L’argument de cette recherche propose d’étudier le concept du pouvoir et ses manifestations chez les héroïnes tragiques de Shakespeare Ophélie, Desdémone, Lady Macbeth, et Cléopâtre. Cette étude suit deux axes d’interprétation, la domination et la résistance qui constituent le pouvoir féminin à travers ses productions verbales et ses projections mentales. Ces aspects sont explorés à travers une théorie de poétique cognitive et d'analyse de conversation. En parallèle, les théories critiques vont compléter la discussion des résultats trouvés. Ce travail explore comment les héroïnes tragiques de Shakespeare mènent leur propre résistance et exercent une contre-force à un poly-système patriarcal basé sur un héritage de séparation de genre. Ces personnages brossent un portrait distinctif d'héroïsme tragique féminin ; une voix indépendante et vibrante dans le texte shakespearien. / The Shakespearean tragic heroines are a polemical topic. Critics are divided between a reading that describes them as complex and dynamic protagonists and a reading that sees their presence as ornamental and paper-thin in the Shakespearean dramatic tradition. This study examines tenets of power within four major tragic figures, Ophelia, Desdemona, Lady Macbeth, and Cleopatra. Conversation analysis and disciplines from cognitive poetics, text world theory and conceptual metaphor analysis, will be used to study these characters’ utterances and thoughts. The research shows that Ophelia, Desdemona, Lady Macbeth, and Cleopatra are actively involved in power relations. They manifest dominance, exercise resistance, and sow dissidence within masculine narratives of authority. The conclusion can also be drawn that the Shakespearean tragic heroine succeeds in breaking through patriarchal embargo, embraces power, and inaugurates a distinctive concept of female heroism.

Many art historians have debated the identity of the couple in Rembrandt's the Jewish Bride (1667). The painting is most often identified as an Old Testament theme. This is due to the seventeenth-century Dutch practice of using biblical "types" as ideal models for the structuring of the new republic founded on the Israelite ideology of nation building. Three of these biblical female types that have been separately associated with the female figure in the Jewish Bride are, Rebecca, Ruth, and Esther. As these biblical women represented different notions of power through their respective narratives, this thesis argues that Rembrandt deliberately left the identity of the female figure ambiguous so that all three types could be referenced by viewers. Consequently, these powerful female prototypes provided significant role models for the women of the Dutch Republic as they strived to carve out similarly strong positions for themselves in this new society.

A combination of cross-cultural and symbolic methodologies suggests that women warriors occur in societies where there is both an emphasis on the sacred feminine that allows women greater access to positions of power and authority (as per Peggy Sanday) and where marital residency rules permit female fighters (following David B. Adams´s theory on women warriors). While neither theory can stand alone in explaining the existence of women warriors, when combined both theories give a solid picture of societies that allow for female combatants. In this paper I propose that by combining Sanday’s work on female power and Adams’s work on women warriors we can come to a better understanding about just what makes the cultures that allow for women’s participation in warfare unique, and perhaps what characteristics must be in place in order for a culture to have women warriors. / Includes bibliography. / Thesis (M.A.)--Florida Atlantic University, 2016. / FAU Electronic Theses and Dissertations Collection

« Pouvoir, présence et action » : chacune de ces trois notions renvoie à la capacité d’un individu à entreprendre. Cette capacité d’action des femmes est particulièrement encadrée dans la France d’Ancien Régime, autant par les normes juridiques que par les représentations mentales qui affirment l’inégalité entre les sexes et la supériorité des hommes. Le présent travail a pour buts l’examen des limites de la subordination féminine et l’affirmation de la possibilité d’action des femmes, dans le cadre d’une étude globale consacrée aux épouses des ministres au temps de Louis XIV. Les spécificités du groupe d’étude fondent l’essence de la réflexion : il s’agit d’analyser la possibilité d’action de femmes de la noblesse dans la France du XVIIe siècle, dans le cadre spécifique de mariages les unissant à des hommes exerçant une fonction de type ministériel lors du règne personnel de Louis XIV. Il s’agit donc d’analyser les conditions d’un pouvoir conjugal, familial et social au féminin, puis de définir les domaines dans lesquels les épouses des ministres apparaissent en tant qu’actrices. L’étude vise également à observer les attitudes des couples ministériels afin de déterminer des invariants permettant de comprendre ce que signifie être l’épouse d’un ministre au temps de Louis XIV. L’ancrage historique, juridique, économique, familial et social de ces femmes constitue un sujet d’analyse essentiel pour comprendre la place qu’elles ont occupée dans leur couple, dans leur famille, à la cour, dans la société. Le sujet invite donc à dépasser la description des activités de femmes pour les inscrire dans une histoire du couple, de la société de cour et de la noblesse au Grand Siècle. / « Power, presence and action » : each of these three notions refers to each individual's capacity to take action. The ability to take action is particularly supervised for women in France under the Ancien Régime, notably under the legal norm, as well as the mental representations which maintain the inequality between sexes and men's superiority. The aims of this present work are to examine the limits of feminine subordination and the affirmation of the the ability for women to take action, within the framework of a global study focused on the ministers' wives under Louis 14th. The specifications of the study group are the essence of the reflection : the idea is to analyse noblewomen's opportunity to take action in 17th century France, more specifically in the framework of the marriages joining them to men practicing a ministerial function under Louis 14th. Therefore the matter at hand is to analyse the conditions of marital, family and social power in a feminine form, then define the areas in which the ministers' wives appear as actors. The study also aims to observe the ministerial couples' attitudes to determine some constants, allowing us to understand what it meant to be a minister's spouse in the time of Louis 14th. The historical, legal, economical, family and social anchoring of these women form an essential subject of analysis to understand the place they occupied in their couple, in their family, at court and in society. The subject therefore invites us to go beyond the description of women's activities to write them in a history of relationship, court society and the Grand Siècle nobility.