Texte remanié de: Thèse de doctorat--Études anglo-américaines--Montpellier 3, 2000. Titre de soutenance : Modèles du sujet dans l'oeuvre romanesque de Laurence Sterne : illustrations et perversions. / Bibliogr. p. 307-356. Index.

Extr. de: Thèse--Lettres--Paris IV, 1983. / Bibliogr. p. 345-391.

Dissertation--Fachbereich Philosophie und Geisteswissenschaften--Freie Universität Berlin, 2005-2006. / Bibliogr. p. 259-280.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Wisconsin--Madison, 1972. / Typescript. Vita. eContent provider-neutral record in process. Description based on print version record. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Wisconsin--Madison, 1975. / Vita. Typescript. eContent provider-neutral record in process. Description based on print version record. Includes bibliographical references.

Note:

Thesis--Lund University, 1997. / Added t.p. with thesis statement inserted. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis--Lund University, 1997. / Added t.p. with thesis statement inserted. Includes bibliographical references.

The thesis argues that the narratives of the eighteenth-century novels selected for this study demonstrate a conscious manipulation of time and space, and that the consequence of this manipulation is to provide the reader with a unique literary journey through the text. The thesis, in its analysis and comparison of these distinctive journeys, chooses to focus on the narrative techniques which facilitate or hamper progression and continuity within the texts. It particularly concentrates on the impact of these narrative techniques on the reading experience. The first chapter studies and compares texts resorting mainly to the present tense with those predominantly written in the past tense. It examines the effects of the tense used in the narration on the reader's engrossment in the fiction. The second chapter concentrates on the repercussions of the author's choice of a beginning and an ending for his story on the nature of the progression of the narrative. The third chapter is devoted to the destabilising reading journey offered by Tristram Shandy. It examines the numerous techniques which react against continuity and progression in time and in space, and the narrator's motivation behind their use. It shows how the narrative choices of Tristram Shandy place the reader face to face with his own act of reading. The fourth and final chapter is concerned with the role and the status of fictional footnotes in some eighteenth-century prose fictions. It demonstrates the fictional nature of the footnotes in Tom Jones. It argues that fictional footnotes affect the reader's progression across the text in time and in space as well as his understanding of the work of fiction, and this in a fundamental way.

In each of her Canadian-set novels, Margaret Laurence features a female protagonist searching for her identity. Hagar, in The Stone Angel; Rachel, in A Jest of God; Stacey, in The Fire-Dwellers; and Morag, in The Diviners--each one, in her own way and with a different degree of success, attempts to discover who she is and what her life means. Through these characters, Laurence expresses her faith in the power of language, for it is at least partly through language that each achieves her measure of victory and comes to terms with herself and her life.For Hagar Shipley, words used precisely, cleverly, and artistically constitute a source of pleasure and pride. Yet Hagar often uses language to assert her superiority and otherwise to distance herself from others and from life. Her epiphany arrives late, but not too late for her to speak at least once "the heart's truth." Rachel Cameron, like Hagar, demonstrates a keen sensitivity to language. Rachel, however, listens to the words and voices which she hears in an effort not to control others but to discover an authentic voice, and thus an identity, of her own. As she learns to speak of herself to others, she also learns that disclosure is not always necessary, for silence can heal as well as threaten.Rachel's sister Stacey also learns to accept silence. Terrified by the violence of modern life, Stacey seeks to build bridges between herself and those she loves. Her frequent failures to communicate lead her to question the efficacy of language, but in the end she affirms language as a means of communication as she also comes to see that "the silences aren't all bad." Her conclusions are shared by Morag Gunn, who has as a successful "wordsmith" made words her life, yet who has learned to accept occasional silences. Morag's relationships with others and her achievements as a novelist have convinced her of the power, as well as the limitations, of language, a conviction that we can assume her creator, Margaret Laurence, shares.