Contemporary scholars seeking to increase Tuber Melanosporum truffle production rely almost exclusively on technological advancements to increase yields, while failing to place the cultivation of truffles, trufficulture, in its historical or local landscape contexts. In this dissertation, I describe how truffle scholars’ conceptualization of trufficulture and landscapes has changed over 150 years in France, while focusing on the French département of Lot. I examine changing relations between humans and nonhumans and how they impact truffle harvests. I analyzed the history of French trufficulture through a close reading of historic truffle manuals, archival research and the classification of remotely sensed images. Shifting from the past to the present, from July 2014-August 2016, I conducted semi-structured survey interviews with working truffle-growers (trufficulteurs) and participant observation at meetings of trufficulteurs, truffle hunts and truffle markets. I utilize actor-network theory (ANT) as both a theory and methodology. Actor-network theory allowed me to follow the impacts made by both humans and nonhumans on trufficulture. I found that truffle harvests in the 1880s dropped by 90%. Highly populated, intensively worked landscapes of viticulture, silvopastoralism and cereal cultivation created conditions suitable to truffles. By the 1870s the phylloxera aphid ravaged grapevines, which made trufficulture an important source of revenue. These advantageous conditions would not last. Post-WWI, yields fell for decades because of an ongoing rural population exodus and consequent agricultural abandonment, which promoted reforestation and closed canopy forests in Lot, France. By the 1960s, French trufficulteurs organized associations to share knowledge and promote local truffle markets to revive production. Trufficulteurs’ utilization of tractors, ‘inoculated’ plants and irrigation systems produced a new form of “modern” trufficulture. State subsidies helped trufficulteurs adopt “modern” practices, in hopes of increasing yields. “Modern” trufficulture has not dramatically increased yields. A few highly-capitalized trufficulteurs dominate production in Lot. Many others practice trufficulture as a hobby. Instead of relying on “modern” technological fixes, my findings suggest that trufficulteurs, farmers and states should reinvigorate extensive polyculture farming practices that maintain open canopy forests, which were beneficial to trufficulture in the past. Actor-network theory allowed me to rethink human and nonhuman relations, and to propose alternatives to “modern” trufficulture.

Cette thèse se propose d'étudier les Miracles de Nostre Dame par personnages en tant que corpus de réécritures dramatiques d'un répertoire assez important de contes hagiographiques et romanesques. La recherche, fondée sur une démarche essentiellement intertextuelle qui fait référence ponctuellement à un vaste corpus de textes de comparaison, est centrée sur deux axes. Il s'agit d'abord de vérifier si les réminiscences mythiques que les textes recèlent sont les simples résidus inertes d'une longue stratification ou s'ils s'organisent, au-delà de l'agencement rationnel de chaque récit, en faisant appel à une mémoire littéraire et mythico-folklorique et en se disposant dans des configurations assez cohérentes. Ensuite, il s'agit d'étudier le contexte de la mise en scène des Miracles, les éléments intrinsèque de l'écriture dramatique, et, par le biais de l'étude de quelques exemples significatifs, les formes de la représentation, qui semblent calquer et réadapter des formes de la théâtralité diffuse liées à des rites préchrétiens. Produits d'un imaginaire chrétien qu'ils contribuent à leur tour à façonner, les Miracles sont des pièces qui exemplifient le rôle de médiatrice universelle de la Vierge tout en évoquant une vision du monde lié au calendrier ancestral d'une culture « autre », qui fait surface dans l'écriture dramatique et dans la mise en scène, en renforçant et en amplifiant, en général, la portée du message édifiant. / This thesis propose to studying the Miracles de Nostre Dame par personnages as corpus of dramatic rewritings of a rather important directory of hagiographic and romantic tales. The research, based on an essentially intertextual approach which makes punctual references to a vast corpus of texts of comparison, is centered on two axes. It is a question at first of verifying if the mythical recollections which texts contain are the simple residues empty of meaning of a long stratification or if they get organized, beyond the rational plot of every narrative, by calling into play a literary and mythical-folk memory and arranging themselves in rather coherent configurations. Then, it is a question of studying the context of the staging and the intrinsic elements of the dramatic writing, and, by means of the study of some significant examples, the forms of the representation, which seem to trace and to readjust forms of the diffuse theatricality bound up pagan rites. Produced by a Christian imagination which they contribute in their turn to shape, the Miracles are plays which exemplify the role of universal mediator of the Virgin while evoking a vision of the world connected to the ancestral calendar of an "other" culture, which makes surface in the dramatic writing and in the staging, by strengthening and by amplifying, generally, the influence of the edifying message.