Eighteenth-century Paris was the cultural capital of Europe and home to a vibrant network of theatres, not all of which are equally present in modern scholarship. The Comédie-Italienne in particular has frequently been downplayed in historical accounts, and there is no existing work outlining its relationship with its authors. This thesis aims to address this gap through a case study of the Italian author Carlo Goldoni, who began work for the Comédie-Italienne in 1762. His thirty years in Paris hold an ambiguous place in his career: the preface to his autobiography draws attention to France as the site of his authorial glory, but his work for the Comédie-Italienne is dismissed as a failure; a view echoed by many modern critics. This study therefore also sets out to explore this apparent contradiction. Substantial original work on the Comédie-Italienne archives sheds new light on the administration of this theatre, building up the most comprehensive existing account of its finances, audiences and author relations in the 1760s, and situating it in the contemporary cultural field. Dramatic authors are revealed to be at the heart of tensions between symbolic and financial concerns across eighteenth-century theatrical Paris. This re-evaluation also provides a new context for understanding Goldoni’s equivocal account of his Parisian career. He desired a glorious image in posterity, yet the Comédie-Italienne’s collaborative production and lack of publication thwarted the reputation-shaping tactics he had developed in Italy. The only weapon that remained was his French Mémoires (1787), in which he consciously constructed his image and the claim of Parisian glory. Goldoni’s case also raises broader questions about the creation of literary gloire, and the fate of the cosmopolitan artist in a strange land. In modern France, Goldoni is remembered as a famous foreigner, not the Frenchman he believed he had become. The thesis concludes that this failure in posterity stems from his misunderstanding of how to achieve gloire in his French context: to rely on artificially created image alone is not enough, and yet Goldoni had no choice.

This thesis examines the articles the Brazilian writer Lima Barreto (1881-1922) published in the popular satirical magazine Careta. It argues that Careta epitomises Lima Barreto’s aim to create social impact through literature, as it provided him with the largest readership he enjoyed in his lifetime, reaching hundreds of thousands of readers weekly nationwide and internationally. The thesis expands the knowledge about the strategies Lima Barreto used to convey his ideas, showing how he endeavoured to engage with mass audiences in order to combat social fragmentation and intellectual alienation in early twentieth century Brazil. The significance of this thesis is evident on two levels. First, I demonstrate throughout the chapters that Barreto fully engaged with Careta to convey his ideas to a mass audience, choosing the magazine as his main periodical voice in the last years of his life. This argument challenges the idea that Lima Barreto was a marginal writer in the First Republic. Second, the originality of this thesis lies in locating and uncovering almost one hundred and fifty hitherto unknown texts, most of them published pseudonymously in Careta. Chapter one discusses the militancy of Barreto's works. Chapter two argues that Barreto elected magazines, more than newspapers, to convey his message to a large audience. Chapter three relates the early history of Careta. Chapter four suggests that Barreto incorporated pictorial strategies into his articles. Chapter five argues that Barreto embraced Careta's central theme derived from the Commedia dell'Arte. Chapter six discusses systematically the pseudonyms attributed to Barreto in Careta and provides robust evidence that he published many hitherto unknown texts pseudonymously. Finally, I conclude that Careta encapsulates Barreto's efforts to reach a mass readership and communicate with readers beyond literary circles.

The aim of the present study is to paint an overall picture of how Voltaire interacted with the books that made up his personal library. Situated at the crossroads between history of the book, literary history and literary studies in the standard meaning of the term, it seeks to deepen our understanding of the ways in which Voltaire used his books and of the different types of notes that he left in them. These notes are of course texts in themselves – short ones, to be sure, but texts all the same – and their material, literary and polemical significance have never before been studied in depth. We begin by classifying the marginalia according to the function they seem to have played for Voltaire and, based on their material characteristics, by developing methodologies to analyse these short manuscripts, along with the non-verbal markings that accompany them. An analysis follows of the ways in which Voltaire used the white spaces in his books, then of the links that can be established between the signs of his reading and the genesis of his published works. Finally, we study the poetics of the marginal notes as well as the dynamics at work in the annotated library as a whole. Throughout, Voltaire’s notes and reading habits are placed in the context of the critical literature that has grown up around the subject of marginalia. Along the way, we compare his marginal notes to those of other literary figures of the period, for the subject of this study is clearly the marginalia of a writer, which are necessarily inextricably linked to his principal activity – writing. Indeed, one might speak of an interpenetration, of a blurring of boundaries between reading and writing. Beyond the marks of Voltaire's reading, the study of marginalia raises questions that are relevant for other non-canonical and paratextual materials. To place them in the spotlight transforms their status, and a note that was 'marginal' comes to be considered a text in its own right.

