Thesis (B.A.(Hons.))-- University of Adelaide, Depts. of French and German, 1973.

Thesis (M.A. 1977) from the Departments of Education and French, University of Adelaide.

Simone de Beauvoir expresses conflicting attitudes regarding the purpose of her art. She has, on the one hand a rational desire to play a humanitarian role and on the other an instinctive need for self-expression. Chapter I - Le Role Humanitaire de la Littérature. Here we deal with Simone de Beauvoir's concept of the humanitarian function of literature in order to show exactly how she proposes to serve man. As a child, she discovered the possibility of transforming ignorance into knowledge while teaching her sister, and this initial success in communication eventually led to a desire to put her personal understanding of the world at the disposal of others. She has since discovered the ambiguities of human relations and consequently resolved to reveal them. As a writer, she has come to feel she should criticize and re-examine the basis of society in order to show that no absolute truth prevails. Her works of fiction enable her reader to inhabit vicariously several different worlds; she thus shows him a new image of himself by revealing his freedom to choose and even to create his own world. However, though she pursued this ideal conscientiously, she was never able to obtain complete satisfaction through its practice. Chapter II - . Le Besoin d'expression personnelle. In this chapter we examine those personal needs of Simone de Beauvoir that are satisfied by literature. During her school years our author had discovered the joys of using her own experiences as material for stories. This form of self-expression has since developed into a need to preserve her life in art. She feels a lack of purpose in her life, and writing becomes the only means of justifying her existence. In addition, writing provides a form of catharsis through which she attains moral autonomy; it frees her from past obsessions, shields her from the menaces of a hostile world, and stills the terror of death. After defining the major conflict within Simone de Beauvoir's work, we proceed to a study of three novels in the hope of determining which of these attitudes is predominant: humanitarianism or self-expression. Chapter III - L'Invitée. We find that Francoise is incapable of minimizing her personal needs. She must always dominate others and be the centre of the universe. Thus in this work the major concern is clearly the self. Chapter IV - Le Sang des Autres. A distinction is made between the public and private life of Jean Blomart. In his public life he adopts a humanistic attitude and consciously works to improve the human condition. In his private life, however, he is unable to accept the fact that someone else is as important as he is. These two attitudes are in real conflict in this novel. In the final outcome Jean Blomart chooses a humanitarian course in his public life and to some extent in his private life as well. Chapter V - Les Mandarins. In this novel the equilibrium is completely destroyed, and we feel that Simone de Beauvoir is professing the value of a humanitarian attitude. Henri Perron, perpetuating the spirit of the Resistance Movement, continues to fight for the liberation and the enlightenment of man. In his private life he quickly evolves from a position of extreme egocentricity to an attitude that admits reciprocity in human relations. Chapter VI - La Technique Romanesque. A short analysis of the techniques in the novel shows how Simone de Beauvoir tries to reveal the ambiguous nature of life by providing two or three points of view. We realize, however, that her fundamental need to show the extent of these ambiguities is not satisfied by the novel form. Chapter VII - La Victoire de 1'Individualisme. In the final chapter we see that Simone de Beauvoir's memoirs not only give her a freedom of expression not attainable within the novel, but also that the need for self-expression has definitely out-weighed the humanitarian ideal. Her original spontaneous desire to express herself has come to the fore in spite of her rational choice to play a humanitarian role. This study has not considered the philosophical or ideological positions of Simone de Beauvoir. Her work, being of a very personal nature, has been considered as an expression of a unique personality in search of its own truth. / Arts, Faculty of / French, Hispanic, and Italian Studies, Department of / Graduate

In this essay I defend Simone de Beauvoir against the charge that her chapter <i>The Givens of Biology</i> from The Second Sex is biologistic. A work can be said to make the mistake of biologism when it assigns a particular nature or essence to human beings based on their biology. De Beauvoir has been accused of making this mistake because her critics have not understood the philosophical landscape in which she was working. Not only have they missed the subtleties of her arguments, but many formulated their criticisms from a poor translation, provided by H.M. Parshley in 1952. In order to combat the decontextualizing of her theory I provide a conceptual backdrop that locates de Beauvoirs work in relation to her philosophical influences, her contemporaries, and her own philosophical works that predate The Second Sex. I give a phenomenological re-reading of The Givens of Biology based on my situating of de Beauvoir. My work is expositional and argumentative to the point of dissuading the reader from understanding de Beauvoir not only as a biological essentialist, but also as holding especially negative views about womens embodiment.

