L'objectif de cette thèse consiste à faire une analyse approfondie des méanismes d'articulation dialectique qui lient la sphère sociale du loisir aux sphères de la production éonomique et de la (re)production domestique. Cette analyse se situe dans le cadre d'une probléatique construite en termes de rapports sociaux de sexe. Une revue bibliographique des recherches sur le loisir permet de constater que les trois paradigmes thériques qui ont éétraditionnellement employé dans léude sociologique de ce 'fait social' manifestent un biais androcentrique implicite qui pose d'importants problèmes quand il s'agit d'éargir le champ d'analyse de ce phéomène au-del à du rapport travail salariéloisir qui constitue l'entré théatique principale de la majoritédes recherches existantes dans ce domaine. Bien qu'il ne soit nullement notre intention de proposer une nouvelle conceptualisation thérique du 'loisir', l'attention porté sur les difféences de sens subjectif et symbolique que les individus et les groupes sociaux attribuent à leurs pratiques de loisir permet, nénmoins, de constater la nature insatisfaisante des recherches fondés sur une analyse quantitative des caractéistiques sociales des pratiquants et soulève la question de l'etude sociologique des méanismes de production-reproduction des identité sociales objectives et subjectives qui s'opèrent à travers les pratiques de loisir. Afin de réondre à cette question, deux approches méhodologiques distinctes ont ééadoptés. Les donnés statistiques portant sur les pratiques 'hors-travail' des femmes sont issues d'une enquête effectué à l'aide d'un questionnaire ferméauprès d'un éhantillon non-repréentatif de 157 mères de famille franc caises (actives et inactives). Les donnés sur les repréentations temporelles proviennent d'une séie de 30 entretiens semi-directifs approfondis effectué auprès de femmes ayant dé à réondu au questionnaire. Une mise en rapport de ces deux types de donnés permet l'analyse du rôle de l'articulation entre la 'part rélle' et la 'part pensé' des rapports sociaux de sexe et la conceptualisation du rapport entre les pratiques et les repréentations du loisir en fonction de l'inscription objective et subjective des enquêtés dans la hiéarchie sociale de classe et de sexe. De cette analyse déoule une déinition de la sphère sociale du loisir en tant qu'espace social contesté oø se jouent à la fois les méanismes de reproduction des systèmes des rapports sociaux à l'identique et les méanismes de réppropriation et de rénterpréation des normes de sexe de la part des groupes sociaux.

Following Andersen's (1986, 1991) study of untutored anglophone learners of Spanish, aspectual features have been at the centre of hypotheses on the development of past verbal morphology in language acquisition. The Primacy of Aspect Hypothesis claims that the association of any verb category (Aktionsart) with any aspect (perfective or imperfective) constitutes the endpoint of acquisition. However, its predictions rely on the observation of a limited number of untutored learners at the early stages of their acquisition, and have yet to be confirmed in other settings. The aim of the present thesis is to evaluate the ex planatory power of the P AH in respect of the acquisition of French past tenses, an aspect of the language which constitutes a serious stumbling block for foreign learners, even those at the highest levels of proficiency (Coppieters 1987). The present research applies the PAH to the production of 61 anglophone 'advanced learners' (as defined in Bartning 1997) in a tutored environment. In so doing, it tests concurrent explanations, including the influence of the input, the influence of chunking, and the hypothesis of cyclic development. Finally, it discusses the cotextual and contextual factors that still provoke what Anderson (1991) terms "non-native glitches" at the final stage, as predicted by the PAH. The first part of the thesis provides the theoretical background to the corpus analysis. It opens with a diachronic presentation of the French past tense system focusing on present areas of competition and developments that emphasize the complexity of the system to be acquired. The concepts of time, grammatical aspect and lexical aspect (Aktionsart) are introduced and discussed in the second chapter, and a distinctive formal representation of the French past tenses is offered in the third chapter. The second part of the thesis is devoted to a corpus analysis. The data gathering procedures and the choice of tasks (oral and written film narratives based on Modern Times, c10ze tests and acceptability judgement tests) are described and justified in the research methodology chapter. The research design was shaped by previous studies and consequently allows comparison with these. The second chapter is devoted to the narratives analysis and the third to the grammatical tasks. This section closes with a summary of discoveries and a comparison with previous results. The conclusion addresses the initial research questions in the light of both theory and practice. It shows that the PAH fails to account for the complex phenomenon of past tense development in the acquisitional settings under study, as it adopts a local (the verb phrase) and linear (steady progression towards native usage) approach. It is thus suggested that past tense acquisition rather follows a pendular development as learners reformulate their learning hypotheses and become increasingly able to shift from local to global cues and so to integrate the influence of cotext and context in their tense choice. Key Words: French language Aspect - Aktionsarl - French as a foreign language - Corpus analysis

