Gabriel Astruc (1864-1938), a French impresario of Jewish background, is mostly known for his collaborative work as an impresario with Sergei Diaghilev and his Ballets Russes. His role within Parisian musical culture at the fin de siècle, however, was much broader. He was a critic, creator of a leading periodical, producer of musical and circus events, music publisher, and associate of many important cultural figures of his day. Although Astruc has been mentioned in scholarly literature, his multifaceted activities have never been carefully studied. Following the revisionist initiatives of previous scholars (e.g., Pasler, Huebner, Garafola, Fauser), this project offers a new understanding of Parisian cultural life between 1880 and 1913. Rather than focusing on valued composers such as Debussy or selected avant-garde repertoire, this dissertation considers the panoramic perspective of the Parisian cultural milieu as understood by a well-positioned impresario who participated in diverse, but often intersecting, music circles. It reveals rich interconnections between Astruc’s entrepreneurial, managerial, and publishing endeavors that linked private fêtes and soirées that he produced in elite homes with his ambitious concert series, La Grande Saison de Paris, 1905-1913 – organized through his firm La Sociéte Musicale – and with compositions and contents published in Musica, the magazine he co-founded in 1902. It questions Astruc’s aesthetic preferences and argues that he helped to shape Parisian culture through the promotion, publication, and programming of balanced, eclectic repertoire of new and old, national and international, and light as well as weighty works. This study also chronicles the development of the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées, Astruc’s culminating project that was intended to embrace symphonic, operatic, and chamber performance and to experiment with new juxtapositions and integrations of the arts. Research for this dissertation centered on a compilation and a comparative analysis of wide-ranging materials found in Astruc’s collections at the Archives Nationales and New York Public Library. Unlike earlier studies of fin-de-siècle Paris, this project utilizes previously unexamined publications, musical criticism, published literature, and manuscript material, all originating from or related to Astruc’s diverse activities and observations.

Jacques-Émile Blanche (1861-1942) is rarely included in histories of late nineteenth-century French art, despite his prolific career as an artist who produced over 2,000 paintings. A portraitist, Blanche’s upbringing as the son of an eminent psychiatrist provided him with a wealth of sitters connected to his father’s fashionable clinic and, I argue, a distinctive approach to their representation. These relatively unstudied portraits of famous Parisian intellectuals and socialites deserve our attention as works of ‘psychological impressionism’. Combining penetrating observation with painterly execution, Blanche’s methods emphasised the ‘nervous’ disposition of his sitters. Blanche’s practice as a portraitist is one of the reasons for his neglect. His contemporaries were evasive when it came to writing about the genre, uncertain of how to evaluate it – a critical apprehension that has persisted to this day. Art historians are as implicated in what may be thought of as a hesitation around the status and significance of portraiture in late-nineteenth-century French art. The thesis seeks in part to redress this through its examination of Blanche’s portraits as intuitive works of art that not only reflected but also, more actively, produced particular forms of knowledge about the ‘nervous’ condition of Parisian high society. With a focus on Blanche’s depictions of Marcel Proust (1871-1922) and the Comtesse de Castiglione (1837-1899), the thesis considers Blanche’s ‘neurasthenic portraits’ in relation to discourses on modern psychiatry, modernity, and modern art, drawing attention to how they enrich our understanding of the social, cultural and artistic contexts in which Blanche lived and worked. By situating Blanche’s artistic practice within his father’s clinical practice, and by embracing a methodology that draws upon both the histories of art and psychiatry, I argue that the language of Blanche’s portraiture was environmentally connected to the language of nervous disorder. As such this thesis will provide an original contribution to the scholarship on Blanche and offer significant insights into the entanglement of art, culture and nerves in nineteenth-century Paris.

