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Using psychoanalytic theory, one can see that the Gothic genre addresses fears to reveal the ever-tense dynamics between subject and object- the subject as the individual with agency and the object as that which the subject desires and which thus lacks agency. This tension between the subject and object exposes the subject's fears about the object specifically pertaining to female sexuality, desire, familial dynamics, and reproduction, and it is these fears that shape the subject's psyche. These fears are addressed in psychoanalysis on two levels: terror and horror. Terror is the fear of what one does not know, whereas horror coincides with the fear of that which one does know. This distinction itself addresses the two parts of the psyche: the unconscious and the conscious. Through the lens of psychoanalysis, we can see that the switch or overlap between these layers of the psyche, is experienced as the uncanny, where the repressed again becomes familiar. In Gothic texts, the return of the repressed occurs for the subject as it relates to the object of desire, and the trauma surrounding this relationship. Through the analysis of three different Gothic texts from three different time periods- Matthew Lewis's The Monk (1796), Bram Stoker's Dracula (1897), and David Lindelofs contemporary television series Lost (2004 )- I argue that these texts demonstrate the ways in which their cultures understood (and understand) subjectivity as constituted through fear of and desire for the object. From the eighteenth century to the twenty-first century, we can see a transition from a reaction to trauma to a need/or trauma in the texts.

From its beginnings, Christianity has been fundamentally conditioned by the idea of repentance. However, while the institutional practice of repentance in the early Christian world has received much scholarly attention, relatively little exists which deals with the development and applications of the wider concept (of which its institutional aspect is only a part). The purpose of this dissertation is to provide both a re-assessment and a re-framing of this foundational concept of repentance in Christian late antiquity, with special reference to formative Greek monastic sources from the fifth to seventh centuries. Following a discussion of scholarship, terms, and methodology in chapter one, the question of defining repentance in the Greek patristic world is addressed in chapter two, looking first at the major sources for later approaches (the Septuagint, the New Testament, and Classical/Hellenistic texts). A significant re-appraisal of the dominant scholarly narrative of repentance in the early church will be offered in the following chapter, making way for a close study of the chosen monastic authors: Mark the Monk, Barsanuphius and John of Gaza, and John Climacus in turn. A threefold framework whereby their respective approaches to repentance can be understood in their integrity and diversity will be suggested, involving 1) initial or 'cognisant' repentance, in which the sinner recognizes his or her fallen state and turns it heavenward; 2) 'existential' repentance, which involves the living out of repentance as a way of life, governing all the Christian's actions and intentions; 3) 'Christ-like' repentance, which serves as the summit and ultimate goal of the Christian's personal repentance, whereby the loving and sacrificial 'repentance' of Christ for others and the world at large is assimilated and worked out in the Christian's own life. It will be argued that this framework provides a new and significant hermeneutical lens through which not simply the early Christian concept of repentance in itself can be better understood, but also through which the development of early Christian self-identity and self-perception, particularly in an ascetic context, can be gauged.

Perçu pendant fort longtemps comme un saint anaphrodite et « castré » avant d’être reconnu comme l’écrivain le plus sensuel des Lettres grecques modernes, Alexandre Papadiamantis (1851-1911), auteur prolifique de près de cent quatre-vingt nouvelles et de trois romans et trésor national hellène, est un artiste antinomique qui ne cesse d’intriguer la critique et de susciter des débats contradictoires. Le présent travail propose une lecture de son œuvre complète axée sur un sujet controversé dont aucune étude systématique n’a été entreprise, malgré un siècle de surabondante critique littéraire : le désir érotique, que nous entendons essentiellement comme le rapport à un objet de convoitise explicitement ou implicitement désigné comme tel, humain ou inhumain, vivant ou inanimé, suscitant un certain nombre de réactions physiques et/ou psychiques et sollicitant un réseau complexe de sens, de sensations, de méditations, d’excitations et de significations représentées par le biais des mots. Une telle définition emphatise l’imbrication de la pulsion et du langage et distingue le désir de l’amour, ce dernier constituant plutôt une stase du désir, un arrêt et une fixation sur l’« autre ». Notre objectif est de comprendre comment l’érotisme ainsi défini s’exprime dans les textes, quels en sont les enjeux psychologiques, les interconnexions avec les techniques narratives, les choix stylistiques et les particularités linguistiques et quelles transformations littéraires il subit dans l’œuvre, en somme, quels sont sa destinée mythique, son aboutissement idéologique et son apothéose thématique, en somme son issue dans l’écriture. / Viewed for ages as an anaphrodite and « castrated » saint before being recognized as the most sensual writer in modern Greek literature, Alexandros Papadiamantis (1851-1911), prolific author of approximately one hundred and eighty short stories, and three historical novels, and deemed to be a Hellenic national treasure, is an antinomic artist who keeps intriguing critics and arousing open debates. The present thesis offers a reading of his complete work based on a controversial subject of which no systematic study has been undertaken before, despite a century of numerous literary comments : erotic desire, defined as the connexion with an objet of lust explicitely or implicitely defined as such, human or inhuman, alive or inanimated, and which rises a number of physical and/or psychological reactions, a complex network of meanings, sensations, meditations, actions and fantasies represented through words. This definition emphasizes the interweaving of drive and language and discerns between desire and love, the latter being rather a stasis of desire, and a fixation on the « other ». Our goal is to understand how eroticism thus defined is expressed throughout the texts, to point out the psychological issues associated with it, its interconnections with the narrative techniques, stylistic choices and linguistic particularities and the literary transformations it undergoes throughout the Papadiamantian opus, that is to say its mythic destiny, its ideological culmination and its thematic apotheosis, in short its outcome in writing.

