Enclosed spaces dominate Anne Hebert's imaginary world. The house is usually depicted as a prison and a tomb, and only sometimes as a shelter. Products of a stagnant society whose laws they wish to perpetuate, parents give their children a loveless upbringing, in a house from which nature and the external world are rigorously excluded. A few of these captives think that happiness is to be found in marriage, but the conjugal home and that in which adultery occurs prove scarcely more welcoming. Some houses can even be dangerous. The house almost always appears as a forerunner of the tomb, inhabited by individuals unwilling to outgrow childhood, by the living dead, by the living who await death. Certain of Hebert's characters, however, revolt against this fate and flee the closed house. In order to be free, the Hebertian hero must exorcise the past and dissolve the obsessive image of the closed house. The rare open habitations of Hebert's universe are shelters to be found along the individual's road to liberation and life. Most are located near the sea or in the countryside, in a magnificent natural setting evocative of Paradise lost.

This thesis analyses Thomas Bernhard's partially autobiographical but at the same time critical works on society as well as on contemporary issues. The mendacity of the Austrian society and the related catastrophical consequences of it for the intellectual individual forms the central theme. The inability of the Austrian people to overcome their past is above all concentrated on. In the year 1988, the commemorative year of the fifty years since Austrian Annexation with Nazi-Germany, Bernhard made with Heldenplatz an essential contribution to the positive incorporation of history. / The careful study of Bernhard's works with particular references made to Beton and Heldenplatz, demonstrates his recognition of the symptoms of the neurotic behaviour of the Austrians. (Abstract shortened by UMI.)

This thesis studies the way in which Robert Soulieres uses, in increasing complexity, four forms of humour in his novels for adolescents. The novels studied are: Le visiteur du soir, Un ete sur le Richelieu, Casse-tete chinois, and Ciel d'Afrique et pattes de gazelle. / These forms of humour are defined, identified, and classified. How they are used and interact with other components of the works are examined. / The thesis is divided into four chapters. The first looks at the way in which the author manipulates language. The second analyses the role of the narrator and the different narrative levels. The third section scrutinizes discursive intertextuality and literary styles, while the final chapter focuses on visual plays. The latter includes the use of original typographical characters and unusual formatting. / In studying these aspects of the novels, it becomes apparent that the author uses them to establish and maintain contact with his young readers.

According to the structuralist Claude Levi-Strauss, all myth has but one same structure. The purpose of this study is to expose the mythico-initiatory edifice that informs Vendredi ou les limbes du Pacifique, Le Roi des Aulnes, as well as Les Meteores, Michel Tournier's "trilogy". / To write, according to Tournier, cannot be a matter of literary creation, but simply of literary renewal. Vendredi ou les limbes du Pacifique, Le Roi des Aulnes and Les Meteores represent literary reflections on the primordial importance of Myth, for the Artist and above all, for Man; it is this mythic dimension that makes Tournier's entire oeuvre an "autobiography", or rather an autohagiography, according to Tournier's neologism. The three protagonists, Robinson, Tiffauges and Paul Surin, literary avatars of Tournier as Author, embark on a Quest for this lost mythic Unity; we will see that the voyage each makes is but one and the same, an allegorical odyssey toward the light$ ...$ of the City of the Sun.

In 1949, Frederic Dard created a character named San-Antonio and he decided to dedicate a series of novels to it. The latter amounts to, up to this day, one hundred and sixty eight titles, to which we must add several outside the series. How can we explain the readers, craze for such works? A possible explanation resides in the quite particular style which distinguishes them. There are any number of neologisms and various styles and levels of language are merrily mixed therein, reminding us of the Rabelaisian tongue to which it is often compared. But shall we end the parallel between San-Antonio and Rabelais solely at the level of linguistics? After reading Mikhail Bakhtine's study devoted to Francois Rabelais et carnivalesque literature, it seems that this comparison must be taken much further. The distance taken by San-Antonio toward the classic detective novel seem to indicate a strong level of carnivalisation and that is what we will study in this thesis.