This study traces the intellectual and political itinerary of the review La Relève, an influential cultural journal in 1930s and ‘40s Quebec, in order to explore broader trends within francophone Catholicism in the middle decades of the twentieth century. La Relève enjoyed a unique role as a propagator of French Catholic thought in Quebec due to its close ties with the prominent French Catholic philosopher Jacques Maritain. In the early ‘30s, members of the Relève group espoused a militant Catholicism with conservative-minded nationalist sympathies. The group’s encounter with Maritain in October 1934, however, moved La Relève towards a more communitarian Catholicism which was open to social and religious pluralism. During the later ‘30s, the Relèvistes would display a new interest in democratic forms of politics, reflecting the larger ‘democratic turn’ evident amongst many francophone Catholic intellectuals. In examining this shift, this study argues that the progressive Catholicism embraced by La Relève remained strongly rooted in longstanding Catholic social teachings and mentalities, thereby shedding light upon the political trajectory of the larger French Catholic Revival during this period. The emergence of a ‘Left’ Catholicism in France and Quebec was the result of a gradual and often contradictory process in which new attempts to engage with pluralism, democracy and human rights were heavily influenced by the traditionally anti-liberal and anti-individualistic perspectives of Catholic social and political thought. This study also examines the social and cultural environment of Catholic intellectual engagement in Quebec during this period, focusing upon the role played by friendship in defining the experiences of the Relève circle during the 1930s and ‘40s. Initially the product of a close-knit and often cliquish group of former schoolmates, La Relève provided a forum for masculine solidarity and shared intellectual and religious pursuits. The Relèvistes' conception of friendship expanded over the course of the decade, reflecting their exposure to the ideas of the French Catholic intelligentsia, for whom the idea of friendship signalled a wider community bound together by common religious, social and political goals. During the war years, the Relève group came to play a new role within the larger francophone Catholic intellectual community, founding a publishing company which printed numerous anti-fascist Catholic authors. In the postwar period, however, contact with the European intellectual milieu diminished, as the review closed in 1948 and the Relèvistes embraced new trends in Catholic thought which ultimately distanced them from Maritain. However, intellectual engagement with French Catholic thought would continue on in Quebec through the review Cité libre, which would play an important role in shaping politics and society in Quebec and Canada during the later twentieth century.

This study explores the interrelationship between spatiality and subjecthood in the work of Stéphane Mallarmé, Guillaume Apollinaire, Maurice Maeterlinck, and Alfred Jarry. Concerned with various modes of poetry and drama, it also examines the cross-pollination that can occur between these modes, focusing on a relatively narrow corpus of core texts: Mallarmé’s Igitur (c. 1867-70) and Un Coup de dés (1897); Apollinaire’s “Zone” (1912) and various of his calligrammes; Maeterlinck’s early one-act plays—L’Intruse (1890), Les Aveugles (1890), and Intérieur (1894); and Jarry’s Ubu roi (1896) and César-Antechrist (1895). The poetic and dramatic practices of these four authors are assessed against the broader cultural and philosophical contexts of the fin de siècle. The fin de siècle witnessed a profound epistemological shift: the Newtonian-Cartesian paradigm, increasingly challenged throughout the nineteenth century, was largely dismantled, with ramifications beyond physics, philosophy and psychology. Chapter 1 introduces three foundational notions—Newtonian absolute space, the unitary Cartesian subject, and subject-object dualism—that were challenged and ultimately overthrown in turn-of-the-century science and art. Developments in theatre architecture and typographic design are examined against this philosophical backdrop with a view to establishing a diachronic and interdisciplinary framework of the authors in question. Chapter 2 focuses on the spatial dimension of Mallarmé’s Un Coup de dés and Apollinaire’s calligrammes—works which defamiliarise page-space by undermining various (naturalised) conventions of paginal configuration. In Chapter 3, the notion of liminality (the experience or condition of the betwixt and between) is implemented in an analysis of character and diegetic space as constructed in Jarry’s Ubu roi and Maeterlinck’s one-acts. Chapters 4 and Chapter 5 undertake a more abstract investigation of parallel inverse processes—the subjectivisation of space and the spatialisation of the subject —manifest not only in the works of Mallarmé, Maeterlinck, Apollinaire and Jarry, but in the period’s poetry and drama more generally.

