Les romans édifiants des XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles – des fictions narratives en prose qui affichent clairement leur volonté de transmettre des valeurs chrétiennes et d’influencer le comportement de leurs lecteurs dans le sens de ces valeurs – développent une poétique spécifique, basée sur la recherche et le dévoilement de la vérité chrétienne à travers la fiction mondaine. Ils posent ainsi de front une question qui a hanté les écrivains et les théoriciens de l’Âge classique, à savoir la conciliation du plaisir romanesque et de la moralité. La topique du roman édifiant (personnages, lieux et temps), sa matérialité (titres, divisions internes, ensembles d’œuvres) et sa voix (narrative et rhétorique) concourent à l’élaboration d’effets de sens qui servent la visée persuasive et religieuse des ouvrages tout en créant des récits et des imaginaires propres à satisfaire le goût du lectorat pour le roman. Cette étude vise à réintégrer dans l’histoire du roman un corpus d’œuvres négligées par la critique en faisant apparaître leur contribution à l’élaboration du roman : du roman d’Ancien Régime d’abord, mais aussi du roman à thèse moderne et, par extension, de toute la fiction idéologique. / Edifying novels of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries - narrative prose fictions that clearly put forth their will to convey Christian values and influence the behavior of their readers in the sense of these values - develop a specific poetics, based on the research and the unveiling of Christian truth through mundane fiction. They therefore emphasize a problem that has haunted writers and theorists of the Classical Age, namely the reconciliation of novelistic pleasure and morality. The narrative topics of the edifying novel (characters, places and times), its materiality (titles, internal divisions, groups of works) and voice (narrative and rhetorical) contribute to the development of significations that serve the persuasive and religious aim of the works while creating stories and imaginary worlds capable of satisfying the taste of the audience for the novel. This study aims to reintegrate in the history of the novel a body of works neglected by literary critics by showing their contribution to the development of the novel: the novel of the Old Regime, but also the modern novel of thesis and by extension, the entire ideological fiction.

Over the course of four sections this PhD examines the ways in which the Aristotelian, Stoic and Epicurean philosophers portray bodily activity. In particular, it argues that their claims regarding bodies' natural tendency to preserve themselves, and seek out the goods capable of promoting their well-being, came to influence Hobbes's and Spinoza's later accounts of natural, animal and social behaviour. The first section presents the ancient accounts of natural and animal bodily tendencies and explores the specific ways in which the Aristotelian, Stoic and Epicurean views on animal desires came to complement and diverge from each other. After investigating the perceived links between natural philosophy, psychology and ethics, the section proceeds to consider how the ancients used this 'unified' view of nature to guide their accounts of the soul's primary appetites and desires. Also examined is the extent to which civil society is portrayed as a means of securing the individual against others, and how Aristotelian philia, Theophrastian oikeiotês and Stoic oikeiōsis came to stand in opposition to the fear-driven and compact-based accounts of social formation favoured by the Epicureans. The second section considers how the ancient accounts of impulsive behaviour and social formation were received and diffused via new editions of ancient texts, eclectic readings of Aristotle, and the attempts of Neostoic and Neoepicurean authors to update and systematise those philosophies from the late sixteenth century onwards. The particular treatments of Hellenistic thought by authors such as Justus Lipsius, Hugo Grotius and Pierre Gassendi are considered in detail and are placed within the context of the growing trend to use Stoic and Epicurean thought to replace the authority of Aristotle in the areas of science, psychology, and politics. The final two sections are devoted respectively to considering the ways in which Hobbes and Spinoza encountered the Hellenistic accounts of bodies and demonstrating how these earlier accounts came to feature in each of their own discussions of bodily tendencies. Engaging with a wide range of their texts, each section develops the many nuances and contours that emerged as both writers developed and fine-tuned their accounts of bodily actions. This reveals the many ways in which the ancient accounts of self-preservation helped to unify large aspects of Hobbes's and Spinoza's own philosophical corpus, while equally showing how a well-developed account of bodily tendencies might challenge the scholastic worldview and expand further the boundaries of the so-called 'New Science'.

