Thèse numérisée par la Division de la gestion de documents et des archives de l'Université de Montréal.

À l’heure où l’industrie de l’enregistrement sonore connait un certain nombre de bouleversements, Internet apparait à la fois comme un responsable d’une crise du disque et comme une plate-forme de diffusion et de promotion de la musique enregistrée. C’est dans ce contexte de mutations des industries culturelles que sont les industries de la musique que les labels indépendants voient les possibilités liées à la promotion se multiplier. Notamment par le biais des sites internet que j’envisage ici comme discours encodé et diffusé. Ce mémoire explore deux sites internet officiels de labels indépendants de rap québécois à l’aide de la proposition de la présence du mythe dans le discours de promotion. S’appuyant sur la théorie de Barthes, mon analyse s’articule autour de l’étude de la signification afin de mettre en lumière la façon dont le mythe fonctionne dans le discours. En m’intéressant principalement à l’image et au texte, je mets notamment en valeur le traitement de l’artiste, de la création musicale et du label dans le discours. / At a time when the music recording industry is going through some shake ups, Internet is seen both as a responsible for a disc crisis and as a plateform for diffusion and promotion of recorded music. This cultural industries' mutations context is now revealing multiple promotion opportunities for independant labels, as part of the music industries. This can be seen through websites which I consider to be a broadcasted, encoded and decoded discourse. This master thesis explore two independant record companys’ websites, both producing rap music in Québec, with the proposal of the presence of the myth in the promotionnal discourse. Based on Barthes' theory, my analysis is built around the study of the signification in order to outline the way the myth works in the discourse. While focusing on images and text, I mainly emphasize the treatment of the artist, the musical creation and the record label in the discourse.

My installations are propositions for an imaginary world that relies on its own internal logic, a world of believability without recognition. While the work references landscape it also emphasizes its contrivance, as it is automatically estranged in an "unnatural" gallery setting. I subvert or de-familiarize the materials and processes that I use in the service of creating a fictitious environment. My places are impossible places. They are irregular, illogical, and unstable. Our imagination can be one of most dangerous things to psychological stability as it is an inventory of all things possible, no matter how irrational or improbable. The irrational is always an option, a lingering threat. The imagination seems to hate permissions and limitations, but is nevertheless lodged within them. I want to create a sense of nonsensical logic. If all things that can be imagined are logical possibilities, I want to find the place where fantasy seems to be just barely reality. If I can't have an inherent contradiction, I'll take an apparent one.

Ce mémoire aborde trois oeuvres du théâtre québécois contemporain, Scotstown de Fabien Cloutier, Yukonstyle de Sarah Berthiaume et Félicité d’Olivier Choinière dans le but de les comparer. Cette comparaison doit alimenter une réflexion sur le concept de québécité, que le présent mémoire définit comme la mise en place d’un traitement de l’identité qui encourage le développement d’une certaine ambivalence identitaire. En stipulant que les discours identitaires sont empreints de ce que Gérard Bouchard appelle les mythes sociaux, ce mémoire analyse le corpus proposé pour en extraire les parts rationnelles de ces mythes, mais aussi les parts émotionnelles, qui agissent comme fondation de l’identité au même titre que la raison. Ce faisant, ce mémoire a pour ambition de déplacer une perception de la québécité ancrée dans une tradition historique et politique influencée par le nationalisme pour ramener ce concept vers une définition plus large, mais aussi plus polysémique pour interpréter l’histoire de la dramaturgie québécoise, qui entretient depuis la Révolution tranquille un rapport ironiquement ambivalent à l’égard des discours identitaires. / This memoir addresses three works of contemporary Quebec theatre, Fabien Cloutier’s Scotstown, Sarah Berthiaume’s Yukonstyle and Olivier Choinière’s Félicité, for the purpose of comparing them. This comparison must fuel a reflection on the concept of Quebec-ness, herein defined as the establishment of a treatment of identity promoting the development of an ambivalent identity. By providing that identity discourses are marked by what Gérard Bouchard calls “social myths”, this memoir analyses the proposed corpus with the intent of extracting the rational part of such myths along with their emotional parts, with both parts considered equally significant in the foundation identity. This memoir seeks to move away from common conceptions of Quebec-ness that are rooted in a political and historical tradition influenced by nationalism and proposes a more global definition of this concept, a definition that takes into account various meanings, allowing us to revisit the history of Quebec dramaturgy, as said dramaturgy ironically maintains an ambivalent position in regards to identity discourses since the Quiet Revolution.

