Seja na literatura, em filmes ou séries de TV, as temáticas da utopia/distopia e do apocalipse se tornam cada vez mais recorrentes. Tendo por base o arranjo de um design social utópico/distópico e de um imaginário apocalíptico, esta dissertação tem por objetivo analisar o romance Oryx e Crake, publicado em 2003 pela escritora canadense Margaret Atwood, autora de uma obra extensa, que é considerada ao mesmo tempo acadêmica e popular. Oryx e Crake retrata um universo ficcional onde a humanidade foi quase totalmente aniquilada por uma epidemia que irrompeu simultaneamente em vários países. Nesse cenário pós-apocalíptico, o Homem das Neves, único sobrevivente provável, busca alimentos e suprimentos em uma área costeira, relembrando seu passado e dividindo residência com criaturas geneticamente modificadas. Considerando uma possível combinação de gêneros literários e efeitos narrativos, o objetivo desta investigação é explorar o romance, separando o passado e o presente da narrativa, cada um associado, respectivamente, aos conceitos de ustopia (termo cunhado por Atwood, para se referir à fusão entre utopia e distopia) e de apocalipse/Armageddon. Os conceitos são analisados com base em como se relacionam entre si e, em última instância, quanto ao que podem revelar sobre a nossa sociedade atual. Como aporte teórico-crítico, a investigação recorre a nomes como Erich Fromm (1990), Fredric Jameson (2005; 2009), Gregory Claeys (2010), Northrop Frye (1973), Paul Alkon (1987) e Peter Fitting (2010), bem como a uma série de estudiosos atwoodianos, especialmente Coral Ann Howells (2005; 2006). A voz de Margaret Atwood como teórica e crítica literária também permeia todo o texto, fornecendo informações valiosas para a análise de sua própria ficção. Pela sua riqueza tanto em termos de forma quanto de conteúdo, Oryx e Crake representa um desafio para os seus leitores e estudiosos. Ao final do trabalho, fica manifesto o quão assustadoramente próximo este mundo ficcional criado por Atwood está da nossa realidade, sendo a imagem de um universo que, em certo grau, já habitamos. / The themes of utopia/dystopia and apocalypse are becoming increasingly more frequent in literature, movies or TV series. Taking into account an arrangement of a utopian/dystopian social design and an apocalyptic imagination, this thesis aims at examining the novel Oryx and Crake, published in 2003 by the Canadian writer Margaret Atwood, author to an extensive body of works, considered at one time academic and popular. Oryx and Crake portrays a fictional universe where humankind has been almost entirely annihilated by an epidemic that broke out simultaneously in several countries. In this post-apocalyptic scenario, Snowman, the probable sole survivor, scavenges for food and supplies in a coastal area, recollecting his past and sharing residence with genetically modified creatures. Considering a possible combination of literary genres and moods, the focus of this investigation is the play of past and present in the novel, each one associated with the concepts of ustopia (a term coined by Atwood to refer to the fusion of utopia and dystopia) and apocalypse/Armageddon, respectively. The concepts are analyzed on the basis of how they relate to each other and, ultimately, as to what they reveal about our contemporary society. For theoretical support, the thesis draws on names like Erich Fromm (1990), Fredric Jameson (2005; 2009), Gregory Claeys (2010), Northrop Frye (1973), Paul Alkon (1987), Peter Fitting (2010), and on a number of Atwoodian scholars and critics, especially Coral Ann Howells (2005; 2006). The voice of Margaret Atwood as theoretical and literary critic also permeates the entire thesis, providing valuable insights for the analysis of her own fiction. For its wealth in terms of form and content, Oryx and Crake poses a significant challenge for readers and researchers. At the end of the work, it is evident that the fictional universe created by Atwood is frighteningly close to our reality, reflecting a world that, to a certain extent, we already inhabit.

The essay is a manifesto-like personal take on painting, and a redefinition of painting in the digital age. Careless usage of the term ”painting” has led to a diluted descriptive function and a waning categorizing capacity; almost anything can be called painting, which in turn puts actual painting in an awkward position – where it, apart from being itself, could be almost anything. The term “painthing” is introduced to distinguish painting from works that beside its two-dimensional visual information also makes a point of its specific materiality. It brings up cave paintings and links to video-games, suggesting that video-games have gone through the reversed evolution of the history of painting – from abstraction to representation. It speaks of the problems of documentation – the translation of visual information (or re-flattening of a flat surface) – and the cultural equalization of information and images on the internet through the common denominator the pixel. It also describes “information painting”, which in short is digital painting where there is no physical object to be translated to a documentation of itself, but rather a painting that is original in its documentation form (its digital form), painting that strives to be nothing but the utopia of an image – the untouchable/unreachable visual information.