This dissertation investigates the way that feminist resistance is expressed in two Swedish and two German so-called New Woman novels from the turn of the twentieth century: Elin Wägner’s Pennskaftet (1910, Penwoman), Gabriele Reuter’s Aus guter Familie (1895, From a Good Family), Hilma Angered-Strandberg’s Lydia Vik (1904), and Grete Meisel-Hess’s Die Intellektuellen (1911). The theoretical apparatus is comprised by the work of Michel Foucault, Judith Butler, Jacques Lacan, and Jessica Benjamin. By introducing a psychoanalytic and feminist perspective, this dissertation seeks to develop the possibilities for agency and resistance within the framework of Foucault’s theories. It investigates four textual and contextually grounded strategies of resistance that are prominent in these novels: individuality, openness, desire, and eugenics. This study demonstrates how Gabriele Reuter, Grete Meisel-Hess, and  Hilma Angered-Strandberg, inspired by the ideas of Friedrich Nietzsche and Ellen Key, depict feminine individuality in relation to a scientific and philosophical discourse that specifically denied women individuality. The authors anchor individuality in a corporality that was similarly denied to women by a bourgeois and dogmatic Christian discourse. Openness and wit function as resistance strategies in Elin Wägner’s Pennskaftet. Humorous rejoinders and narrative comments can disarm a conservative. An open attitude towards the emancipation project could also help to resolve the conflicts between different feminist positions and between different women. Desire functions as an important resistance strategy in each of the novels examined. It is variously represented as a vital instinct, a desire for knowledge, and a sexual desire, as in Gabriele Reuter’s Aus guter Familie – or as a desire for suffrage, as in Pennskaftet, or for maternity legislation, as in Grete Meisel-Hess’s Die Intellektuellen. By formulating a notion of feminine desire, turn-of-the-century feminists were able both to seize control of sexuality from the church and to wrest morality from the grasp of the bourgeoisie. These resistance strategies could also have a biopolitical character: in Grete Meisel-Hess’s Die Intellektuellen, woman is placed at the service of humanity on eugenicist grounds, and her good qualities are seen as capable of promoting humanity’s progress. This dissertation shows that in these novels desire at the individual level serves to reinforce feminine subjectivity. Love is seen as associated with an intensified sense of life and as a precondition of creativity. At the social level, desire also functions as the basis for a feeling of solidarity among women that instils in them courage and an urge to persevere in the suffrage struggle, this latter a highly protracted process. In this way desire acquires political potential. A framing chapter on context provides the intellectual and philosophical backgrounds of the various strategies of resistance. It is followed by four analytical chapters, each of which addresses one novel.

La réflexion autour des correspondances entre les arts a traversé bien des milieux dans le Paris de la fin du XIXe. Il s’est tissé ainsi un réseau discursif lié à la synesthésie, dans lequel de multiples courants de pensée se sont retrouvés, certains aux origines lointaines, comme les présupposés occultistes, ainsi que tant d’autres qui se sont progressivement ajoutés au cours du XIXe siècle. C’est par exemple le cas des discours héritiers de la Naturphilosophie, des théories symbolistes dérivées de l’idéalisme, des postulats wagnériens ou encore des découvertes scientifiques et physiologiques liées au phénomène de la synesthésie. À travers l’étude de différents théoriciens attachés à la synesthésie – Wyzewa, Favre, Mauclair – et créateurs – Verlaine et Mallarmé en ce qui concerne la poésie, Chausson et Debussy pour la musique, Redon et Denis pour les arts plastiques – et par le biais d’une approche interdisciplinaire, nous étudions les mécanismes qui ont rendu possible la formulation de ce discours synesthésique, dans lequel on peut décerner des aspects de type esthétique, théorique, idéologique, sociologique et scientifique. / The reflection on the correspondences among the arts made a remarkable impact on the cultural scene of late nineteenth-century Paris. This gave rise to a whole discursive framework linked to synaesthesia around which several lines of thought converged. Some had remote origins, such as the occultist approach; others were gradually incorporated during the nineteenth century, as in the case of the principles derived from the Naturphilosophie, the theoretical symbolist assumptions linked to the idealistic tradition, the inheritance of Wagnerian’s postulates or the scientific and physiological discoveries regarding the phenomenon of synaesthesia. Based on the work of both theoreticians –such as Wyzewa, Favre, Mauclair- and artists -the poets Verlaine and Mallarmé, the musicians Chausson and Debussy and the painters Redon