L’objet de cette thèse est de montrer comment, en prenant invariablement appui sur la médiation des choses, Willa Cather confère à ses représentations d’espaces, à ses portraits de personnages et à la substance de son discours une densité et un relief qui rapprochent son écriture de l’art de la sculpture. Explorant pleinement le lien entre fictum et fingere, et forgeant des affinités nouvelles entre les mots et les choses, Cather inaugure une poétique des « trois dimensions ». Au sein de ses premiers romans et de ses nouvelles, Cather envisage les choses naturellement présentes au monde et celles que créent les personnages comme des intermédiaires concrets, permettant d’articuler un contact fructueux, mais respectueux, entre les êtres et l’espace et entre le discours et le monde sensible. Des vestiges Anasazi aux objets confectionnés par les pionniers et les artistes catheriens, dans l’Amérique du tournant du siècle, les choses constituent la base mais aussi l’horizon d’une approche véritablement poétique du concret. Au contact des outils et sous l’influence des mots, les terres de la Frontière, les paysages rocheux du sud-ouest et les grandes villes d’Amérique acquièrent une précision et une épaisseur sculpturales. En retour, les choses tangibles ou éthérées, ponctuant la trame du visible, influencent considérablement la forme et la teneur de la prose catherienne. Ecrivant en sculpteur, en orfèvre et en alchimiste, Cather élabore de surprenantes compositions langagières, qui non seulement renouvellent « les séductions qui nous viennent des choses » (Bachelard), mais qui confèrent aussi aux mots la densité et l’éclat de choses finement sculptées. / The aim of the thesis is to show how Cather constantly resorts to the mediating power of things in order to endow the representations of space, the portraits of her characters and the substance of her discourse with a sculptural density and relief. Exploring the link between fictum and fingere and inventing new forms of kinship between words and things, Cather creates an essential homology between her writing and the art of sculpture. According to her own words: “When a writer has a strong or revelatory experience”, he “gets a depth of picture and writes, as it were, in three dimensions instead of two”. Indeed, in Cather’s early novels and short-stories, natural and artificial things act as concrete intermediaries which pave the way for a fruitful yet respectful contact between her characters and space and between her discourse and the tangible world. From the Cliff-Dwellers’ relics to the artefacts crafted by the pioneers and artists in turn-of-the-century America, material things give rise to a genuinely poetic encounter with the real. Men’s tools and Cather’s words join to bring sculptural precision and depth to the Frontier territories, the canyons and mesas, as well as the outlines of cityscapes. At the same time, the tangible or ethereal things delineating the contours of the concrete world also shape Cather’s writing. Genuinely inspired by the sculptor’s, the goldsmith’s and the alchemist’s skills, Cather’s crafted prose not only renews “the seductive power of things” (Bachelard) or “the capacity for wonder” (Tanner), but also turns words into finely sculpted things.

Mémoire numérisé par la Division de la gestion de documents et des archives de l'Université de Montréal.