Profondeur et complexité de la pensée poétique d’Hermann Hesse ont souvent échappé à une réception critique induite en erreur par la limpidité d’une écriture qui, aux antipodes de « la consternation » requise dans l’après-guerre, obéit à une poétique de l’allégresse, de la Heiterkeit. Identification et analyse de cette poétique exigent d’adopter la perspective active de Hesse, celle de lecteur-créateur, afin de mieux le suivre dans sa libération progressive de divers cadres de pensée philosophico-poétiques. Hesse se démarque d’abord, lors d’une première crise, des canons weimariens de la Heiterkeit puis, dans une seconde crise, de l’esthétique créatrice nietzschéenne de l’allégresse. Confronté à l’urgence de la situation historique, Hesse trouve alors à la fin des années vingt sa propre poétique de résistance aux idéologies totalitaires, notamment au national-socialisme : une poétique de l’allégresse originale qui, utopique et initiatique, n’évacue pas le non-rationnel de l’esprit, comme Thomas Mann à la même époque. L’auteur parvient, en incluant le non-rationnel dans le fondement historique et anthropologique qu’il retire de sa lecture de Jacob Burckhardt, à éviter les écueils d’une autre poétique se dédiant au même moment au combat historique et transhistorique contre le fascisme – la poétique benjamienne de l’aura et de « l’image dialectique ». La poétique hesséenne de l’allégresse sera initiation par traces de témoignages à une lecture-écriture allégoricienne faisant participer l’individu à une communication authentique, créatrice de vrai et de joie dans le partage culturel d’une parole poétique originaire où, avec l’autre, l’homme advient historiquement à lui-même. / Depth and complexity of Hermann Hesse’s poetical thinking have been foregone by many of his critics misled by the limpidity of a prosa which, displaying his concept of serene joy (Heiterkeit), dissented from « the consternation» litterature that prevailed after the war. To identify and to analyse this poetics we need to adopt Hesse’s active perspective of reader-creator while following his progressive liberation from different kinds of philosophical and poetical frames: in a first crisis, he struggles himself free of the Heiterkeit canons of the Weimar Classics whereas the second crisis enables him to break the spell of Nietzsche’s creative poetics of joy. Urged by the historical context of the late twenties, Hesse creates his own poetics of resistance against totalitarian ideologies, in particular against National Socialism: an utopian and initiatory poetics of joy, that does not dismiss the non-rational of the mind like does Thomas Mann. Hesse’s poetics is based on the historical and anthropological foundations originating from his reading of Jacob Burckhardt’s works. It therefore prevents itself from the pitfalls of another poetics dedicated to the historical and transhistorical fighting against fascism, i.e. Walter Benjamin’s poetics of the aura and the “dialectical image”. Hesse’s poetics of joy is an initiation, through traces of testimony, towards an allegorical reading-writing which allows the individual to take part in an authentic communication that creates both truth and joy by the cultural sharing of an original poetical language through which the human being is coming, together with the other, historically to himself.

