This dissertation is primarily concerned with women's writing in the mid-seventeenth century, comprising the years from 1624 to 1686. It covers the period immediately following Martin Opitz's vernacular literary reforms in Germany and takes as its primary subject the resultant increase in female authorship. It arises out of an interest in two separate but interrelated issues. The first is out of an interest in female literary production in Germany during the seventeenth century, specifically between 1624 and 1686, dates demarcated by the publication of Martin Opitz's Buch von der deutschen Poeterey and the publication of Susanne Elisabeth Zeidler's collection of poetry, Jungferlicher Zeitvertreiber. The second is the question of women's self-concept within a patriarchal society and the discursive strategies of female authors struggling "against complex odds" to "com[e] to written voice" (Olsen 9). In order to fully explore this subject, I have chosen to focus on the work of two poets, Sibylle Schwarz (1621-1638) and Susanne Elisabeth Zeidler (1657-1706?). Writing at different stages in this period and from dissimilar social positions, the two poets offer contrasting strategies of self-representation and self-authorization. By negotiating the demanding terrain of female authorship in a period inhospitable to female learning in different ways, they illustrate the tensions faced by female poets and the various strategies for overcoming the challenges they faced. I look first at the construction of female gender in the early modern period and the ways female writers could subtly shift the prevailing ideas and definitions to include the act of writing as an acceptable component of female identity. The analysis and comparison of the works of Schwarz and Zeidler also offers a glimpse into the changes in self-awareness and self-concept of female poets across the period. / text

La critique récente sur Aphra Behn (1640-1689) a montré d’une part que ses courts romans entretiennent des liens privilégiés avec le champ de la philosophie naturelle montante et d’autre part, que le monstrueux ou l’exotique sont des motifs privilégiés de ses œuvres. Ce travail vise à mettre en lien ces deux différentes approches, en établissant la centralité de la notion de curiosité dans la fiction d’Aphra Behn. La curiosité est une notion ambivalente au XVIIe siècle qui, bien qu’elle continue à porter des connotations négatives d’origine chrétienne et médiévale, s’est vue revalorisée par la philosophie naturelle. A la même époque, la notion de curiosité suscite également un regain d’intérêt de la part des théoriciens du roman ; Behn se positionne dans le débat esthétique et épistémologique de son temps en revendiquant une mimesis originale du vrai absolu, qui refuse d’intéresser son lecteur par une curiosité pour les choses familières, et choisit de représenter l’extra-ordinaire. Behn tente de discriminer entre une « bonne » et une « mauvaise » curiosité, pour se poser en curieuse et en collectionneuse avisée, mais continue d’entretenir des liens avec une culture plus populaire de la curiosité, celle des spectacles de foires. Le « cabinet de curiosité littéraire » que construit Aphra Behn privilégie des figures de monstres atypiques, qui permettent d’inventer une forme romanesque curieuse et transgressive. / Recent research on Aphra Behn has shown the link between the scientific prose of the period and Behn’s narrative fiction, while other scholars have underscored the importance of bodily and moral deformity in her works. Drawing on these apparently heterogeneous studies, this project aims at providing a global aesthetic framework for Behn’s fiction. The epistemological context of the late seventeenth century offers a stimulating insight in Behn’s fiction, especially through the notion of “curiosity”. This notion is at the centre of both the scientific and literary concerns of the period; the growing interest in natural philosophy progressively rehabilitates curiosity – which had been an object of scorn in the Augustinian tradition – first by valuing curiosity as the ideal attitude of the “scientist”, and by having curiosities as its major object of study – the rare, new, and unusual objects of the Wunderkammern replacing the “universal” objects of study of the Medieval and Renaissance science. At exactly the same time, in the literary field, the notion of curiosity undergoes a redefinition, in a somewhat similar fashion to that which occurs in the scientific field, shifting from the “generalities” of idealized romance to a new conception of curiosity in the emerging genre of the novel. Behn advocates for a radical mimesis of truth and extraordinary curiosities. At the time when Aphra Behn writes her fictional texts, curiosity is therefore a polysemic notion, whose unity can nonetheless be found in a set of specificities: curiosity is concerned, both in science and in literature, with the emotions/reactions of the “curious” scientist or reader; it is what leads us to experiment, and it comes from a desire for knowledge. But curiosity is also a transgressive desire: the distinction between two types of curiosity, a “good” and a “bad” curiosity, is central in Behn’s discourse. The parallel between Behn’s fascination with curiosities and the scientific episteme of her time is obvious in the numerous descriptions of exotica in Oroonoko, as the narrator explicitly compares the objects she shows to those which form part of the Royal Society repository, but the rest of Behn’s fiction is also concerned with this preoccupation with curiosity: in several of her other works, moral irregularities are conjoined with ‘natural’/physical irregularities which belong to the realm of curiosities. The various transgressions depicted in Behn’s fiction can therefore be seen as “curiosities”; Behn’s work can be read as a sort of Wunderkammern, as she herself seems to suggest when she wishes her novels were “esteem’d as Medals in the Cabinets of Men of Wit” – novelists collect and experiment on human nature just as natural philosophers do with nature (and art) in the cabinets of curiosities. But in her fiction Behn actually goes beyond the conventional notion of the cabinet of curiosities, by insisting on moral and physical monstrosity. In underlining the importance of the realm of curiosity in Behn’s fiction, this study aims at showing the specificity of her aesthetics and the originality of her conception of the novel; as she states in the preface to Oroonoko, writers, like painters, are supposed to “erase” defects: by deliberately choosing not to idealize nature, men, or society, and by choosing to systematically depict deformity and exceptions instead (rather than exemplary individuals), Aphra Behn invents her own conception of the novel, a sensationalist aesthetic of the “strange and novel”.

