Michel Eyquem de Montaigne (1533-1592) was a humanist and a jurist, whose mother tongue was Latin. The Essais he wrote (1570-1588) are basic conversational humanism, in French, when everything sacred or learned was in Latin. They are as well a quasi-professional polemic against efforts to change the government of France, occurring on the philosophical and legal levels of jurisprudence in teaching, treatises and commentaries, and on the political level by the Catholic League, and by the Protestants, who set up independent governments in the Midi. The purpose of this dissertation is to examine the rhetorical effort of the Essais to defend the ancienne coustume, the public law of France, as the remedy to govern and preserve the Kingdom as a traditional Christian Monarchy, and to end the civil and religious strife. The Essais are metaphor in the tradition of tropical philosophy to focus thought, and to capture the attention of the audience to persuade them to consider truth or a truth. The purpose is to reorient their thinking so they will act for the purpose about which Montaigne wishes to persuade them. The effect depended in part upon the reader or hearer. The Essais are dialogues which are not dialogues. The texts dialogue with each other and with metatexts. The Essais set forth coustume in its meanings of habit, usage, custom and customary law (case law of judicial decisions) as the guardian of tradition, and relate it to law, justice and government (police), according to Montaigne's knowledge and experience.

Mamluk equestrian expertise in Egypt and Syria from mid-thirteenth to early sixteenth century reflects skills derived from a variety of sources incorporated artfully into their military institution, and which exerted influence beyond the period and the region with which it is directly concerned. With a thorough examination of its various vocations including Furusiyah and equestrian-related activities, a reconstruction of the Mamluk military society leads to the inescapable conclusion that the mounted military sector was absolutely essential to the operation and defense of the State. Maintaining a top-notch cavalry fluctuated at different periods in Mamluk history but seems to have been especially crucial in the first twenty years in the wars against the Crusaders and Mongols. The Mamluk's armies are credited with having cleared the remnants of the Crusaders out of the Levant region, checked the westward advance of the fearsome Mongol hordes into Syria and Palestine, and carved out an empire that extended northwards as far as eastern Turkey. How and where the Mamluks acquired the tactical and riding expertise to accomplish these feats is examined in this dissertation along with the legacy they passed on to later Egyptian and French horsemen. Classical equitation's origins trace to a period of progressive development in horsemanship's history stimulated by Mamluk preoccupation with furusiyah as well as the French Knights' chivalric tournament and battle honor code. Mamluk horsemanship literature left in manuscript form contains systematized military games and tactics patterned after the ancient Greco-Roman world's military, joined with Mamluk cavalry training experience. The main corpus of surviving horsemanship treatises from the Mamluk period awaits translation and/or remains unpublished.

Esta tesis analiza la identidad y la estructura narrativa en las obras de dos escritores hispanos, Reinaldo Arenas y Esther Tusquets, quienes escriben al borde de la transicion entre una vision del mundo moderna a la postmoderna. Arguyo que las obras de estos dos autores cuestionan los procesos de la construccion de la identidad desde la perspectiva de los que son marginalizados por este proceso. Para hacer este analisis, estudio el debate entre el modernismo/postmodernismo dentro del mundo hispano y como este dialogo puede iluminar nuestra interpretacion de las complejidades y los constantes tematicos que presentan estos dos autores. De la misma manera, analizo como estos autores incluyen este debate dentro de su presentacion de la dinamica del desarrollo humano. Para tales propositos, analizare El amor es un juego solitario (1978), El mismo mar de todos los veranos (1979), Varada tras el ultimo naufragio (1980) de Esther Tusquets y El mundo alucinante (1968) de Reinaldo Arenas. En este analisis se consideraran las relaciones tanto socio-historicas como artisticas que existen entre Modernidad y Postmodernidad y la forma en que estas caracteristicas se presentan en los textos analizados. Se plantea que la verdadera relacion entre la modernidad y la postmodernidad no es una de superacion sino de dialogo, la postmodernidad es la problematizacion de la modernizacion. Los conceptos modernos de la Ilustracion son cuestionados por ser inadecuados para describir las situaciones actuales. Es este escepticismo profundo hacia todos los aspectos de la vida lo que define al postmodernismo. Se cree que la modernidad no ha alcanzado sus metas por ser imposibles. La narrativa de Esther Tusquets y la de Reinaldo Arenas presentan este escepticismo profundo con un estilo en que predominan las figuras repetitivas, el erotismo, el retorno, el tiempo circular, el mar y la muerte, tanto como los pre-textos literarios, los cuales se deconstruyen para despues reconstruirse dentro de la re-creacion de una identidad propia a traves de las relaciones sexuales y la muerte. Asi se cuestionan las fronteras entre el sexo y el genero en el establecimiento de la identidad, reinterpretando y reescribiendo el pasado.

