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No description available.

Abstract Not Available.

No description available.

No description available.

Cette thèse porte sur le problème du nihilisme. Elle se veut plus particulièrement une exploration des interprétations de ce phénomène proposées par Friedrich Nietzsche et Fédor Dostoïevski dans certaines de leurs oeuvres. Elle cherche à répondre à deux questions, en particulier: d'abord, que veut dire exactement le nihilisme pour chacun des auteurs; ensuite, pourquoi et comment on doit, selon eux, lutter contre le problème qu'il représente. Pour répondre à ces questions, on s'attardera à l'étude de concepts tels que la «volonté», les «valeurs», la «foi», la «liberté» et la «vie». L'homme atteint de la maladie du nihilisme n'est pas un homme libre. La solution à ce problème se trouve donc dans l'idée d'une certaine forme de foi, une foi qui rend libre en offrant des paramètres à la liberté de l'homme. Car une liberté sans limites ne peut que se transformer en absence de liberté. (Abstract shortened by UMI.)

This study treats in detail one of the significant themes of world literature in the narratives of the Russian writer L. N. Tolstoy. The theme of death, its modalities, motifs and related aspects, occur frequently in all of Tolstoy's artistic and philosophical writings. He presents this theme in connection with other dominant themes such as appearance and reality, falsity and truth, the attempts and failures to materialize individuals' objectives, all in various contexts of life--both private and public, and especially military life. The selection of themes such as sexuality, violence, or the transgression of moral laws, also affects the presentation of the theme of death. Instead of focusing on one pair of dominant semantic fields, Tolstoy (in the majority of his narratives) connects several of them equally. There are very few of his works in which one semantic field dominates. In accordance with Realist poetics, Tolstoy presents the theme of death directly; references to death on an allegorical or symbolic level occur in only a few of his narratives. In his early works, Tolstoy varies not only the fundamental modalities, but also the basic modes of violent and natural death. The presentation of a theme in a narrative differs depending on the length of the narrative. In his shorter prose fiction, Tolstoy concentrates the theme of death into specific passages, while its presentation in the longer narratives is distributed throughout the texts. In presenting the various characters, his narrators reveal their philosophies of life, which are particularly apparent in the borderline situation of death and dying. Members of different social classes display, as a rule, contrasting philosophies in revealing their attitudes and reactions--a trend which is again noticeable both in Tolstoy's major prose and in his late narratives. The author's focus on introspection (although in his early prose members of the lower classes are excluded from this technique) continues to play an important role in his late work as well. The author uses typical narrative devices such as anticipation, retrospection, association and paradox in the depiction of this complex theme as he attempts to 'de-romanticize', 'de-sensationalize' and 'de-dramatize' this topic. Despite the general tendency to omit the actual moment of death, there are a few works in which the horror of violent death shocks the reader. As for artistic development in presenting this theme, Tolstoy continues to employ a basic stock of devices and techniques already manifest in his early works.

This thesis concerns four of Mikhail Bulgakov's prose works: Notes on the Cuff, Theatrical Novel (Black Snow), Fatal Eggs and Heart of a Dog. Bulgakov's masterpiece, The Master and Margarita, is, for the most part, excluded. The four novels, and particularly their heroes, are examined in light of the ideas of the Russian literary theorist, Mikhail Bakhtin. What is chiefly investigated is whether or not the characters in Bulgakov's works function dialogically. This inevitably leads to a certain amount of comparison with the heroes of the novels of Fyodor Dostoevsky, since Bakhtin spent so much time examining the inner workings of the nineteenth century writer's art. Another of Bakhtin's theories which is applied in this thesis is that of "consummation" (zavershenie). To what extent do Bulgakov's heroes need and receive consummation from without? Finally, some time is spent on the question of whether or not Bakhtin's theories are viable in an atmosphere of harsh and violent Juvenalian satire.

The opinion of critics is controversial as far as Leonid Leonov is concerned. One of L. Leonov's novel, The Russian Forest, is now considered to have anti-Stalinist elements even by the Soviet critics. In connection with the new trend in Soviet literary criticism an attempt is being made to analyse Leonid Leonov's creativity independently from political and ideological factors. The purpose of this thesis is to appraise the revolution as seen by L. Leonov's heroes, to find out how it was received and understood by different strata of the Soviet population. To comprehend the literary characters, it was judged necessary to study the life and the literary opinions of their creator. In the first chapter the analysis of Leonid Leonov as a man and a writer showed some discrepancies in details of his life as well as in the critics' appraisal of his views. It was pointed out that the writer is constant and even stubborn as far as his literary beliefs are concerned. The four next chapters are concerned with Leonov's heroes divided according to their social status. Thus the second chapter deals with the peasants. The Russian peasant is passive. He believes in the philosophy of non-resistance, as the result of the long tears of the landowners' yoke. As he was not interested in the affairs of the city, he was not fully aware of the advent of the revolution which would affect his traditional way of life. (The Breakthrough of Petusixa, The White Nights). But after some hopes of betterment of his situation, he revolts against the injustice of the city, brought by the bolshevik newcomers to the village. When the peasants' revolt is crushed they accept the new master (The Badgers, Sot'). Only the period of the Industrialization creates the possibility of rapprochement of the peasants and the new rulers, by the hope of the economic improvement of their lives. However these peasants who join the proletarian ranks change their social status and the social structure of society accordingly. More than twenty years later, during the war, peasants are still not politically educated. They do not feel the previous hostility towards the new order and reveal their readiness to defend the country as such. However the are absorbed mostly in their own affairs (Ljonuska, The Russian Forest). In the third chapter the proletariat is studied. In Leonov's works the real, that is the urban proletariat has some misgivings concerning the methods of revolutionary changes (The Thief, Skutarevskil), but they believe in the revolution as such. Their inner conflicts are eventually resolved. As for the previously rural population, who joined the workers, they will be re-educated under the new conditions (Sot', Skutarevskij). In the fourth chapter the intelligentsia is studied in the examples of the eight heroes starting from Lixarev (Konec Melkovo Celoveka) ending with Vixrov from The Russian Forest. All the heroes are not opposed to the idea of revolution but the acceptance of the reality is made difficult by the suffering and degradation. In the fifth chapter the analysis of communists shows that among them existed two concepts of the role of the revolution in human life. Some of them had only the state's interest in mind while others connected the country's well-being with the satisfactory conditions of its people. The war brings some understanding of the human element as far as the relation with the population is concerned. But it is The Russian Forest, the first novel of the Thaw period, which demonstrates that in human relations coldness is harmful. Polja passes through the transformation from the prevailing conception of human perfection into the acceptance of forgotten simple laws of the human heart. With the new generation, which will take the ruling of the country into their hands, humanism will prevail. At least such is the hope of Polja's creator.

Abstract not available.