The purpose of the present study is to examine the signification of identitary discourses in the novel Sefarad: Una novela de novelas by Antonio Muñoz Molina and determine to what extent these discourses represent and respond to identitary discourses in contemporary Spanish society. The analysis focuses on three principal questions: how is the narrative constructed, what is conveyed as a result, and what is the aim of the narrative. Identity is understood as a social construction, an individual and continuous process of assuming, defining, negotiating and maintaining cultural identities, elements of the surrounding world that provide the individual with a sense of meaning (Fromm 1956; Castiñeira 2005; Marsella 2008). The novel consists of different stories that manifest the social impact of the totalitarian regimes in Europe during the twentieth century, told by a diversity of voices. First, the analysis deals with the structure of the text, examined through the model of mise en abyme (Dällenbach 1989). Secondly, the significations of transition, transgression (Lotman 1978) and, analogically, stigmatization are deduced (Goffman 1972), processes that are related to the effects of the frontier as a metaphor (Pratt Ewing 1998) and to limit situations (Jaspers 1974). Thirdly, the study stresses the representation of the past, in which trauma, melancholy and mourning are significant (Benjamin 1992; Freud 1986). The conclusions confirm the claim that the novel corresponds to humanity’s treasure of suffering (Leidschatz), a cultural possession that thematizes the processes of memory and oblivion (Assmann 1999), represented through stories told by the victims of intolerance at different levels. The text is accordingly conceived as a mirror through which the narrator constructs his identity as a writer and transmits meaning to the reader by providing the opportunity to reflect upon identity issues today.

Lucy Snowe, the heroine of <i>Villette</i>, Charlotte Brontës final novel, is in constant conflict with the dichotomies of patriarchal culture. As she is perpetually torn between the opposing forces of patriarchy, Lucy Snowe inhabits what she calls her own <i>still shadow-world</i> (Brontë164). This thesis explains the nature of the intermediate space Lucy Snowe occupies and examines its repercussions on her mental state. Chapter One theorizes the effect of patriarchal dichotomies on Lucy Snowe to demonstrate that her mental conflict has its roots in the female experience of the opposition between nature and culture. Chapter Twos analysis of the nineteenth-century medical understanding of madness shows that Lucy Snowes melancholy is a symptom of the intermediacy created by conflicting patriarchal expectations. Chapter Three compares Lucy Snowe to the female figure in patriarchal master narratives, which draws attention to the serious consequences of patriarchal culture on women and demonstrates that Lucy is representative of women in conflict with patriarchal expectations. Ultimately, as part of Charlotte Brontës endeavor to represent truth rather than reality, Villette challenges patriarchal expectations of women and presents a different vision of womanhood.

Lucy Snowe, the heroine of <i>Villette</i>, Charlotte Brontës final novel, is in constant conflict with the dichotomies of patriarchal culture. As she is perpetually torn between the opposing forces of patriarchy, Lucy Snowe inhabits what she calls her own <i>still shadow-world</i> (Brontë164). This thesis explains the nature of the intermediate space Lucy Snowe occupies and examines its repercussions on her mental state. Chapter One theorizes the effect of patriarchal dichotomies on Lucy Snowe to demonstrate that her mental conflict has its roots in the female experience of the opposition between nature and culture. Chapter Twos analysis of the nineteenth-century medical understanding of madness shows that Lucy Snowes melancholy is a symptom of the intermediacy created by conflicting patriarchal expectations. Chapter Three compares Lucy Snowe to the female figure in patriarchal master narratives, which draws attention to the serious consequences of patriarchal culture on women and demonstrates that Lucy is representative of women in conflict with patriarchal expectations. Ultimately, as part of Charlotte Brontës endeavor to represent truth rather than reality, Villette challenges patriarchal expectations of women and presents a different vision of womanhood.