and Denis– linked to synaesthesia, and following an interdisciplinary approach, this Ph.D. research analyses the mechanisms that gave rise to the synaesthesic discourse, taking into account its aesthetical, ideological, sociological and scientific aspects. / La reflexión en torno a las correspondencias entre las artes tiñó los diversos ámbitos del panorama cultural del París de finales del siglo XIX. Ello generó un entramado discursivo ligado a la sinestesia en el que se dieron cita diversas corrientes de pensamiento, algunas con orígenes remotos, como las propuestas ocultistas, y otras que se habían ido incorporando progresivamente a lo largo del siglo XIX, como los discursos herederos de la Naturphilosophie, los supuestos teóricos simbolistas ligados al legado idealista, la herencia de los postulados wagnerianos o los descubrimientos científicos y fisiológicos en relación con el fenómeno de la sinestesia. A través del estudio de diferentes teóricos –Wyzewa, Favre, Mauclair– y creadores –Verlaine y Mallarmé desde la poesía; Chausson y Debussy desde la música; Redon y Denis desde la plástica– ligados a la sinestesia y mediante un enfoque interdisciplinar, se han estudiado los mecanismos que posibilitaron este discurso sinestésico, en los que entran en juego aspectos de tipo estético, teórico, ideológico, sociológico y científico.

ENG Esotericism and Occultism in the Italian Literature of the Early Twentieth Century The purpose of this research is to bring contribution to the branch of academic studies dedicated to Western Esotericism with aim to clarify the relationship between this literary field and culture in general. Numerous studies were made in this area of research, specifically tackling the influence of Esotericism on modern and contemporary literature. The goal was to show, in particular, the contribution Italian authors had to establishing of esoteric directions in literature, throughout a limited time-span (last decades of the 19th until the early 20th century). The research, based mainly upon concrete examples and documented resources, portrays the attempt of many writers and entire cultural trends in Italy, during the period considered, to adopt an original approach to expressing themselves, one which will in turn help them to overcome the literary boundaries of that time. This direction found fruitful ground and rooted itself in the esoteric culture, the occult sciences, in the lyrical dimension of dreams and of the unconscious. This study shows the relationship between esotericism and Italian science and culture scene between "fin de siècle and avant-garde", with emphasis on the undeniable influence the...

Dans cette thèse, on examine les différents aspects de la réception et de la fortune des contes de la baronne d’Aulnoy à la fin du XIXe siècle, permettant d’enrichir les analyses critiques à propos des contes de fées classiques et de leur perception en époque moderne. L’étude porte, en un premier temps, sur le domaine de nouvelles éditions des contes qui voient le jour à partir de premières années du XIXe siècle, jusqu’aux premières années du XXe. La composition des volumes et la forme des textes permettent de comprendre comment c’est uniquement à la fin du XIXe siècle que Mme d’Aulnoy commence à être considérée comme une auteure classique : une écrivaine qui propose aux lecteurs des contes merveilleux originaux et non pas une simple transcriptrice de contes folkloriques. L’analyse des réécritures et des transpositions permet, en revanche, de comprendre le rôle de la baronne et de son œuvre dans le renouvellement du merveilleux de la fin du siècle, car les réécritures complètes de certains de ses contes présentent des traits stylistiques propres au genre du merveilleux perverti. Cela permet de saisir l’intérêt que les auteurs de cette époque portent sur la figure de l’écrivaine : elle est perçue comme un modèle, au même niveau que Charles Perrault, ce qui justifie la présence de réécritures complètes de son œuvre. D’un autre côté, certaines reprises de thèmes, motifs et personnages, permettent de mieux comprendre l’importance du souvenir littéraire dans le renouvellement du genre merveilleux. Les transpositions pour le théâtre sont, enfin, présentes uniquement dans la culture anglaise. Les contes de la baronne d’Aulnoy qui participent à ce phénomène permettent un profond renouvellement de certains genres du théâtre classique et la création de nouveaux, qui présentent, pour la première fois, le thème du grotesque. Ce travail permet, donc, de souligner la portée et l’importance de la production d’une écrivaine qui a été, pendant longtemps oubliée et de mettre en relief en quel sens ses contes merveilleux ont contribué à enrichir plusieurs genres et plusieurs modèles relevant de la culture de la fin du siècle. / In this thesis, the variousaspects of the reception and the fortune of the fairy tales of the baroness of d’Aulnoy at the end of the 19th century are examined, allowing enriching the critical analyses about classical