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<p> This dissertation examines the Spanish visual poetry of the 1960s and 1970s, which appeared during the later period of the Franco regime and responded to the rise of mass media and consumer capitalism. It draws on the theoretical work of Gilles Deleuze and F&eacute;lix Guattari to examine how this poetry created an oppositional practice that destabilized the conventional use of codes in media, art, and literature. It brings to light what I will explore as the "schizoid" character of their work and how it redefines the roles of reader, writer, and text in order to create an awareness that is critical and resistant to what the visual poets position as authoritative discourses, such as capitalism, consumerism, and the authoritarianism of the dictatorship. They see these discourses as subjugating the individual's thought through codes of language and image, and they go about subverting such discourses by destabilizing the language and image itself on which those discourses are built. </p><p> This study focuses on the representative works of three different writers, <i> Quiz&aacute;s Brigitte Bardot venga a tomar una copa esta noche</i> by Alfonso L&oacute;pez Gradol&iacute;, <i>La ca&iacute;da del avi&oacute;n en el terreno bald&iacute;o</i> by Jos&eacute; Luis Castillejo, and Textos y antitextos by Fernando Mill&aacute;n. L&oacute;pez Gradol&iacute;'s book restructures the notion of desire as it is represented in capitalist narratives of lack, ultimately schizophrenizing desire as a displaced logic of lack and creating new, interpersonal codes that redefine desire as immanent connection. Castillejo's work deconstructs representation through open-ended texts that multiply possible reading strategies, thus grounding desire in the process of building new codes. Mill&aacute;n's book deconstructs representation into a figural narrative that redefines the reader's role from that of a passive consumer to that of an active schizoanalyst that co-creates poetic codes and schizophrenizes transcendental structures that govern language and image. </p>

<p> Science fiction critics have dueled over definitions of sixteenth-, seventeenth-, and eighteenth-century science fiction, often classifying early science fiction as mere prototype. Chapter One of this thesis examines the myriad definitions of the term &ldquo;science fiction&rdquo; allowing a distinguishable set of literary characteristics for science fiction, fantasy, and science fantasy. Early science fiction authors such as Johannes Kepler, Francis Godwin, Savinien Cyrano De Bergerac, Margaret Cavendish, and Jonathan Swift refashioned the familiar fantasy genre with scientific ideas, establishing a science fantasy genre to frame dangerous and rebellious ideas in a conventional and innocuous structure, the fiction novel. Chapter Two analyzes the science fiction elements present in early science fantasy of Kepler, Godwin, De Bergerac, Cavendish, and Swift as well as the scientific, religious, and political ramifications of science fantasy in the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries. Chapter Three briefly highlights elements of early science fantasy that influenced twentieth- and twenty-first century science fiction. Early science fantasy not only influenced generations of science fiction writers and scientists, but it also was one of the main forces that legitimized the sciences.</p>