本文從舞鶴的作品出發，試圖以「頹廢意識」作為核心概念概括舞鶴的創作內涵。頹廢意識一詞起源於對於現代性的反省，演變為一種藝術風格，在尼采身上被深化，成為一個哲學詞彙，包含廣義社會學與心理學的描述，同時是現代性的象徵也是批判現代性的工具，以單子的面貌，指出人性的病徵與道德的虛偽。舞鶴的作品始於個體自由的追逐，不僅人物展現頹廢的風格，也在作品中飽含單子化的特色與現代國家軍隊的規訓體制的批判，從家族史的書寫意圖出發，伴隨著解構理體中心的衝動，藉由因母逝而開始運作的憂鬱與哀悼的心理過程，以及生之欲力與死亡驅力的爭鬥，還有對消失的父親的模仿與取代，醞釀為〈拾骨〉與〈悲傷〉中成熟的創作主體。本文並進一步從〈悲傷〉的分裂主體，帶出小說背後鄉土文學論戰產生的國族論述對抗與本土文化的興起與僵化，並藉由小說中從瘋狂與理性的拉扯開始，帶出舞鶴小說瘋狂與頹廢的形象背後，隱含著從死亡的威脅逃生後的形象， 後半段本文以《餘生》作代表，探討舞鶴成熟後的頹廢意識，如何在對歷史的大敘事對抗中運作，舞鶴超出舊有漢人對原住民形象的描述，從整體歷史的顛覆出發，開啟對於國家敘事與現代性文明的質疑。本文從列維納斯的他者哲學作為核心，陳述《餘生》乃是對於現代大屠殺創傷的見證，藉由頹廢的書寫行為開啟過去與現在連結的可能，打破倖存者的沉默，拯救放逐之地的餘生。由此診斷了現代社會的頹廢，找出廢墟裡的靈光，從自然與傳統中找到救贖的可能。

