Cette thèse se propose d'interroger l'existence possible d'une francophonie littéraire du Viêt-Nam. En cernant le profil si particulier des œuvres francophones de ce pays, notre démonstration consiste à éclairer leur position dans le champ littéraire. Leur marginalisation a semblé être un élément crucial à analyser, posant la question des causes, mais aussi des conséquences sur leur réception. En effet, leur difficulté à se constituer en ensemble littéraire autonome au sein d'une littérature nationale ou à s'intégrer dans la littérature française est apparue de façon prégnante. Cette oscillation tant au niveau d'un ensemble que d'une œuvre particulière a été un des moteurs de notre analyse. Marquée du sceau de l'origine de ses acteurs et actrices, elle est perçue comme singulière. Mais elle n'est pas un volet de la littérature nationale du Viêt-Nam. Où est donc son avenir ? C'est pour mieux comprendre cette singularité que nous avons étudié les œuvres de trois écrivaines contemporaines : Kim Lefèvre, Anna Moï et Linda Lê. Elles sont le visage le plus connu de cette francophonie, sans que leur projet initial soit de s'y inscrire. Elles empruntent des chemins littéraires différents, illustrant ainsi leur difficile quête d'ancrage. Leur place spécifique dans le champ critique francophone nous a obligée à des incursions critiques développées, d'où l'ampleur de la bibliographie. Celle-ci prépare et ouvre d'autres voies d'exploration. / This thesis investigates the potential existence of a French written literature from Vietnam. In exploring these singular works from this country, our aims are to highlight their specific position in the literary field. The marginalization of these works emerges as a key point to explain their origin as well as the consequences on their reading and broadcasting. The difficulty to constitute a separate field in the national Vietnamese literature or to be fully integrated in the French literature is evident. The oscillation of a particular work or a group of works between these two statuses was the foundation of our analysis. In addition, while they displayed defined specificities, they are not considered as an individual field in the national Vietnamese literature. What should be the future of such literary style? In view of a better understanding of its singularity, we specifically analyzed the works of three of the most famous contemporary women writers in this field: Kim Lefèvre, Anna Moï and Linda Lê. While their initial purpose was not to be a part of this literary trend, these authors used different ways to achieve works that could be classified in similar manner. This illustrates the difficulty to integrate them into a specific literary field. To analyze their specific position in the Francophone critical field, we constantly had to perform numerous critical incursions, which explains the large amount of bibliography. This thesis prepares and opens the way for further explorations.

Combining the critical lenses of early American scholarship and that of the modern South, “Captive Women, Cunning Texts” investigates the uses and transformations of tropes of captivity drawn from the American Indian captivity narrative by women writers of the Southern Renaissance (circa 1910-45). Specifically, this study examines how captivity narratives, the first American literary form dominated by white women’s experiences as writers and readers, provided the female authors of the Southern Renaissance with a genre ideal for critiquing the roles of women in the South, and the official constructions of southern history. This work interrogates the multifaceted ways in which the captivity genre enabled these female authors to reject typical male modes of expression and interpretation, as well as male images portraying women in mythical terms that conflicted with the real experiences and boundaries of their lives. Through critical case studies of Evelyn Scott, Beatrice Witte Ravenel, and Caroline Gordon, this study demonstrates that many women writers of this period self-consciously returned to the literary past of American captivity narratives for models and, in so doing, discovered modes of discourse and tropes of confinement that aided them in their struggle to redefine their place and that of the racial and cultural Other in southern society, literature, and history. Their strategic re-employment of the captivity tradition literally and metaphorically provided liminal sites of exchange that both reveal and inspire agency and change in their unmasking of tradition, veneer, and the deeply imbedded cultural exchange of the white female body.

<p>Taking as its pretext the contemporary moment of self-reflexive critique on the part of interdisciplinary programs like Women's Studies and American Studies, <italic>Reading Democracy</italic> historicizes a black feminist literary critical practice and movement that developed alongside black feminist activism beginning in the 1970s. This dissertation addresses the future direction of scholarship based in Women's Studies and African-American Studies by focusing on the institutionalized political effects of Women's Liberation and the black liberation movements: the canonization of black women's writing and the development of a black feminist critical practice. Tracing a variety of conceptions of black feminist criticism over the course of two decades, I argue that this critical tradition is virtually indefinable apart from its anthological framing and that its literary objects illustrate the radical democratic constitution of black women's political subjectivity. </p><p>The editors of such anthologies of African American women's writing and black feminist practice as Toni Cade Bambara's <italic>The Black Woman</italic> (1970), Mary Helen Washington's <italic>Black-Eyed Susans</italic> (1975), and Barbara Smith's <italic>Home Girls: A Black Feminist Anthology</italic> (1984) articulate the relationship of political praxis to creative enterprise and intellectual activity. In the case of Smith's anthology, for example, "coalition politics" emerges as the ideal democratic practice by which individuals constitute political identities, consolidate around political principles, and negotiate political demands.</p><p>Situating anthologies of black women's writing in relation to the social movement politics of the 1960s and 1970s, Reading Democracy explores how black feminist projects in the academy and the arts materialized the democratic principles of modern politics in the United States, understanding these principles as ethical desires that inspire self-constitution and creative and scholarly production. Constructing a literary critical and publication history, this dissertation identifies the democratic principles that the anthologies in this study materialize by analyzing them alongside the novels and short stories published during the 1970s and 1980s that they excerpt or otherwise reference, such as Toni Morrison's <italic>The Bluest Eye</italic> (1970), Audre Lorde's <italic>Zami: A New Spelling of My Name</italic> (1982), and Paule Marshall's <italic>Praisesong for the Widow</italic> (1983). The anthology facilitates the analysis of the single creative work's black feminist consciousness. Using the critical terms of democratic theory to mark the fulfillment of a political theory of black women's writing, as Smith first proposed, this dissertation arrives at a sense of democracy as a strategic zone of embodiment and a modern political imaginary forged by the recognition of "the others" in our midst who are coming to voice and are ineluctably constituted by the same ethical desires as are we ourselves.</p> / Dissertation

