Claude Debussy (1862-1918) was a prolific composer throughout his lifetime. His song output spans his entire compositional career and comprises over ninety songs from his first published song Nuit d’étoiles, composed in 1880 and published in 1882, to Noël des enfants qui n'ont plus de maison (1915). Among Debussy’s early period works, his most prominent contributions were mélodies with almost half of his ninety songs written in this period. Debussy was profoundly influenced by poetry, especially that of Théodore de Banville (1823-1891). Banville was an important figure in the Parnassian movement and also was a master of rhyme and a virtuoso of French verse. Debussy was influenced by Banville’s poetry and composed many songs on Banville's poems in his early period. This document highlights Debussy's life and his early poetic influences as well as provides an overview of Banville's life as a writer and his collections of verses pertaining to Debussy. The analyses of songs with Banville's text are the emphasis of this study and reveal how Debussy expertly matched music to the nuances of the texts. Such a study illuminates the interpretation and performance of these songs for singers and collaborative pianists.

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This thesis analyses the links between masculinity and representations of power in the fiction of John Banville and argues that his use of the category of the aesthetic,especially the sublime, strategically presents the masculine subject as the site of a loss of power, often figured as selffragmentation or self-delusion. This strategy is particularly evident in Banville’s approach to problems of representation, especially with regard to narrating the past, the construction of systems of knowledge, and efforts to achieve or articulate self-presence balanced by an ethical relation to the other. In each case, gender difference and sexual desire act as markers within Banville’s key themes as part of the enactment of failure that defines the male protagonist. Existing gender criticism has examined many of the representations of women and femininity in Banville’s fiction, but has fully considered neither the ways in which these representations contribute to the construction of the male narrative subject that is the origin or focus of the text, nor the gender politics of the various articulations of creativity and intellectual activity valorised by Banville. Drawing upon Nick Mansfield’s work on cultural masochism, the thesis argues that the disavowal of power, or its entanglement in unresolvable dialectics, constitutes a subtle technique for managing power relations, the origins of which lie in the ambivalent relation to power at the heart of subject-formation. Contrary to the view that Banville’s fiction directly de-centres or deconstructs subjectivity, it shows that by aestheticising the de-centred subject the fiction works to neutralise difference and ultimately recuperate unity within elastic, even contradictory, narratives of self. Through readings of seven of Banville’s novels, it demonstrates that the misrecognitions and ironies that drive his fiction present epistemological and representational failures within an aesthetic closure that asserts itself, paradoxically, through these very failures to establish closure. Crucially, it is in the language of desire that this paradox is expressed. The thesis concludes that the logic of the sublime enables Banville to dramatise a fragmented masculinity that has lost its basis in traditional representational and philosophical ideals, but that it simultaneously brings about a recuperation and consolidation of the very power structures his writing appears to disavow.

Focada na análise do romance de John Banville, The Sea, esta dissertação de mestrado procura analisar os elementos que julga fundamentais na obra: a memória e o processo de recordação. A parte I concentra-se na figura do narrador, o qual foi estudado sob quatro aspectos diferentes: a posição de onde narra, a relação que mantém com a memória, o viés ensaísta e o estilo, nesta parte nossos principais referenciais teóricos foram Walter Benjamin, Anatol Rosenfeld e Theodor Adorno. Na parte II, o foco foi a revisitação do passado e, dentro desse aspecto, estudou-se o cunho mítico da memória da infância, a partir das considerações de Joseph Campbell sobre esse assunto; além disso, estudou-se a relação entre tempo, espaço e memória, tendo como base Henri Bergson e George Poulet. / Focused on the analysis of John Banvilles novel, The Sea, this dissertation tries to analyze what it considers to be the most important elements in the novel: memory and the process of remembering. Part I investigates the narrator who was studied in four different aspects: position from which he narrates, his relationship with memory, his talent for the essay and his style; to that, Walter Benjamim, Theodor Adorno and Anatol Rosenfeld were of great help. Part II had as its focus the revisited past in which the mythic connotation of the narrators childhood was studied using Joseph Campbells considerations about myth; besides that, the relationship established among time, space and memory was analyzed with the help of Henri Bergson and George Poulet.

