<p>"What Can Philosophical Literature Do? The Contribution of Simone de Beauvoir" examines Simone de Beauvoir's existentialist aesthetic theory of the philosophical novel alongside two fictional works, L'invitée (1943) and Le sang des autres (1945), which constitute Beauvoir's first experiments in writing works of this hybrid genre. Throughout this dissertation, I mobilize Beauvoir's theoretical and literary writing to challenge implied notions that literature somehow acts as a supplement to philosophy and that philosophical literature does not offer distinct advantages to the philosophical system.</p><p>In her theoretical writings on philosophical literature - including "Littérature et métaphysique" (1945), her auto-analysis of her novels in La Force de l'âge (1960), her contribution to the forum, Que peut la littérature? (1965), and her lecture, "Mon expérience d'écrivain" (1966) - Beauvoir confronts a potential impasse in the conception of the philosophical novel, which risks devolving into being either a roman à thèse or a concrete example of a pre-existing philosophical system. This aesthetic impasse becomes particularly acute when Beauvoir begins to write ethical fiction after WWII. This dissertation catalogs Beauvoir's unique philosophical solutions to this aesthetic problem, and in turning to L'invitée and Le sang des autres, demonstrates that Beauvoir's aesthetic innovations open up readings of her novels to new insights about her contributions to twentieth-century literary and philosophical thought, including her thought on separation from the other - solipsism and skepticism - and on connection to the other - love, Mitsein, and reciprocal recognition. </p><p>In chapter one, I point to Beauvoir's formulation of the philosophical-literary impasse in "Littérature et métaphysique" and enumerate how this impasse has worked its way into the critical reception of L'invitée. Beauvoir resolves this aesthetic problem through her concept of the philosophical-literary work as a particularly strong appeal to the reader's freedom. In chapter two, I read L'invitée with Beauvoir's aesthetic insights in mind, which has the effect of freeing Beauvoir's novel from the philosophical binds of Sartre's theory of the Look in L'être et le néant. In L'invitée, Beauvoir accounts for and also goes beyond conflict and domination by building a multiplicity of looks through her theme of spectacle in her novel (dance, theater). In chapter three, I show how Beauvoir's turn to ethics and engaged literature after WWII once again raises the specter of the roman à thèse. I thus delineate the differences between engaged literature and the roman à thèse, differences which rely upon the existentialist notion of engaged literature as a dévoilement or unveiling of ethical issues. Finally, in chapter four I show the ways in which Le sang des autres both falls into the traps of the roman à thèse on the one hand and on the other resists that trap through its unveiling of her characters' world as Mitsein and the ambiguous ethical problem of empathy within Mitsein.</p> / Dissertation

L’objectif de ce mémoire est de créer un dialogue entre Dracula de Bram Stoker et deux romans de la série Twilight, Twilight et Breaking Dawn, de Stephenie Meyer. À l’aide de concepts présent dans ces deux ouvrages, il est possible d’analyser ce que la figure du vampire représente pour notre conception de l’être humain. Dans le premier chapitre je soutiens l’idée que la transition que vie un être humain pour devenir un vampire est une métaphore de l’amélioration du soi. À travers cette transition, un individu peut accepter son côté le plus sombre dans l’objectif de le contrôler et non de simplement le dissimuler. Dans le second chapitre, j’examine les différents rôles que porte le sang dans la littérature portant sur les vampires. Bien que le rôle sang joue un rôle dans la représentation de la vie et de la mort, il en vient à représenter des concepts plus en lien avec la société comme l’appartenance à une race ou à un groupe en particulier. Dans le troisième chapitre, j’examine de quelle façon la peur de l’étranger, l’autre que l’on ne connait pas, disparait graduellement au fur et à mesure que le vampirisme devient une image d’amélioration et non de corruption ou de dégradation. Tandis que les deux premiers chapitres sont axés sur la nature même du vampire, le troisième utilise cette nature pour comprendre où est la place du vampire dans une société humaine et ce que cette place signifie. / The objective of this thesis is to create a dialog between Bram Stoker’s Dracula and two novels from Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight series, Twilight and Breaking Dawn. With the help of concepts present in these novels, it is possible to analyze what the figure of the vampire represents in our conception of a human being. In the first chapter I support the idea that the transition that a human undergoes in other to become a vampire is a metaphor of the improvement of the self. Through this transition, an individual is able to accept its darker side in the objective of controlling it instead of simply hiding it. In the second chapter, I examine the different roles held by blood in vampire literature. Even though blood holds the role of being a physical representation of both life and death, it comes to represent concepts that are related to society like being part of a race or of a given group. In the third chapter, I observe how the fear of the stranger, the other that is unknown, gradually disappears as vampirism becomes an image of improvement instead of being one of corruption or deterioration. While the first two chapters are focused on the nature of the vampire, the third will use that nature to understand where the vampire stands in regard to a human society and what its place amongst it signifies.

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