<p>The French Revolution was a turning point towards a republican culture and morality. Merging sociology, and gender studies, historians are addressing the era’s new social structure and the political activism of women. They draw attention to the women’s political revolutionary organizations, awareness and experience that confronted male dominated society. However, while investigating revolutionary prisons, they neglect to examine the issue of gender. This dissertation addresses this lacuna to demonstrate that through the experience of prison, the incarcerated women of the revolutionary period find meaning, relive past events, but also forge new identities as they develop new political competencies behind bars.</p><p>The 18^th century prison literature examined here is unique not only because it is written by women for women, but because its narratives contrast and take place in two political regimes. The prison writings, as political and intellectual heritage, and as a response to gender marginalization, provide a historical framework and political legacy of women’s fight for their rights, and a quest for identity. Marie-Antoinette and Madame Roland are two women prisoners, with different social and educational backgrounds, who wrote letters and memoirs respectively. Their prison writings which cross political, social, spatial and temporal boundaries affirm the importance of women in building a new nation and a new modern philosophical era. </p><p><br></p><p>La Révolution française était un tournant vers la culture et la morale républicaines. À la lumière des études sociohistoriques et des études de genre les historiens accordent une attention particulière à une nouvelle structure sociale et à l’activisme politique des femmes. Ils examinent des organisations politiques révolutionnaires, la conscience et l’expérience des femmes qui ont confronté la société dominée par les hommes. Cependant, leurs études sur l’univers carcéral négligent de soulever la question du genre. La prison a permis aux femmes non seulement de trouver le sens de leur existence, de revivre les événements passés, mais aussi d'établir une identité et de guider leur compétence politique derrière les barreaux.</p><p>La littérature de prison du XVIII^èmesiècle est particulière, non seulement parce qu’elle est écrite par les femmes pour les femmes, mais parce que sa thématique se contraste et se place dans deux régimes politiques. En tant qu’héritage politique et intellectuel et en réponse à la marginalisation des sexes, elle fournit un cadre historique de la lutte des femmes pour leurs droits. Les écrits carcéraux qui manifestent la quête identitaire des prisonnières, dépassent les frontières politiques et sociales, spatiales et temporelles, en affirmant l’importance des femmes dans la construction d'une nouvelle nation et d'une nouvelle ère philosophique moderne.</p><p><br></p>

Notre thèse de doctorat propose une analyse d’inspiration freudienne des œuvres romanesques du marquis de Sade. Elle relève, plus précisément, de la psychobiographie en ce qu’elle privilégie l’analyse des conflits des écrivains avec leurs parents, et les traumatismes psychiques subséquents. L’œuvre et l’écriture de Sade sont les résultats de nombreux facteurs : enfance multi-pathogène, personnalité borderline multi-pathologique (perverse et psychopathique), multi-récidiviste, incarcérations ou internements dans des asiles. Parmi tous ces paramètres psycho-socio-pathologiques, la prison est celui qui a aggravé, sous la forme d’une psychose carcérale réactionnelle, ses tendances morbides et la violence de son écriture. Se sentant menacé par une évolution de sa personnalité vers une psychose structurelle, Sade tente de prendre ses distances, en les rendant absurdes, avec les représentations pulsionnelles délirantes qu’il obtient grâce à ses rêves et à ses rêveries. C’est à ce moment-là qu’interviennent les procédés cathartiques et thérapeutiques de l’humour et/ou du comique pervers. Grâce à ces procédés symboliques, qu’il a mis au point dans sa correspondance avec sa femme et avec « Milly », l’une de ses amies, Sade se met en scène, lui et ses objets sexuels, dans des fantasmatiques pré-œdipiennes. Plus les décalages avec l’esthétique des réalités sexuelles œdipiennes (ou génitales) sont importants, plus l’humour pervers peut surgir. Grâce à l’humour pervers, Sade peut mimer une victoire narcissique illusoire. L’humour pervers facilite l’assassinat psychique, affectif et moral des lecteurs. Nous avons terminé notre étude en proposant l’analyse d’une forme extrême d’humour pervers, l’humour pervers nécrophile. / Our doctoral thesis suggests a Freudian analysis of Marquis de Sade novels. Our analysis is more precisely a work of psychobiography, which favours writers’ conflicts with their parents, and the subsequent psychological traumas. Sade novels and writing are the results of many parameters : a multi-pathogen childhood, a multi-pathological borderline personality (psychopathic and perverse), being a multi-recidivist, imprisonment or internment in asylums. Among all those psycho-socio-pathological parameters, prison, is the one that worsened his morbid tendencies and the violence of his writing, thus creating a prison psychosis. Threatened by the development of his personality towards a structural psychosis, Sade attempts to distance himself from those parameters, making them absurd, crazy instinctual representations coming from his dreams and reveries. The cathartic and therapeutic methods of humour and/or perverse comic played a part at that very moment. Owing to these symbolic methods he has developed in his correspondence with his wife and with « Milly », one of his friends, Sade stages himself and his sexual objects in pre-Oedipal fantasies. The stranger the aesthetics of Oedipal (or genital) sexuality are, the funnier it becomes. By means of perverse humour, Sade manages to mimic an illusory narcissistic victory. The perverse humour facilitates the psychic, emotional and moral murders of his readers. We completed our study by providing an analysis of an extreme form of perverse humour, necrophiliac perverse humour.