fairy tales and their perception in modern time. In first place, new editions of the tales, printed from from first years of the 19thcentury, until the first years of 20th are examined. The composition of volumes and the shape of the texts make it possible to understand how it is only at the end of the 19th century that Mrs. d'Aulnoy starts to be regarded as a classical author. She begins to be considered as a writer that proposes to the readers original marvelous tales and not a simple rewriter of folk tales. The analysis of the rewritings and the transpositions allows, on the other hand, to understand the role of the baroness and her work in the renewal of marvelous literature at the end of the century. In fact, the complete rewritings of some of its tales present some stylistics features that can be connected with the perverted marvelous, typical of the end of the century. That makes it possible to seize the interest which the authors of this time carry on the figure of the writer. She begins to be perceived as a model, on the same level as Charles Perrault, which justifies the presence of complete rewritings of its work. On the other hand, the presence of some themes and characters that can originally be found in Mrs. d’Aulnoy’s works inside new works allows to better understand the importance of the literary memory in the renewal of marvelous literary genre. In the end, the transpositions for the theater can only be found in the English culture. The tales of the baroness d’Aulnoy which take part in this phenomenon allow a deep renewal of certain genres of the classical theater and the creation of new ones, presenting, for the first time, characters and topics linked to grotesque. This work allows therefore, to stress the range and the importance of the production of a writer which, has been forgotten for a long time and to highlight in which direction its tales contributed to enrich the marvelous at the end of the century.

Ce mémoire explore les territoires esthétiques de la culture populaire dans l’imaginaire carnavalisé du compositeur d’avant-garde Erik Satie (1866-1925). L’interprétation de l’arrière-texte de la poétique compositionnelle de Satie proposée par cette étude interroge le caractère iconoclaste des symboles associés à la scène des divertissements « légers ». Par les thèmes, genres, tropes et topoï qu’elle privilégie, l’œuvre musicale de Satie se situe au confluent du « savant » et du « vulgaire ». En portant un regard attentif aux créations « mineures » de Satie pour la scène populaire à Montmartre, ce travail cherche à définir les rapports antinomiques opposant les représentations, attitudes et valeurs promues par la culture « officielle » à l’attachement iconoclaste de Satie aux univers du « bas-social », du grotesque et de l’obscène. Les chahuts intempérants de Satie au cabaret artistique, au music-hall et au café-concert, au même titre que la revendication subversive par le compositeur des potentialités esthétiques offertes par le jeu et l’humour vernaculaires, prolongent le geste de résistance littéraire et artistique contre-culturel de la bohème fin-de-siècle. En visant une compréhension sémantique des enjeux discursifs qui accompagnent historiquement la représentation du populaire – cet « Autre » profanant, repoussoir de l’élite bourgeoise –, ce mémoire appréhende la portée démocratique du rire matérialiste populaire de Satie, principale figure tutélaire des premières avant-gardes modernistes parisiennes au tournant du XXe siècle. / This thesis aims to explore the aesthetic territories of popular culture within the avant-garde composer Erik Satie’s (1866-1925) carnavalized imagination. This study provides an interpretation of the subtext of Satie’s poetics of composition that questions the use of symbols associated with ‘light’ entertainment as means of protest. The themes, genres, tropes and topoï that Satie’s works invoke place them at the intersection of ‘learned’ and ‘vulgar’ culture. By paying close attention to Satie’s ‘minor’ works created for Montmartre’s popular establishments, this thesis seeks to define the antinomic relationship that opposes ‘official’ culture’s promoted representations, attitudes and values to Satie’s iconoclastic penchant for the imaginary spaces of the ‘low-class’, the grotesque and the obscene. Satie’s uproarious contributions to cabaret artistique, music-hall and café-concert, as well as the composer’s subversive exploration of the aesthetic potential of playfulness and vernacular humor, find echoes in the literary and artistic counter-cultural acts of resistance in Bohemian fin-de-siècle circles. Based on a semantic understanding of the discursive issues historically surrounding the representation of the popular as a degrading ‘Other’ by the wealthy bourgeois elite, this thesis appraises the democratic scope of Satie’s materialistic popular laughter, which serves as one of the main influences for the first Parisian modernist avant-garde movement at the turn of the twentieth century.

