This study compares and analyses four portraits of Émilie du Châtelet and four of Madame de Pompadour who were two of the most learned and privileged women of their time. The analysis is based on Erwin Panofsky’s iconological method of analysis of art and looks at the impact of gender related conventions that influenced portraiture in the early 18th century. The overall aim of this study is to answer these questions: What differences and/or similarities can be found among their portraits? Why do only relatively few portraits of Émilie du Châtelet exist? What emphasized these two ladies’ status and the unique position as femmes savantes and how did tradition influence their portraits? Education was a male privilege. How was the female equivalent formed? How did their portraits correspond to the male counterpart? Émilie du Châtelet’s portrait of Marianne Loir is the only one that was painted by a female artist. How did that influence the portrait and what distinguishes it from the other portraits? The study shows that the paintings’ compositions follow the convention of the early 18th century portraiture. Both Émilie du Châtelet and Madame de Pompadour are presented according to the rules that applied to their social and cultural status. A number of relevant symbols were added to their figures in order to mark their unique position as learned women.

Mémoire numérisé par la Direction des bibliothèques de l'Université de Montréal.

Mémoire numérisé par la Direction des bibliothèques de l'Université de Montréal.

C'est dans la famille bourgeoise du XIXe siècle que s'est instaurée la pratique du journal intime au Québec. Alors que les hommes prennent place dans la sphère publique, l'écriture intime séduit les jeunes filles instruites puisqu'elle leur permet, dans un siècle fort contraignant pour la femme, de s'exprimer et à l'occasion de perfectionner leur talent littéraire. Par bonheur, certains de ces journaux nous sont parvenus, dont le Journal intime de Joséphine Marchand, contemporaine d'Henriette Dessaulles, figure emblématique du journal de jeune fille du XIXe siècle. Phénomène social, le journal intime ne peut être étudié en dehors du contexte socio-historique qui entoure et détermine l'écriture. Fille d'un écrivain, Félix-Gabriel Marchand, qui deviendra premier ministre, et femme du sénateur Raoul Dandurand, Joséphine fait figure de pionnière dans l'histoire sociale du Québec. Le présent mémoire offre une lecture sociocritique de son passionnant journal, tenu entre 1879 et 1900, dont l'une des particularités est de ne pas se clore au moment du mariage, selon la règle observée par les grands théoriciens du genre, Béatrice Didier et Philippe Lejeune, et d'offrir ainsi l'occasion d'observer les importantes transformations que le mariage et l'âge adulte apportent à l'écriture de soi.

This dissertation demonstrates how the rise of historical criticism in Germany transformed practices of reading, writing, and public address in the related fields of classicism and biblical criticism in a transnational context. In the late-eighteenth and early-nineteenth centuries, writers on both sides of the Atlantic rendered these practices foundational to the goals of self-formation, cultural and spiritual renewal, and educational reform. In this process, Germaine de Staël's De l'Allemagne (1814) played a key role in disseminating new historically informed modes of teaching, preaching, translating, and reconstructing secular and religious texts among Transcendentalists. I show that her cultural study epitomizes crucial characteristics and functions of the historically informed textual practices that Johann Gottfried Herder's works articulated paradigmatically in Germany and which we find refracted in reviews, addresses, essays, and translations by many Antebellum American scholars, especially Ralph Waldo Emerson.

This papers purpose is to compare the female protagonist as a subject and reader in Madame Bovary, Watermelon and Bridget Jones´s diary. The aim is feministic, where Judith Butler’s concepts of subjectivity and performativity have been used besides the method of close reading. These novels are pioneering works of each genre; the realistic novel and chick lit. Emma Bovary loses her subjectivity and turns in to a passive object when she is desired and looked at by men. Instead dead objects gets animated, which produces an extremely objectifying portrait of Emma. This culminates with the depiction of her suicide. Surprisingly Emma’s position as a subject, if she ever has one, appears through her reading. The performativity of the texts gives her power and agency to try to change her life within the limits of the bourgeoisie marriage. The protagonists of Watermelon and Bridget Jones´s diary are two female subjects in a modern society, who loves reading. Despite their different opportunities to live fulfilling lives, as compared to Emma, they tend to objectify themselves in relationship to men. They also emphasize the importance of love and having a man in their life, which is according to the genre. Interpreted through Butler, an explanation could be that the power of submission not only sets the outer limits, it also influences our internal desires. These chick lit-novels also discuss literature and cultural hierarchy, where the protagonists tend to prefer popular literature. Watermelon also contains an opening for subversion, depicted by Claire’s achieved independency at the end of the novel, and through some gender-parodies. Most of all, these two chick lit-novels tend to reiterate and consolidate a traditional gender-order through their performativity, although ironizing over the same. Keywords: Reading, genre, realistic novel, chick lit, feminism, Judith Butler, subjectivity, performativity, Madame Bovary, Watermelon, Bridget Jones´s diary. / Uppsatsens syfte har varit att analysera och jämföra den kvinnliga protagonisten som subjekt och läsare i tre romaner; Madame Bovary, Vattenmelonen och Bridget Jones dagbok. Metoden har varit närläsning och den teoretiska ingången feministisk och normkritisk. Judit Butlers teorier har varit tongivande, inte minst begreppen subjekt och performativitet. Resultaten visade bland annat att Emma Bovary tenderar att förlora sin roll som subjekt och förvandlas till ett passivt objekt när hon blir betraktad och åtrådd av män. Istället animeras döda ting som får liv och börjar agera som subjekt, vilket skapar en extremt objektifierad gestaltning av Emma som kulminerar i gestaltningen av hennes självmord. Om det alls går att finna någon subjektsposition hos Emma, uppstår den paradoxalt nog genom hennes läsning. Texternas performativitet skapar förvisso orimliga förväntningar på kärleken, men får även Emma att förändra sitt liv inom de snäva ramar 1800-talets borgerliga äktenskap innebär. Protagonisterna i Vattenmelonen och Bridget Jones dagbok är två kvinnliga subjekt som lever i ett modernt samhälle och liksom Emma älskar de att läsa. I dessa romaner förs även en diskussion kring litteratur och kulturella hierarkier. Alla tre protagonister i de undersökta romanerna kan kategoriseras som passionerade läsare och de föredrar att läsa populärlitteratur. I Vattenmelonen och Bridget Jones dagbok har protagonisterna helt andra förutsättningar till självförverkligande och att leva ett självständigt liv, jämfört med Emma Bovary. Trots detta tenderar både Claire och Bridget att objektifiera sig i sina relationer till män. De verbaliserar ofta vikten av kärlek och att ha en man i sitt liv, vilket också är genretypiskt. Tolkat enligt Butler (och Foucault) är förklaringen till detta ”frivilliga” förtryck att underordning inte enbart skapas genom yttre begränsningar, utan även genom påverkan av människors inre, via internaliserade drömmar och önskningar. I Vattenmelonen finns trots allt en subversiv ansats, vilken gestaltas genom Claires nyvunna självständighet i slutet av romanen, samt i förekomsten av ett antal genusparodier. Mest av allt tenderar dock dessa två chick lit-romaner att återupprepa och befästa traditionella genusmönster, trots att de samtidigt ironiserar över dessa.