Henry Peacham fait publier, en 1612, un ouvrage qu’il a longuement retravaillé à partir de manuscrits qui en constituent la matrice. Ainsi, Minerva Britanna voit le jour alors même que l’Angleterre pleure la mort du jeune Henri, prince héritier de la couronne et destinataire du recueil d’emblèmes d’Henry Peacham. Cette thèse propose une étude de l’art emblématique de ce polygraphe anglais peu connu et peu acclamé par la critique. Elle prend appui sur l’examen minutieux de son recueil, Minerva Britanna et s’attache à démontrer la qualité graphique des pictura emblématiques ainsi que la polyvalence des thèmes abordés par l’emblémiste.Un premier temps aborde la question de l’art emblématique d’Henry Peacham sous un angle biographique et bibliographique. Cette partie initiale nous donne l’occasion de découvrir la genèse de l’ouvrage ainsi que sa composition avant de nous pencher sur le développement du genre emblématique en Angleterre. L’étude vise plus précisément à démontrer que l’ouvrage de Peacham prend des accents militants et que l’auteur se veut le porte-parole des artistes anglais dont le statut demeure très instable.La deuxième partie se penche sur la question générique. On remarque que Minerva Britanna tient à la fois du conduct book anglais mais également du genre des specula principum en passant par celui du memento mori. Cela nous permet de mettre en évidence la polyvalence de ce recueil d’emblèmes mais également l’éclectisme du style peachamien. Ce deuxième temps est, en outre, l’occasion de faire le point sur les sources de l’auteur et sur la manière dont il clame son désir d’originalité tout en revendicant ses diverses sources d’inspiration.Enfin, une troisième partie vise à démontrer Minerva Britanna constitue une analyse des premières années du règne jacobéen. Il est ainsi question de politique intérieure puisque le recueil évoque tour à tour la philosophie du règne, la notion d’absolutisme monarchique, mais aussi les difficultés d’ordre religieux auxquelles doit faire face le roi. La politique extérieure du royaume est scrutée de près. Minerva Britanna témoigne en effet de l’épineux projet d’Union entre l’Angleterre et l’Écosse, ce qui nous amène également à nous pencher sur la question de l’identité nationale ainsi que sur l’ouverture au monde du royaume d’Angleterre. / Henry Peacham had a masterpiece published in 1612: Minerva Britanna. This collection of emblems represents the outcome of years of work on several manuscripts which he revised and which make up the main sources of the book. Minerva Britanna was published at the time when England was mourning for Prince Henry, deceased heir to the throne and addressee of Peacham’s book of emblems. This thesis aims at putting forward the worth of the emblematic art of this polygraph English artist who is not very famous and not often praised by critics. This analysis is based on a detailed study of Minerva Britanna and its purpose is to demonstrate the graphic quality of the emblematic picture as well as the variety of the themes treated by the emblemist.First, I shall deal with Henry Peacham’s emblematic art from a biographical and bibliographical angle. This will also enable the reader to discover the book’s genesis as well as its composition before analyzing the development of the emblematic genre in England. I will show that Peacham’s book takes on militant overtones and that the artist wants to present himself as the spokesman of English artists whose status was greatly unstable.Then, I will turn to the notion of genre. I will show to what extent Minerva Britanna can be seen as typical of the English “conduct book”, but also as representative of the specula principum and memento mori genres. This will clearly put forward the variety of this emblem book but also the eclecticism of Peacham’s style. I shall deal with the importance of the author’s source material in order to prove that Peacham skilfully handles both his thirst for originality and his desire to honour those who inspired his work.Finally, a third and last part will show that Minerva Britanna is also a historical analysis of the first years of James as King of England. I shall deal with domestic politics so as to examine the philosophy of James’s rule and the notion of monarchic absolutism but also the religious difficulties that the King had to face. James I’s foreign policy will also be under study. I shall demonstrate that Minerva Britanna is a testimony of the burning issue that was the Union scheme between England and Scotland. This will lead me to consider the question of national identity as well as England’s position concerning the New World.

