Inaug.-Diss.--Greifswald. / Lebenslauf. "Bibliographie": p. [7]-10.

Thomas Hardy souhaitait que l’on se rappelât de lui comme poète. Sa réputation fut cependant bâtie sur ses romans. Partant de là, ses nouvelles, à la fois proches et différentes de sa production romanesque et poétique, offrent une perspective unique sur l’ensemble des écrits. Cette thèse se propose ainsi d’étudier les choix d’écriture en matière de discours narratif et de posture du narrateur. Il s’agit de comprendre de quelle façon les nouvelles, négligées au moins jusqu’aux travaux récents de Kristin Brady (The Short Stories of Thomas Hardy. Tales of Past and Present, 1982) et de Martin Ray (A Textual History of Hardy’s Short Stories, 1997), s’insèrent dans l’oeuvre et y trouvent leur juste place. Des analyses, menées au moyen de la narratologie de Genette ainsi que de la théorie de l’énonciation, montrent qu’une stratégie d’ensemble régit les choix en direction du narrateur. Il apparaît que toute ambivalence ou signe contradictoire surgissant ça et là relève encore de cette stratégie, laquelle est au service du projet d’écriture : raconter une histoire tout en faisant état de ce que Hardy nomme « les relations entre les sexes ». Au vu des contraintes et des codes auxquels la fiction et plus particulièrement le roman, doit se plier au cours de la période victorienne, une telle ambition semblerait vouée à l’échec, n’était la liberté offerte par la nouvelle, un genre dont l’étude formelle est alors en cours de développement. Au cours de l’étude, les nouvelles, en raison des différentes stratégies narratives qu’elles développent, émergent comme un espace médian faisant lien entre les romans et les poèmes : les premiers relèvent d’un genre alors trop codifié, et les seconds sont le lieu d’une liberté que l’auteur juge totale : « Perhaps I can express more fully in verse ideas and emotions which run counter to the inert crystallized opinion ».1 Au final, les nouvelles apparaissent comme une part essentielle de l’oeuvre, à égalité avec les romans et les poèmes qu’elles mettent en dialogue. Leur étude permet de comprendre les raisons qui ont incité l’auteur à mettre fin à sa carrière de romancier, alors même qu’il a poursuivi la rédaction de nouvelles jusqu’au début du vingtième siècle. Elle explique aussi pourquoi seule la poésie permettait à Hardy d’accomplir sa mission de raconteur d’histoires et d’observateur de la société de son temps. Enfin, et ce n’est pas le moindre de leur intérêt, les nouvelles offrent une occasion rare de considérer de plus près la figure qui abrite ce qui est communément appelé « l’auteur dans le texte ». / Thomas Hardy wanted to be remembered as a poet. His reputation, however, was built on his novels. In light of this, his short stories, both different from, and similar to, his novels and his poetry stylistically, offer a unique perspective on his writing as a whole. Accordingly, the purpose of this thesis is to study the choices the author made as regards the narrator’s posture and discourse. It ultimately aims at understanding how the short stories, long neglected and only quite recently brought into a new light by Kristin Brady’s The Short Stories of Thomas Hardy. Tales of Past and Present (1982) and Martin Ray’s A Textual History of Hardy’s Short Stories (1997), fit into the complete body of Hardy’s works. Analyses permitted by Gérard Genette’s theory of narratology and the French enunciation theory reveal that an overall strategy governs all the choices pertaining to the narrator, and that any contradictory or ambivalent sign is just part and parcel of that general scheme: to tell a story while offering the reader a snapshot of what Hardy called « the relation of the sexes ». Given the requirements that fiction, and more particularly the novel, had to meet in Victorian times, such a plan appears doomed to fail, were it not for the elbow room enabled by the short story, then a nascent genre. In the course of the study, Hardy’s short stories emerge as a middle ground between his novels and his poems in terms of the various narrative strategies they make it possible for the author to develop. By comparison, the novel is at that time far too coded as a genre to allow such liberties, and poetry is a completely free ground where Hardy can « express more fully […] ideas and emotions which run counter to the inert crystallized opinion ».2 Eventually, the short stories appear an essential part of Hardy’s works, on equal terms with his novels and his poems. They shed bright light on the reason why Hardy decided to put an end to his career as a novelist whereas he went on writing short fiction until the turn of the century. They also make it clear in what sense only poetry could fit what he wanted to accomplish both as a storyteller and as an observer of the society of his time. Last but not least, the short stories offer a rare opportunity to look closer to the figure which lies behind what we call « the author-in-the-text ».

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1 Abstract Long overlooked, the poetry of Edward Thomas (1878-1917) has enjoyed wide recognition in the past few decades. The same cannot be said of Thomas's criticism. Though he worked as a literary journalist for almost a decade and a half, critics have mainly focused on the final years of his life when, after the outset of the First World War, he voluntarily enlisted in the Artist's Rifles and began writing poetry. He died in France, at the Battle of Arras. Since his youth, Thomas suffered from depression, possibly made worse by the demands of his profession (some years he reviewed over a hundred books). In contrast, the last stretch of his life seems to have been more fulfilling. Not only did military training prove beneficial for his mental health, but - encouraged by a number of his friends, including Robert Frost and W. H. Hudson - he metamorphosed from overworked hack-writer (as some still refer to him) to outstanding poet. As most of his criticism precedes his poetry, scholars usually look at Thomas's reviews, anthologies, and literary studies to better understand his 144 poems. While it is important to explore the links between his poetry and rest of his work, Thomas's criticism is strong and extensive enough to be considered independently of the poetry. His books and articles may illuminate his...