Les questions religieuses se trouvent parmi les preoccupations intimes et ideologiques que Gide a tenu a mettre en valeur dans son oeuvre et a cause desquelles s'est developpe tant de desaccord dans le monde des lettres. Subordonnes peut-etre aux questions morales, les problemes religieux n'en ont pas moins joue un role preeminent dans la pensee et dans l'art d'Andre Gide. Ils paraissent dans la plupart des ecrits romanesques de Gide et, dans certains ouvrages, representent le coeur meme du developpement. Ils remplissent le Journal, temoin monumental de la vie interieure et exterieure de Gide pendant soixante ans. Ils sont la raison d'etre d'une grande partie de sa Correspondance et de plusieurs courts ecrits. On ne saurait donc trop souligner l'importance de ces problemes religieux dans la production litteraire et dans la carriere de Gide. Nous nous proposons de suivre et d'analyser cette evolution de sa pensee religieuse, en nous appuyant sur son oeuvre romanesque et dramatique et en nous servant de ses aveux directs dans les essais, le Journal, la correspondance publiee, et d'autres textes. Dans les nombreux ouvrages analytiques ou il est question de Gide, le developpement de sa pensee religieuse occupe trop souvent peu de place. Dans certains ouvrages critiques, l'etude de ce developpement a ete entierement faussee par la prevention confessionnelle de l'auteur. Une seule these a ete consacree exclusivement a cette question que nous nous proposons de reprendre. Cette these n'est ni assez complete ni assez methodique pour nous satisfaire. Parlant en termes trop generaux, l'auteur y etudie les diverses etapes par ou est passee la pensee religieuse de Gide mais sans pousser l'analyse assez loin a notre avis et en appuyant insuffisamment sur les textes. Son etude s'arrete d'ailleurs a l'examen de la pensee de Gide avant 1935. Les nombreux livres de temoignages et les textes importants de Gide qui sont sortis depuis la publication de cette these justifient, a notre avis, un nouvel examen de la question. Dans notre etude de l'evolution de la pensee religieuse chez Gide, il nous faudra ecarter les questions qui appartiennent principalement au domaine moral, n'en retenant que celles qui eclairent les questions de croyance.

This dissertation discusses the historical and social aspects of myth to point out the earlier maternal subtexts beneath patriarchal myths. Matriarchal myth permits us to redefine an empowered "feminine" for application to literary texts. The early and persistent worship of female deities in France has led to the periodic resurgence of matriarchal consciousness in French literature; namely, in courtly love, romanticism, and surrealism. In twentieth-century women's work in French, this matriarchal choice may still exist, although in conflict with a discordant patriarchal choice. Because of the historical situation of women in Quebec, her French heritage, and strong female models in her youth, Anne Hebert produces a "mothered," matriarchal text in Kamouraska. Her overly gynocentric narrative universe leads to an unbalanced view of the feminine and gender polarization. Hebert empowers women at the expense of men. The resultant prototype of feminine dominance ultimately resembles male mythic images of witches and vampires. Marguerite Yourcenar's exclusive upbringing by her father and her family myth of the mortal danger of childbearing influence her "fathered" text: L'Oeuvre au noir. Over-identification with the father engenders a disdain for the feminine seen in reductive female portrayal. However, while rejecting the feminine and hardening his rational self, her male protagonist experiences a compensatory resurgence in matriarchal-style consciousness. Desvignes's "parented" text, Les Noeuds d'argile, derives from her balanced childhood in the harmonious landscape of her native Bourgogne, where vestiges of a "religion de la terre" still remain. The horror of the German occupation in her teens also fueled her desire for reconstruction and balance. Desvignes creates a matriarchal man with a clear, unrepressed feminine side and a need for merger with the physical female. However, he eventually succumbs to the pressures of patriarchal society and pursues an obsessive masculine ideal which eventually kills him. Each of these novels sounds a distinctive matriarchal voice arising from the woman author's personal and national origins. Whether strident and exclusivistic, camouflaged and muted, or in harmonious balance, this matriarchal voice is a mythic choice and a gauge of her vision of gender.

This work examines principles and theories of literary translation such as literal and non-literal fidelity to the original writing, translational transparency and visibility, and the concepts of "foreignization" and "domestication" in a translated text. Conclusions drawn here are used as a basis to perform a critical evaluation of Smile, the 2000 version of Paul Smail's Vivre me tue . A comparative analysis of the French novel to the English discusses some of the problematic areas of this translation and endeavors to provide alternative translations that would prove more accurate and effective. Subsequent chapters of the dissertation consider the cultural and linguistic difficulties inherent in the Casa, la casa translation and present the ways in which these difficulties were resolved. Round-Trip Barbes, the translation of Casa, la casa, attempts to remain faithful to the original both literally and literarily---to render the strict and full meaning of the author's words while striving to maintain in English the author's style of writing. The translation includes extensive notes offering insight into the socio-cultural and political environment of contemporary France as well as the various news events that, in many ways, shape the narrative. Annotations also signal to the reader the numerous occurrences of intertextual citation and allusion that Smail's work incorporates.