The Restoration Era, 1660-1688, has long borne a reputation as an exceptionally debauched period of English history. That reputation is however a caricature, amplified from a handful of recognizable features. That rhetoric of debauchery originates in the Restoration’s own discourse, constructed as a language for opposing the rising French-style absolutism of the late Stuart kings, Charles II and James II. When Charles II was restored in 1660, enthusiastic panegyrists returned to the official aesthetics of his father Charles I, who had formulated power as abundance through pastoral, mythological, and utopian art. Oppositional satirists in the Restoration subverted that language of cornucopian abundance to represent Charles II and his court as instead excessive, diseased, and predatory. After the Glorious Revolution of 1688-9, Williamite satirists and secret historians continued to wield these themes against the exiled Jacobites. Gradually, the political facets of Stuart excess dulled, but the caricature of the debauched Restoration survived in eighteenth-century state poem collections and historiography. The authors most emphasized in this study are John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester, and Andrew Marvell. Works by John Milton, John Dryden, Edmund Waller, King Charles I, and Gilbert Burnet also receive sustained attention.

Transcription and Translation of the 1658 Jesuit Annual Letter, VietnamNathan Joseph RichardsonDepartment of Spanish and Portuguese, BYUMaster of ArtsThis project provides a translation and two transcriptions (semi-diplomatic and normalized) of the 1658 Jesuit Annua letter sent from the Tonkin kingdom (now Vietnam) to Jesuit authorities back in Portugal. Specifically, the letter, which is housed in the archives of the worldwide Society of Jesus in Rome (folder 89, Japonica Sinica series, fols 286-290v), reports the progress of the Jesuit mission in that kingdom. However, it also contains a fascinating account of contemporary political and other events there. The purpose of this project is to make this letter accessible to a variety of readers. The English translation makes the letter's contents available to an English readership interested in Portugal's expansion in Asia, especially the activities of Jesuit missionaries in Vietnam; the normalized transcription is aimed at those with similar interests who read Portuguese; and the semi-diplomatic transcription, together with a facsimile of the original manuscript, is intended for those who study the history of the Portuguese language and are particularly concerned with the edition of early modern texts.

À partir de 1635, le Japon de la dynastie des Tokugawa se replie sur lui-même en officialisant sa fermeture aux échanges avec l’étranger, avec la mise en place de la politique isolationniste du sakoku, et seuls les marchands opérant pour le compte de la Compagnie néerlandaise des Indes orientales sont désormais autorisés à commercer au pays, de manière limitée. C’est dans ce contexte que fut rédigée, en 1636, la Vraie description du puissant royaume du Japon, par un marchand hollandais protestant du nom de François Caron. L’ouvrage, un bref document administratif, qui n’était d’abord pas destiné à être publié, connût néanmoins un vif succès à partir de 1661, et fut traduit dans plusieurs langues. Dans le cadre de ce mémoire, nous étudierons l’influence de la Vraie description sur les représentations des Japonais dans la France du XVIIe siècle, à travers les riches descriptions faites par son auteur de la société et de la culture du Japon de l’ère Edo. Pour ce faire, nous allons dans un premier temps analyser les écrits des Jésuites, qui sont les premiers à construire une image particulière des Japonais et en influencer durablement les représentations. Dans un second temps, nous analyserons en détail la Vraie description pour en dégager l’image qu’a pu avoir un marchand hollandais du Japon du XVIIe siècle. Dans un troisième et dernier temps, nous nous intéresserons à l’influence de la Vraie description sur la manière dont les auteurs français écrivirent sur le Japon à la fin du XVIIe siècle et au début de l’époque des Lumières. / From 1635 onward, Tokugawa Japan closed itself to any type of foreign trade, with the establishment of the isolationist policy of sakoku, and only merchants operating on behalf of the Dutch East India Company were permitted to trade in the country, on a limited basis. It was in this context that the True Description of the Mighty Kingdoms of Japan and Siam was written, in 1636, by a Protestant Dutch merchant known as François Caron. The work, a brief administrative document, which was not initially intended for publication, was a great success from its first publication in 1661, and was translated into several languages. As part of this thesis, we will study the impact of the True Description on perceptions of the Japanese in 17th century France, through the rich descriptions made by its author of the society and culture of Edo Japan. To do this, we will first analyze the writings of the Jesuits, who were the first to build a particular image of the Japanese and to have a lasting influence on the way they were described and perceived. Secondly, we will analyze in detail the content of the True Description in order to determine the image that a Dutch merchant of the 17th century may have had of Japan and its people. As a conclusion, we will examine the influence of the True Description on the way French authors wrote about Japan from the end of the 17th century to the beginning of the Enlightenment.