This thesis investigates the first poetry written in Castilian by intellectuals, the 'mester de clerecía', ‘craft of clerics’. Exploring the unique circumstances of Iberia in the Middle Ages as a hub for the intellectual vanguard and a holy territory for encounters with saints, pilgrimage and Reconquest, I examine the canonical texts of an alleged thirteenth-century poetic school as the Castilian bedrock of a wider Iberian and European literary movement. Notably including analysis of the fourteenth-century "Libro de buen amor", a canonical work in its own right thought to parody the earlier poems, I also reassess the significance of the verse form 'cuaderna vía' for the 'mester de clerecía', in which the thirteenth-century poems are exclusively written. Over an introduction and four chapters, I combine close reading of the "Libro de Alexandre" (Chapter 1), Berceo’s Vidas of Millán, Domingo and Oria (Chapter 2), the "Libro de Apolonio" and "Poema de Fernán González" (Chapter 3), and the "Libro de buen amor" (Chapter 4), with research into intellectual, pedagogical, and religious contexts. Notably, I have found the poems analyzed to be especially concerned with the landscape of the reading mind. The result is an expanded view of the 'mester de clerecía' as theological and philosophical poems that offer ways of understanding and approaching the life of the mind as well as that of the body that are thought-provoking and informative to this day. Concluding that the thirteenth-century, canonical poems are the witnesses of a 'textual community' of authors rather than a poetic school, I advocate an inclusive definition of the 'mester de clerecía'. The 'mester de clerecía' are of extremely rich intellectual scope and are of potential interest to scholars of all European literatures, and literary, intellectual, and social history, as well as theology and philosophy.

In addition to coverage in the national and international media of the ongoing violence in Mexico related to the drug trade, there has been growing interest in fictional representations of the Mexican drug trade, its origins and social context. There is now a considerable body of written narratives that have been christened narconovelas. A small number of academic works has charted the emergence of the narconovela and sought to examine how drug traffickers have been represented and evaluated in fiction. However, very little attention has been paid to the aesthetic qualities of ‘narco-literature’. This study examines four of the most highly-regarded works in detail: Balas de plata (2008), by Élmer Mendoza; Los minutos negros (2006), by Martín Solares; Contrabando (2008), by Víctor Hugo Rascón Banda; and Trabajos del reino (2004), by Yuri Herrera. So embedded is the phenomenon of drug trafficking in northern Mexican culture, so suffused with cliché is its representation in other media, that to write about the topic with originality and ethical nuance is difficult. This thesis accounts for the distinct choices made by the four authors in question to address this difficulty of representation in the structure, style and tone of their novels. The self-awareness exhibited by these works of fiction regarding the challenges of representing their subject matter render them the most sophisticated examples yet created of the so-called narconovela.