Ce travail porte sur les six premiers récits de Gioconda Belli, romancière, poète et ex-révolutionnaire nicaraguayenne. Il interroge trois motifs récurrents dans son œuvre – la Révolte, la Révolution et l’Utopie –, et cherche à en expliquer la présence obsessionnelle. En tant qu’intermédiaires entre les sphères individuelle et collective, ces objets d’étude nécessitent un éclairage à la fois psychanalytique et sociologique ; ces deux disciplines sont donc les outils privilégiés dans l’analyse, de même que la psychologie sociale, qui s’intéresse précisément aux processus psychiques régissant les interactions interpersonnelles. L’hypothèse de départ est que l’engagement dérive de la situation identitaire instable des personnages au début du récit, et que le choix entre Révolte, Révolution et Utopie dépend des conditions identitaires dans lesquelles ils se trouvent. Pour vérifier ce postulat, notre étude s’attache à dessiner les contours de la carence affective de chaque protagoniste, et analyse les processus identitaires susceptibles d’influencer la décision de s’engager, ainsi que les mécanismes psychiques que cette décision déclenche. Le fait que la quête d’identité ne soit pas assouvie par l’engagement mène alors à s’interroger sur la fonction idéologique de la Révolte, de la Révolution et de l’Utopie dans ces romans. Il s’agit donc aussi de déterminer le rôle de ces trois objets dans les récits, par l’étude de leur dimension temporelle, qui remplit une fonction à la fois diégétique et idéologique, ainsi que par l’analyse du dispositif argumentatif qui leur est associé, et qui révèle, de la part de l’auteur, une instrumentalisation de la littérature à des fins politiques. / This work deals with the first six novels of the novelist, poet and ex-revolutionary from Nicaragua, Gioconda Belli. It explores three recurrent themes – Revolt, Revolution and Utopia – and endeavours to explain the reason for their obsessional presence. As intermediaries between the individual and the collective, these concepts require both a psychoanalytical and sociological perspective. These two academic disciplines thus constitute the main tools of the research, as well as social psychology, which deals indeed with the psychological processes at play in interpersonal relations. The underlying assumption is that commitment stems from the characters’ unstable identity at the beginning of each novel, and that the choice between Revolt, Revolution and Utopia depends upon the circumstances of the creation of these identities. To put this assumption to the test, our study tries to locate the marks of emotional deprivation in each protagonist, and analyses the identity processes which are likely to influence the determination to commit and the psychological mechanisms resulting from such decision. Yet, the quest for identity is not quenched by commitment and this puts into question the ideological function of Revolt, Revolution and Utopia in these novels. Hence, this study equally tries to determine the role of these three objects in Belli’s work. It considers their temporal dimension, which has both a diegetic and an ideological function, and studies the argumentative devices attached to them, revealing thus the author’s political instrumentalisation of literature.

This thesis analyzes dystopian and gender-centered representations manifested in the speculative short stories "freeforall" (1986), by Margaret Atwood and "Congenital Agenesis of Gender Ideation by K.N Sirsi and Sandra Botkin" (1998), by Raphael Carter. Characterized by futuristic temporalities, these narratives raise critical views of identities in relation to the binary models and the stabilizing tendencies regarding gender which are still strongly perceptible in our patriarchal society. I observe the ways in which the literary works (de)construct values and concepts pre-established socially. The study of such (de)construction is carried out by focusing on the intersections between the debates originating from the critical theories on literary genres whose traces are identified in the stories (utopia, dystopia, science fiction) and the knowledge produced in the area of Cultural and Gender Studies. On this interface, emphasis is given to the presence of irony as a major literary strategy, whose functions are approached according to Linda Hutcheon´s propositions, that is used in this work to understand the linguistic communicative interection process in the tales. In Atwood´s short story, I focus on the spaces described in relation to the social dynamics and on the protagonist portrayal so as to argue that such elements engender metaphors for a compulsory heterosexual system whose aim lies on human reproduction by means of the imposition of strict gender norms and the practice of eugenics. Therefore, people are placed in different spaces, predetermined according to their social funcion. The Houses and Freeforall are the spatialities of this comunity. The first one is the place of the chosen, and the last one, unsderstood as deviant heterotopic space, following the theory developed by Foucault, is destined to those deviant from the norm.The word play in the title of the tale and the protagonist's analyses, allow a study with irony. In Carter´s short story, the (de)construction of crystallized gender notions is achieved by means of parodic irony evidenced by the critical incorporation of scientific practices and academic discourses. Finally I argue that, mainly by resorting to the strategy of irony, the fictional representation of gender dystopias in Atwood and Carter question cultural gender configurations which have been conventionalized in/by androcentric society. Thus, these works may be interpreted in light of a feminist critical reading that, based on the Butlerian conception regarding the pressing need to undo gender, seeks to deconstruct normative