Focada na análise do romance de John Banville, The Sea, esta dissertação de mestrado procura analisar os elementos que julga fundamentais na obra: a memória e o processo de recordação. A parte I concentra-se na figura do narrador, o qual foi estudado sob quatro aspectos diferentes: a posição de onde narra, a relação que mantém com a memória, o viés ensaísta e o estilo, nesta parte nossos principais referenciais teóricos foram Walter Benjamin, Anatol Rosenfeld e Theodor Adorno. Na parte II, o foco foi a revisitação do passado e, dentro desse aspecto, estudou-se o cunho mítico da memória da infância, a partir das considerações de Joseph Campbell sobre esse assunto; além disso, estudou-se a relação entre tempo, espaço e memória, tendo como base Henri Bergson e George Poulet. / Focused on the analysis of John Banvilles novel, The Sea, this dissertation tries to analyze what it considers to be the most important elements in the novel: memory and the process of remembering. Part I investigates the narrator who was studied in four different aspects: position from which he narrates, his relationship with memory, his talent for the essay and his style; to that, Walter Benjamim, Theodor Adorno and Anatol Rosenfeld were of great help. Part II had as its focus the revisited past in which the mythic connotation of the narrators childhood was studied using Joseph Campbells considerations about myth; besides that, the relationship established among time, space and memory was analyzed with the help of Henri Bergson and George Poulet.

Ce projet porte sur les romans de john banville et avec les théories psychanalytiques. l'argument principal de cette recherche sera que le narrateur névrosé qui est utilisé dans les œuvres de banville réalise une conscience qui est proche de ce que toshio kawai a appelé 'la conscience post-moderne' qui est associé à nombreux attributs du postmodernisme (en particulier les théories de baudrillard). ce nouveau type de conscience a pour sa composante d'un type de distance, ou plutôt, une dissociation de la notion de la réalité et elle est associée à l'arbitraire, (surtout revendication de lacan que l'objet de notre désir est arbitraire), ainsi que la virtualité (baudrillard, adorno et horkheimer). selon kawai, encore une fois, il existe une conscience moderne qui a comme conséquence un degré de répression dans la psyché de l'individu qui, prenant la parole psychanalytique, suggèrent un certain degré de névrose ou à des moments de psychose sens partiel ou total sentiment d'être perdu entre l'imagination et réalité.la recherche vise à explorer les questions initiales suivantes:1 - quelle est la relation entre la névrose et ce qu'on appelle le postmodernisme?2 - comment cette relation peut être vu dans la fiction de banville?3 – dans quelle façon banville utilise un narrateur névrotique pour obtenir un effet post-moderne?4 - si, selon kawai, la modernité est associée à la répression et donc la névrose, alors, est-il possible de penser que la postmodernité est associée à la psychose, de schizophrénie ou d'autres anomalies psychopathologiques? comment cela se voit dans la fiction de banville?5 - y a t-il un mouvement de modernisme au postmodernisme dans la fiction de banville?comment cela peut-il être considéré dans un contexte psychanalytique? / The present project sets to complement the previous readings of the “self” in John Banville’s fiction by reproblematizing the precariousness of the author’s “subject of narration.” It examines the way in which the author constantly manipulates various narrative elements and consequently creates new experiences. Jacques Lacan’s understanding of the relation between the subject and the signifier, I argue, provides an excellent set of tools to address the way in which the notion of subjectivity is dissected, enhanced, and even extended, in Banville’s philosophically imbued fiction. The central thesis is that Banville creates a narrative universe in which his protagonists’ perception moves in interesting ways as the aspects of the Lacanian triad (the Symbolic, the Imaginary and the Real) are reshuffled, resulting in a precarious sense of self and reality. Although other thinkers (especially the ones hinted at in the narrative, most notably, de Man, Kleist, and Nietzsche) are drawn upon, the theoretical backbone relies on Lacan’s theory of subjectivity as well as recent Lacanian thinkers, most notably, Slavoj Žižek, Mladen Dollar, and Stijn Vanheule. Žižek’s reading of Lacan is of special interest to this study as he theorizes virtuality as a concept using Lacan’s triadic model. In addition, using Žižek’s definition of postmodernism as “symbolic inefficacy” allows us to shed new light on the long debate over Banville’s modernism versus his postmodernism. The dissertation consists of three parts. The first part focuses on Banville’s earlier work, namely, Birchwood, Mefisto, and The Book of Evidence. Here, I examine how the narrators’ preoccupation with finding certainty and truth results in a psychotic universe in Mefisto and a hysteric one in The Book of Evidence. Focusing on the latest trilogy, Eclipse, Shroud, and Ancient Ligh the second part examines the way in which Banville uses the category of the uncanny to create a Gothic narrative in Eclipse. Moreover, the concept of object a is used to demonstrate how the subject/object distinction collapses and gives rise to the Real dimension of the subject. The third and final part argues that the narrators seek to counter the undecidability generated in their uncanny narrations via the rehabilitation of the surface, one with which they hope to restore their precarious sense of self. Both chapters in this part address Banville’s engagement with Paul de Man’s deconstructive theory of language and representation and argue that Banville stages de Man’s ideas as well as his life-story in order to advance his own conception of representation and selfhood. Friedrich Nietzsche, I claim in both chapters, provides the narrators with a way out of the predicament posited by de Man. The underlying idea explored throughout the project is that Banville’s epistemological project can be summed up as an attempt to find a mode of articulation independent from the Symbolic order as most of his narrators, in one way or another, express a fundamental incredulity towards the Symbolic Other. By stripping reality of its Symbolic underpinnings, the Banvillian protagonist allows the Real to emerge and then domesticates it as magic. He does so using the surface of the written pages of his narrative, a surface onto which he can fuse word and image.