La production lyrique de Peter Huchel condense les ambivalences et les tensions d’un moment de l’histoire littéraire allemande où s’opposent l’univers magique hérité du romantisme et le désir de focaliser l’attention à la fois sur les apories d’une forme de lyrisme devenue caduque et sur une poésie en devenir. Elle s’enracine dans le réalisme magique de l’entre-deux-guerres qui prône paradoxalement le retour au concret et la recherche de l’harmonie perdue, rendant ainsi le pouvoir à l’imaginaire et invitant l’artiste à faire oeuvre de magie. L’étude porte sur les tensions entre écriture poétique et réalité extra-littéraire qui font l’objet de la réflexion constante du poète, non dans des écrits théoriques, mais à travers ses poèmes. Après une « première manière de dire », reflétant les distorsions entre une démarche conventionnelle et la conscience des nouveaux enjeux du lyrisme, le poète inverse dans une « seconde manière » le sens des procédés magiques pour faire table rase des codes classiques de la représentation et fonder une nouvelle magie. Univers sensible, corps, logos et mythe sont mis en pièces. Parallèlement, s’esquisse un nouveau projet esthétique qui tend vers le laconisme et s’adresse davantage à l’imagination qu’à la perceprtion, sans pour autant s’enfermer dans l’autoréférentialité. Le nouveau domaine de la poésie est un lieu instable et ouvert où la parole demeure inachevée, mais peut sans cesse être renouvelée. / In the lyric work of Peter Huchel the ambivalences and tensions of a certain moment in German literary history intensify when the contrast between the magic world – a legacy of romanticism- and the desire to focus on the apories of an old-fashioned lyricism on the one hand and on a newly-developing poetry on the other hand becomes obvious. Huchel’s poetry has its roots in the magic realism of the time between the two wars which – paradoxically –advocates the return to the concrete and the quest for a lost harmony giving power to the imaginary and inviting the artist to create a work of magic. The study evolves around the discrepancies between the poetic style and the reality outside literature, a topic the poet keeps reflecting on but not in his essays but in his poems. After a « first way of expression », which mirrors distortions between a conventional approach and the consciousness of a completely new starting point in the poetry, the poet changes in a « second way of expression » the sense of the magic method and leaves behind the classical codes of presentation giving way to a new magic. Physical universe, body, logos and myth are tom apart. At the same time a new esthetic programme becames visible which is directed at laconism and which addresses imagination more than perception without being caught in self-referentiality. This new domain of poetry is an instable but open field where the lyric language remains incomplete though renewable.

Mythological and Mythogenic Aspects of Star Wars and the Specificities of its Stories in Regard to Serialized Storytelling covers the six stories of the Star Wars series in relation to Emil Volek's story model whose terminology and story typology is used to describe how the stories influence one another, which is to say, how the stories influence the reception of the other stories in the series and how the reception has changed over time. The diploma thesis also examines how myth is being applied to Star Wars and reflects whether such connection is justified. Both Star Wars and myth are given a definition and the relationship between the series and Joseph Campbell's monomyth, a concept frequently connected to Star Wars, is explored. The final part of the text describes narrative elements and processes participating in the creation of the original trilogy. An appendix covers various issues in regard to the translation of the series into Czech and briefly evaluates existing translations.

The present thesis explores works of Pavel Růžek and Jerzy Pilch, its central focus being the analysis and interpretation of their approach towards one's own biography and one's identity as a writer. Although both authors come from the same generation, they address different literary traditions and construct different poetics. What they have in common, however, are literary motifs rooted in their biographies, such as alcoholism, the mythology of childhood, [the existence of] "fateful places," even particular types of women or other characters (including animals). Additionally, the thesis scrutinises the position of both writers in the consciousness of Polish and Czech readership along with their place on the two literary markets.

Poetics of space in The Alexandria Quartet is created by multilevel structures. This poetics is closely connected to the main space of the story - Alexandria, which is at the same time one of the novel's topics. Each level is suggested in connection to various theoretical conceptions which are subsequently used for my own analysis. Alexandria is initially an aesthetic coulisse of the story which is portrayed by descriptive passages. Strongly subjective and lyrical descriptions of the city establish overall impression of the story and potentially support reader's experiential illusion. Alexandria and its specificity is further modulated and thematised by its special macroscopic conditions which border Alexandria as an autonomous fictional space with its own rules within the novel's fictional world. Part of poetics of the space in this novel is also portraying spatio-temporal aspect of the reality (chronotope) no only on the level of the story, but also on the level of storytelling. Alexandria is further explicit rhetoric and also through semantic indexation personified and enters semantic relations with the main characters and events. Each level is complementary to another and all are part of the semantic gesture of the novel. Alexandria becomes a separate symbol, mythical entity which importance is...

The aim of this thesis is to compare similar cosmogonic narratives in Indian and Chinese culture. The most important elements are the motives of the egg and the giant/god who is formed from it. Comparative method consist of the comparison of the meanings and interpretations of the motives of these two elements, depending on the expectations and character of the source of this mythological narrative. Final findings are, that the importance of both motives in the texts and their participation in the process of creation of the world change chronologically, due to changes in religious, philosophical and social preferences. In Indian cultural environment in the begining, the vague motive of the egg slowly emerges and becomes a single creative element, gaining importance and continues to the stage where it reaches the same level of importance as the cosmic being. The primordial being on the other hand, loses its function of cosmic matter and passes it to the egg. The being itself then plays an active role rather than an object. China, for its religious scepticism suppressed motive of the egg until it was completely removed from texts. The primary role is played by the cosmic giant whose role is not focused on the creation of the world itself but the desintegration of the giants body, representing fission...

This thesis deals with the evolution of vampire as a literary character in contemporary production for young adults. Its aim is not to describe all existing works but to cover only the most interesting representations of a vampire in various epochs. The thesis describes the most influential works building the literary stereotype of a vampire and proposes an evolution line. The crucial works in this genre are: Vampire, Carmilla, Dracula, Interview with a Vampire, The Vampire Diaries, True Blood, Twilight, House of Night, Vampire Academy and Vampire Boardingschool. Based on them we create a typology according to the appearance, character and narrative role of a vampire. The thesis begins with an anthropological introduction, especially with the origin of the vampires in Easteuropean folk tradition. Farther more we deal with most common genres used to enrich the vampire literature and theory of a literary character as a narrative category. The analysis covers the evolution of a vampire character from its naturalistic appearance to its very civilized pole in the contemporary young adults fiction. We close with the chapter describing the character of a vampire as a literary symbol.