Prenant notre point de départ dans l’étude du rapport fantastique avec le savoir mis en évidence par Michel Foucault à propos du travail littéraire de Flaubert, nous voudrions nous interroger sur les modalités proprement contemporaines des rapports entre les écrivains et les savoirs, et tenter de caractériser précisément ces rapports dans la littérature européenne contemporaine, en nous appuyant sur les œuvres de Pierre Michon, W.G. Sebald et Antonio Tabucchi. À l’aide d’une définition pragmatique des savoirs, nous commençons par une étude des représentations de l’érudition dans la fiction, en nous concentrant sur divers personnages, secondaires ou plus importants, qui jouent tous des rôles d’intercesseurs dans la production, la transmission et la diffusion des savoirs. S’ils fonctionnent bien d’un certain côté comme des figures de l’érudition, images idéales de savoirs efficaces, ces personnages portent aussi des critiques des savoirs établis et des hiérarchies qui lui sont associées. Les lieux associés aux savoirs, bibliothèques et musées en particulier, sont également abordés selon cet angle polémique. La seconde partie de notre travail s’attache à l’étude des usages des savoirs par les écrivains que nous avons choisis, en fournissant des éléments pour une poétique des textes littéraires contemporains construits sur un rapport à l’érudition. Leur écriture seconde, s’appuyant sur une grande variété de textes, s’approprie de nombreux savoirs. Nous étudions successivement les diverses modalités des usages des paroles rapportées, que cela soit à travers l’oralité, par des citations, ou la présence des langues étrangères, pour montrer les usages particuliers des savoirs que font nos écrivains. En opposition à un usage postmoderne de l’érudition, une érudition inquiète, mettant au centre de sa dynamique une mise en commun du sens, se fait jour. / Beginning with the fantastic relation with knowledge highlighted by Michel Foucault regarding Gustave Flaubert’s literary work, we would like to bend over the contemporary modalities of the relations between knowledge and literary writers, and try to precisely characterize theses relations in contemporary European literature, basing our work on the examples of Pierre Michon, W.G. Sebald and Antonio Tabucchi. A pragmatic definition of knowledge helps us to begin with a study of the representations of erudition in the fiction, focusing upon various characters, who play an intermediary role in the production, transmission or diffusion of knowledge. If on one hand they operate as figures of erudition, ideals representations of effective knowledge, these characters on the other hand carry with them some critics of the established knowledges and the hierarchy that are associated with them. The places associated with knowledge, libraries or museums, are also studied in this polemic approach. The second part of our work studies the uses of knowledge done by the writers chosen, giving some elements for a poetic study of the contemporary literary texts that are written in a relation with knowledge. Their secondary writing, built on a wide variety of texts, assimilates various knowledges. We study successively the diverse modalities of the uses of the words reported, by the relation between the literary text and the orality, the quotations, or the presences of foreign languages, to highlight the original uses of knowledge done by our writers. Opposing a postmodern use of erudition, emerges an anxious and restless erudition, concerned by the sharing of meaning and the community it constitutes.

