in an attempt to reconcile the strictures of dynastic marriage&mdash;marriage for reasons of state&mdash;with the necessities of emotional fulfilment and mutual trust of marriage partners suggested in contemporary conduct manuals. Chapter 2 reads two short stories from Mar&iacute;a de Zayas's <i>Desenga&ntilde;os amorosos</i> (1648), "Mal presagio casar de lejos," and "Estragos que causa el vicio," as nationalist allegories. I suggest that the families Zayas depicts are metaphors for a Spanish national family, belagured in European theaters of war and beset by domestic conflicts such as the Portuguese and Catalonian uprisings of the 1640s. In Chapter 3 I explore a painting, <i> La familia del pintor</i> (1665), by Juan Bautista del Mazo, son-in-law of Diego Vel&aacute;zquez and heir to his post as painter of the king. I compare Mazo's <i>La familia del pintor</i> to Vel&aacute;zquez <i> Las meninas</i>. Mazo's proud portrayal of his own biological family and of a dyanasty of court artists indicates that the painting is not merely dervivative of his father-in-law's masterpiece, <i>Las meninas</i>; rather, Mazo has a pictorial agenda all his own, one that includes the social advancement of the court artist and of a multitude of heirs seeking the king's patronage in other careers.</p>

Ortega y Gasset's assertion that 'to write well is to make continual incursions into grammar, into established usage, and into accepted linguistic norms' finds resonance in the work of a number of sub-Saharan Francophone African writers, most notably in texts by Ahmadou Kourouma, Veronique Tadjo, Werewere Liking, Henri Lopes and Sony Labou Tansi. The types of incursions that are most characteristic of these authors include the incorporation of visible and quasi-invisible traces of African languages, the exploitation of stylistic features associated with orality, including sustained use of colloquialisms and vulgarisms, and experimentation with various kinds of wordplay. Taking as its corpus all of the novels by these authors that are available in English translation, the thesis seeks to set the translations in their publishing context and to analyse the ways in which the translators treat the linguistic innovation of the originals. It reveals the dominance of translation strategies that normalise the linguistically or generically innovative features of the original texts, or, where these are retained to any significant degree, that separate them from the 'standard' language through typographical variation. When the post-colonial context of the original texts is taken into account, such normalising and exoticising strategies can be seen to have significant implications, diminishing the ability of the texts to carry broader cultural and political significance. For this reason, a number of critics have argued the need for a 'decolonised translation practice'. The thesis outlines the type of translation practice that might be viewed as 'decolonised', engaging in debates over the untranslatability of layered language, and drawing comparisons with other translation theories developed at the interface with post-colonial studies such as foreignising translation, the space between, and metametonymics.