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The main aim of this work is the presentation, characterisation and review of the image of the Greek underworld deity, Hades/Plouton in Greek beliefs of the Archaic and Classical periods, on the basis of comparison of the preserved literary and epigraphic testimonies with the remains of material culture, and the reconstruction of the most coherent possible image of the god, claimed by scholars to be of little importance to Greek beliefs and to have no cult. The present dissertation liberates the god from long-standing scholarly misconceptions and returns him to his proper place within the Greek pantheon. Its main scholarly contribution and originality can be summarised as follows: (i) Hades is mainly an agricultural deity with a clear cult environment and has more in common with the world of the living than that of the dead; (ii) Hades influenced the representation of other male deities connected with earth: his main attribute, paradoxically the cornucopia or 'horn of plenty', appears for the first time in Greek art in the 6th century BC as exclusively his, and is later ascribed to other deities; (iii) Hades and Plouton were the same deity (Plouton - an Attic instantiation - spread throughout Greece with Attic literature and the Eleusinian cult of Demeter and Kore), sharing the same myths, and both, through the properties inscribed in their names (invisibility in Hades' and corn in Plouton's), referring to the earth; both names are products of the conceptualisation of the world of the dead; (iv) contrary to the prevailing scholarly view, the multiplicity of Hades' names is not exclusively the result of euphemism (which I propose to see rather as a by- product): the nomenclature is more complex and depends principally on cultic or mythological contexts and local tradition. My work not only reconstructs the repertoire of Greek ideas and opinions on Hades and the character of his cult, but also advocates a new understanding of the notion of Greek deity, as metonymy: Hades is representative of a wider class of deities who are concrete and abstract at the same time (like Gaia [the Earth], Uranos [the Sky], Okeanos [the Sea]): they denote a place, a god, a property of something, a form of matter.

This thesis examines Dickens's uses of images of the river throughout his fiction, and also in the early sketches, the reprinted pieces from Household Words and The Uncommercial Traveller. The river concerned is usually but not exclusively the Thames, usually but not exclusively in London. The thesis offers some practical evidence to account for the powerful influence of the Thames upon Dickens's imagination and shows how he conceives of it both within existing frames of reference and in some distinctively Dickensian ways. It considers how Dickens's representations of the river play into the cult of the picturesque which emerged at the end of the eighteenth century, and into the tradition which sees it as a symbolic conduit of the empire. It goes on to consider his use of the river as a boundary, the consequent importance of river crossings in his work, and his conception of the riparian space as a liminal one. It then explores a distinctive scheme of discourse which uses the river to represent rebellious forces beyond the control of human agency and shows how this reflects the sense of spiritual threat which is to be found in some of the other, albeit rare, depictions of nature to be found in his writing. It then shows how Dickens uses the river symbolically to express ideas about death and rebirth, together with the loss of and changes in identity, and how he draws on a scheme of distinctively Christian iconography to do so. Finally it shows how he uses it to create and represent an underworld for London, using tropes of epic founded on classical models. The thesis concludes that, in its use of natural forces to signify social ones, Dickens's writing about the river serves to amplify his conception of stratification in Victorian society and adds weight to the socially conservative political stance which is known to be present in his world view.

The ancient Maya afterlife is a rich and voluminous topic. Unfortunately, much of the material currently utilized for interpretations about the ancient Maya comes from publications written after contact by the Spanish or from artifacts with no context, likely looted items. Both sources of information can be problematic and can skew interpretations. Cosmological tales documented after the Spanish invasion show evidence of the religious conversion that was underway. Noncontextual artifacts are often altered in order to make them more marketable. An example of an iconographic theme that is incorporated into the surviving media of the ancient Maya, but that is not mentioned in ethnographically-recorded myths or represented in the iconography from most noncontextual objects, are the "travelers": a group of gods, humans, and animals who occupy a unique niche in the ancient Maya cosmology. This group of figures is depicted journeying from one level or realm of the universe to another by using objects argued to bridge more than one plane of existence at a time. They travel by holding onto or riding objects familiar to the ancient Maya that held other-world or afterlife symbolic significance and that are connected to events related to birth, death, and leadership. This group of figures (the "travelers"), represented across time and space and on wide ranging media, provides insight and broadens what is currently understood about the ancient Maya view of life and death by indicating a persistent belief in the ability to move from one realm to another in the afterlife.

A series of chance encounters with the city of Cleveland leads to a non-objective reading of this place. It is an intuitive approach, an attempt to understand the complexity of a city in fragments and to change the city's perception of itself. This thesis is a reciprocal play between conceiving and creating, revealing their close interrelation. It is an inquiry into how our imagination transforms our built and not-built environment. To be an architect is to dwell at the interface between the imaginary and the real, to draw from both worlds. / Master of Architecture

Ce mémoire a pour objectif d'analyser le phénomène du Grand Roman Américain comme représentation de l'imaginaire national, en en faisant l'archéologie. Je propose, à partir de ce postulat initial, de procéder à un balayage sociologique des éléments qui entrent en ligne de compte dans la composition formelle et symbolique de certaines oeuvres marquantes ayant eu droit au titre de Grand Roman Américain. Il s'agit d'une sorte d'histoire chronologique de l'expression et de ses représentations littéraires. Opération qui mènera à une analyse approfondie de la prise en charge du langage, de l'espace et du temps comme discours dans Underworld de Don Delillo, parangon de ce qu'est le Grand Roman Américain dans son acception moderne. Underworld jouera le rôle d'un prisme, apte à rendre compte du roman contemporain (pour des notions telles que l'obsession de la mémoire collective et individuelle, l'absorption des mythes fondateurs, la contamination entre culture d'élite et culture de masse) et de ses prédécesseurs (on peut penser à la réactualisation des archétypes, aux intertextes, aux réécritures). Entre une sociologie qui prendrait comme point d'appui une littérature américaine analyste de son environnement, et une sociocritique d'un roman emblématique comme Underworld, ce mémoire cherche aussi à créer un pont entre différentes oeuvres qui pensent et ont pensé l'Amérique à la fois comme un tout préhensible et un concept fuyant, équivoque. Dans un premier temps, il s'agira de proposer une analyse sociologique et historique de l'expression Grand Roman Américain et d'en examiner les corrélats à l'intérieur de l'imaginaire social de l'Amérique. Dans un aller-retour entre la société et le livre qui s'en veut le reflet, je tenterai de dégager les lignes de tensions et les chevauchements, autrement dit les instants d'imprécisions entre la réalité et le mythe, entre le vrai social et le faux livresque. En quoi les oeuvres littéraires qui se réclament du Grand Roman Américain sont-elles révélatrices des ambiguïtés propres à leur milieu? Se consacrer ensuite à l'étude d'Underworld, c'est chercher à investir le coeur de la problématique. Le roman sera abordé sous les deux angles suivants: premièrement, son rapport au langage et au discours (la parole, la voix, l'énonciation). Qu'est-ce que l'Amérique, comment être Américain? Deuxièmement, et par extension, son appartenance au corpus Grand Roman Américain, dans une perspective d'intertextualité qui permettra de bien saisir les enjeux majeurs qui regroupent et recoupent les différentes époques littéraires et les différentes écritures. ______________________________________________________________________________ MOTS-CLÉS DE L’AUTEUR : Littérature américaine, Imaginaire social, Oralité, Mythes, Idéologies.