Dissertations / Theses on the topic '20th century french literature - literary criticism'
To see the other types of publications on this topic, follow the link: 20th century french literature - literary criticism.
Create a spot-on reference in APA, MLA, Chicago, Harvard, and other styles
Consult the top 50 dissertations / theses for your research on the topic '20th century french literature - literary criticism.'
Next to every source in the list of references, there is an 'Add to bibliography' button. Press on it, and we will generate automatically the bibliographic reference to the chosen work in the citation style you need: APA, MLA, Harvard, Chicago, Vancouver, etc.
You can also download the full text of the academic publication as pdf and read online its abstract whenever available in the metadata.
Browse dissertations / theses on a wide variety of disciplines and organise your bibliography correctly.
1
Mueller, Marieke. "Subjectivity in Sartre's 'L'idiot de la famille' : biography as a space for the development of theory." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2015. https://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:54f60363-e148-4481-b710-c7e68a908bd5.
Full textAbstract:
In the context of a renascent interest in the thought of Jean-Paul Sartre, this thesis proposes a close examination of one of his less studied texts, the study of Gustave Flaubert, L'Idiot de la famille (1971-72). The analysis focuses on theoretical developments that emerge from Sartre's biographical enquiry, pursuing an interdisciplinary approach combining a consideration of literary theory and literary history with the perspective of Sartre's philosophy of subjectivity. L'Idiot is situated amongst a wide variety of texts by Sartre, from Qu'est-ce que la littérature? (1948) to the Critique de la raison dialectique (1960), identifying theoretical innovations within Sartre's understanding of the subject (ch. 1), his social theory (ch. 2), his theory of the imaginary (ch. 3), of literary production (ch. 4) and of reading (ch. 5). Additionally, hitherto largely unexplored passages highlight Sartre's reflections on the situation of the late 1960s. Previous analyses of the philosophical innovations presented in L'Idiot have often focused on the strictly theoretical passages in the biography. The present thesis also concentrates on the 'imagined' scenes presented throughout the text. Read as an integral part of Sartre's method, it is suggested that the dramatization facilitated by the biographical format is an integral part of the theoretical enquiry. Despite the lack of explicit referencing provided by Sartre, the biography is explored in its open character, identifying a series of resonances and similarities with a diverse range of authors. The different chapters consider thinkers whose relationship with Sartre has received little or no attention (such as Pierre Bourdieu and Walter Benjamin), or whose work resonates with Sartre in ways that have so far gone unnoticed (Roland Barthes, Maurice Merleau-Ponty and Maurice Blanchot).
2
Magerski, Christine 1969. "The constitution of the literary field in Germany after 1871 : Berlin modernism, literary criticism and the beginnings of the sociology of literature." Monash University, German Studies, 2002. http://arrow.monash.edu.au/hdl/1959.1/8724.
Full text
3
Nardout, Elisabeth. "Le champ littéraire québécois et la France, 1940-50 /." Thesis, McGill University, 1987. http://digitool.Library.McGill.CA:80/R/?func=dbin-jump-full&object_id=72078.
Full textAbstract:
The decade 1940-1950 represents a decisive stage in the evolution of the relations between the Quebec literary scene and France. Whereas before the war, literary discourse keeps on upholding, in a dogmatic way, the superiority of French culture and literature, the next period is characterized, on the contrary, by a reassessment of this postulate.The historical circumstances justify the setting up of exceptional institutional conditions. Some French writers and critics, in exile in North America, partake, to varying degrees, in the French Canadian literary scene. The backing of these intellectuals is not unrelated to the process of modernization and autonomization undertaken at that time by the major sectors of the Quebecer literary apparatus.
A conflict of interest in the publishing sector as well as ideological differences spark a controversy between Robert Carbonneau and some members of the Comite National des Ecrivains. This "quarrel", to quote Charbonneau, is an unprecedented example of direct confrontation between Quebecer and French literary agents. On this occasion, Robert Charbonneau redefines French Canadian literature outside of France's sphere of influence, France being a country whose status he wishes to limit to that of just one foreign reference among many.
This desire for autonomy can also be found in literary texts which, using means available to them, bear witness to an appreciable decline of the French literature. But whereas literary discourse attempts to resist annexation to French literature, the literary apparatus is subject, upon the Liberation, to a material and symbolic domination by the French authorities, a domination it cannot fight. In this respect, the conditions of literary production in the fifties are paradoxical since the text, while voicing its rejection of the French institution and its French Canadian identity, continues to receive its ultimate consecration from France.
4
Karolyi, Julian. "Literary renewal and the reader : the multiple pleasures of La Nouvelle Fiction." Thesis, University of St Andrews, 1998. http://hdl.handle.net/10023/13406.
Full textAbstract:
In this thesis I seek to describe, analyse and characterise the contemporary literary movement La Nouvelle Fiction, a group that has received no critical attention to date. The movement is examined first in terms of its place in French literary history, taking as reference points both literary and theoretical trends: in particular, the nouveau roman and aspects of post-structuralism, with both of which the Nouvelle Fiction implicitly compares or contrasts itself. In Part I, I go on to analyse the theory of the fantastic and detective fiction, both genres that influence the Nouvelle Fiction, and provisional descriptions of the Nouvelle Fiction are thereby developed based on Umberto Eco's theory of the 'model reader'. I suggest that the Nouvelle Fiction demands a particularly active interpretative role of its reader, which is compared in the texts with moral competence in the world. Through analysis of key narrative strategies in Part II (circular narrative structures, unreliable narrative voices, parody, and mise en abyme), the movement is examined for its internal characteristics, and specific differences in practice are established between the Nouvelle Fiction and the nouveau roman. In Part III, aspects of reader-reception are examined, first, through the use of Barthes's anatomy of textual pleasure, second, through the relationship between fiction, the world and identity, and thirdly, through discussion of the extent engagement is possible in these ludic and interpretatively ambiguous texts. I argue that a picture thus emerges of a fiction that heralds a heightened role for the active reader of texts that represent a renewed relationship with reality and with the way narrative shapes it, after the reaction against representation that was an important characteristic of the modernist aesthetic.