values and views. / Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico / Esta dissertação analisa as representações literárias distópicas e de gênero construídas nos contos especulativos "Freeforall" (1986), de Margaret Atwood e "congenital Agenesis of Gender Ideation by K.N Sirsi and Sandra Botkin" (1998), de Raphael Carter. De temporalidade futurista, essas narrativas suscitam visões críticas sobre as identidades no que diz respeito aos modelos binários e às tendências estabilizadoras de gênero ainda fortemente perceptíveis em nossa cultura patriarcal. Observo as maneiras pelas quais as obras (des)constroem valores e conceitos pré estabelecidos socialmente. O estudo da representação dessa (des)construção é realizado através do enfoque nos entrecruzamentos entre os debates oriundos das teorias críticas sobre os gêneros literários cujos traços são identificados nas histórias (utopia, distopia, ficção científica) e do conhecimento produzido na área dos Estudos Culturais e de Gênero. Nesta interface, ênfase recai sobre a presença da ironia como estratégia literária importante, abordada em suas funções, conforme proposto por Linda Hutcheon, utilizada, neste trabalho, para entender o processo de interação comunicativa linguística e literária das obras. No conto de Atwood, enfoco os espaços em relação às dinâmicas sociais e a figuração da protagonista para argumentar que esses elementos engendram metáforas de um sistema heterossexual compulsório que visa à reprodução por meio da constituição de rígidas normas de gênero e de práticas de eugenia. Para tanto, os indivíduos são colocados em diferentes espaços, previamente estabelecidos e de acordo com sua função social. As Casas e o Freeforall são as espacialidades desta comunidade. O primeiro é o local dos escolhidos e, o último, entendido como um espaço heterotópico de desvio, conforme teoria desenvolvida por Foucault, é destinado àqueles desviantes em relação à norma. O jogo de palavras presente no título do conto e a análise da protagonista permitem um estudo da ironia. No conto de Carter, a (des)construção das noções cristalizadas de gênero se desenvolve por meio da ironia paródica, evidenciada pela incorporação crítica de práticas científicas e discursos acadêmicos. Finalmente, argumento que as representações ficcionais das distopias de gênero de Atwood e Carter, principalmente por meio da estratégia da ironia, questionam as configurações culturais de gênero convencionadas pela/na sociedade androcêntrica. Assim, as obras podem ser interpretadas sob um viés de leitura crítica feminista que, baseado numa concepção butleriana sobre a necessidade iminente de se desfazer gênero, busca desconstruir valores e visões normativas.

Ce mémoire propose d’analyser la place de la réflexion utopique au sein de la philosophie politique. En tant qu’idéal permettant de porter un regard critique sur la société ainsi qu’une mise en lumière des perspectives de transformation de celle-ci, l’utopie est un concept pertinent pour la réflexion politique. L’utilisation de l’utopie selon ces termes est toutefois critiquée. Pour justifier la réactualisation de l’utopie, nous analysons deux critiques qui ont été formulées à son égard avant de proposer une reconceptualisation de celle-ci. Le premier chapitre traite de la critique concernant l’incapacité de la réflexion idéale à être appliquée dans le monde. Nous mobilisons les apports théoriques du débat entre la théorie idéale et non idéale afin d’y répondre. Cette discussion nous fournit une meilleure compréhension du concept de faisabilité ainsi que de la capacité de la théorie idéale à guider l’action. Le deuxième chapitre se concentre sur l’autoritarisme inhérent aux idéaux utopiques. L’utopie serait la recherche d’un idéal de perfection absolue qui doit être imposé par la violence. Cette critique est partiellement répondue par des exemples d’utopies ne se conformant pas à cette définition. Le troisième chapitre propose de repenser le concept d’utopie. L’utopie réaliste de Rawls est analysée, mais elle s’avère inadéquate pour notre propos. Notre attention est tournée vers les perspectives de Böker et McKenna nous permettant de jeter les bases d’une nouvelle conception de l’utopie. Nous terminons par un retour positif sur notre question principale : l’utopie doit être réactualisée dans la philosophie politique comme une dimension essentielle. / The purpose of this master’s is to analyze the role of utopian thinking within political philosophy. Utopia, being an ideal used to criticize and transform present society is a useful concept for political thought. However, using utopia in these terms is criticized. To justify reintroducing this concept within political philosophy, we analyze two criticisms against utopia before reconceptualizing our main concept. The first chapter deals with the inability of ideal thought to address real world issues. To respond to this criticism, we analyze the recent debate between ideal and non-ideal theory. This discussion provides us with a renewed understanding of the role of feasibility and action-guiding in ideal theory. The second chapter deals with the authoritarian character of utopian ideals. Within this perspective, utopia is a pursuit of social perfection which can only be enforced through violence. This criticism is partially responded with examples of utopia which do not conform with this definition. The third chapter proposes to rethink the concept of utopia. The first perspective to be analyzed is Rawls’s realist utopia, but it does not adequately reintroduce utopian thought within political philosophy. In turn, the theories of Böker and McKenna enable us to think of utopia in a more open and dynamic perspective. To finish this master’s, we return to our first inquiry. Not only does utopia has a role within political philosophy, it should be seen as an essential part.