When a writer, usually a woman, uses fairy tales as a veil through which to narrate a story of her life, I call this practice asymptotic autobiography. In mathematics, the asymptote is a straight line that a curve approaches increasingly closely, but never actually touches. I define “asymptotic autobiography” as a term for discussing any personal narrative that deliberately employs fiction in order to tell truth. In this inquiry, I examine the use of fairy tale language in giving voice to women writers’ autobiographical representations, using Zelda Fitzgerald’s novel and letters as the focus for my analysis. My research and critical analysis will examine how Save Me the Waltz, which Zelda Fitzgerald wrote while she was a psychiatric patient in the Phipps Clinic, uses fairy tales to provide a mapping of the many performances that autobiographical selfhood entails. By experimenting with open-ended fairy tale conventions instead of being limited by clinical truths, and by contextualizing her personal history in the realm of the imaginary, Fitzgerald removes her story from the psychiatric ward and places it safely in legend. The first three chapters of this dissertation show how, in sequence, the autobiographical self becomes free through the use of fairy tales in three stages: once the autobiographer has worked to separate herself from being bound by illness or clinical reality (Chapter One), she is free to make the decision of which self or selves she wishes to narrate and perform (Chapter Two); only once she has established her sense of self can the autobiographer then locate her plot, her map, and her narrative (Chapter Three). In Chapter Four, I offer an example of asymptotic autobiography in the form of a one-person play script that I wrote and performed about Zelda Fitzgerald’s life and hospitalization, using as a frame the fairy tale “The Swan Maiden.” This hybrid essay-performance combines the play script itself with personal writing of my own in which I describe the difficulties I had approaching and performing the rich material of Zelda’s life. / text

Die Dissertation untersucht von Autorinnen (Louisa Johnson, Jane Loudon, Maria Theresa Earle, Gertrude Jekyll, Elizabeth von Arnim) verfasste Ratgeberliteratur zum Hausgarten für ein weibliches Lesepublikum, mit dem Anspruch an eine praktische Gartentätigkeit, im Zeitraum von 1839 bis 1900. Die Genderperspektive steht hieraus folgend im Mittelpunkt der vorliegenden Arbeit. Der Fokus auf die bürgerliche Mittelklasse ergibt sich aus der Autorinnenperspektive und der angesprochenen Leserschaft. Die Behandlung des Gartens wird einer Analyse unterzogen, die nach der weiblichen Sicht auf den Garten und einem spezifisch weiblichen Selbstverständnis der garteninteressierten bzw. gärtnernden Frauen fragt. In ihrer Beschäftigung mit dem Garten leisten die Frauen einen Beitrag zur Konzeption von männlich und weiblich, zur Bewertung von Geschlechternormen und deren Verhandlung. Das Schreiben und Lesen über den Garten sowie hieraus resultierende Handlungen waren mit der Konstruktion weiblicher Identität verknüpft. In ihrer befreienden Konzeption des Gartens heben sich diese Frauenstimmen zu Weiblichkeitsvorstellungen von anderen gesellschaftlichen zugeschriebenen Wirkungsbereichen ab. An die bürgerliche Frau herangetragene Rollenerwartungen werden in den Werken weder affirmativ bestätigt noch offen subversiv hinterfragt. Es handelt sich vielmehr um ein subtiles Unterlaufen durch das Anbieten von Handlungsfeldern, die dem Wunsch nach Selbstverwirklichung und Selbstbestimmung entgegen kamen. Im Garten als vermeintlich kleinem, hausnah-restriktivem Kontext nehmen die Frauen neue Rollen an und variieren diese. Der Beschäftigung mit dem Garten kommt daher ein protofeministischer Charakter vor dem Einsetzen der Ersten Frauenbewegung zu, so dass von einem Gartenfeminismus als Instrument zur weiblichen Bewusstwerdung gesprochen werden kann. / The thesis takes a close look at gardening literature by several women writer’s (Louisa Johnson, Jane Loudon, Maria Theresa Earle, Gertrude Jekyll, Elizabeth von Arnim) in the Victorian period, focusing on practical gardening activities. Central to its theme is its gender perspective within the garden context, predominantly in the middle classes. The garden is analysed in various contexts focusing on a specific female view on gardening as seen in the texts and a growing female self-awareness that results from their involvement with the garden. In making the garden their subject, these writers actively construct notions of male and female. Writing and reading about the garden and the resulting practices are linked to the construction of a female identity and ultimately open up gender roles. The liberating construction of the garden within the texts differs from the conception of other socially accepted areas of female involvement in the period of examination. Received gender roles are neither overtly affirmed nor subversively challenged in the texts. Their approach is more of a subtle reconstruction by offering a new and wider range of activities that acknowledge a female desire for self-determination and fulfilment. In the garden as an allegedly small and restrictive site close to the home, women are able to diversify given stereotypes and take on new roles. Gardening as a leisure or professional occupation therefore holds proto-feminist implications even before the beginning of the First Women’s Movement, so that we can speak of a garden feminism instrumental to a negotiation of female gender roles.