Ce travail s’intéresse à l’esthétique des objets et des choses dans l’oeuvre poétique de Derek Mahon. On constate en effet une véritable prolifération des objets dans ses poèmes, dont l’importance est telle qu’ils monopolisent la parole poétique au point de voler la parole au poète lui-même, et de devenir les sujets lyriques du poème, comme dans « The Apotheosis of Tins » ou « The Drawing Board ». Les objets deviennent la synecdoque du Je poétique, et reflètent les ambiguïtés de leur créateur, notamment vis-à-vis de l’Histoire et du conflit nord-irlandais, conflit qui selon les termes de Mahon lui-même, a eu pour conséquence de provoquer, dans son oeuvre, ce qu’il nomme une « aphasie coloniale ».Les objets seraient-ils alors pour le poète un moyen détourné d’exprimer une parole poétique qu’il se refuse à assumer ? Le recours à la parole des objets aurait alors une vertu thérapeutique, et permettrait au poète de surmonter le traumatisme du conflit nord-irlandais qu’incarnent les Troubles, ainsi que de se libérer de l’emprise de son milieu protestant nord-irlandais, afin d’élaborer une poétique des objets qui lui serait propre. En nous appuyant sur des ouvrages des material culture studies, nous verrons comment Mahon tente de s’extraire d’objets qui lui semblent trop « étiquettés ». Nous étudierons notamment le rapport de Mahon aux déchets ou disjecta, qui représentent la pierre angulaire de sa nouvelle classification poétique des objets. Il faut également distinguer chez Mahon les objets des choses, auxquelles il attribue une valeur différente. Nous tentons d’établir, à travers une perspective à la fois philosophique, esthétique et économique, comment Mahon choisit de ne pas faire coïncider la valeur économique et la valeur esthétique d’un objet, par un double procédé de réévaluation puis de recyclage poétique de l’objet en chose.C’est le statut problématique de l’objet et de la nouvelle dimension que Mahon lui attribue dans son oeuvre poétique que nous nous proposons d’étudier. / This thesis explores the aesthetics of objects and things in the poetic works of Derek Mahon. We cannot but be struck by the impressive array of objects in his poems, where they seem to literally monopolize the poetic voice, and almost steal the poet’s firmly established position. Objects in Mahon’s poetry become the true lyrical “I” of the poem, as in “The Apotheosis of Tins” or “The Drawing Board”. Objects are considered as the mouthpiece for the poet’s own preoccupations and ambiguities, especially apropos his attitude towards History and the Troubles in Northern Ireland (this conflict has even provoked on Mahon’s part what he calls a “colonial aphasia” syndrome).We might then assume that objects represent a disguised opportunity for the poet to express his own thoughts about the conflict, but also about other issues as well, economic as well as environmental. Speaking through objects might then enable the poet to overcome his trauma due to the conflict, as well as liberate himself from his own Protestant Northern Irish milieu, in order to conceive his own aesthetics of objects, and even an Aesthetics of Trash, as Hugh Haughton has called it. Thanks to some recent writings in the field of material culture studies, we will endeavour to study how Mahon is actually trying to escape in his poetry from “(Northern) Irish objects”, and how he finds in beckettian disjecta or rubbish the possibility of freedom, as well as the possibility of a new, post-human world. We will also seek to distinguish between objects and things, which Mahon values differently. We shall try to demonstrate, by using a philosophical, but also an economic and aesthetical perspective, how Mahon chooses to differentiate between the economic and the aesthetical value of an object, by reevaluating it before recycling it, opening the possibility of the transformation of the object into the thing.It is the problematical status of the object and the new dimension that Mahon allows it to take that we intend to study in this thesis.

La critique de la romancière américaine Amy Tan se concentre principalement sur la dimension humaine de ses romans, négligeant la dimension matérielle de l’existence qui occupe une place prépondérante dans ses romans. Sous l’influence d’une conception anthropocentrique qui privilégie l’être humain ou le sujet, la critique s’est concentrée essentiellement sur la relation mère / fille, sur l’importance du langage et de la mémoire et sur les conflits entre les cultures chinoise et américaine. Néanmoins, dans le contexte de ce qu’il est convenu d’appeler le “retour aux choses” et l’accent nouveau mis sur le “non humain”, mouvement qui s’est mis en place dans la critique des années 1990, je porte mon attention sur les choses, plus particulièrement sur les interactions entre humains et non-humains dans ses romans. Sous la double influence des cultures chinoise et américaine, Tan dépasse l’opposition binaire, qui caractérise la tradition occidentale, selon laquelle le sujet est supérieur à l’objet. Les humains et les non-humains ainsi que les entités naturelles et spirituelles sont tous des choses-Qi dans l’univers textuel. En mettant en dialogue la réflexion occidentale contemporaine sur les choses avec les philosophies chinoises, notamment le taoïsme, cette thèse examine les caractéristiques des choses-Qi et leurs interactions de nature à provoquer un retour écologique à l’harmonie entre les humains et les non-humains, entre le microcosme et le macrocosme dans l’ordre textuel. / Comments on Amy Tan's novels mainly focus on what we associate with human culture, ignoring the material dimensions of existence that figure prominently in her novels. Influenced by the anthropocentric idea that the human being/the subject is superior to things/the object, critics mainly focus on the mother-daughter relation, the importance of language and memory and the conflicts of Chinese and American culture. However, in the context of the so-called “return to things,” “back to things,” and “turn to the non-human” which has become visible in the humanities since the 1990s, I concentrate on things, specifically on the interactions between humans and nonhumans in her novels. Under the influence of both American and Chinese culture, Tan breaks with the western tradition of binary opposition in which the subject is superior to the object. Qi-things include natural and man-made things, human beings, and even spiritual things and things in the textual world. Bringing the twenty-first century western revision of things into dialogue with Chinese philosophies, especially Taoism, this dissertation discusses the traits of Qi-things and how they interact with each other to foster an ecological return to harmony within the textual world that reconciles humans and non-humans, microcosm and macrocosm.