This literature review aims to investigate, expose and explain August Strindberg's religious position in his partly autobiographical work Inferno, published in Swedish in 1897, in relation to Peter Berger's socialization theory. Strindberg says in the beginning of Inferno that he goes from being an atheist, occultist and Swedenborgian to finally return to his ancestral religion, Christianity. This is questionable, as Strindberg seems to be religious in its atheistic era, and occultist during his Christian period. Strindberg's own religious views seem not always match what he portrays, compared to what he writes in his correspondence and diary entries. This literature review aims to highlight the influences of Strindberg affected to clarify his religiosity which is implicitly and explicitly depicted in Inferno. This thematic epicanalysis has revealed several religious perplexities which Strindberg depicted in his literary works. Strindberg describes in the beginning of the work his alchemy and the occult tendencies that flourish around him and how it affects his scientific experiments. There is a time where Strindberg feels anxious and extremely mentally ill, something that gets better as Strindberg learns Emanuel Swedenborg's religion. Inferno ends with a description of Strindberg's conversion to Christianity, which has sought to be explained by various researchers.

This thesis examines the character of the unhappy bride in three French novels of the 19th century: Le Lys dans la vallee (1836) by Honore de Balzac, Madame Bovary (1857) by Gustave Flaubert and L'Assommoir (1877) by Emile Zola. It compares the heroines' tragic destinies based on the following points: childhood; education; marriage; the philosophy of love and psychology; and escapism and death. We are shown that it is education that leads to the philosophy of love, which is filled with ideas of platonic love, and that unhappy marriages involve compensation. Research by psychoanalyst Karen Horney is applied to the characters found in the novels to explain their deviant behaviour (masochism, bovarism, narcissism, detachment). Each heroine demonstrates a tendency towards the ideal and illusions inherited from romanticism. Their fates are sealed with the failure of their dreams and the victory of reality over fantasy.

This thesis is a study of the ways in which the fear of death, and its natural consequence, the desire for immortality, is manifested in the major characters of three post-Romantic works. In each case, the fear of death is unconscious, and has to "be interpreted from the dreams and illusions of the characters, which may not appear to have any immediate connection with death or immortality. In Madame Bovary, the blind man is the symbolic antithesis of Emma's dreams of finding a means of transcendence within the world itself. He is the embodiment of the horrifying vision of biological process that lies at the heart of her flight from reality. The pharmacist, Homais, is also considered to be attempting to establish a symbolic form of immortality for himself through the glorification of his reputation and his sentimental belief in scientific progress. In Niels Lyhne, the young hero attempts to free himself from the romantic influences of his childhood by proclaiming a new philosophy that is based, on atheism. However, his temperamental attachment to the idea of "infinity", and his inability to accept the physical nature of human beings betray his unconscious desire for a state of being in which he will be invulnerable to the forces of aging and death. In John Gabriel Borkman the three major characters attempt to find a means of denying the inevitability of their approaching deaths. Borkman tries to gain control over the forces of life through the exercise of power and through an identification with rocks and metal that seem to hold the promise of conferring their immutability onto him. Borkman's wife wants her son to devote his life to the glorification of the name of Borkman, that her husband has dishonoured. She hopes that her idealized self-image will live on"in the "monument" that Erhart will "erect" to the family name. Ella Rentheim, her sister, also plans to use Erhart for the establishment of a symbolic form of immortality, by trying to persuade him to adopt her family name after she has died. The method of this thesis could be applied to works from any age of literature, but I have chosen the nineteenth century because of the particular social and intellectual influences that existed in Europe after the Enlightenment'. All the artistic movements of the nineteenth century were conditioned by the legacy of metaphysical uncertainty that the religious skepticism of the Age of Reason had bequeathed to the future. In these three works, the characters devote the same religious fervour to the worldly objects of their desires as, formerly, man had devoted to God. The unconscious hope in all their attempts is that they will discover a means of being delivered from death. / Arts, Faculty of / English, Department of / Graduate

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