The present study has two major goals: first it reconstructs the history of travel-literature from the Middle Ages to the 19th century with a special focus on the role of women, second it attempts to analyse and evaluate travel-accounts by women who travelled to the Orient in the 19th century (Engel-Egli, Forneris, Pfeiffer, Hahn-Hahn and Muhlbach). / The reconstruction of the history of travel and travel-literature up to the 18th century shows that it was possible for women to travel with relative freedom. With the polarization of gender-roles in the last third of the 18th century, however, women were declared 'unfit for travel' and confined to their homes. Due to this development, travel-accounts by women travelling to the Orient, that were written in the middle of the 19th century, have to fulfil a special function. Besides representing an attempt to reestablish the tradition of female travellers that had been suppressed from the middle of the 18th century on, travelling to the Orient meant that the female authors in question had access to areas and spaces that were both off limits to their male counterparts (i.e. the harem) and charged with sexually connoted images. Forneris,' Pfeiffer's and Hahn-Hahn's statements can be interpreted as a conscious attempt to criticize European man through the deconstruction of the images of the Oriental femme fatale in two ways: the first criticism is that they present themselves as authorities with regard to the domain of the Oriental woman. The second occurs through consciously creating grotesque anti-images, whereby women turn the "oriental dream" of their male contemporaries into a nightmare. This act of turning the images into their opposite happens without taking into account the culturally different woman. She has been reduced to the status of an object by women travelling to the Orient exactly in the same manner as male colleagues reduced them. / In addition, this analysis gives special consideration to much discussed 19th century elements of racial theories which found their way into the travel accounts.

This Master's Thesis offers a study of the works of Swiss travel narratives' writer Nicolas Bouvier (1929-1998). Bouvier develops a poetics that defines the practical rules of his travels as well as the aesthetic rules of his writing. / These rules form a whole that can be named poetics of transparency and divided into two complementary poles, each linked to themes and images of disappearance or apparition. Both are oriented towards one single goal: to make the world visible for the reader. Seemingly contradictory, the two movements of Bouvier's project are connected by a polyphonic worldview, mirrored in narratives by the interweaving of multiple voices. / Bouvier's work is a model of the travel narrative's evolution in the XXth century. Compared to travel writings of the classical and romantic periods, it appears as a reversed interpretation of the genre's codes, leading it to explore the possibilities of grasping a world poetic rather than objective.

The purpose of the analytical part of this master's paper is to specify the signification of the voyage motive considered as the theme of some of the stories in Jacques Ferron's Contes. This theme consists in being at the basis of both travel narratives and tales structure. It is a matter of studying, on the one hand, how the author is spiritually in line with these stories and on the other hand, how he distinguishes himself by his singular use of them. / Two tales, "La vache morte du canyon" and "Cadieu" are analyzed, in the first part, according to literary theories applied on travel narratives. Ferron's versions of this type of stories are particular in that they favour the theme of the return from banishment. The second part of this work treats of the tale "Les Mechins", in which the themes remind the rituals of initiation in tribal societies. The effective displacement achieved by the hero appears as an interiorized voyage rather than a social one. The author transposes, from preexisting but inadequate material to explain the modern society, a new vision of the becoming of the self. / In the creative part of the paper, eleven tales present the introspective reflexion of individuals who have to get over an important period into their life. The flow of the river along which the characters live is a fundamental element determining the way they can go through the learning process. The goal is to reconcile with personal and peculiar destiny.

Thesis (doctoral)--Université de Franche-Comté, Besançon, 1996. / Includes bibliographical references (p. [471]-491).

Thesis (doctoral)--Université de Franche-Comté, Besançon, 1996. / Includes bibliographical references (p. [471]-491).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Wisconsin--Madison,1983. / Typescript. Vita. eContent provider-neutral record in process. Description based on print version record. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 553-567).

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Thesis (Ph. D.)--Ohio State University, 2006. / Available online via OhioLINK's ETD Center; full text release delayed at author's request until 2009 Jun 15