La thèse a pour objet la démonstration de l’évolution et de l’adaptation du système international de répartition et de distribution des ressources de l’espace extra-atmosphérique à la nature même de ces ressources dans un premier temps et à l’évolution des utilisations qui en ont été faites dans un second. Ces modifications factuelles se traduisent par des adaptations institutionnelles, juridiques. Elles s’expliquent certes par les évolutions des moyens de communication, par le besoin grandissant des acteurs en charge de missions de service public d’abord, puis des sociétés de droit privées ensuite, de fournir de nouveaux services au plus grand nombre. Au sein des ressources de l’espace extra-atmosphérique, figure en premier lieu le spectre hertzien, à savoir les bandes hertziennes sur lesquelles il sera possible de transmettre un signal et de mettre en place un service particulier. Ce « spectre », à l’instar du spectre lumineux, est fini et présente diverses caractéristiques, fonction de la partie de ce dernier dont il s’agit. Les services d’astronomie, de géolocalisation, de radio transmission ou encore de météorologie verront leur efficacité accrue sur certaines fréquences hertziennes, et ne pourront fonctionner proprement sur d’autres. La disponibilité de ces fréquences est donc limitée, et celles-ci entrent en conséquence dans la définition des ressources rares. Entrent également dans la catégorie des ressources qualifiées de rares, les orbites terrestres sur lesquelles il est possible de placer des satellites de communication à rendement optimum. Celles-ci sont naturellement limitées par une restriction physique matérielle, à savoir la place qu’il leur sera attribué, à la différence des ressources hertziennes, quantifiées via un spectre immatériel. Leur caractéristique de ressource naturelle rare / limitée a contraint les acteurs internationaux, premiers utilisateurs, à définir des principes pour le partage, la répartition et l’utilisation desdites ressources. Cependant, et si les principes développés initialement sont toujours d’actualité, le mode de répartition préconisé à l’origine, à savoir « premier arrivé, premier servi » a été le vecteur de nombreuses distorsions, voire non-respect flagrant, des principes précités. En effet, la privatisation des activités spatiales, notamment des activités de télécommunications, ainsi que des organisations internationales initialement chargées de la bonne coordination de l’utilisation de ces ressources, telle qu’étudiée ici, fût suscitée par le potentiel lucratif desdites activités, accompagnée par leur libéralisation parfois normative, et par des besoins croissants pour des types de technologies sans cesse renouvelés. Elle a toutefois dû s’effectuer en coordination avec les instances internationales chargées de la répartition et de la régulation des ressources hertziennes au niveau mondial, et plus précisément de l’Union internationale des télécommunications. C’est cette organisation qui constitue le centre de gravité de notre étude. Elle est un objet à part, représentatif de ce que doit être une organisation internationale moderne, évolutive, étant paradoxalement l’organisation internationale rattachée aux Nations-Unies la plus ancienne, puisque fondée en 1865 en tant qu’Union internationale de la télégraphie. L’adaptation en tant que clé de l’évolution, comme nous l’avions mentionné, aux usages des nouvelles technologies mais également à la restriction de ressources naturelles constantes en nombre, et pourtant de plus en plus sollicitées. Ceci constituera le troisième point de notre développement : l’étude des mécanismes internationaux créés pour pallier aux conséquences néfastes de la surréservation de ces ressources à fort potentiel lucratif, pourtant considérées comme patrimoine commun de l’Humanité, et à ce titre ne devant théoriquement pas faire l’objet de marchandisation. / The thesis aims at demonstrating the evolution and adaptation of the international system for distribution of the resources of outer space to the very nature of these resources, at first, and to the evolution of uses that have been made, in a second time. These factual changes translate into institutional and legal adaptations. They are certainly explained by the evolutions of the means of communication, by the growing need of actors in charge of public service missions first, then of private companies, to provide new services to the greatest number.Among the resources of outer space is the radio spectrum, namely the radio bands on which it will be possible to transmit a signal and set up a particular service. This "spectrum", like the luminous spectrum, is finite and has various characteristics, depending on the part of the latter. The services of astronomy, geolocation, radio transmission or even meteorology will see their efficiency increased on certain radio frequencies, and will not be able to work properly on others. The availability of these frequencies is therefore limited and they undoubtedly fall within the definition of scarce resources. Also included in the category of qualified scarce resources are the earth orbits on which it is possible to place communication satellites with optimum efficiency. These are naturally limited by a physical restriction, namely the place that they will be allocated, unlike radio resources, quantified via an intangible spectrum. Their characteristic as a rare / limited natural resource constraint has forced the international actors, first users, to define principles for the sharing, distribution and use of these resources. However, and while the principles developed initially are still current, the method of distribution advocated at the outset, namely "first arrived, first served", has been the vector of numerous distortions, or even flagrant non-respect, of the aforementioned principles.Indeed, the privatization of space activities, in particular telecommunications activities, as well as the international organizations initially responsible for the proper coordination of the use of these resources, as studied in our thesis, was prompted by the lucrative potential of these activities, accompanied sometimes by their normative liberalization, and by growing needs for constantly renewed types of technology. It must, however, have been carried out in coordination with international bodies responsible for the allocation and regulation of radio resources at the global level, specifically the International Telecommunication Union (ITU). This organization is the center of gravity of our study. It is a separate object, representative of what should be a modern, evolving international organization, being paradoxically the oldest international organization attached to the United Nations, since it was founded in 1865 as the International Telegraphic Union. The thesis finally develops adaptation as a key to evolution, as we have mentioned, to the use of new technologies but also to the restriction of natural resources, which are constant in number and yet increasingly solicited. This constitutes our third point: the study of international mechanisms developed to mitigate the adverse consequences of overbooking of these resources with a high lucrative potential, yet considered as common heritage of the Humanity, and in this capacity that should theoretically not be subject to any commodification.