The Program of the Czech Decadent Movement and the Question of Intertextuality. The Work of Miloš Marten This thesis explores the work of Miloš Marten (1883-1917) seeking to analyse its decadent narrative as a modern narrative that brings into play the unity between the pinnacle and the decline. It departs from the comparison between the style and interpretation of the two versions of Cyklus rozkoše a smrti (orig. The Cycle of delight and death; 1907 and 1917/1925) and the study of the realisations of this work. For this purpose the study contextually examines the conceptions of "intertextuality" from fin de siècle authors-critics, meaning their conceptualisations of similarity and/or identity of literary works which frequently involve a confluence of degeneration theory, the argument of the non-ethical nature of plagiarism and theory of decadence. All were often used as instruments of disqualification as well as justifications for a modern aesthetics and style. Reconstitution of Marten's theoretical reflection on artistic genres evidences his research of a harmonizing modern culture within an anti-syncretic tendency: mythology and revolt against myth Order being shifted to tragedy and parable, while the novel is designed as an analytical-critical synthesis. Applying contemporary approaches to...

Bertha von Suttner (1843-1914) reste connue pour son engagement pacifiste. Son ouvrage Bas les Armes! (1889) lui a valu une grande notoriété mondiale, avant la première guerre mondiale. Son engagement dans le mouvement de la paix qu’elle a contribué à organiser lui a valu le prix Nobel de la paix en 1905. Engagée dans multiples combats, elle est encore méconnue. Où la situer ? Comment caractériser sa lutte pour la paix, l’émancipation des femmes ou la sécularisation de la société, alors qu’émerge en Europe un discours pacifiste et libérateur ? Il importait de mettre en évidence sa rupture face à la tradition et sa position spécifique politiquement non révolutionnaire. Voilà à quoi s’attache la présente thèse, qui s’appuie sur l’analyse inédite des romans et nouvelles à tonalité autobiographique, et qui s’emploie à jeter un éclairage sur l’influence persistante de la philosophie populaire des Lumières allemandes à la fin du XIXe siècle. Ainsi se trouve montrée l’actualité des positions de cette aristocrate novatrice / Bertha von Suttner (1843-1914) is well known for her commitment to peace. Her book Lay down your arms! (1889) made her famous before World War First. She becam one of main advocates of the idea of universal peace through the creation of a European suprantional identity. She owes the 1905 Nobel Peace Prize to her international fame. But beyond this fight she was committed to the defence of women or against the dogmatism of society and the church. How to define the consistency of her many fights at the very time when a pacifist and emancipating discourse was emerging ? the present thesis, based on a original analysis of the author's novels and short stories with an autobiographical undertone, is driving to light her breaking away from tradition but on a politically not revolutionary way, with the persitent influence of the popular philosophy of the German Enlightenment Age at the end of the XIXth century. The thesis shows the topicality of this innovative aristocrat's positions