The theatre director (metteur en scene in French) is a relatively new figure in theatre practice. It was not until the 1820s that the term 'mise en scene' gained currency. The term 'director' was not in general use until the 1880s. The emergence and the role of the director has been considered from a variety of perspectives, either through the history of theatre (Allevy, Jomaron, Sarrazac, Viala, Biet and Triau); the history of directing (Chinoy and Cole, Boll, Veinstein, Roubine); semiotic approaches to directing (Whitmore, Miller, Pavis); the semiotics of performance (De Marinis); generic approaches to the mise en scene (Thomasseau, Banu); post-dramatic approaches to theatre (Lehmann); approaches to performance process and the specifics of rehearsal methodology (Bradby and Williams, Giannachi and Luckhurst, Picon-Vallin, Styan). What the scholarly literature has not done so far is to map the parameters necessarily involved in the directing process, and to incorporate an analysis of the emergence of the theatre director during the modem period and consider its impact on contemporary performance practice. Directing relates primarily to the making of the performance guided by a director, a single figure charged with the authority to make binding artistic decisions. Each director may have her/his own personal approaches to the process of preparation prior to a show. This is exemplified, for example, by the variety of terms now used to describe the role and function of directing, from producer, to facilitator or outside eye. However, it is essential at the outset to make two observations, each of which contributes to a justification for a generic analysis (as opposed to a genetic approach). Firstly, a director does not work alone, and cooperation with others is involved at all stages of the process. Secondly, beyond individual variation, the role of the director remains twofold. The first is to guide the actors (meneur de jeu, directeur d'acteurs, coach); the second is to make a visual representation in the performance space (set designer, stage designer, costume designer, lighting designer, scenographe). The increasing place of scenography has brought contemporary theatre directors such as Wilson, Castellucci, Fabre to produce performances where the performance space becomes a semiotic dimension that displaces the primacy of the text. The play is not, therefore, the sole artistic vehicle for directing. This definition of directing obviously calls for a definition of what the making of the performance might be. The thesis defines the making of the performance as the activity of bringing a social event, by at least one performer, providing visual and/or textual meaning in a performance space. This definition enables us to evaluate four consistent parameters throughout theatre history: first, the social aspect associated to the performance event; second, the devising process which may be based on visual and/or textual elements; third, the presence of at least one performer in the show; fourth, the performance space (which is not simply related to the theatre stage). Although the thesis focuses primarily on theatre practice, such definition blurs the boundaries between theatre and other collaborative artistic disciplines (cinema, opera, music and dance). These parameters illustrate the possibility to undertake a generic analysis of directing, and resonate with the historical, political and artistic dimensions considered. Such a generic perspective on the role of the director addresses three significant questions: an historical question: how/why has the director emerged?; a sociopolitical question: how/why was the director a catalyst for the politicisation of theatre, and subsequently contributed to the rise of State-funded theatre policy?; and an artistic one: how/why the director has changed theatre practice and theory in the twentieth-century? Directing for the theatre as an artistic activity is a historically situated phenomenon. It would seem only natural from a contemporary perspective to associate the activity of directing to the function of the director. This is relativised, however, by the question of how the performance was produced before the modern period. The thesis demonstrates that the rise of the director is a progressive and historical phenomenon (Dort) rather than a mere invention (Viala, Sarrazac). A chronological analysis of the making of the performance throughout theatre history is the most useful way to open the study. In order to understand the emergence of the director, the research methodology assesses the interconnection of the four parameters above throughout four main periods of theatre history: the beginning of the Renaissance (meneur de jeu), the classical age (actor-manager and stage designer-manager), the modern period (director) and the contemporary period (director-facilitator, performer). This allows us properly to appraise the progressive emergence of the director, as well as to make an analysis of her/his modern and contemporary role. The first chapter argues that the physical separation between the performance space and its audience, which appeared in the early fifteenth-century, has been a crucial feature in the scenographic, aesthetic, political and social organisation of the performance. At the end of the Middle Ages, French farces which raised socio-political issues (see Bakhtin) made a clear division on a single outdoor stage (treteau) between the actors and the spectators, while religious plays (drame fiturgique, mystere) were mostly performed on various outdoor and opened multispaces. As long as the performance was liturgical or religious, and therefore confined within an acceptable framework, it was allowed. At the time, the French ecclesiastical and civil authorities tried, on several occasions, to prohibit staged performances. As a result, practitioners developed non-official indoor spaces, the Theatre de fa Trinite (1398) being the first French indoor theatre recognized by scholars. This self-exclusion from the open public space involved breaking the accepted rules by practitioners (e.g. Les Confreres de fa Passion), in terms of themes but also through individual input into a secular performance rather than the repetition of commonly known religious canvases. These developments heralded the authorised theatres that began to emerge from the mid-sixteenth century, which in some cases were subsidised in their construction. The construction of authorised indoor theatres associated with the development of printing led to a considerable increase in the production of dramatic texts for the stage. Profoundly affecting the reception of the dramatic text by the audience, the distance between the stage and the auditorium accompanied the changing relationship between practitioners and spectators. This distance gave rise to a major development of the role of the actor and of the stage designer. The second chapter looks at the significance of both the actor and set designer in the devising process of the performance from the sixteenth-century to the end of the nineteenth-century. The actor underwent an important shift in function in this period from the delivery of an unwritten text that is learned in the medieval oral tradition to a structured improvisation produced by the commedia dell 'arte. In this new form of theatre, a chef de troupe or an experienced actor shaped the story, but the text existed only through the improvisation of the actors. The preparation of those performances was, moreover, centred on acting technique and the individual skills of the actor. From this point, there is clear evidence that acting began to be the subject of a number of studies in the mid-sixteenth-century, and more significantly in the seventeenth-century, in Italy and France. This is revealed through the implementation of a system of notes written by the playwright to the actors (stage directions) in a range of plays (Gerard de Vivier, Comedie de la Fidelite Nuptiale, 1577). The thesis also focuses on Leoni de' Sommi (Quatro dialoghi, 1556 or 1565) who wrote about actors' techniques and introduced the meneur de jeu in Italy. The actor-manager (meneur de jeu), a professional actor, who scholars have compared to the director (see Strihan), trained the actors. Nothing, however, indicates that the actor-manager was directing the visual representation of the text in the performance space.