Caliban, the ultimate figure of linguistic and racial indeterminacy in The Tempest, became for African-American writers a symbol of colonial fears of rebellion against oppression and southern fears of black male sexual aggression. My dissertation thus explores what I call the "Calibanic Quadrangle" in essays and novels by Anna Julia Cooper, Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, and Pauline Elizabeth Hopkins. The figure of Caliban allows these authors to inflect the sentimental structure of the novel, to elevate Calibanic utterance to what Cooper calls "crude grandeur and exalted poesy," and to reveal the undercurrent of anxiety in nineteenth-century American attempts to draw rigid racial boundaries. The Calibanic Quadrangle enables this thorough critique because it allows the black woman writer to depict the oppression of the "Other," southern fears of black sexuality, the division between early black and white women's issues, and the enduring innocence of the progressive, educated, black female hero ~ all within the legitimized boundaries of the Shakespearean text, which provides literary authority to the minority writer. I call the resulting Shakespearean intertextuality a Quadrangle because in each of these African-American works a Caliban figure, a black man or "tragic mulatto" who was once "petted" and educated, struggles within a hostile environment of slavery and racism ruled by the Prospero figure, the wielder of "white magic," who controls reproduction, fears miscegenation, and enforces racial hierarchy. The Miranda figure, associated with the womb and threatened by the specter of miscegenation, advocates slavery and perpetuates the hostile structure. The Ariel figure, graceful and ephemeral, usually the "tragic mulatta" and a slave, desires her freedom and complements the Caliban figure. Each novel signals the presence of the paradigm by naming at least one character from The Tempest (Caliban in Cooper's A Voice from the South; "Mirandy" in Harper's Iola Leroy; Prospero in Hopkins's Contending Forces; and Ariel in Hopkins's Hagar's Daughter).

This dissertation examines how the trait of intelligence is portrayed in novels of twentieth-century Britain, and how this portrayal grapples with the quantitative revolution in the conception of intelligence, brought on by the invention of IQ testing in the 1900s. I trace the construction of characters’ intelligence across different genres, starting with Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes stories, through the modernist Bildungsromane of Henry James, James Joyce, and Virginia Woolf, to Iris Murdoch’s realism, and finally to Lee Child’s late twentieth- century serial thrillers featuring Jack Reacher. I posit that the IQ model of intelligence as abstracted, quantified, and statistically measurable is profoundly at odds with the novelistic investment in the unique individual subject. This project traces the narratological strategies of characterization through which intelligence—or cleverness, or smartness, or brightness—are conveyed to the reader. Novels, generally speaking, do not provide the IQ scores of their characters; and though we might occasionally encounter an explicit narratorial characterization of some fictional being or other as “remarkably clever,” most often we must rely on perceptions of behavior, speech, and thought in order to assess characters’ intelligence, much as we do in real life. As the psychometric paradigm gained prominence in the psychological circles in the United States, England, and Europe, and as more people were exposed—and subjected—to intelligence testing, its values and assumptions gained more cultural traction. Attributes like mathematical facility, logical and systemic thinking, or a large vocabulary, are likely to yield a high score on an IQ test, as well as a favorable judgment in an informal, casual assessment, such as that of a date or a new acquaintance at a party. This dissertation, therefore, explores how this permeation of the psychometric paradigm into general culture affect the novelistic construction of smartness. Ultimately, I argue that against the IQ model, the novels I am reading construct a conception of intelligence as a coherent set of cognitive abilities, remarkably consistent across genres, which overlaps, yet reconfigures, the priorities and epistemological frameworks of psychometrics. This model centers on the notion of observation, i.e., a mix of sensory susceptibility to impressions and the cognitive skill of taking notice of the world and of other people. It is both anchored to the body by connoting a sensory experience, and divorced from it in conveying a more purely cognitive process, one of directing attention and processing information, thus renegotiating psychometric assumptions regarding embodiment and sensory experience—as well as the relationship between the individual’s intelligence, the world, and the minds of others.

