A figura da rainha Genevra é uma das mais relevantes e ao mesmo tempo mais complexas personagens do romance arturiano. Para melhor perceber o seu papel no mundo governado pelo rei Artur, partir-se-á do texto que se encontra no ms. 752BNF, referente ao Lancelot (versão cíclica) e no ms. 2594 da Biblioteca Nacional de Viena, referente à Demanda do Santo Graal, demonstrando, através da reflexãoacerca do louvor e das condenações da rainha, como esta se assume como um elemento fundamental para a prossecução do projeto ideológico do romance.

O objecto de estudo deste trabalho incide sobre um conceito, Bildungsroman e a sua presença na literatura portuguesa, nomeadamente na literatura moderna. Para isso, escolheram-se três romances de grande interesse de meados do séc. XX de autores portugueses, obviamente, que tinham obrigatoriamente como protagonistas jovens em fase de desenvolvimento: A escola do paraíso, José Rodrigues Miguéis; Esteiros, Soeiro Pereira Gomes; As sete partidas do mundo, Fernando Namora. Aquilo que se pretende avaliar é em que medida destes pretensos romances de aprendizagem respeitam um determinado número de directrizes que habitualmente define o romance de aprendizagem. Assim, tentaremos verificar se os protagonistas destes romances sofrem, efectivamente, um processo de evolução tal como o espaço envolvente.

O romance histórico de Arnaldo Gama enquadra-se no contexto da ficção histórica de meados de oitocentos, caracterizada por reconstituições alegadamente fiéis das épocas retratadas e cumprindo um objectivo didáctico. A nossa dissertação pretende mostrar em que medida a ficção histórica deste autor se aproxima dos pressupostos do romance histórico tradicional e dos romancistas tidos por modelos - Walter Scott e Alexandre Herculano - nomeadamente no que diz respeito à escolha das personagens. Arnaldo Gama criou uma galeria de figuras vincadamente românticas que se movimentam em épocas recuadas, vivendo histórias marcadas pelos mais característicos tópicos românticos. Mas a obra deste romancista é recordada principalmente pelas narrações de motins populares, nas quais se percebem a tensão e o dramatismo subjacentes aos grandes acontecimentos históricos.

Este estudo analisa as relações entre o Lançarote de Lago, versão castelhana do Lancelot contida no ms. 9611BNE, e o Lancelot en Prose. Considera-se a difusão ibérica do texto, sobretudo entre os séculos XIV e XV, partindo da data mencionada no colofon do manuscrito; estuda-se as relações entre a versão castelhana e outras versões francesas do Lancelot; analisa-se as relações entre o Lançarote de Lago e o ciclo arturiano de romances do pseudo-Boron partindo de referências documentadas no romance castelhano. As principais conclusões deste estudo são que o romance ibérico é muito conservador, detectando-se diversos arcaísmos linguísticos no texto; manifesta fortes conexões com algumas versões francesas do Lancelot, nomeadamente a do ms.751BNF, até hoje pouco conhecidas; o Lançarote de Lago pode também representar estratégias redaccionais pouco usuais na tradição textual do Lancelot, uma vez que evidencia fortes relações com o ciclo arturiano do pseudo-Boron que não resultam de processos de índole compilatória, mas sim de uma interligação de textos, personagens e motivos perfeitamente integrada na estrutura interna do romance.

Esta Tese de Doutoramento pretende aclarar alguns aspectos da obra do escritor Júlio Dinis bem como introduzir algumas inflexões analíticas que, até ao momento, não se encontram no escopo crítico literário. Faz-se um levantamento de alguns posicionamentos narrativos, criticamente observados no âmbito da literatura portuguesa, e procura-se renovar a imagem das relações literárias estabelecidas com alguns escritores portugueses. No âmbito comparatista, dado que nos romances de Júlio Dinis se estabelece uma inquestionável ligação às literaturas inglesa e irlandesa (de notar que o escritor era filho de mãe inglesa e neto de avós inglês e irlandesa), decorrendo das temáticas comummente trabalhadas são chamados a este os escritores Laurence Sterne, Oliver Goldsmith, Henry Fielding, Jane Austen e Charles Dickens. O inovador tratamento psicológico atribuído por Júlio Dinis ao sujeito e à sociedade na literatura do século XIX português aprofunda claramente as raízes na tradição literária inglesa do século XVIII. Este tratamento esforça-se por aproximar as classes sociais a partir das relações individuais e, lutando pela ordem e justiça que integra um quadro de valores morais, torna-se manifesto o esboço da utopia social. Os recursos da influência literária inglesa no trabalho dinisiano são vários: a pintura é utilizada como processo intersemiótico de incentivo à auto-estima do leitor; a perspectiva judicativa, quer aplicada pelo sujeito, quer pela sociedade, expõe-se como o indesejável constrangimento que só a metamorfose psicológica consegue ultrapassar; a mundivisão do teatro na vida, e da vida no teatro é promotora do permanente esforço de utilização da máscara; invoca-se a androginia que, aplicada às personagens femininas, pretende claramente conferir especiais atributos à mulher; o corpo e a casa apresentam-se como linguagem do pensamento; (...).