This thesis examines representations of the ‘métisse’ in nineteenth-century metropolitan French literature to determine the figure’s function and significance in the texts that display her and the larger society that imagines her. By ‘métisse’, I refer specifically to a woman of ‘black’ and ‘white’ ‘racial’ mixture whose identity, in the context of the texts that figure her, both legitimates and deconstructs distinct and discrete ‘racial’ identity. As such, she is a useful figure through which to investigate and unpack conceptions of ‘race’. I will suggest that her innate performative ability – a product of her deceptively white exterior – demonstrates the discursive nature of identity that can be seen as constructed and parodied rather than as a simple ontological category. I use the term ‘tenebrous’ to describe the ‘métisse’ because it conjoins the two constitutive aspects of her signification – her ambiguity and her colour. Her fundamentally ambiguous identity is crucial to her figuration as an erotic and dangerous femme fatale. Unknowable and protean, she attracts and simultaneously disconcerts or terrifies her prey. Concurrently, the term ‘tenebrous’ highlights the explicit colouring of her body by all of the authors who imagine her so as to mark her as identifiably different, and to explain her essential bestial, primitive, and dangerous sexuality. This thesis locates the ‘métisse’ at the crossroads of discourses of race, class, gender, and sexuality. In an era when fears of personal and social degeneracy and decline were capturing the collective imagination, the ‘métisse’, as a figure of frightening alterity and deceptive similitude, embodies deviancy. Primarily portrayed as a natural courtesan due to her essential yet hidden ‘black’ blood, the ‘métisse’ attracts ‘white’ men with her seductive body, but her malign sexuality corrupts, dilutes, or kills them. Associated with the working-class, the prostitute, the criminal, and the savage, the ‘métisse’ fits into a larger discourse that seeks to postulate the normative identity of ‘white’, bourgeois masculinity. Her ability to dilute the ‘purity’ of her ‘white’ male victim articulates a general contemporary fear of pathological sexuality and, through it, invisible degeneration. Using the comparative framework of ‘case studies’, I will examine Eugène Sue’s Les Mystères de Paris, Émile Zola’s Thérèse Raquin, Arthur Gobineau’s Essai sur l’inégalité des races humaines, Pierre Loti’s Le Roman d’un spahi, a selection of poems from Charles Baudelaire’s Les Fleurs du Mal, as well as the critical and biographical studies centring around the figure of Jeanne Duval, Baudelaire’s long-time and muchmaligned ‘métisse’ partner. The wide variety of texts and the diverse list of authors will demonstrate the surprising currency of this literary figure in the collective imagination of nineteenth-century metropolitan France, as well as twentieth-century literary criticism. By focussing upon well-known and significant French authors, I will reexamine the cultural heritage to which these writers contributed with specific attention to the investigation of cultural assumptions, desires, and fears pivoting around the theme of mixed-race.