Mémoire numérisé par la Division de la gestion de documents et des archives de l'Université de Montréal

This dissertation critiques and updates the theoretical frameworks for understanding encyclopedic and diagrammatic images as presented in the scholarship of Lucy Freeman Sandler, Barbara Maria Stafford, John Bender, and Michael Marrinan. It offers a new model for examining the cognitive role of images by studying an important medieval encyclopedia, On the Properties of Things, originally written in Latin by Bartholomaeus Anglicus in the thirteenth century. Bartholomaeus’ text was the most popular encyclopedia of the later middle ages and four vernacular translations were produced and circulated between the fourteenth and sixteenth centuries. Significantly, the French translation of the compendium, coming out of the vernacularization movement of King Charles V but radiating out to other production centres, involved the design of an elaborate and novel illustrative program. The present project examines two exceptional fifteenth-century French copies of this encyclopedia (BnF fr. 9141 and BnF fr. 135/6), and interprets them in light of the shifting intellectual culture and evolving reading practices of late-medieval lay audiences. The information-rich and highly aestheticized miniatures found in such encyclopedic manuscripts have traditionally been defined, by Sandler and others, as having an explanatory function and the capacity to elevate the content of the text through displays of material luxury. My model expands the significance of such images by highlighting their capacity to promote thought. I argue that images in didactic compendia can (i) encourage the reader to actively engage with the text through representations of aristocratic readers performing their understanding of the book socially, and (ii) facilitate visual thinking by aesthetically reflecting the structure of the encyclopedic text through the diagrammatic strategies of the collection, compression, and division of fragmented information. Though the images in my two manuscript case studies take distinct approaches to reader engagement and the mediation of knowledge, in both cases the power of these visualizations rests in the cognitive acts and range of mental associations they provoke. This dissertation demonstrates that epistemically-dense images, in addition to merely reflecting a text, could shape knowledge as it was being formed in the minds of active viewers, readers, writers, and artists, in an intellectually rich period in late-medieval France. / Graduate

À la question de savoir ce qu’est la valeur des biens, le courant doctrinal majoritaire affirme que la valeur des biens est leur prix et que c’est en raison de cette valeur que les biens sont désirables et appropriables. Pourtant, juridiquement, le prix et la valeur des biens ne s’appliquent pas aux mêmes branches du droit et visent deux rapports d’équivalence différents. Même leurs expressions divergent puisque, contrairement au prix qui ne connaît qu’une expression monétaire, la valeur des biens connaît, en plus, une expression symbolique. Quant à l’affirmation selon laquelle la valeur des biens rend ces derniers désirables et justifie leur appropriation, il s’agit là d’un renversement du raisonnement. En effet, l’étude du droit français révèle qu’il conçoit la valeur des biens comme une mesure relative aux biens. En conséquence, c’est la catégorie juridique des biens qui est au cœur de leur désirabilité. Une étude comparative de celle-ci avec les autres qualifications juridiques relatives aux choses, démontre ainsi que les biens sont appréhendés comme une réserve non naturelle de choses entièrement appropriées, dont le propriétaire est connu et qui sont bénéfiques aux hommes en ce qu’elles leur fournissent un complément de service. Les biens contribuent ainsi à la subsistance des individus, c’est-à-dire qu’ils leur apportent une aide à leur existence matérielle. L’homme se caractérisant par son individualité et sa sociabilité, ils contribuent à chacun de ces besoins. Cependant, tous n’y contribuent pas dans la même proportion. La valeur des biens mesure ainsi cette contribution à la subsistance individuelle ou sociale des êtres humains. Ces deux types de subsistance connaissant des antagonismes, ils justifient des régimes juridiques et des expressions de la valeur différents. Ainsi, les biens contribuant à la subsistance individuelle connaissent un régime dynamique et une expression monétaire. Ce sont les biens les plus répandus et au cœur du droit commun. Il s’agit des biens à valeur économique. Les biens contribuant à la subsistance sociale connaissent, quant à eux, des régimes conservateurs et une expression symbolique et constituent des exceptions au droit commun. Il s’agit des biens à valeur morale. / To the question about what is the value of goods, the main body of doctrine maintains that the value of goods is their price and that is why the goods are desirables and appropriables. However, legally, price and value of goods do not apply to the same branches of law and aim at two different kind of equivalence. Their expressions also diverge. Contrary to the price, which knows only one monetary expression, the value of goods knows, besides, a symbolic expression. As for the assertion according to which the value of the goods become desirables and proves their appropriation, this is a reversal of the reasoning. Indeed, the study of French law reveals that the value of goods is a measure relative to goods. Consequently, the goods, as a legal category, are desirable as such. A comparative study of this one with other legal categories related to the things, shows that goods are knew as a non-natural reserve of completely appropriated things, to which the owner is known and which are advantageous to him to have a complement of service. So, the goods contribute to the subsistence of the individuals, because they help them for their material existence. Considering that the humanity is characterized by individuality and sociability, the goods could be analysed as a contribution to every kind of these needs. However, every goods do not contribute to it in the same proportion. The value of goods measures this contribution in the individual or in the social subsistence of the human beings. These two types of subsistence is characterised by an antagonism. It justifies different legal regimes and expressions of the value. So, the goods which contribute to the individual subsistence have a dynamic regime and a monetary expression. These are the most spread category of goods and the legal reference. They are the goods with an economic value. The goods which contribute to the social subsistence have two conservatives regimes, a symbolic expression and are exceptions to the legal reference. They are the goods with a moral value.

