Este estudo analisa três obras dramáticas de Sam Shepard: Curse of the Starving Class, Buried Child e Fool for Love dentro do contexto de sua obsessão compartilhada com o sonho americano sobre uma família harmoniosa mostrando um desvio do sonho o que também é predominante em peças de dramaturgos americanos, como O\'Neill e Miller, que antecedem Sam Shepard. Este estudo também investiga o conceito da identidade americana nas peças. Entre os trabalhos do dramaturgo Sam Shepard encontramos três peças que exploram o que significa ser o membro de uma família do meio oeste americano. Em Curse of the Starving Class, Buried Child, Shepard retrata a dor ecoando dentro do círculo familiar. Assim como os trabalhos iniciais de Shepard, essas peças familiares se revelam com um forte elemento biográfico, nascidas das experiências pessoais e persistentes preocupações do dramaturgo; através das peças, ele examina e reexamina o sistema familiar multigeracional do qual ele é oriundo. Por exemplo, o alcoolismo do pai e a forma como os pais são construídos em suas peças, a partir de uma perspectiva pessoal, são muito mais do que simples características das personagens, são uma condição que afeta a todos os personagens, seu relacionamento interpessoal e seus destinos. Além disso, podemos observar que o sonho americano, e sua relação com essa instabilidade familiar é um dos temas recorrentes nos dramas escritos pelo autor. Outra intenção deste estudo é, num primeiro momento analisar, o sonho americano sob uma perspectiva histórica para definir suas múltiplas facetas desde os tempos coloniais até o século XX, tal como apresentado no drama; em segundo lugar em um nível temático para identificar os vários temas que Sam Shepard usa em suas peças, tais como laços familiares adulterados, alienação, incapacidade de se comunicar, a violência, a relação esposa-amante surreal, e a busca de identidade e assim definir como eles impedem a realização do sonho; em terceiro lugar, as características usadas por Sam Shepard, que servem para apresentar as peças como instâncias do sonho de uma família harmoniosa tornando-se um pesadelo.Na peça Fool for Love analiso também a tirania exercida pela família sobre as vidas das suas crianças crescidas. De 1977 até 1985, Shepard distancia-se da aceitação fatalística e desse modo revela mudanças tanto na perspectiva autoral como no ambiente social. Como ele faz frequentemente em seus trabalhos, Shepard reflete o comportamento de uma época. / This study analyzes three dramatic works of Sam Shepard: Curse of the Starving Class, Buried Child and Fool for Love within the context of their shared obsession with the American dream of a harmonious family showing a deviation of the dream which is also predominant in plays of American playwrights such as O\'Neill and Miller, preceding Sam Shepard. This study also investigates the concept of American identity in the plays. Among the works of playwright Sam Shepard there are three plays that explore what it means to be a member of a family in the U.S. Midwest. In Curse of the Starving Class, Buried Child, Shepard portrays the pain echoing within the family. As the initial work of Shepard, these family plays reveal themselves with a strong biographical element, born of personal experience and persistent concerns of the playwright, through the plays, he examines and reviews the multigenerational family system of which he also derives from. For example, the father\'s alcoholism and how the fathers of his plays are constructed from a personal perspective are much more than simple features of the characters, it is a condition that affects all the characters, their relationships and their interpersonal destinations. In addition, we note that the American dream and its relationship with that family instability is one of the recurring themes in dramas written by the author. Another aim of this study is, at first look at the American dream from a historical perspective to define its many facets from colonial times to the twentieth century, as depicted in the drama, and secondly on a thematic level to identify the various themes Sam Shepard uses in his plays, such as family ties tampered with, alienation, inability to communicate, violence, wife-lover surreal relationship, and the search for identity and to define how they prevent the fulfillment of the \'dream\', and finally, the features used by Sam Shepard, which serve to make the plays as instances of the \'dream\' of a harmonious family becoming a nightmare. In the play Fool for Love we also analyze the tyranny exercised by the family on the lives of their grown children. From 1977 until 1985, Shepard is away from the fatalistic acceptance and thereby reveals changes in both the authorial perspective and the social environment. As he does often in his work, Shepard reflects the behavior of an era.