L’Histoire de la gauche radicale en France connaît deux influences majeures souvent considérées comme incompatibles : le marxisme et l’anarchisme (ou la pensée libertaire). Pourtant face aux échecs répétés des tentatives révolutionnaires à base prolétarienne en Europe, et au manque de « poids » des théories libertaires au sein de la contestation radicale du monde contemporain, la « gauche révolutionnaire traditionnelle » semble aujourd’hui être « dépassée » voire « démodée ». Si depuis les évènements de Mai 68 nombre de courants radicaux de gauche, parfois appelés « ultra-gauche », sont apparus en France, il semblerait qu’émerge aujourd’hui, au sein de la gauche radicale, contestataire et révolutionnaire une volonté de s’unir autour d’une ambition commune : faire la Révolution. C’est d’ailleurs ce que tentent d’expliquer Olivier Besancenot et Michael Löwy dans leur ouvrage intitulé : Affinités révolutionnaires . Souvent associés dans la lutte, les partisans de ces deux écoles de pensée semblent se séparer sur le plan des idées. D’inspiration marxiste et libertaire la pensée anti-industrielle reflète cette volonté unificatrice. Issu de la contestation radicale de Mai 1968, la pensée anti-industrielle se développe en France au cours des années 1980 à travers la revue Encyclopédie des Nuisances dirigée par Jaime Semprun. Rejetant le marxisme comme dogme et considérant qu’aucune critique radicale ne permet à cette époque de réellement comprendre correctement l’organisation du monde et l’idéologie dominante, les penseurs de l’Encyclopédie des Nuisances souhaite proposer à travers ce Dictionnaire de la déraison dans les sciences, les arts et les métiers, une forme de bilan reprenant les échecs de mai 1968 et « les immenses succès remportés depuis 68 par la domination modernisée » afin de « les voir dans toute leur ampleur et dans leurs conséquences, sans se dissimuler en quoi ils étaient, bien plus qu’une simple restauration, une contre-offensive décisive, achevant de ruiner à peu près tout ce sur quoi la critique sociale avait cru jusque-là pouvoir se reposer » . Par la suite, c’est en Mars 2010 que Manuel Amoros a rédigé un manifeste intitulé Nous les anti-industriels dans lequel il tenta de définir la position des penseurs anti-industriels. Il conclut en définissant la pensée anti-industrielle comme suit : La pensée contre le développement, ou anti-industrielle, ne représente pas une nouvelle mode, une critique purement négative de la pensée scientifique et des idéologies progressistes, ni un vulgaire primitivisme qui proposerait de retourner à un moment quelconque de l’Histoire ou de la préhistoire. Elle n’est pas non plus une simple dénonciation de la domestication du prolétariat et du despotisme du capital. Encore moins est-elle quelque chose mystificatrice comme une théorie unitaire de la société, chasse gardée de la dernière des avant-gardes ou du dernier des mouvements. Elle va plus loin que cela. Elle est le stade le plus avancé de la conscience sociale et historique. C’est une forme déterminée de conscience, de la généralisation de laquelle dépend le salut de l’époque. Si les Encyclopédistes peuvent être considérés comme les premiers auteurs appartenant à la pensée anti-industrielle et le manifeste comme étant le socle théorique de base de cette pensée, il ne faut pas négliger d’autres auteurs et d’autres maisons d’éditions qui se rattachent aujourd’hui à ce courant. Citer tous les auteurs anti-industriels. Constitution de corpus. Une fois ces auteurs « recensés », il est intéressant de noter que cette pensée anti-industrielle semble rassembler l’ensemble des critiques radicales du monde contemporain afin d’en dégager une globale, permettant à la fois d’en saisir toutes les « caractéristiques » et « les nuisances », mais également de définir les bases du monde à venir qui devrait se substituer au monde contemporain. / .This PhD thesis aims at understanding the ideological construction of a revolutionary political thought that came to existence in France during the 1980s. This work is the result of our will to understand – in the Weberian sense of the term – not only what motivated the thinkers of the “Encyclopédie des Nuisances” to start a situational analysis of the social critique of the time, but also the ideological evolution that permitted the development of an anti-industrialist movement at the beginning of the twenty-first century. In 2010, thanks to the anti-industrialist manifesto the movement appeared. Our hypothesis is that the birth of these particular contemporary utopian views is the result of two decisive factors: on the one hand, the disappointment of some activists towards the May 1968 events in France; and on the other hand, the sense of urgency concerning the sophistication of the industrial world through nuclear power, and the new information and communication technology. We argue that these different evolutions seem to lean towards the creation of a contemporary utopian thought offering to readjust the social critique to the new living standards of individuals.