In the early seventeenth century, a number of female writers began to exercise a strong degree of agency in the materials they published and the discourse in which they participated. Discussions of expanded female education abounded in their writing, and by the end of the century, female writers had become bold enough to write tracts proposing entirely new educational institutions for women. These proposed all-female schools would have provided teachers and students alike with both an intellectual space free from patriarchal strictures and the opportunity to expand their minds unimpeded. Through analysis of works by Rachel Speght, Elizabeth Isham, Margaret Cavendish, Bathsua Makin, and Mary Astell, this thesis traces the broad preoccupation of female writers with female intellectual communities across the seventeenth century. This project adds to current and past scholarly discussions of female reading in the early modern period, notes rhetorical continuities between the works of these various writers, and hopes to contribute to our understanding of early feminist thought.

Ce travail qui propose une étude sur la représentation du Sarrasin dans Saint Louys ou la Sainte Couronne reconquise de Pierre Le Moyne, nous permet de constater que l’Orient véhicule tout un imaginaire qui attire et repousse à la fois. Ainsi ce travail comporte-t-il non seulement l’étude des Sarrasins eux-mêmes, mais aussi celle de la religion qui leur est attribuée, de leur organisation politique, de leurs armes et de leur manière de combattre. Une partie importante de cette étude consiste à découvrir si les Sarrasins de Pierre Le Moyne sont un portrait réaliste ou imaginaire des Arabes en Egypte et en Syrie, des Turcs, ou des Perses…etc.Ainsi, ce que Pierre Le Moyne dit des Sarrasins et de leur religion permet de nous faire une idée non seulement du contexte historique de l’époque, mais aussi de la conception sociale et culturelle de l’Orient. Cette représentation de l’ennemi sarrasin nous permet aussi de bien comprendre les intentions du poète qui voient fleurir différentes stratégies pour affronter le danger sarrasin. / This work which proposes a study on the representation of the Saracen in Saint Louys ou la Sainte Couronne reconquise of Pierre Le Moyne, allows us to observe that the Orient carries an imaginary that attracts and repulses at the same time. this work involves not only the study of the Saracens themselves, but also the characteristics of the religion which are attributed to them. But also their political organization, their arms, and their way to fight. An important part of this study is to discover that the Saracens of Pierre Le Moyne are a realistic or imaginary portrait of the Arabs in Egypt and Syria, Turks, or Persians ... etc.We can ask what Pierre Le Moyne says about the Saracens and their religion gives us an idea not only of the historical context of the time, but also of the social and cultural conception of the East. This representation of the Saracen enemy also allows us to understand the intentions of the poet who sees different strategies flowing to face the danger of Saracen.