This thesis examines relations between the French Confederation Generale du Travail (CGT) and the labour movements of other countries in the years leading up to the First World War. The aim of the study is to examine the CGT's policy of internationalism in practice, both in relations with other labour movements and in its membership of the International Secretariat of National Trade Union Centres (between 1900 and 1914). In particular, the relationship between the French and German labour movements is explored in the light of the events of August 1914. This study shows that the relationship was a reflection of the respective positions of the French and German labour movements in the international movement. It also subjects to close scrutiny the assumption, widely made before 1914, that workers had more in common with each other than with the ruling classes of their own country, by analysing the extent of, and the reasons for internationalism and international cooperation in the labour movement. As a study of the International Secretariat of National Trade Union Centres, an organisation about which very little has previously been written, this thesis complements existing work on the international labour movement prior to 1914. It also provides new insights into the French CGT by concentrating on the fundamental areas of internationalism and opposition to war, and offers fresh contributions to the continuing debate on the international labour movement and its response to the outbreak of war.

Following the fall of France in June 1940 and the installation of the Vichy Regime, government set about establishing its own New Order. A reprogramming of national consciousness was attempted through an emphasis on a return to traditional values which was disseminated in various fora. Despite publications on divers aspects of Vichy's propaganda machine, work on film production of the period has merely touched on mainstream documentary without further analysis. Such a lacuna appears inexplicable in light of the production of 550 or so documentaries between 1940 and 1944, especially in view of a 1948 comment by the film writer Roger Régent that documentary in many ways provided a focal point for the regime's wishes for "moralisation collective". This thesis sets out the first steps of a new evaluation of the role of documentary during the Occupation. After an overview of the changes to the industry and the ideological framework of the Révolution nationale, the thesis discusses theories of propaganda together with direct examples of Vichy propaganda documentary. The 'control' thus established is then applied to an examination of the 'Arts, Sciences, Voyages' series of documentary screenings (1941-43) and the Premier congrès du film documentaire (1943), tracing thematic and ideological consonances and evaluating the use of documentary film of the Occupation in the Service of the Marshal.