Tout au long du XIXe siècle, le Costa Rica a construit son identité nationale sur l’idée de « pureté et de blancheur de la race costaricienne ». C’est dans ce paradigme identitaire qu’une population afro-caribéenne provenant majoritairement de la Jamaïque est arrivée sur la côte caribéenne pour travailler à la construction du chemin de fer et dans les plantations bananières à partir des années 1870. Cette population « noire », qui ne parlait pas l’espagnol, mais l’anglais et un créole à base d’anglais, constituait « un obstacle » au projet d’identité nationale. L’année 2015 marque un tournant, car le Costa Rica vient de se redéfinir comme une « République […] multiethnique et pluriculturelle » par un amendement constitutionnel de l’article premier. Cette thèse retrace le processus complexe d’intégration de la population afro-caribéenne au Costa Rica de 1870 à 2015 et défend l’idée qu’une reconfiguration du paradigme de l’identité nationale costaricienne s’est amorcée depuis la zone la plus périphérique du Costa Rica (la province de Limon) et en grande partie par le biais des revendications sociolinguistiques et identitaires de la population caribéenne. En effet, la politique linguistique concernant l’espagnol et les langues indigènes centrées sur la relation du citoyen à la langue officielle est contrariée par la pratique fortement ancrée du créole de Limon dans la Caraïbe costaricienne. L’apport théorique des linguistes Robert Le Page et Andrée Tabouret-Keller qui ont mis en évidence comment les choix langagiers constituent des « actes d’identités » par lesquels les locuteurs exposent discursivement leur identité personnelle, leurs affiliations à certains groupes et leurs aspirations à certains rôles sociaux a retenu notre attention pour montrer que l’utilisation du créole de Limon avec ses concepts et ses symboles propres dans le contexte plurilinguistique et diglossique de la Caraïbe costaricienne révèle des positionnements identitaires favorisant une reconfiguration de l’identité nationale. En 2010, l’UNESCO a classé le créole de Limon dans son Atlas des langues du monde en danger. Existe-t-il une campagne de revitalisation au Costa Rica ? Dans une perspective intersémiotique de l’étude des reconfigurations identitaires, la littérature et les arts de la Caraïbe costaricienne ont été envisagés comme des espaces privilégiés de représentation des identités plurielles et plurilingues et d’expression des revendications sociolinguistiques et identitaires de la population caribéenne. / Throughout the 20th century, Costa Rica built its own national identity on the “purity and whiteness” of the Costa Rican race. This is the identity paradigm in which the Jamaican population found itself upon arriving on the Caribbean coast in 1870 in order to work on the construction of railways and the banana plantations. This black, non-Spanish-speaking community was a barrier to the Costa Rican national identity project. However, the year 2015, marked a turning point. In virtue of an amendment to the first article of the Constitution, Costa Rica redefined itself as a “multiethnic, multicultural Republic”. This thesis retraces the complex process of integration undergone by the Costa Rican Afro-Caribbean community from 1870 to 2015. This study claims that the existence of this recent reconfiguration of the Costa Rican identity paradigm was in part fostered by one of the country’s most peripheral areas: Limon. The works of linguists such as Robert Le Page and André Tabouret-Keller have proven that linguistic choices can be considered as “identity claims or acts” by means of which a given speaker demonstrates his identity, his background and his aspirations. The people from Limon, by means of their sociolinguistic and identity claims, have thus helped start the aforementioned process of reconfiguration. The well-established use of Creole English clashes with the government’s official policy regarding the use of the official language of Spanish and the indigenous languages. Even though Creole English is spoken in Limon, in 2010 UNESCO classified it in its Atlas of the World’s Endangered Languages. Is there thus a campaign of revitalization in Costa Rica concerning Creole English? In an attempt to analyze the changing identity paradigm from an intersemiotic perspective, this study has chosen to focus on Caribbean literature and art as they both represent powerful mediums through which the expression of the Caribbean identity is portrayed and claimed.