In this essay I defend Simone de Beauvoir against the charge that her chapter <i>The Givens of Biology</i> from The Second Sex is biologistic. A work can be said to make the mistake of biologism when it assigns a particular nature or essence to human beings based on their biology. De Beauvoir has been accused of making this mistake because her critics have not understood the philosophical landscape in which she was working. Not only have they missed the subtleties of her arguments, but many formulated their criticisms from a poor translation, provided by H.M. Parshley in 1952. In order to combat the decontextualizing of her theory I provide a conceptual backdrop that locates de Beauvoirs work in relation to her philosophical influences, her contemporaries, and her own philosophical works that predate The Second Sex. I give a phenomenological re-reading of The Givens of Biology based on my situating of de Beauvoir. My work is expositional and argumentative to the point of dissuading the reader from understanding de Beauvoir not only as a biological essentialist, but also as holding especially negative views about womens embodiment.

Thèse (M.A.)--Université Laval, 1997. / Bibliogr.: f. 94-96. Publié aussi en version électronique.

The common idea of love is a fusion of the individuals into one. The idea has permeated throughout society so that it has now been taken for granted. Such an idea of fusion of two individuals is actually harmful rather than helpful. In this thesis, I will show why the fusion model is not a prime model of love that one should follow, starting with Sartre. He is the paradigmatic example of the traditional model of love going wrong. By taking the fusion model to its final culmination, love is impossible or among other things sadomasochistic. Beauvoir reads Sartre's view as a bad-faith version of love. She inserts her view by giving an account of the €œwoman in love which is an example of a woman under Sartre'€™s interpretation of love. After showing why love under Sartre cannot be true, Beauvoir states that authentic love can only happen if the individuals are equal. That way, love can have grounds for culmination and fusion. Irigaray looks at the fusion model as debunked. She sees what Sartre and Beauvoir try to do but they are still assuming major things. Irigaray states that genuine love is based on the differences particularly sexual differences €”which Sartre and Beauvoir have failed to realize. By looking at Irigaray'€™s account of love, the traditional fusion model is debunked and love based on differences is applauded.

The corpus of this project consists of the five volumes of Simone de Beauvoir's memoirs: Memoires d'une jeune fille rangee, La force de l'age, La force des choses I, La force des choses II and Tout compte fait. In this study, we have considered the difficulties of self-analysis and examined the limitations and demands of the genre of autobiography. / A memoir is not simply the reconstruction of the author's past, but a personal interpretation of this past which often includes discrepancies between the narrative and the reality of his or her life. The autobiographer's primary objective is not to deliver the historical facts of his or her existence, but to show a self beneath the person that appears to the world. In our research, we have found that the value and truth of Simone de Beauvoir's autobiography arise from her creation of a character she sees as embodying her own distinct personality.

Thesis (M.A.) in French--University of Maine, 2007. / Includes vita. Abstract, table of contents in French and English. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 102-103 ).

Submitted by Rangel Sousa Jamile Kelly (jamile.kelly@ufba.br) on 2012-07-14T13:22:35Z No. of bitstreams: 1 dissertação ana regina.pdf: 633697 bytes, checksum: fc9e3e94ba75eae3d0d190d15384ceb1 (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2012-07-14T13:22:35Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 dissertação ana regina.pdf: 633697 bytes, checksum: fc9e3e94ba75eae3d0d190d15384ceb1 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2008-03-30 / Esta dissertação discute a diversidade dos discursos feministas sobre a maternidade, tomando como objetos as obras: de Simone de Beauvoir, O Segundo sexo ([1949] 1980), de Shulamith Firestone, A Dialética do Sexo: Um Estudo da Revolução Feminista ([1970] 1976) e de Nancy Chodorow, Psicanálise da Maternidade: Uma Crítica a Freud a Partir Da Mulher ([1978] 2002) sendo, estas duas últimas, representativas do movimento feminista radical dos anos 1960 e 1970. Entendendo a maternidade como um fenômeno plasmado nas relações sociais e partindo do pressuposto de que os papéis sociais de mulheres e homens são construídos, discursivamente, em situações de poder desigual, destaca a importância histórica dos discursos médico e religioso na fusão da identidade da mulher com a função materna, configurada na formação da família burguesa ocidental e seus desdobramentos atuais. As leituras realizadas pelas referidas autoras desse desenvolvimento histórico e as críticas às análises que dele fizeram a teoria marxista e a psicanálise contribuíram para a formação dos conceitos de gênero, trazendo aportes para as discussões que desnaturalizaram as categorias sexo, feminilidade, e sexualidade. A contextualização do pensamento feminista da Segunda Onda mostrou suas articulações com os movimentos sociais seus contemporâneos, notadamente, o movimento negro pelos direitos civis. / Salvador