Première femme à publier un roman en Angleterre, Lady Mary Wroth (1587 ?-1651 ?) est l’auteur d’une œuvre profondément marquée par la mélancolie. En 1621, soit la même année que la première édition de l’Anatomie de la mélancolie de Robert Burton, elle publie sous son propre nom un roman pastoral, The Countess of Montgomery’s Urania, suivi d’un recueil de poèmes intitulé Pamphilia to Amphilanthus en référence au couple central du roman. De la représentation du paysage à la structure narrative en passant par les symptômes physiques et psychologiques que manifeste l’ensemble des personnages, la mélancolie est partout dans ce roman. Maladie érudite et culturelle propre à une élite sociale mais réservée aux hommes lorsqu’elle révèle les génies, objet d’une véritable mode dans l’Angleterre du dix-septième siècle, la mélancolie devient pour Lady Mary Wroth l’instrument privilégié de la légitimation de son projet romanesque. Le roman se caractérise en effet par une poétique de la mélancolie qui se traduit par la mise en scène réflexive de l’écriture, par une écriture noire typiquement maniériste dans laquelle l’auteur s’affirme en se niant. Mais la mélancolie est aussi dans ce roman le symptôme d’un monde en crise dans lequel les valeurs morales qui ont triomphé à l’époque élisabéthaine, telles que l’héroïsme martial, sont désormais obsolètes. Le roman présente le sombre tableau d’un monde déchu sans espoir de rachat. En imitant aussi systématiquement l’Arcadie de Sidney – dont Wroth était la nièce –, l’Urania met en scène une nostalgie littéraire qui souligne l’incapacité de l’auteur à égaler ses modèles, mais fait parallèlement de cet aveu d’échec l’affirmation de sa propre légitimité. / Lady Mary Wroth (1587 ? -1651 ?), who was the first woman to publish a prose romance in England, authored works that are pervaded by melancholy. In 1621 – the same year as the first edition of Robert Burton’s Anatomy of Melancholy – she published a single volume containing her pastoral romance The Countess of Montgomery’s Urania and a sonnet sequence entitled Pamphilia to Amphilanthus which refers to the main couple in the romance. Melancholy is an overwhelming presence in Urania, as it appears not only in the setting and in the characters’ bodies and minds, but in the narrative structure of the romance as well. In seventeenth-century England, there was a well-known fashion for melancholy, which was seen as a sign of nobility and cultural genius, but only as far as men were concerned. Lady Mary Wroth uses melancholy to legitimize her authorial position inside the romance. Urania, indeed, is characterized by a poetics of melancholy which appears both in a self-conscious representation of the writing process and in a black, mannerist style which enables Wroth to make a claim for the legitimacy of her works by denying her own agency in them. Melancholy also functions as the symptom of moral decline, as the moral values which triumphed in the Elizabethan period, such as martial heroism, now appear irrevocably obsolete. The romance portrays a fallen world which reveals no hope of redemption whatsoever. In its systematic imitation of Sidney’s Arcadia, Urania showcases a literay nostalgia which enables Wroth to affirm her own authorial position by demonstrating her inability to equal her models.

This dissertation asserts that women’s anonymity in seventeenth-century devotional texts functions as a performance to be understood rather than a mystery to be solved. Anonymity has long been framed as merely a protean form of authorship or a barrier to the recovery of a lost literary history. The archive frequently renders anonymity invisible or reveals anonymity at the moment of its undoing; however, this study of women’s anonymity contends that, although women applied anonymity to avoid the stigma of print, their anonymity functions less as a blind than as a frame to emphasize those traits they wished most to expose. In my first and second chapters, I demonstrate how the anonymous Eliza’s Babes (1652) and the nearly anonymous An Collins’s Divine Songs and Meditacion (1653) use the anonymous text to replace the signification of sick, infertile, and therefore volatile female bodies with an imitative production of devotion that constitutes the text as a divinely-restored, alternatively-productive body through which they relate to God and reader. Readers’ positive reception of this devotional re-signification of the body’s productivity countermands stereotypes readers hold against women writing, affirms the woman writer as faithful, and reincorporates both reader and writer in a corporate body of believers through their mutual participation in devotional practices. My third chapter affirms the perceived authority of anonymity’s corporate voice through the exploration of George Hickes’s retroactive attribution of several late seventeenth-century anonymous devotional texts to Susanna Hopton. I argue that the derivative nature of the anonymous devotional collections invests them with a corporate voice Hickes finds to be a valuable asset in his defense of Hopton’s devotional acumen. Drawing together scholarship on seventeenth-century relationality and intersubjectivity, readership, devotion, and women’s health, this study reconsiders the signification of women’s anonymity and their unoriginality as a tool that facilitates agentive reading and rehabilitates women’s claim to corporate belonging. / Thesis / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

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