What is the relationship between writing in the present and the traumatic historical events that form the subject of that writing? What narrative strategies do authors employ in order to negotiate the ethical and epistemological problems raised by this gap in time and experience? “Trauma theory” is undermined by clinical controversies and contradictory claims for “literal truth” and “incomprehensibility”. Similarly, the Holocaust has been considered inherently unrepresentable unless by those who witnessed it, leading to a false opposition between genres of “testimony” and “fiction”. A way out of these dead ends is to consider the role of the first-person narrator in contemporary Holocaust narratives. While use of this device risks an inappropriate level of identification with those whose experience is both extreme and unknowable, I argue that this problem may be resolved to an extent through “transgenerational empathy”, an approach to the past that is self-reflexive, incorporates ideas of time, memory and generations, and moves both towards and away from the victims of the past in a simultaneous gesture of proximity and distance. For this theory I draw on Dominick LaCapra’s definitions of empathy and “empathic unsettlement”, and on Hans-Georg Gadamer’s concept of the “fusion of horizons” between past and present. Transgenerational empathy involves giving equal weight to “memory” and “history”. An over-emphasis on memory leads to narratives that are merely identificatory, such as Anne Michaels’ Fugitive Pieces and Binjamin Wilkomirski’s Fragments. In contrast, W. G. Sebald’s use of a narrative persona in The Emigrants and Austerlitz enables transgenerational empathy in narrative by simultaneously imposing layers of distance while establishing close personal connection. Similarly, Jonathan Safran Foer’s third-generation aesthetic of “post-postmemory” in Everything is Illuminated uses a “dual persona” device to foreground empathically the abyss at the heart of any attempt to recapture the past. My analysis of these authors draws on the writings of Gillian Rose, Paul Ricoeur, Marianne Hirsch and Jacques Derrida. However, the concept of “transgenerational empathy” would benefit from further research, both in terms of its “temporal dimension” and the use of narrative personae by other contemporary authors such as Philip Roth.

Mémoire numérisé par la Division de la gestion de documents et des archives de l'Université de Montréal.

This practice-led research examines ideas surrounding the interpretation of place; the representation and experience of place are explored in my practice and throughout the thesis. The practice and thesis develop an interdependent relationship where one informs the other and each provides a critical platform whereby existing beliefs are brought into question and new ideas emerge. During the research period the practice is tested against different circumstances in a variety of situations and novel responses are generated. The thesis critically analyses approaches to interpreting place through a number of formats and a variety of sources. Both practice and theory are examined through peer-reviewed conference papers, artist-in-residence programmes and publications allowing new ideas to be explored and scrutinized by the academy. A working method that recognizes the importance and usefulness of serendipity and sagacity is established, bringing together my practice and the theoretical scope of the research. My primary focus is to understand and develop critical responses to the experience and representation of place within the realm of contemporary art practice. The work of W.G. Sebald and the secondary literature surrounding his work plays a significant role in providing ways of dealing with the entanglement of knowledge. Period Drama is both the name of an artwork and the name I have given to a conference paper. Both explore the convoluted and complex methods involved in realizing a site-specific work that challenges fiercely-held beliefs about place. My intention throughout the research has been to examine a variety of approaches that explore the representation and experience of place within contemporary art practice. Prominent within this examination has been the highlighting of the need to belong to a particular place and the sense of displacement generated when this need to belong is challenged or the nature of this connection is questioned.

This dissertation focuses on the construction of the narrated environment in W. G. Sebald's <em>Die Ausgewanderten</em>, <em>Die Ringe des Saturn</em>, and <em>Austerlitz</em>. Drawing on a constellation of ecocritical theories, I examine the ways in which memory and history are embedded in images of the built environment and how, in turn, this spatialization of the past contributes to a criticism of traditional linear narration. Sebald's texts create postmodern textual environments, urban, domestic, faux-pastoral, and heterotopian, that unite disparate times and spaces, demonstrating the need for innovative narrative in untangling and portraying complex, sometimes contradictory layers of history. An examination of the labyrinth and garden in <em>Die Ringe des Saturn</em> and of urban spaces in <em>Austerlitz</em> demonstrates the potential of the environment to seize agency and exert force on the human subject in the environment. The domestic environment also contains this potential, but in <em>Austerlitz</em>, the protagonist reclaims agency and uses the domestic environment as a medium for recovering memory. Finally, drawing on theories from Michel Foucault and Marc Augé, I examine the effect heterotopian spaces have on the characters experiencing them in all three of Sebald’s major prose works. More importantly, I demonstrate the way in which Sebald exploits the heterotopian potential of the text itself, creating a textual “environment” that pushes back against the reader, reinforcing the meaning of its content, but also drawing attention to the textual structures it deploys to create meaning.