The subject-matter of this thesis is the interaction between the Parti Communiste Français and the National Liberation struggle in Algeria , and the debate that ensued within the Party itself. For a detailed study of the Party ' s line on the war, PCF publications were contrasted with the texts produced by the opposition. Three main axes were identified crystallising discussion within the Party during the Algerian war: The relationship between France and Algeria and the Party ' s attitude to the French nation; The nature of the Algerian nation and its genesis; France's military engagement in Algeria. The dichotomy between the Party's national and internationalist responsibilities is shown to have resolved itself by the fundamental integration of the PCF into the political structure and value system of the French Republic. This study demonstrates the birth of a substantial internal opposition to the PCF during the Algerian war.

This dissertation is an attempt to understand how early twenty-first century French films (2000-2002) position themselves in relation to late twentieth century feminist public discourse in France. More specifically, this study will examine how cinematic narratives are modifiers of feminist debate. Four selected films are analyzed for this research: Catherine Breillat's Fat Girl (2002), Patrice Leconte's Girl on the Bridge (2000), Pascale Bailly's God is Great and I am not (2002), and Agnes Varda's The Gleaners and I (2001). The study focuses on how these four films illustrate the historical moment of the changing role of French women in society, as they move from a more private sphere to a larger public sphere. Following a renewed feminist debate in the 1990s, both male and female film directors express their ideas on this public discourse, that of the future role of women in French society. These films depict, through the narrative medium of cinema, proposals for a revised role of women, with its assets and its difficulties. Often, there is a merging of the private and public realms of the woman protagonist's life. A critical reading of each of the four chosen films for study traces the methods used by directors to depict a public debate, focusing on those techniques unique to film. This study shows the power of cinema to construct, propose, question and/or resolve potential real-life situations in relation to a historical public discourse.

<p>Although Charles Baudelaire's poetry was censored in part for his graphic representations of death, for Baudelaire himself, death was the ultimate censorship. He grappled with its limitations of the possibility of articulation in Les Fleurs du mal, Le Spleen de Paris, "Le Poème du hachisch," and other works. The first chapter of this dissertation, "Dead Silent," explores Baudelaire's use of apophasis as a rhetorical tactic to thwart the censoring force of death as what prevents the speaking subject from responding. Chapter two, "Voices Beyond the Grave," then investigates the opposite poetics of articulation and inarticulation, in the form of post-mortem voice from within the cemetery, and particularly as didactic speech that contradicts the living. "Baudelaire's Widows" argues that the widow is for Baudelaire a figure of modernity par excellence, auguring the anticipation of mourning and the problem of remembering the dead as a lifelong cognitive dilemma. Chapter four, "Lethal Illusions," combines analysis of suicide in "La Corde" and "Le Poème du hachisch" with interrogation of mimesis. If the intoxicant serves as suicide and mirror, the production of illusion is the possibility and the fatal pathology of art. Yet art simultaneously channels a truth understood as the revelation of illusions--not least the illusion of a life without death.</p> / Dissertation

Prosody, the structures governing the pitch and rhythm of speech, is essential to the correct and authentic use of a language. Unfortunately, many students of a second language find it difficult to learn these patterns, particularly when they differ significantly from their mother tongue. Several pedagogical models are now widely used, but only within the confines of a conventional classroom environment. Dramatisation, the process of preparing a full theatrical performance, has already shown itself to be useful in the acquisition of second language grammar and vocabulary. This thesis demonstrates by means of a qualitative case study that this approach to language teaching also results in a statistically significant improvement in the area of prosody. The results were obtained by analysing the digitised speech of four students who participated in a course employing dramatisation in order to teach French as a second language.