Mon projet de thèse démontre le rôle essentiel que tient la mélancolie dans les comédies de Shakespeare. J’analyse sa présence au travers de multiples pièces, des farces initiales, en passant par les comédies romantiques, jusqu’aux tragicomédies qui ponctuent les dernières années de sa carrière. Je dénote ainsi sa métamorphose au sein du genre comique, passant d’une représentation individuelle se rapportant à la théorie des humeurs, à un spectre émotionnel se greffant aux structures théâtrales dans lesquelles il évolue. Je suggère que cette progression s’apparent au cycle de joie et de tristesse qui forme la façon par laquelle Shakespeare dépeint l’émotion sur scène. Ma thèse délaisse donc les théories sur la mélancolie se rapportant aux humeurs et à la psychanalyse, afin de repositionner celle-ci dans un créneau shakespearien, comique, et historique, où le mot « mélancolie » évoque maintes définitions sur un plan social, scientifique, et surtout théâtrale. Suite à un bref aperçu de sa prévalence en Angleterre durant la Renaissance lors de mon introduction, les chapitres suivants démontrent la surabondance de mélancolie dans les comédies de Shakespeare. A priori, j’explore les façons par lesquelles elle est développée au travers de La Comedie des Erreurs et Peines d’Amour Perdues. Les efforts infructueux des deux pièces à se débarrasser de leur mélancolie par l’entremise de couplage hétérosexuels indique le malaise que celle-ci transmet au style comique de Shakespere et ce, dès ces premiers efforts de la sorte. Le troisième chapitre soutient que Beaucoup de Bruit pour Rien et Le Marchand de Venise offrent des exemples parangons du phénomène par lequel des personnages mélancoliques refusent de tempérer leurs comportements afin de se joindre aux célébrations qui clouent chaque pièce. La mélancolie que l’on retrouve ici génère une ambiguïté émotionnelle qui complique sa présence au sein du genre comique. Le chapitre suivant identifie Comme il vous plaira et La Nuit des Rois comme l’apogée du traitement comique de la mélancolie entrepris par Shakespeare. Je suggère que ces pièces démontrent l’instant où les caractérisations corporelles de la mélancolie ne sont plus de mise pour le style dramatique vers lequel Shakespeare se tourne progressivement. Le dernier chapitre analyse donc Périclès, prince de Tyr et Le Conte d’Hiver afin de démontrer que, dans la dernière phase de sa carrière théâtrale, Shakespeare a recours aux taxonomies comiques élucidées ultérieurement afin de créer une mélancolie spectrale qui s’attardent au-delà des pièces qu’elle hante. Cette caractérisation se rapporte aux principes de l’art impressionniste, puisqu’elle promeut l’abandon de la précision au niveau du texte pour favoriser les réponses émotionnelles que les pièces véhiculent. Finalement, ma conclusion démontre que Les Deux Nobles Cousins représente la culmination du développement de la mélancolie dans les comédies de Shakespeare, où l’incarnation spectrale du chapitre précèdent atteint son paroxysme. La nature collaborative de la pièce suggère également un certain rituel transitif entre la mélancolie dite Shakespearienne et celle développée par John Fletcher à l’intérieure de la même pièce. / My dissertation argues for a reconsideration of melancholy as an integral component of Shakespearean comedy. I analyse its presence across the comic canon, from early farcical plays through mature comic works, to the late romances that conclude Shakespeare’s career. In doing so, I denote its shift from an individual, humoural characterization to a more spectral incarnation that engrains itself in the dramatic fabric of the plays it inhabits. Ultimately, its manifestation purports to the cyclical nature of emotions and the mixture of mirth and sadness that the aforementioned late plays put forth. The thesis repositions Shakespearean melancholy away from humoural, psychoanalytical and other theoretical frameworks and towards an early modern context, where the term “melancholy” channels a plethora of social, scientific, and dramatic meanings. After a brief overview of the prevalence of melancholy in early modern England, the following chapters attest to the pervasiveness of melancholy within Shakespeare’s comic corpus, suggesting that, rather than a mere foil to the spirits of mirth and revelry, it proves elemental to comic structures as an agent of dramatic progression that fundamentally alters its generic make-up. I initially consider the ways in which melancholy is developed in The Comedy of Errors and Love’s Labor’s Lost, as an isolated condition, easily dismissible by what I refer to as the symmetrical structure of comic resolution. In both plays, I suggest, the failure to completely eradicate melancholy translates into highly ambiguous comic conclusions that pave the way for subsequent comic works, where melancholy’s presence grows increasingly cumbersome. Chapter three reads Much Ado about Nothing and The Merchant of Venice as prime dramatic examples of the phenomenon by which prominent comic characters not only fail to offer a clear cause for their overwhelming melancholy, but refuse to mitigate it for the benefit of the plays at hand. The melancholy found here creates emotional loose ends from which a sense of malaise that will take full effect in later comedies emanates. In the next chapter, As You Like It and Twelfth Night are held as a landmark in Shakespeare’s treatment of comic melancholy. The chapter suggests that these plays complete the break from individual melancholic characterization, which no longer seem suitable to the comic style towards which Shakespeare progressively turns. Consequently, the final chapter undertakes an analysis of Pericles and The Winter’s Tale to demonstrate the fact that, in his concluding dramatic phase, Shakespeare returns to the comic taxonomies of melancholy in order to foster more forceful, lingering emotional impacts as a form of dramatic impressionism, a relinquishing of details in favour of more powerful emotional responses. In a brief coda, I read The Two Noble Kinsmen as the culmination of the dramatic treatment in melancholy in Shakespeare, where the spectral wistfulness that characterized the late plays reaches a breaking point. I suggest that the play bears witness to a passing of the torch, as it were, between the Shakespearean dramatization of melancholy and the one propounded by Fletcher, which was to become the norm within subsequent seventeenth-century tragicomic works.

The Culture of Sensibility permeates both Burney’s and Austen’s novels. Burney and Austen both use anomalous bodies and minds as a vehicle to explore the performative requirements of the Culture of Sensibility. The performance of disability, including bodily manifestations of nervous disorders, melancholy, and hypochondria, allows sensibility to become visible on the body. This dissertation examines the similarities between Burney’s and Austen’s portrayals of disability in order to understand how Austen’s texts engage and reflect Burney’s influence. Despite the frequency with which disability is necessary for the production of Sensibility, the connection between disability and Sensibility remains unexplored. This dissertation investigates the connection between various performances of disability with the Culture of Sensibility and exposes the narrative reliance on the anomalous body in both Burney’s and Austen’s novels. Through a combination of disability theory and performance theory, this dissertation examines the Culture of Sensibility’s reliance on the non-normative body for the performance of sentimental behaviour. Disability theory allows for the examination of the anomalous body beyond that of a strictly medical definition. Mansfield Park’s Fanny Price illustrates the difference between the medical and social construction of disability. Using only the medical model, Fanny’s debility represents her poor health; however, the social construction of disability connects Fanny’s debility to the fetishization of the anomalous body by the Culture of Sensibility. Disability features in Burney’s and Austen’s courtship narratives, as temporary physical and mental impairment provide opportunities for physical proofs of Sensibility, somatic communication of desire, and narrative resolution. Both Burney’s and Austen’s illness narratives of characters with permanent disabilities reveal concerns of the appropriation of the ii invalid’s favourable position within the Culture of Sensibility through an affected performance of disability. Male characters with temporary or permanent physical impairment suffer effeminization and exclusion from courtship narratives, whereas instances of female invalidism contribute to successful resolution of courtship narratives. I conclude that Burney’s and Austen’s reliance on the anomalous body to prove sensibility indicates that the late-eighteenth century sentimental novel normalizes the anomalous body.

