Ce mémoire cherche à réfuter la critique dont l’œuvre de Françoise Sagan a été sujette. D’une part, ses écrits autobiographiques : Toxique et Les bleus à l’âme seront analysés afin de prouver que Françoise Sagan étaient un auteur passionné et engagé. D’autre part, les actions de ses héroïnes, pourtant sévèrement jugées, seront observées sous un regard sociocritique. Il va s’avérer que Françoise Sagan, au contraire, met en évidence les limites réservées aux femmes dans la société française d’aprèsguerre. Le but de ces conclusions étant de montrer que François Sagan devrait avoir une place dans le canon de la littérature française. / This essay aims to refute the criticism against the works of Françoise Sagan. To do so, first we make an examination of her autobiographical writings: Toxique and Les bleus à l’âme in order to prove that Sagan was indeed a passionate and engaged writer. Secondly a sociological analysis is made of some of her severely judged female heroes. It will show that it is quite the opposite, as Françoise Sagan exposes the limits of the French post-war society for women. The conclusion of this essay is that Sagan’s works should have a position in the French literary canon.

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Extreme violence, which often results in murder, is a prominent theme in the American literary canon; therefore, it deserves a wider and more focused lens in the study of Twentieth-Century American literature. Murder and entertainment seldom coexist in canonical literature, but the very nature of the murder, foreign to many readers, consequently piques one’s curiosity, and demands special attention. The literary texts I have chosen to discuss are four novels and three plays. They all belong to the genre known in literature as ‘a crime novel or play.’ The murderers are easily identified, and their criminal acts have been carried out successfully, often with much forethought and detail. My focus has been to conduct a psychological study to highlight the impetus for the crime. Three basic themes have captured my attention: 1- Is the murder a sin or a crime? What is the role of religion in the lives of the accused? 2- Is it right to blame society for such horrendous acts? 3- How is the American Dream portrayed in these works? The closer we get to the end of the Twentieth-Century, the harder it is to detect an affirmative ending in the works of literature I have explored. The insatiable appetite for material consumption overshadows the pursuit of happiness, or, maybe happiness is defined by material wealth. The critical question is: can American society read the warning written on the wall?

La construcción y divulgación de un canon literario, sea éste en el contexto de las literaturas nacionales o de la literatura universal, provoca hasta hoy fuertes debates ya que representa algo elitista, lo más eximio de la literatura de una cultura como así también la inmortalidad de los autores. Todo esto constituye a su vez el prestigio de una país como nación cultural.

This study examines the myth of the surrogate power of canonicity by exposing the condition of liminality of the Zimbabwean short story genre within African literary canon. Building on the hypothesis that canonisation distorts literature the study postulates that literary canon produce predictable biases in construing the position of the short story. It fossilises and condenses the marginal genres to the extent that the existing canon repertoire hardly recognises them. The peripheral but de facto canon of the short story genre entertains a strong relationship of heteronomy to the mainstream/central canon. This thesis studies this relationship which determines canon formation within the African literary systems. It challenges the prevailing status quo in which the short story is polarised against other literary modes. The polarity creates a charged diametric force between the presumed canonical genres and the supposedly non-canonical short story mess. What lacks in this equation of conflicts is a sense of revival, reformation and continuity of the short story canon. The marginality of the short story canon is predicated on factors external to the genre itself, such as the influence of colonial institutions, collegiate institutions and publishers on writers. These factors pervade the dialectics of canonical marginality of the genre. The study, which argues that there is no unanimity on theory of canon, proposes Africulture, as both a theory and praxis of Afrocentricity, to function as an arbiter of short story literary reputation and consecration. The research reveres the autonomous value of African story-telling tradition which withstood the test and movement of time, in the process, surviving not only the historical-cum-cultural threat of colonial loss and canonical displacement, but also the throes and will power of new media and digital technologies. The ascendancy of the electronic short story genre to canonical status remains questionable. Critical controversies abound about the canonicity of electronic literature. The study employs Technauriture as a theoretical model for rethinking the transcendence of the electronic short story canon. The study concludes that, by virtue of its resilience, the short story ought to be treated as a wholesale and independent genre, worth of full scale appreciation. / African Languages / D. Litt. et Phil. (African Languages)