5
Zambelli, Sessona Anna. "Intertextual strategies and the poetics of identity in Imīl Ḥabībī's literary works." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2001. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.711596.
Full text
6
Fahmy, Miriam. "Le discours sur la fin de la littérature en France de 1987 à 1994 /." Thesis, McGill University, 2003. http://digitool.Library.McGill.CA:80/R/?func=dbin-jump-full&object_id=79937.
Full textAbstract:
The "essai crepusculaire" was one of the most popular literary genres during the 1980's and 1990's in France. Among those, the essays warning of the impending end of French literature offer a view of the world which idealises the past while condemning a shameful present in order to justify the return of lost values.Our project consists of an analysis of the argumentative rhetoric contained in the four essays of our corpus, which together form the Discourse on the death of French literature. We studied how the authors set up an argumentative construct likely to convince the reader that French literature has fallen into decay. By analysing the rhetorical processes as well as locating the tacit discourse, we sought to single out the ideology which they promote and to make out the contours of the literary ideal which they delineate. In light of these observations, we ended with the broad outline of a typology of the genre, liable to exemplify all "essais crepusculaires".
7
de, Vivanco Camillo. "Misanthropy in the works of Louis-Ferdinand Céline and Thomas Bernhard." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2015. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.712505.
Full text
8
Papanikolaou, Dimitris. "Singing poets : literature and popular music in France and Greece /." London : Legenda, 2007. http://bvbr.bib-bvb.de:8991/F?func=service&doc_library=BVB01&doc_number=016510046&line_number=0002&func_code=DB_RECORDS&service_type=MEDIA.
Full text
9
甘李國冰 and Lee Kwok-ping Vivien Kam. "The literary profession and domestic politics in the People's Republicof China, 1950-1980." Thesis, The University of Hong Kong (Pokfulam, Hong Kong), 1985. http://hub.hku.hk/bib/B31207625.
Full text
10
Gagné, Marie 1961. "Le mouvement "Tel Quel": neo-avant-garde et postmodernite." Thesis, McGill University, 1990. http://digitool.Library.McGill.CA:80/R/?func=dbin-jump-full&object_id=74534.
Full textAbstract:
Cette etude propose une analyse de "Tel Quel" en tant que mouvement de neo-avant-garde situe a la frontiere de la modernite et de la postmodernite. Nous y considerons tous les textes de creation (roman et poesie) publies dans la collection "Tel Quel" entre 1960 et 1982, sans negliger l'etude de leur rapport avec la reflexion theorique exposee dans les essais et les articles de la revue. Cette these represente en meme temps un effort de synthese des principales typologies ou tentatives de definition proposees par la critique occidentale pour caracteriser les mouvements litteraires issus des societes post-industrielles: modernite, postmodernite, modernisme, postmodernisme, avant-garde, post avant-garde et neo-avant-garde.
11
Behin, Bahram. "Aspects of the role of language in creating the literary effect : implications for the reading of Australian prose fiction /." Title page, contents and abstract only, 1997. http://web4.library.adelaide.edu.au/theses/09PH/09phb419.pdf.
Full text
12
Maximenkov, Leonid. "An analysis of the genesis and growth of literary Staliniana." Thesis, McGill University, 1992. http://digitool.Library.McGill.CA:80/R/?func=dbin-jump-full&object_id=39503.
Full textAbstract:
Staliniana is an eclectic genre of Russian literature of the Soviet period. It deals with the fictional image of I. V. Stalin and the impact of his life and politics on history. For several decades it was the core of socialist realist literature and Stalin's personality cult.The first chapter discusses the phenomena of Stalin's personality cult in the context of the intellectual history of the post-revolutionary Soviet society in the 1920s and 1930s. Chapter two offers different classifications of a vast amount of fiction written on Stalin. The genesis and documented development of staliniana is discussed in the third chapter. Special attention is paid to the manipulations in the genre exercised by ideological and cultural authorities in the USSR from the 1920s to the 1970s. The fourth chapter discusses some aspects of staliniana in Western Europe as contrasted to Soviet literature. In the fifth chapter a detailed analysis of key elements of the codified literary image of Stalin is undertaken. Chapter six explores the folklore background of Stalin's cult and its interaction with the cult of V. I. Lenin. The final chapter offers an analysis of the development of the language used by Stalin as a fictional character in works of literature. This study uses the recently declassified materials from Soviet archives in order to demonstrate that staliniana was not only a key element of the Stalin cult but also a cornerstone of Soviet literature.
13
Elston, Suzanne Poteet. "Garrison Keillor and American Literary Traditions." Thesis, University of North Texas, 1988. https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc500338/.
Full textAbstract:
Although Garrison Keillor is perhaps best known as the creator and host of Minnesota Public Radio's A Prairie Home Companion (1974-1987), the focus of this study is his literary career. Keillor's literary accomplishments include a successful career as a writer for The New Yorker and two best-selling books about the fictional town of Lake Wobegon, Minnesota, entitled Lake Wobegon Days (1985) and Leaving Home (1987). His literary style incorporates elements from several traditions in American literature--the precise, sophisticated "New Yorker style" practiced by writers such as E. B. White and James Thurber; the oral tradition prominent in the works of Mark Twain and the nineteenth-century literary comedians; and the satiric realism associated with the small-town literature of writers such as Sherwood Anderson and Sinclair Lewis.
14
Heiberg, Sarah Charlotte. "La répresentation de l'identité dans la littérature de la Guadeloupe et de la Martinique /." Thesis, McGill University, 2006. http://digitool.Library.McGill.CA:80/R/?func=dbin-jump-full&object_id=98927.