This thesis investigates the relations between romance and texts of religious instruction in England between c.1170–c.1330, taking as its principal textual corpus the exceptionally rich literary traditions of insular French romance and religious writing that subsist during this period. It argues that romance is a mode which engages closely with religious and ethical questions from a very early stage, and demonstrates the discourses of opposition in which both kinds of text participate throughout the period. The thesis offers substantial readings of a number of neglected insular French religious texts of the thirteenth century, including Robert Grosseteste's Chasteau d'Amour, John of Howden's Rossignos, and Robert of Gretham's Miroir, alongside new readings of romances such as Gui de Warewic and Ipomedon. This juxtaposition of romance narrative and religious instruction sheds new light onto both kinds of text: romance emerges as a mode with deep-rooted didactic qualities; insular French religious literature is shown to be intensely concerned with the need to compete with romance’s entertaining appeal in literary culture. This oppositional discourse profoundly affects the form of instructional writing and romance alike. The discussion of the interactions between insular French romance and instructional literature presented here also serves as a new pre-history of Middle English romance. The final chapter of the thesis offers several new readings of texts from the Auchinleck manuscript, including the canonical romance Sir Orfeo and the neglected, puzzling Speculum Gy de Warewyk. These readings demonstrate that fourteenthcentury romance intelligently adapts the material it inherits from Francophone literature to a new cultural situation. In these acts of reformation, Middle English romance reveals itself as a discursive space capable of accommodating a wide range of ethical and ideological affiliations; the complex negotiations between romance and instructional literature in the preceding centuries are an important cultural condition for this widening of possibilities.

L’école a longtemps ignoré les langues et cultures maternelles des élèves.Une exploration des apports de la recherche en didactique d’apprentissage des langues, avec notamment les approches plurielles, montre comment la didactisation du contact de langue permet de construire une réflexion métalinguistique favorisant de nouveaux apprentissages en langue vivante étrangère ou dans la langue de scolarisation. Une étude de l’évolution historique des programmes scolaires français laisse enfin entrevoir la perspective d’ouvrir l’école au plurilinguisme, en adéquation avec les préconisations des Institutions Européennes. L’intercompréhension entre langues apparentées, apparaît comme une modalité d’apprentissage favorisant la compréhension et le fonctionnement de plusieurs langues, d’autant plus si l’apprentissage organise l’intégration des langues entre elles. Nous décrirons le fonctionnement et les enjeux de l’intercompréhension intégrée en langues romanes.Une expérimentation fut menée sur deux classes de CM1-CM2 lors des apprentissages scientifiques en intercompréhension intégrée à l’aide du manuel Euromania. Dans une classe, cette expérimentation était couplée à l’approche interculturelle Comparons nos langues. Il s’agissait d’observer de quelle manière cette expérimentation contribuait à l’évolution des représentations linguistiques des élèves, au développement de compétences linguistiques ainsi qu’à l’élaboration de stratégies de compréhension. Nous observerons les bénéfices apportés par l’intercompréhension intégrée et les approches interculturelles, aux apprentissages linguistiques et discipinaires, au plurilinguisme, à une meilleure réussite et à un plus grand épanouissement des élèves. / For a long time, primary education has overlooked the students' languages and cultures of origin. An exploration of the conclusions of research in the field of language didactics, and more specifically pluralistic approaches establishes that the didactisation of language interaction/language contact helps in building a metalinguistic reflection that can facilitate fresh learning in a foreign language or in the language in which the child is being educated. At last, a study of the evolution ofFrench school curricula can show us the way for opening schools to multilingualism, in conformity with European Union directives. Intercomprehension between related languages is shown to be a modality of learning that facilitates the comprehension and the way different languages work, especially if the learning process organizes the integration of these languages. We will describe the methodology and the stakes of integrated intercomprehension in romance languages. An experiment has been conducted with two classes of CM1-CM2/last grades of Middle School during science classes, using integrated intercomprehension with the help of the schoolbook Euromania, as well as, in one of the classes, the intercultural-approach based Comparons nos langues. The goal was to observe to which direction this experiment contributed to the evolution of the students' linguistic representations, to the development of linguistic competence and to the invention of strategies of understanding. We will present the benefits of integrated intercomprehension and intercultural approaches to language learning and to learning in other subjects, to multilingualism, and to the well-being of learners, conducive to more successfullearning.