Au cours du XIXe siècle a eu lieu une grande réorganisation des genres poétiques. La poésie lyrique, parfois considérée comme mineure par rapport aux grands genres, a fini par absorber tous les autres genres poétiques. C'est dans ce courant qu'est né le mot Lyrisme. Pourtant cette notion doit toujours être éclaircie. Théodore de Banville était un poète considéré éminemment lyrique par ses contemporains et lui-même il le reconnaît. De plus, Banville est un poète qui avait une très vive conscience critique de la poésie lyrique et de son corrélat, le lyrisme. Poète lyrique, Banville est aussi un théoricien du lyrisme. D’où l’intérêt de confronter sa théorie du lyrisme et sa pratique, pour mieux saisir non seulement la nature du lyrisme banvillien, mais aussi le développement du lyrisme en général au cours de la seconde moitié du siècle. Dans un premier temps est traitée la théorie du lyrisme chez Banville. L’objet privilégié sera le Petit traité de poésie française et les critiques, sans oublier divers autres textes, tels que la préface et les avant-propos des œuvres. La deuxième partie décrit la pratique du lyrisme dans l’œuvre de Banville. On analyse la diversité admirable des formes strophiques, basée sur le principe de l’expression lyrique, tant dans ses recueils poétiques que dans son théâtre, pour en tenter dans la troisième partie la synthèse. / During the nineteenth century there was a major reorganization of poetic genres. Lyric poetry sometimes considered minor compared to the major genres, eventually absorb all the other poetic genres. It is in this current was born the word lyricism. Yet this concept must still be clarified. Théodore de Banville was a poet regarded by his contemporaries as lyrical, as the poet himself acknowledged. In addition, Banville is a poet who had a very strong critical awareness of lyric poetry and its correlate, lyricism. Lyric poet, Banville is also a theorist of lyricism. Therefore it is important to confront the theory and practice of lyricism, in order to understand better not only the nature of the lyricism of Banville, but also the development of lyricism in general during the second half of the century. Firstly, the theory of the lyricism in Banville is treated. The privileged object is Petit Traité de poésie française, not to mention various other texts, such as critics, and prefaces. The second part describes the practice of lyricism in the work of Banville, while the third part establishes the synthesis. There is a wonderful diversity of strophic forms based on the principle of lyrical expression both in his poetry and in his plays.

Translation of the author's thesis written in Portuguese (doctoral)--University of São Paulo, Brazil, 1995. / Includes bibliographical references (p. [163]-177) and index.

Thèse de doctorat : Littérature française : Rennes 2 : 2008.

Tesis-Universidad de Valladolid (inédita). / Incluye referencias bibliográficas e índice.