Full textAbstract:
The goal of this thesis is to explore the ways in which identity is represented in French Caribbean literature (Guadeloupe and Martinique). Literature is often the place where Caribbean writers explore new ways of defining themselves. This quest for an authentic cultural identity can be mostly explained by the colonial legacy of the French Caribbean.This study will first explore the important role of re-writing history. It will then examine the Creolite movement and the way in which the Creole language and culture are celebrated in literary texts. Finally, it will look at how the French Caribbean define their relationship to the Other. The authors studied for this thesis are Edouard Glissant, Patrick Chamoiseau, Simone Schwarz-Bart and Maryse Conde.
15
Wilson, Jean. "Images du clown dans la littérature française du XXe siècle." Thesis, McGill University, 1988. http://digitool.Library.McGill.CA:80/R/?func=dbin-jump-full&object_id=64067.
Full text
16
Roy, Alain. "L'écriture minimaliste; suivi de Journée programmée." Thesis, McGill University, 1990. http://digitool.Library.McGill.CA:80/R/?func=dbin-jump-full&object_id=59429.
Full textAbstract:
This master's thesis in creative writing is divided into two parts. The first constitutes a critical analysis of "minimalist" writing, a term which has been used to describe the work of certain contemporary American writers but which might equally be applied to a portion of the world literature. This literary form has two fundamental characteristics from an aesthetic point of view: brevity and realism. In fact, it could be defined as the short story taken to its ultimate expression. Furthermore, it represents one of two poles by which we can evaluate all literature. The second part of the thesis is a collection of short stories which embody the minimalist aesthetic with everyday life and relationships between couples as their central theme.
17
Pinson, Guillaume 1973. "Fiction du monde : analyse littéraire et médiatique de la mondanité, 1885-1914." Thesis, McGill University, 2005. http://digitool.Library.McGill.CA:80/R/?func=dbin-jump-full&object_id=102151.
Full textAbstract:
This work proposes a double analysis of the mundane society representations between 1885 and 1914, in the press and the novel. This analysis separates these two categories of media to insist on their particularities, and tries to think of them in terms of an interaction.A first part explores the organisation of the topics and the main genre of the mundane society in the press, applying the social discourse theory. The analysis is based on the perusal of a set of representative daily newspapers (Le Gaulois, Le Figaro) and of weekly and monthly publications (Le Grand monde, La Vie parisienne, Femina notably, as well as around thirty other titles). It shows that the mundane society in the newspaper is constrained by a poetics stemming from the characteristics of press writing: collective writing, periodicity of the publication, text length limitation and reference to reality. Some texts are tempted by fiction, even though they keep a reality-based referential, whereas other texts that are openly fictitious, fit the mundane fiction into the newspaper.
The second part is based on the general conclusion of the first part: the mundane society in the newspaper is a represented society, made of for a distant and anonymous public. With the advent of the medias in the 19th century, the mundane society has entered into the era of mediations and "industrial writing". Some writers, from Bourget to Proust, take these upheavals into account and present the mundane society as a metaphor of the mass media society. This is done following three main axes: the temptation of withdrawal of the fiction into a closed world (psychological and mundane movement impulsed by Goncourt with Cherie, prolonged by Bourget and Hervieux notably); the games of exchange between the novel and the newspaper (Maupassant, Toulet, Legrand, amongst others); and finally, the isolation of the mundane world and the aesthetic work on mediations (Rolland, Colette, Mirbeau, Lorrain et Gide notably). All these writings address the question of sociability at the era of the triumph of mediations: what room is left for the mundane society, for direct encounter, for exchange, in a world of mediation and mass media coverage? for immediate connections in a society of mediated ties? The epilogue proposes a journalistic reading of A la recherche du temps perdu, synthesis-work which inaugurates a modern and sociological perception: it is in the world of the imagined mundane society, distant and represented in the mass media, that the narrator draws the resources for his observation of the world.
18
Fasey, Rosemary J. "Writers in the service of revolution : Russia's ideological and literary impact on Spanish poetry and prose, 1925-36." Thesis, University of St Andrews, 2003. http://hdl.handle.net/10023/14655.
Full textAbstract:
This thesis is a comparative literary study which is conducted by placing the reception of Russian literature in Spain during the period 1918-36 within the context of the interplay of literature and the social and political situations in which it is written. It first places the boom in the publication of Russian literature in the late 1920s and 1930s within the context of the history of the reception of Russian literature in Spain, providing a comprehensive survey of that history. Next, it describes the impact of the Russian Revolution and the formative years of the Soviet Socialist state on the political situation in pre-Civil War Spain, including the ideological links between the political situations of both countries. In pre-Civil War Spain, the revolutionary atmosphere changed the mood, subject matter and style of literature, and certain writers, recognizing their civic duty, began to produce literature that had a socially critical and didactic role. During that period, given the political context and the development of politically committed literature, Spanish intellectuals and artists of a Marxist persuasion derived incentive from their Russian counterparts. Russian literature has traditionally been the forum for social criticism, and has had a profoundly revolutionary dimension. Pre-revolutionary writers such as Dostoevsky and Andreev have been perceived by outsiders as revolutionary writers, and, in that capacity, have enjoyed great popularity abroad, including Spain. In the Soviet era, Mayakovsky was often considered to be the "Poet of the Revolution", and Gorky was the chief spokesman in the promotion of socialist ideals in literature in the twenty years following the Revolution. In Spanish pre-Civil War fiction, both the social novel and poetry were instrumental in conveying overtly Marxist messages. The thesis concludes with a comprehensive study about certain Spanish writers and their works, in the domains of poetry and the novel, specifically seeking evidence of the impact of the literature and ideology which was emanating from Russia in the first third of the twentieth century.
19
Campeau, Sylvain 1960. "Poésie et discours poétique au Canada français (1889-1909)." Thesis, McGill University, 1999. http://digitool.Library.McGill.CA:80/R/?func=dbin-jump-full&object_id=36560.