University of Macau / Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities / Department of English

Analyzing novels by Sheri Reynolds, Lee Smith, Barbara Kingsolver, Alice Walker, Gloria Naylor, and Sue Monk Kidd, I argue that these authors challenge religious structures by dramatizing the struggle between love and resentment that brings many women to the point of crisis but also inspires imaginative and generative processes of appropriation and revision, emphasizing not destination but process. Employing first-person narration in coming-of-age stories, Smith, Reynolds, and Kingsolver highlight the various narratives that govern the experiences of children born into religious cultures, including narratives of sexual development, gender identity, and religious conversion, to portray the difficulty of articulating female experience within the limited lexicon of Christian fundamentalism. As they mature into adulthood, the girl characters in these novels break from tradition to develop new consciousness by altering and adapting religious language, understood as open and malleable rather than authoritative and fixed. Smith, Kidd, and Naylor incorporate the Virgin Mary and divine maternal figures from non-Christian traditions to restore the mother-daughter relationship that is eclipsed by the Father and Son in Christian tradition. Identifying the female body as a site of spiritual knowledge, these authors present a metaphorical return to the womb that empowers their characters to embrace divine maternal love that transgresses the masculine symbolic order, displacing (but not necessarily destroying) the authority of God the Father and His human representatives. Reynolds and Walker portray physical pain, central to the Christian image of crucifixion, as destroying the ability of women to speak, denying them subjectivity. Through transgressive sexual relationships infused with religious significance, these authors disrupt the Christian moral paradigm by presenting bodily pleasure as an alternative to the Christian valorization of sacrifice. The replacement of pain with pleasure inspires imaginative work that makes private spirituality shareable through artistic creation. The novels I study present themes that also concern Christian and non-Christian feminist theologians: the development of feminine images of the divine, emphasis on immanence over transcendence, the apprehension of the divine in nature, and the necessity of challenging the reification of religious images and dualisms that undermine female subjectivity. I show the reciprocal relationship between fiction and theology, as theologians treat women's literature as sacred texts and fiction writers give life to abstract religious concepts through narrative.

Sue Monk Kidd’s The Secret Life of Bees (2002) tells the story of a motherless fourteen-year-old Lily Owens, raised by a cruel father, who desperately searches for clues to unlock her mother’s past. Kidd’s bildungsroman reveals the incredible power of black women, particularly a group of beekeeping sisters and a black Mary, to create a safe haven where Lily can examine her fragmented life and develop psychologically, finally becoming a self-actualized young lady. Lily’s matriarchal world of influence both compares and contrasts with the patriarchal world represented in Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, exposing the matriarchy’s aptly structured ways of providing a more healing environment than is Huck Finn’s. Kidd’s novel also showcases the stylistic strategies of first person narrative point of view, language, dialect, and the motif of place in order to contextualize the social awareness and psychological development Lily gains through her journey.

Sue Monk Kidd’s The Secret Life of Bees (2002) tells the story of a motherless fourteen-year-old Lily Owens, raised by a cruel father, who desperately searches for clues to unlock her mother’s past. Kidd’s bildungsroman reveals the incredible power of black women, particularly a group of beekeeping sisters and a black Mary, to create a safe haven where Lily can examine her fragmented life and develop psychologically, finally becoming a self-actualized young lady. Lily’s matriarchal world of influence both compares and contrasts with the patriarchal world represented in Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, exposing the matriarchy’s aptly structured ways of providing a more healing environment than is Huck Finn’s. Kidd’s novel also showcases the stylistic strategies of first person narrative point of view, language, dialect, and the motif of place in order to contextualize the social awareness and psychological development Lily gains through her journey.

L’essor du monachisme au courant des IVe et Ve siècles a transformé le paysage religieux dans le bassin méditerranéen. Ce mouvement d’ascètes célibataires et l’impact de son institutionnalisation au sein de la Grande Église ont contribué à la formation d’une nouvelle identité religieuse et à la transformation des systèmes hérités des penseurs classiques. Ce projet, en partant des sources monastiques et classiques, mettra en lumière les relations entre les premiers moines chrétiens et les différentes figures de l’altérité – religieuse, intellectuelle et culturelle – dans la province égyptienne pendant la période byzantine. En se penchant sur différentes entités présentes sur le territoire égyptien, on sera en mesure de mieux comprendre de quelle façon l’identité monastique s’est formée dans sa relation avec l’altérité et comment les auteurs monastiques ont représenté ces groupes identitaires. Ainsi, au terme de cette présentation, le lectorat sera mieux outillé pour saisir les relations qu’entretiennent les premiers moines chrétiens et les divers visages de l’altérité dans le contexte monastique égyptien. / During the 4th and the 5th centuries, the emergence of monasticism transformed the religious landscape around the Mediterranean. This ascetic movement and the impact of its institutionalization within the Great Church contribute to the formation of a new religious identity and to the transformation of systems inherited from classical thinkers. Starting from the monastic sources, this project will shed light on the relations between the first Christian monks and the various figures of otherness – religious, intellectual, and ethnical – in the Egyptian provinces during Late Antiquity. By looking at different entities present in Egyptian territory, we will be able to understand how monastic identity was formed in its relationship with the otherness and how the monastic authors represent these identity groups. Thus, at the end of this presentation, the readers will be better equipped to understand the relationships between the first Christian monks and the various face of otherness in the Egyptian monastic context.

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