L'objectif de cette thèse est de combler des lacunes scientifiques dans la connaissance de l’histoire du francoprovençal et de son lexique. En effet, à l'heure actuelle aucun travail de synthèse ne regroupe les matériaux anciens du francoprovençal et dans le Französisches Etymologisches Wörterbuch (FEW), qui pourrait remplir cette fonction, les états anciens du francoprovençal sont sous-représentés en raison de l'absence d'un tel travail. La conséquence est un grand déséquilibre avec la connaissance que nous avons de l'ancien français et occitan qui sont les langues romanes anciennes les mieux décrites. Les sources en francoprovençal sont relativement peu nombreuses parce que cette langue a été de tout temps confiné à un usage essentiellement oral. La littérature ancienne se borne à quelques textes d'édification et un traité juridique, surtout des traductions. À partir du XVIième siècle se développe une littérature en patois le plus souvent fortement ancrée localement. Les auteurs qui voulaient toucher un publique plus large ont très tôt opté pour le français. Les sources documentaires sont plus nombreuses, mais très inégalement réparties dans l'espace. Les sources issues de la partie française du domaine ont pour la plupart été éditées, mais beaucoup d'entre elles sont difficilement exploitables en l'absence de glossaires. La situation est plus favorable en Suisse romande où le Glossaire des patois de la Suisse romande (Gl.) documente non seulement les dialectes modernes, mais aussi leurs états anciens. Pour cette raison nous nous sommes concentrée sur la partie française du domaine et nous nous sommes basée sur le Gl. pour la partie suisse. En collaboration avec une autre doctorante, Laure Grüner, nous avons rassemblé les sources intéressantes pour l'étude de l'ancien francoprovençal de France et nous avons procédé à des dépouillements étendus. Sur cette base, nous avons élaboré un modèle de description lexicographique adapté à l’ancien francoprovençal et nous avons rédigé la tranche f de ce Dictionnaire de l'ancien francoprovençal, qui représente environ un vingtième du dictionnaire complet, afin de prouver la faisabilité du projet et d'évaluer son apport à la connaissance de l’ancien francoprovençal. Plus de la moitié de nos articles documentent des unités lexicales qui n'étaient pas encore attestées en ancien francoprovençal de France dans le FEW et dans une bonne partie des autres cas nous pouvons compléter les matériaux. Sur la base des 386 articles rédigés, nous évaluons la nomenclature complète du dictionnaires à 7’500 articles et le temps de rédaction à une bonne douzaine d'années de travail d'une personne à temps plein. Nous avons aussi envisagé plusieurs possibilités pour obtenir des résultats tangibles dans des délais plus courts / The aim of this thesis is to fill in the scientific gaps concerning the knowledge of the history of Francoprovençal and its vocabulary. Currently, there is no synthesis of the available documentation of Old Francoprovençal. In the Französisches Etymologisches Wörterbuch (FEW), that could fulfil this function, the older states of Francoprovençal are underrepresented because of the lack of this kind of work. The consequence is a huge imbalance with the knowledge we have for instance of Old French and Occitan which are the best known Romance languages of the past.There are few sources in Francoprovençal because this language has always been mostly oral. The oldest literature consists of a few religious texts and a legal treaty. Most of them are translations. From the 16th century onward, a locally based literature emerges generally with modest ambitions. Authors wanting to reach a larger audience chose French at a very early stage. The documentary sources are more numerous but very unevenly spread. Most sources from the French part are edited, but many of them lack a glossary and are difficult to handle. The situation is better in Switzerland, where the Glossaire des patois de la Suisse romande (Gl.) provides documentation not only regarding the modern dialects but also their older stages. For this reason, we concentrated our work on the French part and relied on the Gl. for the Swiss part. Together with an other PhD student, Laure Grüner, we gathered the sources and extracted the interesting lexical forms.Based on this documentation, we elaborated a lexicographical description template suitable for Old Francoprovençal. We wrote the articles of this Dictionnaire de l'ancien francoprovençal beginning with the letter f which represents about one twentieth of the whole dictionary. Not only did this provide a proof of its feasibility, but it also assessed its contribution to the knowledge on Old Francoprovençal. More than a half of the articles gather evidence for lexical units not yet documented in this language regarding the French part of the linguistic area, whereas for most of the others we could complete the existing documentation. Based on the 386 articles written, we estimate the complete nomenclature at approximately 7’500 articles and the time needed to write them at about twelve years. We also considered various possibilities to get tangible outcomes in a shorter amount of time