Cette thèse porte sur la poétique du roman de Victor Hugo, Theodor Fontane et Thomas Hardy en s'appuyant plus spécifiquement sur l'étude de L'Homme qui rit (1869), Errements et Tourments (1888) et Tess d'Urberville (1891). En rapprochant ces trois romanciers majeurs mais tenus à l'écart des théories générales du roman, il s'agit de montrer le maintien d'une conception du roman moderne comme forme poétique du monde, s'inscrivant dans un horizon de pensée idéaliste, progressiste et critique. Hugo, Fontane et Hardy, romanciers qui se disent avant tout poètes, font le choix de faire du roman une tragédie, forme poétique du monde qui va à l'encontre du prosaïsme moderne et romanesque théorisé par Lukacs, à la suite de Hegel. Face au nihilisme et aux théories du roman réaliste qui voient le jour dans la seconde moitié du XIXe siècle et tentent de définir – au sens restrictif du terme – le genre romanesque, ils retrouvent le modèle du roman romantique et le redéfinissent face au roman réaliste. Leur poétique est alors fondée sur la « poiétisation » de la prose, autrement dit, sur l'imagination, le symbolique et le métaphorique. Ils affirment ainsi la spécificité et la possibilité d'une expérience poétique, c'est-à-dire subjective, héroïque et morale du monde, ainsi que la capacité du roman à produire un savoir poétique sur le monde et l'histoire. / This thesis deals with the poetics of the novel in Victor Hugo, Theodor Fontane and Thomas Hardy, with a specific focus on The Man who Laughs (1869), Trials and Tribulations (1888) and Tess of the d'Urbervilles (1891). By bringing together these three novelists who are widely acknowledged as major writers yet ignored by general theories of the novel, this study will show how a vision of the modern novel as a poetic rendition of reality, with an idealist, progressive and critical background, has maintained itself. Hugo, Fontane and Hardy, three novelists who considered themselves to be poets first and foremost, opted to turn the novel into a tragedy, a poetic rendition of reality which stands in contrast with Lukacs’ post-Hegelian theories of the modern novel as a prosaic literary genre. In the face of nihilism and the theories of the realist novel which surfaced in the second half of the XIXth century and attempted to define – in the restrictive sense of the word – the genre of the novel, they turned back to the model of the Romantic novel and reinvented it at a time when the realist novel was preeminent. Their poetics was therefore based on the “poietisation” of prose, in other words, based on the imaginary, the symbolic and the metaphoric. This enabled them to assert the specificity and possibility of a poetic, that is to say subjective, heroic and moral experience of the world, as well as the ability of the novel to generate poetical knowledge about the world and history.

Psychiater: 'Amerikas Jungen in der Krise', titelt Die Welt am 2. Juni 1998 und ruft unter Bezug auf den Psychiater William Pollock von der Harvard University 'eine nationale Krise des Knabenalters' aus. Nachdem '[j]ahrelang (...) in den USA die Förderung von Mädchen Priorität' hatte, offenbaren die Statistiken nun eine erschütternde Bilanz: 'Im Pubertätsalter begehen in den USA fünfmal so viele Jungen wie Mädchen Selbstmord. Jungen machen 90 Prozent der Disziplinarfälle aus und brechen viermal häufiger die Schule ab.' Während es unter männlichen Jugendlichen zu immer mehr Gewalttaten, wie beispielsweise der weltweit durch die Medien gegangenen Serie von Bluttaten an amerikanischen Schulen kommt, die 2002 in einem Film wie Bowling for Columbine sogar noch einen künstlerisch-kritischen Ausdruck findet, und sich Deutschland noch von den Schockwellen des Erfurter Massakers erholt, leiden nach einer in L'Actualité médicale publizierten kanadischen Studie im Kindes- und Jugendalter deutlich mehr Männer als Frauen an Beeinträchtigungen beziehungsweise Erkrankungen.

This thesis examines the use and representation of letters (and other written messages) in Thomas Hardy's novels, and it considers how Hardy's writing engages with Victorian communication technologies. The 1895 Preface to Far from the Madding Crowd describes Hardy's fictional setting as a ‘a modern Wessex of railways, the penny post, mowing and reaping machines, union workhouses, lucifer matches, labourers who could read and write, and National school children'. The penny post, a communication revolution with an enormous social, economic, and cultural impact, was introduced on 10 January 1840, just a few months before Hardy was born. This thesis aims to demonstrate how a consideration of the material, technological and cultural conditions of communication in Victorian England might reshape our understanding of Hardy's novels, especially of the countless letters, notes, and telegrams which permeate his texts. The written messages in Hardy's novels serve as a means for exploring the process of human communication, and the way this process shapes individual identity, interpersonal relationships, and social interactions alike. Chapter I of this thesis relates Hardy's portrayal of letters to the historical transition from oral tradition to written culture. Chapter II enquires into the relationship between letter writing and notions of privacy and publicity in Hardy's novels. Chapters III and IV argue that Hardy uses letters so as to give a strikingly modern complexity to his representation of human subjectivity and intersubjectivity. The two final chapters investigate how the modalities and technological conditions of written communication influence the construction of Hardy's narratives, the design of his plots. Taken together, the six chapters examine Hardy's perception of one of the most fundamental human activities: communication.

This thesis investigates D.H. Lawrence’s idea of the “great background” in the context of Thomas Hardy’s Jude the Obscure and how it reappears in a transformed way in Lawrence’s novels Sons and Lovers, The Rainbow, and Women in Love. Through examining the perverse effects of modernism on these novels’ characters, this thesis argues that the “great background” is something that gradually moves inward––from the old, traditional “State” to an internal, inscrutable yet attainable reality.