Full textAbstract:
In 1892, in one of his characteristic attacks, Arthur Buies denounced the "deplorable" style of certain young French-Canadian writers of the day. The "jeunes barbares", as he called them, published in small magazines such as Le Recueil litteraire and L'Echo des jeunes, and were strongly influenced by French fin-de-siecle writing (the decadent and Symbolist schools in particular). The creation of the Ecole litteraire de Montreal in 1895 can be seen as a continuation of these varied literary endeavours. Quite aware of the criticisms leveled at young writers by Buies and others, the members of the Ecole viewed their association as both a literary circle and a training ground. The Bulletin du parler francais au Canada , founded in 1902, approached the issue of the poor quality of spoken and written French in French Canada from a more philological angle. It was in the Bulletin... that Camille Roy published his articles on French-Canadian literary history and his famous conference on the nationalisation of French-Canadian literature (in 1904--1905). This text was to have an influence so far-reaching that the Ecole litteraire de Montreal, in its second incarnation, espoused---albeit with some reticence---certain of the "pre-regionalist" values it promoted. The texts published in the Ecole's magazine, Le Terroir (1909), clearly indicate this.This thesis analyses the diverse modernist and pre-regionalist discourses present from 1889 to 1909, taking into particular account the variations in their antagonism (which manifested itself in a number of short-lived quarrels), with a view to providing a more complete and nuanced picture of the period than previous studies have done; it explores, in the process, the less well-known antecedents to the period which was to follow, a period during which the opposition between the regionalists and the "exotiques" came to a head.
20
Kenny, Tobias. ""Coming home to roost" : some reflections on moments of literary response to the paradoxes of empire." Thesis, National Library of Canada = Bibliothèque nationale du Canada, 1998. http://www.collectionscanada.ca/obj/s4/f2/dsk1/tape11/PQDD_0023/NQ50200.pdf.
Full text
21
Macklovitch, David Nathaniel. "Modalités de lecture du nouveau roman." Thesis, McGill University, 2002. http://digitool.Library.McGill.CA:80/R/?func=dbin-jump-full&object_id=79791.
Full textAbstract:
In this thesis, we examine theories of reading as they apply to three examples of the French New Novel. We begin with a detailed theoretical expose in which we compare and attempt to reconcile the reading models of Umberto Eco, Wolfgang Iser, Stanley Fish, Bertrand Gervais and Richard Saint-Gelais. The hybrid theory thus obtained is then tested on three works in order to underscore the modalities of reading that are particular to the New Novel, while insisting on these modalities' inherent variability. We focus on the reader's reconstructing of the narrative in L'Emploi du temps , on the impossibility of structuring the plot in La Maison de rendez-vous, and on the paradigmatic mode of reading La Bataille de Pharsale. In so doing, we hope to demonstrate how an analysis of the reading process allows for a heightened appreciation of the essential indeterminacy of the New Novel, of its fundamental otherness. We conclude with tentative remarks on the heuristic function of these texts.
22
陳燕 and Yan Chen. "Currents of literary thought in the late Qing and early Republican period (1872-1916)." Thesis, The University of Hong Kong (Pokfulam, Hong Kong), 1992. http://hub.hku.hk/bib/B31233016.
Full text
23
Bonk, James Bruce. "Zheng Zhenduo and the writing of literary history in Republican China (1920-1940)." Thesis, McGill University, 2006. http://digitool.Library.McGill.CA:80/R/?func=dbin-jump-full&object_id=99358.
Full textAbstract:
This thesis examines the institutionalization and practice of literary historiography in Republican China through the writings of Zheng Zhenduo (1898-1956). On the basis of a careful reading of Zheng's three book-length histories of Chinese and world literature, written from the early 1920s to late 1930s, the thesis questions the characterization of Republican literary historical scholarship as simply iconoclastic (vis-a-vis Chinese tradition) or derivative (vis-a-vis the West). It shows that Zheng's literary historiography was actually comprised of multiple and sometimes contradictory approaches to the past. These approaches were shaped, on the one hand, by the demands of a professional discipline that was constructed on the ideal of a universal literature but also faced with the task of integrating the Chinese people into history; and, on the other, by a confrontation and creative negotiation with earlier readings and valuations of Chinese literature.
24
Muller, Adam Patrick Dooley. "The importance of being elsewhere : modernist expatriation and the American literary tradition." Thesis, McGill University, 1997. http://digitool.Library.McGill.CA:80/R/?func=dbin-jump-full&object_id=35022.
Full textAbstract:
My dissertation concentrates on Americans writing at home and abroad in the inter-war period and contextualizes their expatriation with reference to debates between modernist critics over the nature and substance of the American literary tradition. I clarify the definitions of terms like "exile," "emigrant," and "expatriate" central to my analysis but muddied by years of misuse. I do so with reference to coercion, a concept which I develop in accordance with recent work in the philosophy of action. At the same time I make the case for a realist, causalist hermeneutics. Next I explore the aesthetic corollary to my argument with reference to the fiction, autobiography, and literary criticism of Gertrude Stein. I argue that Stein's decision to leave America must be viewed as uncoerced, and as therefore indicative of her emigration to France. Viewed as an emigrant, and not as an exile or expatriate, Stein can be shown to manifest tendencies in her work (towards subjectivity, abstraction, and retrospection) which reflect her dissociation from, rather than ongoing connection to, America. Lastly, I look closely at the work of Van Wyck Brooks and Harold Stearns, two modernist literary and culture critics whose writings on expatriation demonstrably influenced generations of subsequent biographers and intellectual historians. Steams and Brooks can be counted among the most articulate and vociferous proponents of literary change in America, and can be situated at the poles of a vigorous debate within the literary community of their day over whether American letters were better served from within or without the United States. I contrast Brooks' civic humanism with Steams' rugged individualism and identify in the debate over expatriation a powerful analogue to ongoing debates in literary and cultural critical circles referred to as "the culture wars."
25
Ausoni, Alain. "En d'autres mots : l'écriture translingue de soi." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2015. https://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:e06d8806-9bc2-4be1-ab9a-c1b63ba38541.