This dissertation deals with the influence of the thirteenth-century narrative poem Libro de Alexandre in medieval Spanish literature and various types of imitation of it by other medieval poets. The two texts chosen for comparison, analysis and interpretation are the thirteenth-century Libro de Apolonio and the fourteenth-century Libro de buen amor. The Spanish Alexander poem is believed to be the earliest work of the poetic school 'mester de clerecia;' and its relations with other medieval Spanish poems have been treated by several scholars such as Ramon Menendez Pidal, Maria Rosa Lida de Malkiel, Dana Nelson, and Jorge Garcia Lopez. However, my scope, perspective and interpretative strategy in the present study are different from those of most of the previous scholars. Through a close scrutiny, a considerable number of new thematic, linguistic and stylistic parallels are retrieved between the Alexandre and the Apolonio, and between the Alexandre and the Buen amor. Theories of literary imitation, intertextuality, literary influence, and plagiarism are introduced to guide the interpretation of these new data Chapter One examines the relations between the Alexandre and the Apolonio, which are organized in thematic terms: moralization, wedding and festival celebration, medieval erudition, and knowledge of music. Other parallels are included in a section 'paralelismos narrativos aislados'; more singular parallels which affect no more than one or two verses are made into a appendix. What the author of the Apolonio learned from the Alexandre is mainly the art of descriptio and the formulaic mechanism of the 'cuaderna via' verse form; his basic approach is that of abbreviation. He may also have relied on his poetic model for his knowledge and treatment of medieval music performance. His imitation of the Alexander poem varies from the reproductive mode to transformative and heuristic absorption Chapter Two examines the relations between the Alexandre and the Buen amor. The influence of the Alexander poem affects Juan Ruiz's poem from single verse borrowings to the configuration of one of the major sections of the Buen amor, sequences covering the battles between Lady Lent and Sir Carnal and the tent of Sir Love. Ruiz's modes of imitating his Alexander model are more complex than those seen in the Apolonio. Judging from his hilarious treatments of the ideal personal portrait, the Serranilla, the lamentation on Death, and the epitaph of Trotaconventos, it is probably true that his imitation is by no means reverent or sincere, although we are not absolutely sure that he parodies the Alexandre in all these treatments. Many remote European, Islamic or Jewish parallels or sources for Juan Ruiz's poem have been claimed by scholars, but no important and probable native Spanish antecedent has been found. This study recognizes the Alexandre as the most important Spanish model for the Buen amor. It, in turn, also affects the place of the Alexandre in the history of medieval Spanish literature. Overall, through an examination of the influence of the Alexander in the Apolonio and the Buen amor , this study shows the great impact of the Spanish Alexander poem in thirteenth-century and fourteenth-century Spanish literature and its proper place in the history of the Spanish literature / acase@tulane.edu

While critics have recognized the presence of naturalism and Zola's influence in Emilia Pardo Bazan's narrative, they have agreed on the limitation of naturalism in her work as a whole. The result has been twofold: the minimization of the presence of science and the radical division of Pardo Bazan's work. The identification of literary and scientific discourses which occurred in the nineteenth century makes a charting of the discourse of science especially important. This dissertation proposes such a charting through Pardo Bazan's narrative by means of a selection of novels in chronological order Because the literary text weaves an ensemble of discursive practices and participates in a complex social activity, by privileging the theme of disease as operative in the mind/body relationship of the human being and by tracing it through the 'body' of her work, it is possible to map the trajectory of the discourse of science. This approach highlights the active role that scientific methodology played in Pardo Bazan's studies of the dysfunctional human being and the assimilation of contemporary theories within the literary text In two of her early novels, Pascual Lopez and El cisne de Vilamorta, Pardo Bazan participates in a scientific tradition which emphasized the organic aetiology of mental pathology. Disease consists in the individual's identification with anachronistic fictional models. In her 'middle' period, she is concerned with the failure of science as a panacea for national problems. Her vivisection of patriarchy in Los pazos de Ulloa and in Insolacion 'reveals' the underlying mechanism responsible for the 'story' of national decline. La piedra angular represents a continuation of concerns with reform. In La sirena negra, disease becomes one of obsessive self-consciousness. This subjectivity has destabilizing potential for both the individual and for the novela experimental. The novel fragments, and reality is pluralized. In this trajectory, disease has shifted from serving as a cognitive instrument for social analysis to becoming an existential condition; however, the discourse of science is operative from beginning to end. It operates as one more of the discourses which configure the socio-cultural milieu woven into Pardo Bazan's text / acase@tulane.edu