This dissertation examines the literature of royal consorts in Stuart England. Critics and historians have devoted considerable attention to the creation of the monarch’s image during this tumultuous period, which witnessed two revolutions and the explosion of print. We know that the Stuart monarchs embraced different forms of visual media – including pageantry, portraiture and print – to disseminate their image within the court and to a broader public. However, the extensive literature about the royal consorts remains under-examined. My thesis makes an original contribution to scholarship by exploring what texts were written about the royal consorts, by whom, and how these writers constructed images of the royal consorts that participated in broader debates over the status of the monarchy. The dissertation is divided into two main parts. Part 1 comprises six chapters that analyse succession writing, when a new monarch came to the throne and established their iconography for the new reign. I draw on hundreds of texts that were printed about the Stuart consorts at these moments. These writings span a variety of genres, from poems and plays to sermons and political pamphlets. I investigate the literature of each succession in turn, analysing the main themes and motifs that emerged. This approach enables me to uncover a swathe of anonymous and under-utilised literature, but also re-interpret works by more canonical writers such as Aphra Behn. I ask how the royal consorts themselves, their spouses and members of the public could influence the creation of the royal consorts’ images at these moments. Critically, I also compare the conventions that were used to describe the consorts across the century. Part 2 analyses how writers re-constructed ideals for the royal consorts in Restoration England, as debates about the structure of the monarchy came to be more explicit. Chapter 7 concentrates on images of Henrietta Maria when she returned to England as Queen Mother. Chapter 8 asks how writers adapted former models of representation to praise Catherine, the infertile queen, when it became clear that she would not bear an heir. Finally, Chapter 9 examines the numerous secret histories and romances that were authored about Mary Beatrice’s purported behaviour during her exile in the 1690s. These chapters highlight the continued importance of these women and examines how writers constructed their legacies. As a whole, the literature about the royal consorts reveals a dynamic project as part of which authors engaged with and adapted earlier models of writing. This enabled them to address broader questions about changes in the nature of the Stuart monarchy and political life.

Cette thèse examine le discours puritain ainsi que les différentes manifestations de la présence indienne et de la voix indienne (Indian agency) dans la littérature Puritaine des XVIIème et XVIIIème siècles en général et dans les récits de captivité indienne en particulier. Les récits de captivité manquent évidemment d’objectivité en ceci qu’ils présentent une version unique des faits (celle des auteurs puritains des récits). Le problème de la subjectivité se pose d’autant plus lorsque l’on examine les paroles censées avoir été prononcées par les Indiens (les paroles que leur attribuent leurs anciens captifs). Ce constat nous a amené à poser la question suivante : par-delà la définition du récit de captivité au sens concret du terme (otages puritains entre les mains des Indiens dans le contexte précis de l’Amérique du Nord coloniale), n’y aurait-il pas lieu de postuler l’existence, au sein de ces récits (« en filigrane ») d’autres formes, plus abstraites, de captivité, comme celle que constituerait l’« l’emprisonnement » de la « voix » indienne dans des récits écrits par des blancs ? Cette voix indienne, comment se manifeste-t-elle dans les récits du corpus? Quels discours les auteurs attribuent-ils à leurs anciens ravisseurs ? / This study is dedicated to the analysis of seventeenth-and early eighteenth-century Puritan discourse and the way in which the agency of Indian appears in writings penned by the Puritans, a prominent subsection of which falls under the genre known as Indian Captivity Narrative. My main intention was to go beyond the initial characterization of captivity narratives and claim that these texts are not only about the actual physical and moral experience of the white Christian captives among the Indians, but also deal with more abstract and less often addressed forms of captivity. One such (less immediately obvious) form of captivity is, metaphorically speaking, that of the Indian “voice” in white narratives. This study therefore addresses the following questions: How does the Indian voice come across in such prose? What kinds of discourse do Mary Rowlandson, Hannah Swarton, and other former captives attribute to their former abductors? How do these former captives render and reconstruct dialogues that purportedly occurred between them and their Indian captors? This presentation of the Indian voice is not only conditioned by the former captive’s attitude (i.e., by the author’s voice), but it is also altered by the specific bias of those in charge of controlling the contents of the narrative, i.e., the editors and the publishers, such as Cotton and Increase Mather, who were the most influential representatives of the political and religious establishment of the time.