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This thesis examines works written about imprisonment by four South African political prison writers who were incarcerated for political reasons. My Introduction focuses on current research and literature available on the subject of political prison-writing and it justifies the study to be undertaken. Chapter One examines the National Party's policy pertaining to the holding of political prisoners and discusses the work of Michel Foucault on the subject of imprisonment as well as the connection he makes between knowledge and power. This chapter also considers the factors that motivate a prisoner to write. Bearing in mind Foucault's findings, Chapters Two to Five undertake detailed studies of La Guma's The Stone Country, Dennis Brutus's Letters to Martha, Hugh Lewin's Bandiet and Breyten Breytenbach's The True Confessions of an Albino Terrorist, respectively. Particular emphasis is placed on the reaction of these writers against a repressive government. In addition, Chapters Two to Five reflect on the way in which imprisonment affected them from a psychological point of view, and on the manner in which they were, paradoxically, empowered by their prison experience. Chapters Four and Five also consider capital punishment and Lewin and Breytenbach's response to living in a hanging jail. I contemplate briefly the works of Frantz Fanon in the conclusion in order to elaborate on the reasons for the failure of the system of apartheid and the policy of political imprisonment and to reinforce my argument. / English Studies / D. Litt. et Phil. (English)

This thesis examines works written about imprisonment by four South African political prison writers who were incarcerated for political reasons. My Introduction focuses on current research and literature available on the subject of political prison-writing and it justifies the study to be undertaken. Chapter One examines the National Party's policy pertaining to the holding of political prisoners and discusses the work of Michel Foucault on the subject of imprisonment as well as the connection he makes between knowledge and power. This chapter also considers the factors that motivate a prisoner to write. Bearing in mind Foucault's findings, Chapters Two to Five undertake detailed studies of La Guma's The Stone Country, Dennis Brutus's Letters to Martha, Hugh Lewin's Bandiet and Breyten Breytenbach's The True Confessions of an Albino Terrorist, respectively. Particular emphasis is placed on the reaction of these writers against a repressive government. In addition, Chapters Two to Five reflect on the way in which imprisonment affected them from a psychological point of view, and on the manner in which they were, paradoxically, empowered by their prison experience. Chapters Four and Five also consider capital punishment and Lewin and Breytenbach's response to living in a hanging jail. I contemplate briefly the works of Frantz Fanon in the conclusion in order to elaborate on the reasons for the failure of the system of apartheid and the policy of political imprisonment and to reinforce my argument. / English Studies / D. Litt. et Phil. (English)