The theme of the dissertation is the important piece of 16th century Spanish prose, Retrato de la Lozana andaluza (Portrait of Lozana: The Lusty Andalusian Woman) by Francisco Delicado. Published anonymously in Venice around the year 1530, it fell into obscurity for the next three hundred years. The only known copy was discovered in the middle of the 19th century in Vienna. Over the next hundred and fifty years this literary curiosity gradually became recognized as an integral part of the Spanish literary canon. Still, the research of La Lozano andaluza continues to feature blank spaces and unresolved issues, and is at the same time characterized by its conflicting nature and the absence of a generally accepted consensus. The introduction of the thesis summarizes and evaluates the state and condition of present-day research and outlines the general problems of the literary canon and its exploration through the concept of a philological field. The aim of the first part of the thesis is to present all verified editing data and to focus on those aspects of the work that have been neglected. These include the typography and iconography of the original publication, the narrative structure and the overview and nature of the general meaning-making principles. Delicado's peculiar use of language, his...

Ce travail vise à observer les mécanismes à l'œuvre dans la canonisation des nouvelles finlandaises et estoniennes. L’auteur présente d’abord les travaux théoriques qui concernent le canon littéraire et les fréquents débats entourant cette notion. Il étudie ensuite le rôle des plus importantes instances canonisatrices (recensions, travaux critiques, prix littéraires, anthologies, traductions, institution scolaire et universitaire) en Finlande et en Estonie. Une attention particulière est accordée à la réception critique dans les revues littéraires des deux pays, et à la présentation qui est faite des classiques de la nouvelle dans les manuels de littérature.Des études de cas sont ensuite présentées : à partir d’exemples tirés d’écrivains ou de thèmes précis, l’auteur y met en lumière certains phénomènes caractéristiques de la canonisation, et diverses circonstances susceptibles de faciliter la canonisation des textes, ou au contraire d’y faire obstacle. Ces analyses débouchent sur des propositions de nouveaux outils théoriques pour l'étude diachronique des canons. / This study aims to analyze the mechanisms of canonization, based upon Finnish and Estonian short stories. The author first presents the theoretical works about literary canons and the frequent debates that surround that notion. He then studies the respective roles of the most important canonizing instances (critical articles, critical works, literary prizes, anthologies, translations, educational system) in Finland and Estonia. Attention is particularly drawn toward critical reception in literary journals, and the way classical short stories are evocated in literary handbooks. Case studies dealing with precise authors and themes lead to several proposals of new theoretical tools for the diachronic study of canons and the description of canonization-related phenomena and the different circumstances which can help or hinder the canonization of short stories.

L'œuvre d’Amelia Rosselli entend se dessiner, au sein de la poésie lyrique italienne, comme expérience de subversion du processus de sublimation et de stylisation du corps féminin. A travers la traduction et l’analyse de poèmes choisis contenus dans les recueil Cantilena (1953), La Libellula (1958) et Variazioni belliche (1964), nous avons conduit une tentative d’exégèse critique des textes. L’analyse des poèmes se poursuit à travers une pratique dialogique avec le texte poétique, à partir d'un positionnement critique à l’intérieur du comparatisme féministe.En partant de l'idée pétrarquiste d'élimination et de suppression du corps des femmes nous avons démontré comment la tentative d’apaiser la portée potentiellement dangereuse de l’affection amoureuse a donné lieu au déni de la sensualité. Le langage de la douleur transfigurée se traduit dans une poétique du « dispositif sursensuel », un processus semblable à celui que Gilles Deleuze avait repéré dans la personnalité littéraire de Sacher-Masoch. Le processus de subversion qu’on vient d’évoquer est accompagné du bouleversement des rôles traditionnels au sein du canon poétique européen. Ces déconstructions conduiraient à un rejet du corps organique et au même temps à la révélation d’une subjectivité excentrique. La révision des modèles littéraires du canon passe également par le réécriture d'un ensemble de figures féminines du répertoire mythique et littéraire au sein de l’antiquité gréco-romaine, lesquelles, prélevées de l’imaginaire patriarcal, sont réinterprétées et à nouveau poétisées au sein d'un Sujet poétique qui cherche à faire parler la voix d’une poète femme. / Amelia Rosselli’s work took shape, within Italian lyric poetry, as an experience of subversion of the process of sublimation and of stylisation of the female body. Through the translation and the analysis of the content of poems chosen from the collections Cantilena (1953), La Libellula (1958) and Variazioni belliche (1964), I conducted a critical exegesis of the texts. I performed an analysis according to suggestions of a dialogical practice with the poetical text and with a female subjectivity often hidden, anchored to my critical investment inside feminist comparatism. From petrarchist idea of deletion and “suppression” of women’s body – deletion, of which Pasolini talked already in relation to the genesis of Italian poetry and its characterisation of the lyrical canon – I analysed how the attempt to ease the impact potentially dangerous of love affection has caused the denial of sensuality. The language of camouflaged sorrow is then established as a deliberated choice included in some poetics where it is not the statement that reveals, but the poetical word, which in its cryptic canonical measure, is able to make resonate beyond declarations. We can observe the deployment of a “sursensual device”, similar process to what Gilles Deleuze perceived in Sacher-Masoch's literary personality. The process of subversion does not seem a reconstitution of identity roles, but rather a deconstruction of the traditional model. The starting point for the analysis of those deconstructions is based on the hypothesis that the non-functionality of the desiring organisms (desiring subject and desired object) will lead to a reject of the organic and at the same time to a revelation of an eccentric subjectivity. The revision of the literary model of the canon lies in the hypothesis that a set of female figures of the mythical and literary repertoire in Greco-Roman antiquity are placed in the imaginary practice of Amelia Rosselli's poetical writing, with a view to incorporate the nature of the characters born and conceived inside and by the patriarchal imaginary and to form the body of a subject that aims at making them speak through the voice of a female poet.