The purpose of my dissertation is to conduct an intertextual study of two fantasy texts — Alice in Wonderland by Victorian author Lewis Carroll, and Stardust by postmodern fantasy author Neil Gaiman — and their filmic re-visionings by Tim Burton and Matthew Vaughn respectively. In scrutinising these texts, drawing on insights from feminist, children’s literature and intertextual theorists, the actions of ‘growing up’ and ‘falling down’ are shown to be indicative of a paradoxical becoming of the text’s central female protagonists, Alice and Yvaine. The social mechanisms of the Victorian age that educate the girl-child into becoming accepting of their domestic roles ultimately alienate her from her true state of being. While she may garner some sense of importance within the imaginary realms of fantasy narratives, as these female protagonists demonstrate, she is reduced to the position of submissive in reality – in ‘growing up’, she must assume a ‘fallen down’ state in relation to the male. / English Studies / M.A. (English)

‘The Ophelia Versions: Representations of a Dramatic Type from 1600-1633’ interrogates early modern drama’s use of the Ophelia type, which is defined in reference to Hamlet’s Ophelia and the behavioural patterns she exhibits: abandonment, derangement and suicide. Chapter one investigates Shakespeare’s Ophelia in Hamlet, finding that Ophelia is strongly identified with the ballad corpus. I argue that the popular ballad medium that Shakespeare imports into the play via Ophelia is a subversive force that contends with and destabilizes the linear trajectory of Hamlet’s revenge tragedy narrative. The alternative space of Ophelia’s ballad narrative is, however, shut down by her suicide which, I argue, is influenced by the models of classical theatre. This ending conspires with the repressive legal and social restrictions placed upon early modern unmarried women and sets up a dangerous precedent by killing off the unassimilated abandoned woman. Chapter two argues that Shakespeare and Fletcher’s The Two Noble Kinsmen amplifies Ophelia’s folk and ballad associations in their portrayal of the Jailer’s Daughter. Her comedic marital ending is enabled by a collaborative, communal, folk-cure. The play nevertheless registers a proto-feminist awareness of the peculiar losses suffered by early modern women in marriage and this knowledge deeply troubles the Jailer’s Daughter’s happy ending. Chapter three explores the role of Lucibella in The Tragedy of Hoffman arguing that the play is a direct response to Hamlet’s treatment of revenge and that Lucibella is caught up in an authorial project of disambiguation which attempts to return the revenge plot to its morality roots. Chapters four and five explore the narratives of Aspatia in The Maid’s Tragedy and Penthea in The Broken Heart, finding in their very conformism to the behaviours prescribed for them, both by the Ophelia type itself and by early modern society in general, a radical protest against the limitations and repressions of those roles. This thesis is consistently invested in the competing dialectics and authorities of oral and textual mediums in these plays. The Ophelia type, perhaps because of Hamlet’s Ophelia’s identification with the ballad corpus, proves an interesting gauge of each play’s engagement with emergent notions of textual authority in the early modern period.

The purpose of my dissertation is to conduct an intertextual study of two fantasy texts — Alice in Wonderland by Victorian author Lewis Carroll, and Stardust by postmodern fantasy author Neil Gaiman — and their filmic re-visionings by Tim Burton and Matthew Vaughn respectively. In scrutinising these texts, drawing on insights from feminist, children’s literature and intertextual theorists, the actions of ‘growing up’ and ‘falling down’ are shown to be indicative of a paradoxical becoming of the text’s central female protagonists, Alice and Yvaine. The social mechanisms of the Victorian age that educate the girl-child into becoming accepting of their domestic roles ultimately alienate her from her true state of being. While she may garner some sense of importance within the imaginary realms of fantasy narratives, as these female protagonists demonstrate, she is reduced to the position of submissive in reality – in ‘growing up’, she must assume a ‘fallen down’ state in relation to the male. / English Studies / M.A. (English)

Trees, as threshold beings, effectively blur the line between the real world and fantastical alternate worlds, and destabilise traditional binary classification systems that distinguish humanity, and Culture, from Nature. Though the presence of trees is often peripheral to the main narrative action, their representation is necessary within the fantasy trope. Their consistent inclusion within fantasy texts of the twentieth century demonstrates an enduring arboreal legacy that cannot be disregarded in its contemporary relevance, whether they are represented individually or in collective forests. The purpose of my dissertation is to conduct a study of various prominent fantasy texts of the twentieth century, including the fantasy works of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Robert Holdstock, Diana Wynne Jones, Natalie Babbitt, and J.K. Rowling. In scrutinising these texts, and drawing on insights offered by liminal, ecocritical, ecofeminist, mythological and psychological theorists, I identify the primary function of trees within fantasy narratives as liminal: what Victor Turner identifies as a ‘betwixt and between’ state (1991:95) where binaries are suspended in favour of embracing potentiality. This liminality is constituted by three central dimensions: the ecological, the mythological, and the psychological. Each dimension informs the relationship between the arboreal as grounded in reality, and represented in fantasy. Trees, as literary and cinematic arboreal totems are positioned within fantasy narratives in such a way as to emphasise an underlying call to bio-conservatorship, to enable a connection to a larger scope of cultural expectation, and to act as a means through which human self-awareness is developed. / English Studies / D. Litt. et Phil. (English)