This thesis attempts to analyse the status of the 16th-century narrative---history, novel, epic---in its historical (instead of 'literary') context. The standard 'poetical' categories have been overlooked in favour of an axiology of 'truth' and 'falsehood' that overshadows all discourse from the end of the 15th to the beginning of the 17th century. Abandoning the traditional avenues of poetics (appraisal, classification, definition), this thesis studies writing and human invention in their relation to the presence or evocation of a transcendental divinity. / Christianity establishes a permanent break with both idolatrous paganism and iconoclastic Judaism so as to impose a new 'iconophile' relation to art: icons and poetical figures will be valued insofar as they constitute an evocation of the divine otherness and transcendence. Christianity encourages, within parameters rigourously established (by Tertullian, Augustine and Alain de Lille, among others) the writing of new texts dedicated to the enlightenment of faithfuls and of new Christians, as well as to the defense of faith against heresy and to the formation of clergymen. This thesis argues that medieval and many Renaissance narratives were written in this Christian perspective. / In the beginning of the 16th century, the monarchy increasingly favoured the emancipation of a learned institution that would rival the ecclesiastical university, a learned institution that would also seek to redefine the foundations of Christian faith and, in so doing, provide the king with powerful ideological weapons. The narrative---be it historical or fabulous---was initially linked to the Christian tradition, which makes of all writing an evocation of divinity. But, progressively, the narrative started to take position against the temporal dominion of the Church in favour of a power at once monarchistic and Christian (such is for instance the perspective of Dante Alighieri). / The scope of this thesis is thus twofold. On one hand, it argues that the 16th-century narrative cannot be apprehended within the parameters of our modern literary institution. That is, a text is never conceived as an imitation of reality possessing an independent status and constituting an end in itself, as will be established by the analysis of French narratives and paratextual commentaries from the 16th century (including the Illustrations de Gaule et singularites de Troyes by Jean Lemaire de Belges, the narratives of Rabelais, Helisenne de Crenne and Herberay des Essarts, and the epic poems of Ronsard and d'Aubigne). On the other hand, it studies the 'other,' historically predominant, cultural institution. In other words, it studies the absence of a 'literary' outlook as such (and therefore the absence of labelled genres such as 'the Novel', 'the Epic'), and the predominance of Christian thought in the establishment of a new secular (that is non ecclesiastical) cultural institution.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:LACETR/oai:collectionscanada.gc.ca:QMM.38538 |
| Date | January 2002 |
| Creators | Bouchard, Mawy, 1967- |
| Contributors | Desrosiers-Bonin, Diane (advisor) |
| Publisher | McGill University |
| Source Sets | Library and Archives Canada ETDs Repository / Centre d'archives des thèses électroniques de Bibliothèque et Archives Canada |
| Language | French |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Coverage | Doctor of Philosophy (Département de langue et littérature françaises.) |
| Rights | All items in eScholarship@McGill are protected by copyright with all rights reserved unless otherwise indicated. |
| Relation | alephsysno: 001984580, proquestno: NQ88427, Theses scanned by UMI/ProQuest. |
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