Full textAbstract:
For several reasons, translingual writers, defined here as authors who write in a language that is not their native one, have gained increased visibility in recent years. This is particularly true in the context of French literature where, more frequently than before, and with a more explicit recognition of their particular status, translingual writers have received important literary prizes and have been welcomed into the French Academy. Central to this recognition is their rich and diverse mobilisation of life writing, a corpus curiously neglected in the study of the phenomenon of literary translingualism. This thesis focuses on the writers Andreï Makine, Hector Bianciotti, Vassilis Alexakis, Nancy Huston, Agota Kristof and Katalin Molnár. It demonstrates that the translingual experience, in its capacity to question one's sense of self and provide novel tools for the exploration of one's personal history and subjectivity (conceived as an experience in language), appears eminently suited to the genre of life writing and that, in the current configuration of the French literary space, life writing is demanded from translingual authors. It proposes an original cartography of contemporary translingual literature in French, suggesting that more than any similarities in the conditions of their literary adoption of French, what creates family resemblance between translingual writers is the types of relation with their adopted language that are constructed in their autobiographical texts.
26
Bolongaro, Eugenio. "The modern intellectual negotiating the generic system : Italo Calvino and the adventure of literary cognition." Thesis, National Library of Canada = Bibliothèque nationale du Canada, 1997. http://www.collectionscanada.ca/obj/s4/f2/dsk2/ftp02/NQ36958.pdf.
Full text
27
Yillah, Dauda. "Post-war French writings on Black Africa : the ambiguities and paradoxes of a cross-cultural perspective." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2007. http://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:6fed22a9-2401-45ef-b492-aa0e5ee65163.
Full textAbstract:
Edward Said stresses the politically and ideologically skewed nature of western imperial responses to colonised or formerly colonised cultures and peoples, articulated in a variety of media, including scholarly and imaginative writings, which are inflected by the various kinds of power (political, intellectual, cultural and moral) that the West has wielded and continues to wield over non-Western regions of the world. While recognising the pathbreaking import of Said's work, critics have pointed out his blindness to the possibilities of resistance to and subversion of the discourse of Empire within the western-authored texts that he discusses. Even where he does consider the issue of resistance and opposition to Empire by western intellectuals, he still stresses the complicity of their texts with the processes of Empire. If one were to pursue the logic of such criticisms to its limit and apply it to the intellectual resistance generated from the centre in the context of the post-War dismantling of European overseas empires and its aftermath, one might be tempted to conclude that such resistance constitutes an unqualified disruption of colonial modes of apprehending difference. Against the backdrop of such readings of Said, this thesis examines the issue of cross-cultural representation in a selection of mainstream metropolitan French writings relating to black Africa produced between 1945 and the present. It brings together scholars and writers like Gide, Sartre and Griaule, some of whose works relating to black Africa belong to the first decade of the post-War period marked by France's continued colonial presence in the continent. It also considers other scholars and writers like Dumont, Conchon, Verchave and Le Clézio, whose books appeared in the second and succeeding decades of the period. The overall aim is to identify the ways in which these writers respond individually and collectively to black Africa often construed as a paradigm of cultural difference, and to consider whether such cross-cultural responses, given their historical context, can be described as being invariably a function of the changing relations between France and black Africa. What forms do the cross-cultural responses take? What cultural assumptions and ideological motivations shape those responses? Are the responses entirely disruptive of colonial modes of relating to difference? If not, what are their aporias, their ambiguities and paradoxes? My conclusion is that while Sartre and others relate to black Africa with unmistakeable empathy, their positive cross-cultural disposition does not necessarily enable them to attain a relationship with the peoples and cultures of Africa which is an equipollent relationship between equals.
28
Ménard, Valérie. "L'influence de Réjean Ducharme chez les écrivains de la génération x." Thesis, McGill University, 2004. http://digitool.Library.McGill.CA:80/R/?func=dbin-jump-full&object_id=83128.
Full textAbstract:
Generation X has often been defined as being without role models or inspiration. Nevertheless, it is possible to detect a sizeable amount of intertextual references in several Quebecer books written by authors of that generation. In Quebec, these young writer's influences are as distinct as they are diverse, varying from Kerouac to Hemingway and from Sartre to Camus. But concerning their Quebecer role model, one name continually returns, that of Rejean Ducharme.The goal of this thesis is to illustrate the presence of ducharmesque universe in three Generation X novels, namely Le souffle de l'harmattan by Sylvain Trudel, Vamp by Christian Mistral and La rage by Louis Hamelin. Within these novels, we will attempt to find the trail of three typical elements to Ducharme's work: the rejection of conformity, the contempt towards a consumer society, and the substitution of a utopian universe for reality.
According to Francois Ricard, Ducharme belongs to what he calls the "generation lyrique", which is the eldest baby boomers, while Generation X is composed of Baby Boom's youngest members. Interestingly enough, one should expect such a generational conflict between these two cohorts to incite Generation X writers to despite their predecessor. Hence, this thesis will conclude with a few tentative explanations as to why Generation X authors were so driven to choose Rejean Ducharme, a member of the "generation lyrique", to be their role model.
29
Schmid, William A. (William Albert). "An Analysis of Elements of Jazz Style in Contemporary French Trumpet Literature." Thesis, University of North Texas, 1991. https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc332815/.
Full textAbstract:
French trumpet works comprise a large portion of the contemporary standard repertoire for the instrument, and they frequently present unique stylistic and interpretive challenges to performers. The study establishes the influence of jazz upon Henri Tomasi, André Jolivet, Eugène Bozza and Jacques Ibert in their works for solo trumpet. Idiomatic elements of jazz style are identified and discussed in terms of performance practice considerations for modern-day trumpeters.
30
Cheng, Maorong. "Literary modernity : Studies in Lu Xun and Shen Congwen." Thesis, National Library of Canada = Bibliothèque nationale du Canada, 1999. http://www.collectionscanada.ca/obj/s4/f2/dsk1/tape9/PQDD_0018/NQ46330.pdf.
Full text
31
Molkou, Elizabeth. "Contributions d'ecrivains juifs a la problematique de l'autofiction." Thesis, McGill University, 2000. http://digitool.Library.McGill.CA:80/R/?func=dbin-jump-full&object_id=37784.