Thesis (Ph. D. in Religion)--Vanderbilt University, May 2009. / Title from title screen. Includes bibliographical references.

Doctorat en philosophie et lettres / info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished

Cette thèse propose de mettre en rapport les enjeux soulevés par la thèse de la philosophe Judith Butler concernant la « mélancolie du genre » et l’œuvre autobiographique d’Hélène Cixous, travaillée depuis ses commencements par la question du deuil et de la différence sexuelle/genre. Dans ce travail, nous souhaitons montrer en effet que la démarche philosophique théorique de Judith Butler, qui relit les thèses freudiennes sur le deuil, la mélancolie et la formation du moi en montrant l’importance de la perte au cœur de l’identité sexuelle, trouve des résonances dans le travail d’écriture et de réécriture « autobiographique » d’Hélène Cixous. L’écrivain reconfigure de fait la notion classique d’autobiographie, tout son œuvre vie étant marqué par un mouvement fondamental qui consiste à reconnaître les deuils et les séparations ayant donné naissance à l’écriture, un mouvement qui consiste, autrement dit, à créer une archive de l’autre. La thèse comporte deux parties : la première partie théorique explique les enjeux qui sous-tendent la « mélancolie du genre » pensée par Judith Butler et les effets de cette mélancolie sur le corps et la sexualité ; les notions de travestissement et de performativité sont revisitées à partir des notions psychanalytiques d’identification et d’incorporation. Puisque la mélancolie du genre est le résultat de la non-reconnaissance des premiers attachements homosexuels, la nécessité de repenser le rapport au maternel, du point de vue féminin plus particulièrement, est posée ; les notions de sémiotique (Julia Kristeva) et de chôra (Jacques Derrida/ Julia Kristeva) ouvrent ici la voie et nous invitent à penser la mère du côté du mouvement et de l’altération, de la plasticité (Catherine Malabou). La seconde partie propose une traversée de l’œuvre d’Hélène Cixous, depuis Dedans (1968) jusqu’aux toutes récentes fictions analysées à partir de la question du deuil et de la notion freudienne de la substituabilité des objets. Sont examinées les formes de substitutions des pertes inaugurales que sont pour l’écrivaine le deuil du père et le deuil de l’Algérie, substitutions qui passent d’abord et avant tout par le travail signifiant. La question de l’humain est abordée par la figure de l’enfant mongolien, dont la naissance quarante ans avant son entrée dans l’œuvre est venue faire vaciller toutes les divisions caractérisant habituellement le sujet (féminin/masculin, humain/animal, vivant/mort), y compris celle, capitale, entre né et non-né. La notion d’incorporation mélancolique est également mobilisée pour explorer les métamorphoses et nombreuses transfigures animales de l’écrivaine, qui mettent en avant la plasticité du vivant mais non moins sa fragilité. Incontournable, la question de la mère et du maternel chez Cixous est analysée dans son rapport à l’écriture et à la langue : lieu de mouvement, support de transformation et de transsubstantiation mais aussi contenance, la langue chez Cixous fait mère. / This thesis proposes to make a link between the issues raised by Judith Butler regarding « gender melancholy » and Hélène Cixous’ autobiographical work, which has dealt from the start with the question of grief and sexual difference/gender. Our wish is to show how Judith Butler, in revisiting Freud’s theories on grief, melancholy and the formation of the ego, points out the importance of loss at the heart of sexual identity and finds resonance in Hélène Cixous’s « autobiographical » writings and rewritings. The writer, in fact, reconfigures the classical notion of what an autobiography is; her/his life-work is under the influence of a fundamental impulse seeking to identify the losses and separations which gave birth to the writing;an impulse which consists, in other words, in creating an archive of the other. The thesis is made up of two parts: the first part explains the issues underlying Judith Butler’s « gender melancholy »and the effects of this melancholy on body and sexuality; the concepts of transvestism and performative utterance are revisited based on notions of psychoanalytical identification and incorporation. The necessity to rethink the maternal relationship, especially from a feminine perspective, is posited. Notions of semiotics (Julia Kristeva) and of chôra (JacquesDerrida/Julia Kristeva) open the way and invite us to consider the mother from the angle of movement and modulation, of plasticity (Catherine Malabou). The second part offers a cross-section of Hélène Cixous’ work, starting from Dedans (1968) right up until her latest fiction, analyzed from the point of view of grief and the Freudian notion of the substitutability ofobjects. The initial losses, which for the writer mean mourning for a father and for Algeria, take on the form of substitutions which are found above all in the work of the signifiers. The human question is broached by the figure of the Down syndrome child whose birth forty years prior to appearing in the literary work, has come and put off balance the divisions which normally characterize the subject (feminine/masculine, human/animal, living/dead), including the crucial division between born and unborn. The notion of melancholic incorporation is also used to explore the metamorphoses and many animal transfigures of the writer, which highlight the plasticity of the living as well as its fragility. The unavoidable question of the mother and the maternal in Cixous is analyzed in its relation to writing and language: a place of movement, material for transformation and for transubstantiation, not to mention countenance. Language for Cixous enacts the mother.