Este estudo analisa três obras dramáticas de Sam Shepard: Curse of the Starving Class, Buried Child e Fool for Love dentro do contexto de sua obsessão compartilhada com o sonho americano sobre uma família harmoniosa mostrando um desvio do sonho o que também é predominante em peças de dramaturgos americanos, como O\'Neill e Miller, que antecedem Sam Shepard. Este estudo também investiga o conceito da identidade americana nas peças. Entre os trabalhos do dramaturgo Sam Shepard encontramos três peças que exploram o que significa ser o membro de uma família do meio oeste americano. Em Curse of the Starving Class, Buried Child, Shepard retrata a dor ecoando dentro do círculo familiar. Assim como os trabalhos iniciais de Shepard, essas peças familiares se revelam com um forte elemento biográfico, nascidas das experiências pessoais e persistentes preocupações do dramaturgo; através das peças, ele examina e reexamina o sistema familiar multigeracional do qual ele é oriundo. Por exemplo, o alcoolismo do pai e a forma como os pais são construídos em suas peças, a partir de uma perspectiva pessoal, são muito mais do que simples características das personagens, são uma condição que afeta a todos os personagens, seu relacionamento interpessoal e seus destinos. Além disso, podemos observar que o sonho americano, e sua relação com essa instabilidade familiar é um dos temas recorrentes nos dramas escritos pelo autor. Outra intenção deste estudo é, num primeiro momento analisar, o sonho americano sob uma perspectiva histórica para definir suas múltiplas facetas desde os tempos coloniais até o século XX, tal como apresentado no drama; em segundo lugar em um nível temático para identificar os vários temas que Sam Shepard usa em suas peças, tais como laços familiares adulterados, alienação, incapacidade de se comunicar, a violência, a relação esposa-amante surreal, e a busca de identidade e assim definir como eles impedem a realização do sonho; em terceiro lugar, as características usadas por Sam Shepard, que servem para apresentar as peças como instâncias do sonho de uma família harmoniosa tornando-se um pesadelo.Na peça Fool for Love analiso também a tirania exercida pela família sobre as vidas das suas crianças crescidas. De 1977 até 1985, Shepard distancia-se da aceitação fatalística e desse modo revela mudanças tanto na perspectiva autoral como no ambiente social. Como ele faz frequentemente em seus trabalhos, Shepard reflete o comportamento de uma época. / This study analyzes three dramatic works of Sam Shepard: Curse of the Starving Class, Buried Child and Fool for Love within the context of their shared obsession with the American dream of a harmonious family showing a deviation of the dream which is also predominant in plays of American playwrights such as O\'Neill and Miller, preceding Sam Shepard. This study also investigates the concept of American identity in the plays. Among the works of playwright Sam Shepard there are three plays that explore what it means to be a member of a family in the U.S. Midwest. In Curse of the Starving Class, Buried Child, Shepard portrays the pain echoing within the family. As the initial work of Shepard, these family plays reveal themselves with a strong biographical element, born of personal experience and persistent concerns of the playwright, through the plays, he examines and reviews the multigenerational family system of which he also derives from. For example, the father\'s alcoholism and how the fathers of his plays are constructed from a personal perspective are much more than simple features of the characters, it is a condition that affects all the characters, their relationships and their interpersonal destinations. In addition, we note that the American dream and its relationship with that family instability is one of the recurring themes in dramas written by the author. Another aim of this study is, at first look at the American dream from a historical perspective to define its many facets from colonial times to the twentieth century, as depicted in the drama, and secondly on a thematic level to identify the various themes Sam Shepard uses in his plays, such as family ties tampered with, alienation, inability to communicate, violence, wife-lover surreal relationship, and the search for identity and to define how they prevent the fulfillment of the \'dream\', and finally, the features used by Sam Shepard, which serve to make the plays as instances of the \'dream\' of a harmonious family becoming a nightmare. In the play Fool for Love we also analyze the tyranny exercised by the family on the lives of their grown children. From 1977 until 1985, Shepard is away from the fatalistic acceptance and thereby reveals changes in both the authorial perspective and the social environment. As he does often in his work, Shepard reflects the behavior of an era.