Full textAbstract:
The present literary production in France indicates the return of the subject, which has been proclaimed dead since the New Novel. With the proliferation of autobiographical texts in the nineteen-eighties, a generalized movement towards an aesthetic genre valuing this particularity was noticed. This proliferation renders the scope of this literary form immense. It covers a range from strictly historical texts, including autobiographies, memoirs and intimate journals to semi-referential texts, qualified as autobiographical fictions, "autofictions" or again "factual fictions". Midway between the autobiography and the novel, autofiction, this little studied literary practice, inaugurates a new writing form which we believe constitutes one of the boldest modern incarnations of the writing of the self. This thesis considers the possibility of a correlation existing in the problematics of autofiction and those of Jewishness in writing. Already off-centered, the Jewish writer, can be seen as the emblematic figure of the writer himself. Drawing on a corpus of four writers (Serge Doubrovsky, Marcel Benabou, Regine Robin and Patrick Modiano), we examine the structure, as well as its functionning rules, woven through texts sharing Jewish authorship. These writers pose, each from his own specific perspective, the problem of Jewishness in writing. This correlation brings to light the exemplary nature of these texts with regards to the more generalized and thus far unprecedented strategy that is autofiction. The intersection of these historically marked problems, autofiction and Jewishness in writing, leads us inevitably to further reflection upon the tragedy of modernity, the Shoah and its omnipresent shadow in the works of our corpus.
32
Smith, James Gregory. "The Dostoevskyan Dialectic in Selected North American Literary Works." Thesis, University of North Texas, 1995. https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc278268/.
Full textAbstract:
This study is an examination of the rhetorical concept of the dialectic as it is realized in selected works of North American dystopian literature. The dialectic is one of the main factors in curtailing enlightenment rationalism which, taken to an extreme, would deny man freedom while claiming to bestow freedom upon him. The focus of this dissertation is on an analysis of twentieth-century dystopias and the dialectic of Fyodor Dostoevsky's Grand Inquisitor parable which is a precursor to dystopian literature. The Grand Inquisitor parable of The Brothers Karamazov is a blueprint for dystopian states delineated in anti-utopian fiction. Also, Dostoevsky's parable constitutes a powerful dialectical struggle between polar opposites which are presented in the following twentieth-century dystopias: Zamiatin's Me, Bradbury's Farenheit 451, Vonnegut's Player Piano, and Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale. The dialectic in the dystopian genre presents a give and take between the opposites of faith and doubt, liberty and slavery, and it often presents the individual of the anti-utopian state with a choice. When presented with the dialectic, then, the individual is presented with the capacity to make a real choice; therefore, he is presented with a hope for salvation in the totalitarian dystopias of modern twentieth-century literature.
33
Cook, John. "The philosopher masked as literary theorist : 'cunning intelligence' (metis) instantiated in Bakhtin's rhetorical style." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2016. https://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:61c605c3-33f2-4a41-adb9-e4c3530aacfc.
Full textAbstract:
This dissertation discusses and analyses Mikhail Mikhailovich Bakhtin's conscious strategy of self-fashioning and reinvention, which is realised in his life and supported by the theoretical constructs contained in his Collected Works. It addresses the ambiguities and uncertainties in Bakhtin's life and work and uses two aspects of his philosophical approach and constructs to explicate these inconsistencies: his theory of identity and his theory of language. The analytical tools used to arrive at this conclusion include the notion of reflexivity (using Bakhtin's own theoretical constructs to analyse incidents in his life, and in turn, using those incidents to illustrate the concepts he developed). Theoretical support for Bakhtin's self-fashioning is provided by Fitzpatrick's theory of reinvention through impersonation and imposture in Revolutionary Russia. Bakhtin's theory of identity (expressed in his Nietzsche-influenced concept of the mask and its associated concept of travesty) supports this reinvention. Bakhtin's notion of double-voicedness, supported by his linguistic theories of interdiscursivity, heteroglossia and the utterance reinforce these two lines of thought. Bakhtin's two figures of speech: the word with a 'backward glance' and the word with a 'loophole' encapsulate this convergence of theory and life. These two constructs are brought into sharp relief when illuminated by Wittgenstein's theory of language-games, Austin's concept of performativity and Benveniste's formulation of deixis. The overarching metaphor for this dissertation is the Classical Greek concept of metis, or 'cunning intelligence', a concept that is instantiated in the way in which Bakhtin framed the narrative of his life and the manner in which he performed his work. The dissertation concludes that Bakhtin evolved a multi-threaded philosophy which was self-consistent in the way in which it addressed the creation of identity, the expression of language and the performance of life and work through the metaphor of metis.
34
Anderson, Robin. "Bridging the Past and the Present: The Historical Imagination in the Criticism and Narrative Poetry of C. S. Lewis." Thèse, Université d'Ottawa / University of Ottawa, 2013. http://hdl.handle.net/10393/25482.
Full textAbstract:
C. S. Lewis is best known as the author of The Chronicles of Narnia, but Lewis’s poetry tends to be treated separately from his other works, or as an antecedent to his more famous prose works. This thesis shows that Lewis’s paradoxical views of literary history, cultural death, reason and imagination are reflected in his narrative poems. George Watson says that Lewis was “a paradoxical thing, a conservative iconoclast, and he came to the task well-armed” (1). He is both a traditionalist and a rebel against his times. I explain Lewis’s paradoxes in terms of the concepts of history, memory, reason and imagination, and show that Lewis’s position was a negotiation of his own historical and cultural context. Lewis’s poems and scholarly work indicate that his approach to historical terms is first to underline divergence, and then to emphasize a use of seemingly polarized terms in order to unify them.
35
Soulard, Louis. "La génération X dans le roman québécois actuel." Thesis, McGill University, 1995. http://digitool.Library.McGill.CA:80/R/?func=dbin-jump-full&object_id=23244.