Conceived in the wake of a global pandemic and the unanticipated need to create digital theatre, COVEN-19, or Magicks for Unprecdented Times as a devising project consisted of two witchcraft-inspired performances: a fall 2020 Samhain ritual and a spring 2021 Beltane ritual. The company of undergraduate and graduate theatre witches explored decentralized, iterative, slow, caretaking, queer forms of devising over digital platforms. The written portion of this thesis takes the form of a digital tarot blog: 22 (plus a bonus) interconnected essays and spells that interrogate feminist and queer theories as they pertain to the Coven’s devising process. This digital format not only reflects the malleable nature of the creative process, but it is also a kind of praxis that invites the reader to take an active role in meaning-making and resists an objective, singular narrative. Woven through these tarot cards are threads of utopian futurity, situated subjectivities, and anticapitalist temporalities. The essays and spells are primarily in conversation with adrienne maree brown, Judith Butler, Audre Lorde, Jose Estaban Munoz, and Starhawk – engaging with these theorists as thought-ancestors in order to activate rather than regurgitate their knowledges of radical hope and nonlinear process. The tarot deck takes a situated, backwards glance toward these ancestors as it grasps at seemingly impossible utopian horizons of collaboration and creation.

My diploma work is focused on topic of environmental responsibility, priviledge of mobility, nomadism, borders and dreaming of utopic un/realities. In site-specific instalation I combine sound, video, painting and text.

Ce travail analyse le rôle fondamental du royaume arthurien dans le récit breton du XIIe siècle. Ce lieu soulève des problématiques relatives aux fonctions de la souveraineté et tend vers la définition d’un idéal qu’on appellera « eutopique ».L’étude repose sur l’hypothèse de l’existence de deux « domaines » arthuriens qui donnent aux textes leur polarité fondamentale : le domaine courtois d’une part, qui se caractérise par une emprise masculine, celle d’Arthur, et le domaine merveilleux qui est davantage marqué par des figures féminines, souvent féeriques. Ce dernier domaine figure un envers symbolique du domaine d’origine du héros dont le parcours met en lumière une tension dialectique féconde. En effet, l’aventure le conduit du domaine courtois au domaine merveilleux, pour le ramener à la fin à la cour d’Arthur. Or ce retour ne signifie pas une régression au point de départ, mais implique au contraire la définition d’un nouvel espace, à la fois concret et idéal, à la tête duquel le héros, désormais investi de la fonction royale, règnera en assurant le bien-être de sa communauté. Ce troisième lieu est donc distinct du domaine courtois originel et en propose une variante régénérée. Le nouveau royaume qui émerge à l’issue de l’aventure chevaleresque peut ainsi être appelé « eutopique ». C’est le lieu de la construction d’un idéal humble, assurant la satisfaction des besoins humains les plus simples : l’abondance alimentaire, et de manière générale la réparation de toutes les « mauvaises coutumes » que le roi fatigué a laissé s’installer. Il se situe donc aussi aux antipodes d’idéaux plus abstraits pour poser cette aspiration simple d’une vie à mesure humaine. / This thesis analyses the fundamental role of the Arthurian kingdom in the Arthurian narrative of the twelfth century. This place raises issues related to the functions of sovereignty and tends towards the definition of an ideal that will be called « eutopic ».The study is based on the hypothesis of the existence of two Arthurian « domains » which give to the texts their fundamental polarity: on the one hand, there is the courteous domain, which is characterized by a male authority, that of Arthur, and on the other hand, the marvelous domain is comprised of fairy feminine figures. The marvelous domain is a symbolic reverse of the hero’s original domain, whose path highlights a dialectical tension. Indeed, the adventure leads him from the courteous domain to the marvelous one, to bring him back at the end to Arthur’s court. This return does not mean a regression to the starting point, but on the contrary implies the definition of a new space, both concrete and ideal, at the head of which the hero, now invested with the royal function, will reign by ensuring the well-being of his community. Therefore, this third place is distinct from the original courteous domain and proposes a regenerated variant. The new kingdom that emerges at the end of the chivalrous adventure can thus be called « eutopic ». It is a place for the construction of a humble ideal, ensuring the satisfaction of the simplest human needs: the abundance of, and more generally the restoration of all the « bad customs » that the tired king let settle down. It is the antithesis of more abstract ideals to pose this simple aspiration of human scale life.