L’oeuvre de Wieslaw Mysliwski, auteur connu et primé de la littérature contemporaine polonaise, tire ses racines de la culture paysanne traditionnelle. La clef anthropologique d’analyse de cette oeuvre semble être la plus efficace pour présenter les contenus et la mécanique de cette culture. Même si elle est encore proche dans le temps cette culture n’en est pas moins éloignée des enjeux de la modernité d’un Polonais du XXIème siècle.La mémoire collective du monde paysan suscite un vrai questionnement quant à ses voies, son exercice et ses contenus. Elle se niche dans trois couches de l’activité humaine : biologique, sociale et culturelle. L’analyse éthologique montre que la mémoire du monde paysan se révèle dans le rapport de l’homme aux animaux et dans le conditionnement de l’homme par ses gènes - lien indestructible entre les humains. L’approche sociologique révèle la stéréotypie des comportements humains dans l’interaction sociale, ce qui contribue au caractère universel des écrits de Wieslaw Mysliwski. Le monde paysan traditionnel y est magnifié par la façon dont est présenté l’imaginaire de la campagne polonaise. La pensée mythique donne structure et dynamique à sa configuration. L’oeuvre de Wieslaw Mysliwski illustre le passage de la société traditionnelle communautaire vers la société moderne individualiste. Son originalité consiste en la découverte d’un processus : les personnages de Wieslaw Mysliwski, après être passés par la société moderne, retournent à leur source paysanne pour s’y reconstituer en tant qu’individus qui arrivent à synthétiser en eux les valeurs traditionnelles et modernes. L’oeuvre de Wieslaw Mysliwski est un monument de mémoire de la campagne polonaise, dans le sens où elle est une proposition féconde des moyens de préservation et de fonctionnement de cette culture par sa dynamique créatrice propre. / Literary art of Wieslaw Mysliwski, a famous prize-winning contemporary Polish author, is deepely rooted inthe Polish peasant culture and its ancient traditions. Taking that fact into account, an anthropological approachof textual analysis is probably the one which can present the contents of this culture and explain its functioningmost clearly. Though close in time, for it's nearly our contemporary, peasant culture is, at the same time, faraway because of the gap between its values and those modern Polish men and women look up to. The moststriking element of the peasant culture is its collective memory, a puzzling phenomenon as to its ways, itscontents and its workings, operating in three layers, each delving deeper into human nature: the cultural stratus,the social one and, finally, the organic core which is the deepest of them all. The ethological approach revealsthe fact that the collective memory is linked to the way men treat animals and the way genetic heritage, thatlink one cannot destroy, frames their behaviour. As for the sociological approach, the latter deals with theexamples of stock behaviour in social interaction. That gives a universal dimension to Wieslaw Mysliwski'swriting. His craftsmanship consists in magnifying the traditional rural world by the way he depicts its capacityof generating transcendence. Mythical thinking gives structure and dynamics to its layout. WieslawMysliwski's writing deals with the transition from the traditional society, defined by the tight group links, tothe modern individualistic one. His originality resides in discovering that in order to become a person in hisown right, an individual needs both modernity and tradition. Thus, the characters Mysliwski portraits alwaysreturn to the peasant traditions to resource themselves. Wieslaw Mysliwski's literary art can be regarded as atribute to the Polish peasant culture as it reveals its capacity of constant rebirth. It is a sanctuary dedicated tothe memory of the Polish rural world.