Full textAbstract:
The following Master's thesis is proposing the analysis of five novels, written between 1988 and 1993, by five young Quebec writers. The object of this research is to study the representation of "generation X" in these five texts. The introduction of the thesis establishes the parameters of the "generation X", which comprises people born between 1959 and 1974. This definition constitutes the basis of our comparison between the concept of "generation X" and the main characters of the novels, who are "fictive" members of this generation.The rest of the thesis includes three chapters, devoted to the following themes: the politic perception of young characters, their economic situation and their attitude toward society. Necessarily, our analysis also considers the difference of perception between "baby-boomers" (people born between 1944 and 1959) and "generation X". This comparison is essential because "generation X" defines itself in opposition with adults values and institutions: reject of political power and authority, reject of work, instruction and money, refusal to integrate society.
The main purpose of this analysis is to see how the present Quebec novel integrates, assimilates and thinks the socio-historic context where it takes place, and how it could possibly renew the forms and the style of Quebec novel in general.
36
Chalykoff, Lisa. "Space and identity formation in twentieth-century Canadian realist novels : recasting regionalism within Canadian literary studies." Thesis, National Library of Canada = Bibliothèque nationale du Canada, 2000. http://www.collectionscanada.ca/obj/s4/f2/dsk2/ftp02/NQ56523.pdf.
Full text
37
Schaper, Benjamin. "Poetik und Politik der Lesbarkeit in der deutschen literatur." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2016. https://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:8e1e8c05-c0f9-4dda-ad9b-b208ded2432b.
Full textAbstract:
In 1990, German literary critics agreed that the end of the Cold War should mark the end of politically committed post-war literature. The political caesura prompted a debate about the future of German literature during which the concept of 'readability' evolved as a contested issue. It was championed in particular by the author Matthias Politycki and the publishers Uwe Wittstock and Martin Hielscher. Ever since, 'readability' has remained a benchmark for authors and critics alike in the battle for value and success. The thesis will establish a theoretical basis for 'readability' that draws on narratology, the Aristotelian concept of 'mimesis', classical rhetoric, and the poetics of contemporary authors who explicitly engage with 'readability'. Discussion will centre on the novel since this genre has been the focus of debate ever since the novel gained prominence with the rise of the reading middle classes in the eighteenth century. An analysis of the historical role of 'readability' will demonstrate that the debate as it manifested itself around 1990 developed out of a specifically German tradition, in which authors and critics alike viewed it as potentially in conflict with true art. In 1990, German literary critics agreed that the end of the Cold War should mark the end of politically committed post-war literature. The political caesura prompted a debate about the future of German literature during which the concept of 'readability' evolved as a contested issue. It was championed in particular by the author Matthias Politycki and the publishers Uwe Wittstock and Martin Hielscher. Ever since, 'readability' has remained a benchmark for authors and critics alike in the battle for value and success. The thesis will establish a theoretical basis for 'readability' that draws on narratology, the Aristotelian concept of 'mimesis', classical rhetoric, and the poetics of contemporary authors who explicitly engage with 'readability'. Discussion will centre on the novel since this genre has been the focus of debate ever since the novel gained prominence with the rise of the reading middle classes in the eighteenth century. An analysis of the historical role of 'readability' will demonstrate that the debate as it manifested itself around 1990 developed out of a specifically German tradition, in which authors and critics alike viewed it as potentially in conflict with true art. The thesis will demonstrate that 'readability' is key to understanding the debates about German literature in an era of globalisation when readers are more attracted to works by foreign authors than to works by German ones. It will examine how writers such as Helmut Krausser, Daniel Kehlmann, and Thomas Glavinic have exploited the opportunities of the changed parameters by writing and promoting 'readable' books. It will further explore to what extent 'readability' has opened up new avenues even for authors like Felicitas Hoppe and Ulrike Draesner, who distrust the quest for 'readability'. The thesis will conclude with a reflection on the prospects for 'readability' in the current literary landscape in Germany.
38
Sachikonye, Tsitsi Shamiso Anne. "Lʹétude des thèmes du deuil et de la marginalité dans Le Royaume Aveugle et Reine Pokou, concerto pour un sacrifice de Véronique Tadjo." Thesis, Rhodes University, 2013. http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1002956.
Full textAbstract:
The field of our study is Francophone African Literature and this thesis explores the themes of marginality and grief both experienced by Princess Akissi in The Blind Kingdom and Princess Pokou in Queen Pokou (2004) during their rise to power in their respective kingdoms. The two novels written by Véronique Tadjo from Ivory Coast, are subjected to thematic analysis because they are both based on similar storylines - that of conflict and rivalry within kingdoms resulting in the exile of the two princesses. One of the novels is set in a pre-colonial period while the other is set in a postcolonial era. Queen Pokou, winner of the 2005 Grand Prix Littéraire d’Afrique Noire (which is the most distinguished prize in Francophone African literature), is a retelling of the founding myths of the Baoulé people of Ivory Coast. In her literary texts, Tadjo transgresses the original legend and her reconstruction of this legend is significant because it challenges the ritual sacrifice made by Princess Pokou in order to free her people and to become queen. In The Blind Kingdom (1990), Tadjo highlights the corruption and injustice of the ruling elite. Space is used to reinforce the King’s domination thus a revolution is necessary to overthrow the exploitative power structures in place. The revolution that takes place relies heavily on the participation of Karim and especially on Princess Akissi who chooses to rebel against her father, King Ato IV in order to stop injustice. This thematic analysis, supported by semiotic theory, aims to establish and demonstrate the relationship between marginality of the two princesses, in particular, and their subsequent grief. It sheds light on the reasons for their exclusion from power as well as the nature of the conflicts that occur as they rise to power. The study postulates that certain myths and images are evoked by the novelist to symbolise the exclusion of the two princesses from power.
39
Brüning, Angela. "Caribbean connections : comparing modern Anglophone and Francophone Caribbean literature, 1950s to present." Thesis, University of Stirling, 2006. http://hdl.handle.net/1893/84.