Cette thèse porte un regard croisé sur les œuvres de deux auteures américaines contemporaines nées dans la région du Sud des Appalaches. Elle se lance pour objectif principal de définir et analyser les frontières et caractéristiques d’une identité littéraire proprement appalachienne ayant émergé ces trente dernières années aux États-Unis et connaissant actuellement un essor critique sans précédent. L’étude s’appuie sur une approche essentiellement pluridisciplinaire (histoire, géographie, économie, religion, philosophie) traçant les contours d’une littérature régionale motivée par une tension entre les notions d’espace (« space ») et de territoire (« place »), d’une part, et les dynamiques inverses de territorialisation (comment passe-t-on d’un corps physique à un corps textuel spécifiques ?) et déterritorialisation (comment ce corps textuel se transforme-t-il en réceptacle de considérations plus universelles ?), d’autre part. Tout en les remettant en perspective, l’analyse adopte comme cadre théorique les considérations philosophiques de Gilles Deleuze (fondateur du concept de « déterritorialisation ») et Gaston Bachelard (phénoménologue ayant développé la notion de « poétique de l’espace »). / The aim of this doctoral dissertation is to explore the writings of two American women writers born and raised in the Appalachian South. It attempts to define and analyze the characteristics of a typically Appalachian literary identity that has been taking shape in the United States over the past thirty years and which is only now starting to receive nationwide and worldwide critical acclaim. The approach is mainly interdisciplinary (history, geography, economics, religion and philosophy provide different ways to delve into the topic) and seeks to outline a regional literature which has been essentially fueled by a tension between the concepts of “nature” (the physical place around us) and “environment” (the more complex result of the interplay between nature and man or woman). The opposed dynamics of regional grounding (how does the writer move from a specific physical natural body to a specific literary body?) and regional un-grounding or uprooting (how does this literary body turn into a receptacle of more universal emotions and concerns?) also shed light on the idiosyncrasies of this Appalachian literature. The analysis uses as a theoretical framework the philosophical views of Gilles Deleuze (the French philosopher who coined the concept of “deterritorialisation”) and Gaston Bachelard (the French phenomenologist having developed the notion of “poetics of space” recently rediscovered and explored in the United States).

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The Girl Gang: Women Writers of the New York City Beat Community seeks to revise our understanding of the Beat community and literary tradition by critically engaging the lives and work of five women Beat writers: Diane di Prima, Joyce Johnson, Hettie Jones, Carol Bergé, and Mimi Albert. This dissertation argues that, from a position of marginality, these women developed as protofeminist writers, interrogating the traditional female gender role and constructing radical critiques of normative ideas in fiction and poetry in ways that resisted the male Beats' general subordination of women and that anticipated the feminist movement of the late 1960s and 1970s. A project of recovery and criticism, The Girl Gang provides literary biographies that explore how each writer's experience as a marginalized female writer within an otherwise countercultural community affected the development of her work; it also analyzes a range of works (published and unpublished texts from various genres, written from the early 1950s through the turn of the twenty-first century) in order to illustrate how each writer distinctively employs and revises mainstream and Beat literary and cultural conventions. The dissertation's critical analyses examine each writer's engagement in various literary, cultural, and social discourses, drawing attention to their incisive and provocative treatment of thematic issues that are central to the postwar countercultural critique of hegemonic norms --including fundamental Beat questions of identity, authenticity, and subjectivity-- and that are developed through experimentation with literary conventions. Ultimately, The Girl Gang argues that the literary achievements of the New York City women Beats collectively reconceptualize the prevailing notion of the Beat community and canon. / English