Thesis (Ph. D.)--Columbia University, 1940. / Published also without thesis note. Vita. Selected bibliography: p. [173]-191.

Thesis--Lausanne. / Includes bibliographical references (p. [251]-264).

Revenants, voyants, télépathes… : le personnel du fantastique est omniprésent dans l’œuvre de Jules Romains. C’est que le « pape de l’unanimisme » veut croire à l’existence d’un autre côté où la psyché règnerait en maîtresse (presque) absolue. Cette fascination pour l’extraordinaire étonne de la part d’un écrivain qui se comporte par ailleurs en apôtre de la raison. Mais cette apparente contradiction invite à proposer, plutôt qu’une appréhension théorique du fantastique comme catégorie architextuelle, une approche pratique du fantastique comme outil de l’écriture, de la pensée et de l’action. Il se trouve en effet que Jules Romains met l’extraordinaire au service de sa pensée scientifique et politique aussi bien que de son ambition littéraire. Maniant un fantastique militant, il crée un monde à la fois enthousiasmant et décevant – car la toute-puissance de la pensée finit par se retourner contre elle-même. Dès lors, l’œuvre échappe à son créateur, et devient œuvre du fantastique. Toutefois, il reste à Jules Romains cette ressource, de jouer sur et avec l’ambiguïté constitutive de cette œuvre qui lui échappe. L’âme, ainsi, joue le jeu des corps (d’où l’importance du thème pornographique dans la symphonie romainsienne) ; et, devant le spectacle d’un cosmos en guerre où l’unanimisme n’a pas sa place, il ne reste aux hommes de bonne volonté que d’adopter la logique de l’hypocrisie et d’accepter d’être en apparence les complices de la mauvaise volonté d’un univers criminel : la langue s’engage alors dans un périlleux devenir-rhétorique, se faisant par là même le lieu dynamique d’une lutte quasi désespérée contre la mort et le temps. / Ghosts, clairvoyants, telepathists… : the characters of fantastic literature are almost omnipresent in Jules Romains’ work. The « pope of unanimism » believed in the possible existence of a world where the psyche would be freed from material contingencies. Jules Romains being an apostle of reason, his fascination for the supernatural, or rather for the extraordinary, is surprising. But above all, it leads to rethink the fantastic. Rather than a theoretical apprehension of the fantastic considered as an architextual category, one could propose a practical approach of the fantastic considered as a literary, intellectual and political tool. Jules Romains uses the extraordinary as a scientific tool and as a political device, and hence he develops a committed fantastic. But the fantastic world he creates is both exciting and disappointing, because the omnipotence of thought ends up turning against itself. Therefore, Jules Romains has to play with the essential ambiguity of this work that escapes him, and that appears to be the work of the fantastic. The soul deals with the body (it explains the importance of pornography in Romains’ books), and Romains develops what one may call a hypocrisy logic. According to him, man should flee from a universe that is in the grip of war, and where there is no place for unanimism. However, the only recourse, for men of good will, is to be apparently in collusion with the criminal cosmos, to side with appearances against substance, with absence against presence. The language consequently enters into a perilous process of becoming-rhetorical, thereby metamorphosing into the dynamic locus of an almost hopeless struggle against death and time.

The aim of this thesis is to present the literary activities of Zdenek Kalista in 1919- 1924, a period which saw him becoming one of the most prominent figures of the young post- war generation of writers. The research has been primarily based on materials that had been so far ignored or insufficiently reflected (literary remains of Zdenek Kalista, Antonin Matej Pisa, Cestmir Jerabek, Lev Blatny, Jiri Wolker etc., as well as articles from contemporary magazines and daily newspapers) together with Kalista's memoirs. The thesis is divided into five chronologically sorted parts, each reflecting one year of Kalista's life and work and relating them to the literary situation of that time, while continuously describing them from multiple perspectives. In the first part, Kalista's personal life and the activities of the youngest literary generation are analyzed. After that, the focus shifts to the contemporary art groups (Umelecky klub, Literarni skupina, partly Devetsil) and Kalista's relationship with his contemporaries and various key figures of the literary scene (Jiri Wolker, Antonin Matej Pisa, Frantisek Gotz, Stanislav Kostka Neumann etc.). Then, Kalista's activities in the respective years are analyzed, be it for his work in contemporary magazines (Den, Orfeus, Host), his books (collections of...