L’imaginaire contemporain a vu naître une esthétique du fragment qui se caractérise par la dissolution du sujet en quête d’identité dans un monde privé de stabilité et de repères au lendemain du traumatisme suscité par la guerre et la menace nucléaire. Le déni du principe de linéarité, les jeux de l’intertextualité et de l’intergénéricité de même que l’éclatement des schémas de représentation qui sous-tendent les romans réalistes traditionnels favorisent le déploiement des grilles de lecture interprétative au détriment de l’harmonisation des discours. Cette thèse, qui couvre l’intégralité de la fiction fowlesienne depuis 1963, se propose de diagnostiquer les symptômes de la crise ainsi postulée, par le prisme d’une étude (méta)textuelle, narratologique, linguistique, philosophique, mythocritique et psychanalytique. Il s’agit de voir comment l’auteur, les narrateurs et les protagonistes mis en scène envisagent de résoudre leur conflit existentiel et de réintégrer le réel dont ils se sont peu à peu désolidarisés. Ces derniers peuvent choisir de disloquer le réel pour mieux l’apprivoiser et pouvoir ensuite se l’approprier ou encore de recoller les fragments éparpillés en projetant leur moi à travers une identité fictive idéale pour retrouver le chemin de leur individuation. Une telle évolution du dissensus au consensus traduit la veine humaniste d’une œuvre qui s’efforce non seulement de faire renouer l’individu avec son moi authentique mais aussi de le réconcilier avec les autres dans un univers qui gagne en cohérence. / The contemporary imaginary has given rise to an aesthetics of fragmentation which is characterized by the dissolution of the self in search of an identity in a world deprived of stability and landmarks soon after the trauma caused by the war and nuclear threat. The refusal to follow the principle of linearity, together with the play involved in intertextuality and intergenericity, the disruption of representational patterns underlying traditional realistic novels, favour the display of reader responses at the expense of the harmony of utterances. This thesis, which covers the whole of Fowles’s fiction since 1963, aims at diagnosing the symptoms of the aforementioned crisis by means of a study including metatextual, narratorial, linguistic, philosophical, mythocritical and psychoanalytical tools. We will see how the author, the narrators, the protagonists on stage consider coming to terms with their existential conflicts and returning to a reality they have progressively dissociated themselves from. The latter can either choose to disintegrate the « real » in order to get a better apprehension of it and then to put the scattered fragments together again so as to appropriate them, while projecting their selves through an ideal and a fictional identity, which paves the way for their individuation. Such an evolution from dissensus to consensus conveys the humanistic vein of a work which endeavours not only to have the individual take up with his/her more authentic self but also to reconcile him/her with the others within a universe gaining in coherence.

La fragmentation et l’aliénation, thèmes récurrents dans la littérature postcoloniale, sont représentées par le contenu et la forme des œuvres étudiées dans cette recherche. Dans un cadre historique et fictionnel, les romans postcoloniaux de Chinua Achebe et de V.S. Naipaul inscrivent le postcolonisé fragmenté et aliéné dans des lieux et des milieux différents. La quête identitaire de ce dernier, entre tradition et modernisation, a déclenché son déracinement. En effet, tiraillé entre l’Occident et l’Orient, le postcolonisé, dans les romans de ces deux écrivains, est aliéné géographiquement et culturellement, ce qui explique son instabilité et sa quête identitaire interminable. L’espace dans le roman postcolonial est fragmenté pour aliéner davantage le postcolonisé qui cherche à mettre fin à cette aliénation. La double culture – orientale et occidentale – participe non seulement à la perte d’identité culturelle, mais aussi à celle des personnages. À la rencontre de l’Autre ou de l’Occidental, les personnages achibiens et naipauliens essayent de cacher leur « peau noire » avec un « masque blanc » par le biais du mimétisme de cet Autre. Cette littérature est distinguée par son métissage, son intertextualité ainsi que son aspect linguistique qui font d’elle une littérature dialogique avec la littérature occidentale et notamment la littérature coloniale. Une telle littérature indigène, exprimée dans une langue étrangère, reflète un attachement et un détachement. La non-linéarité joue un rôle important dans cette