De Nodier à Baudelaire, nombre de romantiques ont clamé leur désenchantement ou leur mélancolie ; on les a trop souvent pris au mot, oubliant « la puissance d'être à la fois soi et un autre » qui est la leur. Confrontés à un réel en voie d’uniformisation qu’ils méprisent ainsi qu’aux tourments d’une intériorité qu’ils découvrent duelle et déchirée, ils font du rire et de l’imagination, « reine des facultés », les leviers d’une résistance et d’une créativité renouvelée, cette dernière s’appuyant sur un recyclage humoristique de formes oubliées et visant à restaurer une sensibilité perdue tout en l’adaptant à leur époque. Ils inventent le fantastique moderne et font du rire le principe de son écriture. Le rire, paradoxal, y prend en charge les contradictions du réel et du langage, l’oblicité de l’ironie en révélant la réversibilité et la polysémie, dans un esprit malicieux et retors qui fait circuler partout, jusque sous les apparences les plus macabres les serpenteaux d’artifice du Witz. Le rire des fantastiqueurs n’est pas un rire « réduit » mais un rire intériorisé, un rire galvanisé par la découverte de l'épaisseur et de l'étrangeté des choses, un rire qui contribue à donner naissance à la bienveillance distanciée de l’humour moderne / From Nodier to Baudelaire, numerous romantic poets and writers claimed their disillusionment in human existence or their melancholy. Much too often, they have been taken at their words, one neglecting the ''power to be oneself and someone else at one and the same time” which was theirs and constituted their dual nature. Facing up a reality on its way to standardization, which they despised, as well astorments of their inner self which they experienced and felt as agonizingly dual and tornapart, they turned laughter and imagination, being “the most dignified faculty of mind”, into power of resistance and renewed creativity, the latter being based on a humorous adjustment and re-use of old forms, highlighting this way the revival of lost sensitivities while updating these to their time.They were the inventors of the modern fantastic literature and made out of laughter the principle of this new form of writing. There, laughter, paradoxical, takes on and assumes the internal contradictions of reality, the oblique and indirect nature of irony by disclosing the reversibility and the polysemy of their surrounding world, in a mischievous and cunning spirit which disseminates the pharaoh's serpent fireworks of the Witz all over the place, and which emit sparks even from the most macabre appearances such as the grim reaper of death.The laughter of the fantastic authors is not a "subdued" laughter, a restrained laughter, but an inner laughter, exalted by the consciousness of the density and weirdness as well as through the uncanny nature of things, a laughter which contributes to the emergenceof modern humor, because it takes a step back while paying benevolent attention to the other