Cette thèse examine et discute la notion de dispositif telle qu'elle a émergé au sein de la philosophie française contemporaine, principalement dans les œuvres de Michel Foucault et Gilles Deleuze. Son intention est critiquer l'association en architecture du structurel et du structural et de proposer une pratique architecturale moins vouée aux agencements de milieux qu'ouverte à des situations de liberté. Pour cela, elle étudie les notions de forme et de fonction en architecture à partir d'un raisonnement d'ordre philosophique sur le « matériau». Trois temps d'une possible histoire en la matière sont envisagés. Dans le premier et le deuxième, consacrés pour l'un au béton, pour l'autre aux matériaux dits « intelligents », l'architecture apparaît dans sa liaison à un mode de l'industrie et à une économie du travail. Dans le troisième, il est montré comment mise en scène et fiction peuvent être parties prenantes d'un traitement en dispositif des matériaux. On peut ensuite sur cette base envisager d'une part de dépouiller la notion de forme de nombre de sens de nature plutôt fonctionnelle, d'autre part de mettre en tension la lecture de Michel Foucault proposée par Giorgio Agamben et de nuancer les concepts et suggestions que cette lecture implique, notamment du côté de l'économie. Tout ce travail est indissociablement architectural et philosophique. Son enjeu est d'établir le caractère essentiel, pour l'un comme pour l'autre domaine de la pensée, d'une notion de forme sans but ou de « forme pour rien ». À cette notion peut correspondre une architecture du « discontinu » dont les matériaux ne s'accordent ni à la structure ni au pouvoir des dispositifs. / This Ph.D thesis examines and discusses the notion of dispositif (device) such as it emerged within the contemporary French philosophy, mainly in Michel Foucault's and Gilles Deleuze's works. Its intention is to criticize the association in architecture of the structural and the organization, to propose an architectural practice less dedicated to the assemblages of environments, but which facilitates situations of freedom. For that purpose, this thesis studies the notions of form and function in architecture from a philosophical order reasoning on the "material". Three moments of a possible history on the material are considered. In the first two moments, dedicated to the concrete, and "small" materials respectively, architecture appears in its connection to a mode of the industry and to a labor economy. In the third moment, it is shown how the staging and fiction can contribute to transforming materials into dispositifs. On this base, we move, on the one hand, to strip the notion of form from the functional significations that surround it, while on the other hand, we put in tension Michel Foucault's reading proposed by Giorgio Agamben, putting into context the concepts and the suggestions implied in it, in regards to economy. Ali this work is indissociably architectural and philosophical. Its purpose is to establish the essential character, for both demains of thought, of the notion of an aimless form or "form for nothing ". This notion can be related to an architecture of the "discontinuity" whose materials are neither in harmony with the structure nor the power of the dispositifs.