Mémoire numérisé par la Division de la gestion de documents et des archives de l'Université de Montréal

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Washington, 2008. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (p. 279-304).

Überarb. zugl: Leuven, Universiẗat, Diss., 2005.

Revised version of author's dissertation, Louvain, 2005. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 343-354) and index.

Les traditions antique, biblique et médiévale de la consolation se sont jusqu’à récemment imposées par leurs définitions respectives de ce genre littéraire, l’érigeant en rhétorique qui propose la prévention de souffrances vécues et à venir, à défaut de pouvoir les guérir. Les multiples génocides et conflits du XXe siècle marquent cependant un changement décisif dans la conception même de la souffrance ainsi que des moyens d’y remédier : la consolation, traditionnellement considérée dans sa forme individuelle, revêt désormais une dimension collective en raison des ampleurs des événements de l’Histoire et de leurs effets sur des communautés entières décimées ou vouées à un douloureux exil. Près de soixante ans après la Seconde Guerre mondiale, l’auteur allemand W. G. Sebald se démarque par sa volonté de sonder les profondeurs du silence d’après-guerre dans son Allemagne natale pour dénoncer le trauma collectivement hérité et enduré. Si son œuvre est teintée d’une profonde mélancolie, si elle représente l’anéantissement de tout un monde et si ses protagonistes meurent sous l’effet d’un excès de mémoire, l’univers qu’ébauche l’auteur laisse néanmoins entrevoir une poétique de la consolation : les photographies en noir et blanc ainsi que les documents d’archive qui accompagnent la narration sont la trace persistante d’un monde qui n’est plus ; les ruines décrites renvoient au souvenir des majestueux édifices dont elles sont les restes ; la nature s’offre comme cadre régénérateur qui résiste à la folie humaine ; le temps se révèle malléable et les êtres abritent une mémoire que l’auteur se fait le devoir d’écrire et de transmettre. La consolation se profile autant dans la forme de l’œuvre de Sebald que dans ses thèmes, repensant l’individuel dans le collectif et le passé dans le présent. Ce mémoire propose une réflexion sur la consolation chez Sebald à partir de deux de ses textes phares, Les Émigrants [Die Ausgewanderten : Vier lange Erzählungen] et Austerlitz, où l’écriture est à la fois refuge et consolation, autant pour l’auteur que pour le lecteur. / Until recent years, the ancient, biblical, and medieval traditions of consolation each offered their respective definitions of this literary genre, making it a rhetoric which aimed to prevent or reason past and future suffering, for want of a cure. The multiple genocides and conflicts of the 20th century, however, mark a decisive change in the very conception of suffering as in the means of remedying it: traditionally considered in its individual form, consolation now takes on a collective dimension because of the scale of historical disasters and their repercussions on entire communities reduced to annihilation or condemned to painful exile. Almost sixty years after World War II, German author W. G. Sebald stands out for his willingness to plumb the depths of post-war silence in his native Germany and to denounce the trauma that was collectively inherited and endured. If his work is tinged with a deep melancholy, if it represents the vanishing of an entire way of life, and if his protagonists die from an excess of memory, the universe sketched out by the author nonetheless suggests a poetics of consolation: the black and white photographs and the archival documents accompanying the narration are the persistent traces of a world that is no longer; the descriptions of ruins bring to mind the memory of the majestic buildings of which they are the remains; nature offers itself as a restorative frame resisting human madness; time appears more malleable than ever and beings shelter a memory which the author makes his duty to transcribe and transmit. Consolation is found as much in the form of Sebald’s work as in its themes, rethinking the individual in the collective, and the past in the present. This dissertation aims to reflect on the poetics of consolation in Sebald’s writing, particularly in two of the author’s key works, The Emigrants [Die Ausgewanderten: Vier lange Erzählungen] and Austerlitz, where writing becomes both a refuge and a consolation, as much for the author as for the reader.