In nationalist or Islamist ideology, Islam defines itself through an identity which is homogeneous and self-enclosed. The goal of this study is to examine how the Tunisian writer Abdelwahab Meddeb draws from the margins of Islam to imagine instead an identity open to the Other and to possibilities of transformation. Meddeb replaces the traditional search for identity with what we shall call the search for hybridity. This new search, which he develops in his fiction (Talismano (1979), Phantasia (1986), and Tombeau d'Ibn Arabi (1987) and his essays, necessitates an examination of memory in order to extricate the forgotten traces of Arab-Islamic tradition (in particular sufism) and those suppressed remnants of European culture. Meddeb's project is carried out in two aspects: the look at the Self, and the look at the Other. in this way, the little-studied topic of Islam in Maghreb literature here reveals an audacious vision, an alternative imagination that dismantles the categories authentic/inauthentic and resists "the culture of resentment" which, according to Meddeb, is choking Islam today.

This thesis attempts to put into practice certain precepts culled from leading semioticians in its focus on La camisa (1960), a work by the contemporary Spanish dramatist, Lauro Olmo (1922-). Semiotics has, thus, provided the theoretical framework from which to question the usual critical interpretations of this work: by concentrating on the theme of heroism the intention here is, therefore, to offer an alternative critical reading of the play's protagonists. / The work of Patrice Pavis, Anne Ubersfeld and Keir Elam is examined in the first chapter and particular attention is paid to the interface between signs, communication and characterization on stage. This is the theoretical basis for the consideration in the next chapter of the heroism of the masculine protagonist, widely acknowledged in previous criticism. In the third chapter an innovative interpretation is offered, using the same theoretical base, of the heroism of the female protagonist, which posits a code of behaviour rarely commented upon before.

Zhang Ailing is an extraordinary yet important literary figure in 1940s China. In her writing, the specificity of hybridity breaks through restriction of domestic, social, political and cultural issues and makes her writing surpass the boundaries of races, cultures and space and time. It integrates Zhang's profound concern for human life and humanity with her exquisite literary sensibility. In my thesis, I deploy my study on this hybrid specificity, and also on the cultural phenomena relevant to Zhang Ailing in 1990s China, namely the "Zhang Ailing fever" and the nostalgia theme in Hong Kong film. By exploring the underlying relationship between the two issues on the basis of respective analyses of them, I try to enrich our understanding of this legendary writer and stimulate further thought on the broad and complex process of the "rehabilitation" of Zhang's literary reputation in both Western sinology and Chinese academia.

This thesis attempts a study of the published plays of Rejean Ducharme. Apart from the fact that they have both been published, Ines Peree Inat Tendu et HA!ha!... form a coherent whole because of their shared place in the history of contemporary Quebec theatre. Associated from the beginning with the claims made by the "New Quebec Theatre", Ducharme's plays are now part of the repertory. / The first chapter examines the textual forces that allow one to trace the narrative structure in Ducharme's dramatic writing. It also describes the different actantial models as well as the mechanisms that regulate their function. / In the second chapter, an analysis of the characters adds a layer of significance to the analysis of the actants and reveals to us the "small world" of Ducharme's plays. The actants take shape, becoming characters who establish ties among themselves. / The third chapter describes the universe in which these "unusual" characters evolve. Space and time throw referential precariousness into relief which in turn, gives a sense of meaning and non-meaning to different objects as well as to the logic of events. / Finally, the fourth chapter deals with the discursive process and, more particularly, with the initiations that stem from the dialogues. With the advent of theatrical communication, the spectator or the narratee is also initiated into Ducharme's theatre where he or she re-assumes his or her place. (Abstract shortened by UMI.)

This work examines the fiction of Salman Rushdie--Grimus, Midnight's Children, Shame and The Satanic Verses, and its complex narrative structure. Fictional narrative is discussed in terms of structuralist theory using studies by Mieke Bal, Seymour Chatman and Gerald Prince. Historical narrative is analyzed through the writings of the philosophers of history, Hayden White, Louis O. Mink and Paul Ricoeur. These theories are applied to the fiction of Salman Rushdie in order to investigate his use of narrative. It is concluded that he uses a combination of historical and fictional narrative in order to explode existing 'truths' and mythologies, and to suggest alternative realities in their place.