fiction, vu que les récits sont décomposés et fragmentés tout comme les personnages. C’est ainsi qu’on peut dire que selon des thématiques et des stylistiques divers que ces deux écrivains postcoloniaux ont réussi à présenter au lecteur la fragmentation et l’aliénation du postcolonisé dans son milieu et son ère. / Fragmentation and alienation: recurring themes in the postcolonial literature, are represented by the content and the form of the studied literary works in this research. Within a historical and fictional setting, the novels of Chinua Achebe and V.S. Naipaul set the fragmented and alienated postcolonial figures in different places and surroundings. The quest for identity of these postcolonial figures, between tradition and modernization, has caused their uprooting. In fact, in the novels of these two writers, the postcolonial figures, who are torn between the Occident and the Orient, are geographically and culturally alienated. Hence, they are unstable and are in a never-ending quest. The setting in the postcolonial novel is itself fragmented so that it alienates more the postcolonial figures who try to make an end to this alienation. The double culture – oriental and occidental – does not only participate in losing the cultural identity, but also in losing the figures’ ones. While meeting the Other or the Occidental, the characters of Achebe and Naipaul try to hide their « black skin » under a « white mask » through the mimicry of this Other. This literature stands out by its hybridization, its intertextuality, as well as its linguistic aspect, which has turned into a dialogic literature, in a discourse with the occidental literature and notably the colonial one. Such an indigenous literature, revealed in a foreign language, shows an attachment and a detachment. The non-linearity plays an important role in this fiction, given that the tales are distorted and fragmented like the major characters of these stories. In this way, one can say that through varied thematic and stylistic features these two postcolonial writers have succeeded in presenting to readers the alienation and fragmentation of postcolonial figures within their surroundings and in their era.

This study of Canadian adventure romance for adolescents seeks to demonstrate the cultural significance of the genre through close readings of James Houston's Frozen Fire and The White Archer, Monica Hughes's Hunter in the Dark and Ring-Rise, Ring-Set, as well as Markoosie's Harpoon of the Hunter. By means of a semiotic-structuralist approach I examine the texts as a signifying system conveying discourses that constitute a code of connection to the social context of contemporary young-adult readers.Structured on the formula: separation-initiation-return and informed by the symbolism of death-rebirth, the stories hold out the promise of a life-enhancing return. Roland Barthes's definition of myth as a mode of signification underpins my discussion of how the narrative conventions become vehicles of existential truths by replicating and intensifying adventurous experiences. With the quest for identity and the polarization between two worlds as structural determinants, the selected books juxtapose the values of Western civilization with those expressed through the Canadian North and its indigenous population. As a defining category of Canadian identity, the northern wilderness provides the space and the challenges for the protagonists' initiatory experiences. My application of the dichotomy self-other to the selected books provides a number of polarized positions such as civilization-wilderness, white-native, male-female, and conscious-unconscious, polarities through which the different discursive levels of the texts are generated. Arguably, the formulaic character of the journeys into the unknown allows the stories to signify on various levels, thus inviting both psychological and ideological readings of the texts.It is primarily through a recycling of narrative conventions that Houston and Hughes invest their work with significance. By focusing on the structural and thematic similarities of adventure romance, my examination attempts to elucidate the parallels to mythic adventure and archaic rites of initiation with the aim of validating the role of the genre as symbolic representations of the process of maturation and vicarious rites of passage. The conclusions I draw have a bearing on much of Houston's and Hughes's fiction, on the genre of romance as a whole, and to some extent on the adjacent genres of fantasy and science fiction. / <p>Behandlar James Houston, Monica Hughes och Markoosie.</p> / digitalisering@umu