The architectural premise of the Fables of Jean de La Fountaine is the pedagogy of being. This type of universal teaching flows from the very nature of the Lafontainian proposition Homo homine lupus or Man is a wolf for man. The pedagogy of being, the corner stone as well as the ultimate goal of the Lafontainian Fables (the universal album where everyone and everything are depicted: the Self, the Other and the world), is the main objective of this dissertation. It seeks to explain the preponderance, the functionality, the ultimate goal, the effectiveness, the universality and the essence of the prescriptive nature of the pedagogy of being of The Fables. From this point of view, the study is divided into three main parts. (A) Part I: Apologue, Parable, Prophecy. It comprises three sections which not only illustrate the Lafontainian claim the fable is the parable but further postulate that the fable and the parable are parallel to prophecy. It is concluded that they are three types of pedagogical discourses that are similar in every aspect. (B) Part II: Apologue, Physiognomy. The aim of this part is to show the quintessential difference between physiognomony (as a knowledge derived from conjecture) and fable (as a knowledge derived from experience). (C) Part III: The General Conclusion, which illustrates that the Lafontainian Fables are a type of mediation through which one can gain a greater understanding of the Self, the Other and the World; for in the Lafontainian vision of the world, 'Man' is the microcosmic summary of all that is / acase@tulane.edu

This dissertation is an attempt to feminize Spanish Modernism, which has been traditionally gendered masculine. By studying several women writers who were actively involved in the literary productions of the first decades of the 20th century, I try to add my efforts to an ongoing collective endeavor to construct a female tradition in Spanish literature In the introduction Chapter, I analyze various reasons that have accounted for women's obscurity in Modernist literary history and present my arguments for constructing a female Modernism. In the second chapter, I study the poetry of Josefina de la Torre focusing on her concerns with language and her anxiety of symbolic power. In the third chapter, I read two of Maria Teresa Leon's prewar collections of short stories from perspectives of political and feminist critics in order to underscore the social dimension of Spanish Modernism. In the fourth chapter, I explore the spatial discourse in Concha Mendez's poetry to disclose a gradual interiorization of her poetic space, corresponding to different stages of her life. In the last chapter, I concern myself with the religious discourse of Ernestina de Champourcin's poetry and its various manifestations at different phases of her creations. In the 'Conclusion,' I stress the features that these women writers share with each other despite their apparent differences. By doing so, I intend to reinforce the feminist approach to Modernism, which is recast as a polyphonic, mobile but sexually charged literary movement / acase@tulane.edu

This dissertation examines representations of the lion in Old French literature by focusing on four literary discourses in which the 'king of beasts' reigns supreme: religious, socio-political, chivalric and courtly. The first chapter examines two influential sources of medieval animal lore: the Bible and the bestiaries. In the second chapter, lions in the hagiographic tradition are examined. In these texts, lions are non-carnivorous, a trait shared with the holy men and women they encounter. In depriving the lion of one of its most fundamental identities, that of predator, these texts transform its character into a more symbiotic relationship with saints. The third chapter, deals with 'beast literature'---specifically, fables and the 'beast epic.' In these genres, the lion has evolved into a human in a lion's skin. Indeed, it is the anthropomorphized lion-figure which suffers the greatest at the hands of its authorial creators. The more medieval authors shape the lion in man's image, twisting the animal into a 'manimal,' the more violent the affronts on its bestiality and its very body. In the last two chapters, the notion of 'motif transfer' as it applies to the lion in Old French romances will be studied, notably in Yvain and Floire et Blancheflor. Yvain provides the motif of a lion fighting a serpent, which is consequently reconfigured in the Queste del Saint Graal and other texts. While Chretien takes pains to subvert any religious implications in his representation of the scene, the author of the Queste deliberately emphasizes the religious symbolism of the two animals. Whereas the progression from Yvain to the Queste is from secular to ecclesiastical, the motif transfer that occurs within the surviving manuscript versions of Floire et Blancheflor is from Biblical to profane. The Old Testament story of Daniel provides the original motif that is recycled in the young pagan lover's humorous encounter with two lions. The motifs in these chapters are changed and subverted, a process which embodies the medieval concept of authorship, a pairing of imitatio and inventio / acase@tulane.edu