Dans le contexte d’une mise en question sans cesse renouvelée des hiérarchies sociales et culturelles dans les sociétés occidentales contemporaines, dont rend compte le développement des études culturelles depuis les années 1960, la publication d’un grand nombre de réécritures romanesques de l’Iliade témoigne d’un mouvement réflexif de la littérature vis-à-vis de sa propre histoire. En observant les tensions dynamiques à l’œuvre dans la rencontre du roman et du discours épique, ce travail de thèse entend proposer une approche du champ littéraire qui ne soit pas fondée sur la division de ce dernier entre culture artistique et culture à destination du grand public, mais conçue sous l’angle d’un partage transmédiatique et transculturel. L’analyse des réécritures romanesques de l’Iliade révèle en effet une convergence des procédés et des discours de part et d’autre du « grand partage » littéraire, au service d’une réflexion commune sur le caractère problématique du canon littéraire. La confrontation des discours épique et romanesque contribue à l’élaboration d’une pensée démocratique de la société, qui repose sur la construction d’un espace narratif traversé par une pluralité de discours génériques et de références culturelles. / Challenging the social and cultural hierarchies which are still authoritative in our contemporary Western societies has been a long-lasting concern of Cultural Studies ever since their development in the 1960s. As evidenced by the great amount of novels set in the fictional world of the Trojan War, which prove themselves to be genuine rewritings of the Iliad narrative, the Western canon and its relevance are equally scrutinized by contemporary novelists. By studying the dynamic conflicts which underlie the encounter between epic discourse and the genre of the novel, this dissertation intends to dispute the concept of a “Great Divide” between artistic and popular culture, and to prove that literature is a transcultural medium. A close study of a few contemporary novelisations of the Iliad brings to light existing shared narrative techniques and discourses undermining the legitimacy of the Western canon. Through the remodeling of the epic genre and its conventions, the novel assumes a democratic approach to society which stems from a narrative architecture hinging on a multiplicity of generic discourses and cultural references.

This master thesis deals with feminist literary analysis of the works of writer Michal Viewegh, specifically his two prose novels Román pro ženy and Román pro muže using a method called resistant reading with a critical gender analysis and subsequent final comparison. This thesis consists of two parts, from the theoretical - methodological, which outlines the theoretical basis for the next analytical part. The key concepts are in the first part the researches of literary critics on Michal Viewegh, theories of Judith Fetterley, Elaine Showalter and Janice A. Radway. Furthermore, there are the theoretical basis of gender, and how gender stereotypes are constructed. This section is mainly based on the theorists Blanka Knotková - Čapková, Annis Pratt, Claire M. Renzetti and Daniel J. Curran and founder of analytical psychology Carl Gustav Jung. In describing femininity and masculinity are central lines theories of Naomi Wolf, Simone de Beauvoir and Pierre Bourdieu, Michael Kimmel and Robert Bly. The analytical part is the critical uncovering of gender stereotypes and power discourse. The conclusion is made by the final critical comparison of both novels. Key words: resistant reading, literary canon, gender stereotypes, masculinity, femininity, beauty myth, male domination, power