Choses in action are valuable assets. This has compelled (and been facilitated by) the development of legal devices such as equitable assignment to allow holders of choses to deal with them, inter vivos. This thesis makes two claims. First, equitable assignments are best conceived as a composite of a bare trust and an atypical agency where the assignee is authorised to invoke the assignor's entitlements against the obligor to the chose assigned, as the assignee pleases. On this conception, equitable assignments merely entail generation of a new set of jural relations as between assignor and assignee. Though these affect how the jural relations between assignor and obligor are to be discharged, those jural relations are left intact and unchanged, unless the requirements for 'statutory' assignments have been satisfied. Second, 'statutory' assignments are regulatory in effect. Where a debt or other chose in action has been validly equitably assigned and the requirements in s 136(1) Law of Property Act 1925 are satisfied, the specific entitlements set out in sections 136(1)(a), (b) and (c) will be passed from the assignor and transferred to the assignee. But that is only true with regards entitlements falling within those provisions, and the set of entitlements listed therein is not exhaustive. The composite model of equitable assignment, and the clarification of the nature of 'statutory' assignment, reduces confusion over their operation and effects. Accordingly, this thesis tempers the urge towards legislative reform of the law of assignment: reform may not be needed since the law is not incoherent, though it is certainly complex. And if targeted law reform to simplify the law on assignment be thought desirable, it is as well to know what one is reforming.

Cette recherche verse sur les tongs Havaianas qui sont faites au Brésil et commercializes internationalement, comme une chose vivante et qui detient une biographie culturelle. La dissertation augmente cette notion de vie des Havaianas pour sommer les processus d’agencement et les qualifications qui les construisent comme un produit et lui confère d’identité. L’objet de l’investigation a été la reconstitution certains de ces processus dont les tongs ont été soumis à transformer en Havaianas. L’argument du travail est sur un referencial théorique qui discute les agencements marchands, en considérant la multidimensionalité des aspect qui singularisent les tongs et ont été décisifs dans la transformation de cette commodity dans un bien de luxe. Sa trajectoire, dés la création en 1962, est analysée par quatre agencies: la publicité, le design, la compétition e les utilisateurs. Le étude sur le terrain n’est pas centre dans une seule region géographique à cause de l’amplitude du thème, mais Il est surtout donné dans lês points de vente des Havaianas qui agissent dans la consommation populaire et dans la consommation de luxe, dans les villes de São Paulo et Porto Alegre. / Esta pesquisa aborda os chinelos Havaianas, fabricados no Brasil e comercializados internacionalmente, como coisa que possui vida e detém uma biografia cultural. A dissertação amplia essa noção da vida da Havaianas para incluir os processos de agenciamento e as qualificações que a constroem enquanto produto e conferem identidade. O objeto da investigação foi a reconstituição de alguns desses processos a que os chinelos de tiras foram sujeitos até se transformarem em Havaianas. O argumento do trabalho está assentado em um referencial teórico que discute os agenciamentos mercadológicos, considerando a multidimensionalidade dos aspectos que singularizam os chinelos e foram decisivos na transformação dessa commodity em um bem de luxo. Sua trajetória, desde a criação em 1962, é analisada por meio de quatro agências: a publicidade, o design , a concorrência e os usuários. O trabalho de campo não está centrado em uma única região geográfica, devido à amplitude do tema, mas deu-se principalmente em pontos de venda da Havaianas que operam tanto no consumo popular como no de luxo, nas cidades de Porto Alegre e São Paulo. / This research discusses the Havaianas flip flops, manufactured in Brazil and internationally marketed as something that has a life and a cultural biography. The dissertation extends the idea of an Havaianas' life to include the agency processes and qualifications that build it as a product and give them identity. The investigation object was the reconstitution of some of these processes to which flip flops were subjected until turn into Havaianas. The argument is based in a theoretical framework that discusses the market agencements considering the multidimensionality aspects that singularizes the slippers and were decisive in the transformation of this commodity into a luxury good. Its trajetory, since launched in 1962 is analyzed through four agencies: advertising, design, competition and users. Field work is not centered on a single geographic place, due to the extent of the subject, but mostly took place in Havaianas sales points that operates both in popular consumption as in luxury, in the cities of Porto Alegre and São Paulo.