Full textAbstract:
In this thesis I investigate connections between modern Anglophone and Francophone Caribbean fiction between the 1950s and the present. My study brings into focus literary representations of inter-related histories and cultures and problematises the fragmentation of Caribbean studies into separate academic disciplines. The disciplinary compartmentalisation of Caribbean studies into English studies on the one hand and French and Francophone studies on the other has contributed to a reading of Caribbean literature within separate linguistic spheres. This division is strikingly reflected in the scarcity of any sustained literary criticism that acknowledges cultural and literary interpenetration within the archipelago. My comparative study of selected Anglophone and Francophone Caribbean fiction allows me to account for the ethnic, cultural, linguistic and historical diversity of Caribbean societies while, at the same time, foregrounding their inter-relatedness. Through a series of specific case studies the thesis illuminates ways in which theoretical concepts and literary tropes have travelled within the archipelago. Through a close reading of selected narrative fiction I will contextualise and analyse significant underlying linguistic, ethnic and cultural links between the various Caribbean societies which are largely based on the shared history of slavery, colonialism and decolonisation processes. The themes of migration, transformation and creolisation will be at the centre of my investigation. Chapter One establishes the historical and literary-critical framework for this thesis by engaging with key developments in Anglophone and Francophone Caribbean writing from the 1920s until the present. My comparison of the most influential trends in both Anglophone and Francophone Caribbean literature and criticism from the discourse of négritude to postcolonial studies seeks to highlight connections between these two linguistically divided fields of study. The analysis of Caribbean fiction in Chapters Two to Four pursues such theoretical, stylistic and thematic links further. Chapter Two challenges the conception of postwar Antillean and West Indian writing produced in the metropolis as distinct literary canons by drawing attention to thematic connections between the two traditions. Through the comparison of The Lonely Londoners by Samuel Selvon and La Fête à Paris by Joseph Zobel it argues that these continuities represent a wider trend in ‘black European’ writing. Chapter Three examines concepts of cultural identity which have been central to Anglophone and Francophone Caribbean literature and criticism during the last two decades. Specifically it focuses on the notions of hybridity, créolité/creoleness and créolisation/creolisation which it discusses in relation to Robert Antoni’s novel Divina Trace and Patrick Chamoiseau’s Texaco. The final chapter focuses on Shani Mootoo’s and Gisèle Pineau’s representations of specific female experiences of trauma which are related to reiterated colonial violence. Their fictional portrayal of suppressed memories can be read in light of recent critical debates about a collective remembrance of the history of slavery and colonialism.
40
Bundu, Malela Buata. "L'Homme pareil aux autres: stratégies et postures identitaires de l'écrivain afro-antillais à Paris, 1920-1960." Doctoral thesis, Universite Libre de Bruxelles, 2006. http://hdl.handle.net/2013/ULB-DIPOT:oai:dipot.ulb.ac.be:2013/210803.
Full textAbstract:
Cette étude porte sur le fait littéraire afro-antillais de l’ère coloniale (1920-1960). Il s’agit d’examiner les stratégies des agents à partir des cas de René Maran, Léopold Sédar Senghor, Aimé Césaire, Édouard Glissant et Mongo Beti et de percevoir comment ils se définissent leur identité littéraire et sociale.Pour ce faire, notre démarche s’articule en deux temps :(1) examiner les conditions de possibilité d’un champ littéraire afro-antillais à Paris (colonisation française et ses effets, configuration d’un champ littéraire pré-institutionnalisé, etc.) ;(2) analyser les processus de consolidation du champ, ainsi que les luttes internes qui opposent deux tendances émergentes représentées d’abord par Senghor et Césaire, ensuite par Beti et Glissant, dont les prises de position littéraires mettent en œuvre des « modèles empiriques » ;ceux-ci régulent et unifient leurs rapports au monde et à l’Afrique.
This study relates to afro-carribean literature in colonial period (1920-1960). We want to examine the strategies of agents like René Maran, Léopold Sédar Senghor, Aimé Césaire, Édouard Glissant and Mongo Beti ;and we want to understand how they invente literary and social identity.
Our approach is structured in two steps: we shall analyse (1) the conditions for an afro-carribean literary field to appear in Paris (french colonialism and its consequences, configuration of literay field.) ;(2) the consolidation of this field and the internal struggles between two tendances represented by Senghor and Césaire, by Glissant and Beti whose literary practice shows the “empirical model” that regularizes and consolidates their relation with the world and Africa.
Doctorat en philosophie et lettres, Orientation langue et littérature
info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished
41
Gagné, Marie 1961. "1968, théorie et praxis de "Tel quel" dans "Logiques" et "Nombres" de Sollers." Thesis, McGill University, 1986. http://digitool.Library.McGill.CA:80/R/?func=dbin-jump-full&object_id=63765.
Full text
42
Richardson, Yasmine. "Awkwardness in Marcel Proust's 'A la recherche du temps perdu'." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2015. https://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:0fcd5792-a961-4e37-b0ae-9ba02872b6a8.
Full textAbstract:
This thesis examines awkwardness between characters in Marcel Proust's A la recherche du temps perdu. It offers the first full-length study of awkwardness in literary fiction, and provides a new prism through which to analyse many major characters in Proust's novel, and, crucially, their interactions. While the word "awkwardness" poses translation challenges, the thesis identifies a rich lexicon of French terms used by Proust to denote various aspects of the phenomenon: through close analysis of passages containing these terms, a coherent vision of awkwardness and its importance in the novel emerges. Awkwardness occurs in very different types of relationship - family, social, friendship and love - because, Proust stresses, human interaction is rarely easy. This latter point is not a new argument, but by focusing directly on the feelings of awkwardness which arise, original insights can be made about the specific challenges of communication, cohesion and desire in the Recherche. The thesis explores the degrees of togetherness and separation Proust depicts, and compares well-known scenes and neglected moments to their mutual illumination. We find that awkwardness is essential to the novel's depiction of society in a state of rapid flux - the consequence of accelerated social change is escalated awkwardness - and that uncomfortable encounters with other people develop the protagonist's relation with his own mind.
43
Poirier, Christine. "La Shoah dans la littérature québécoise de langue française /." Thesis, McGill University, 2004. http://digitool.Library.McGill.CA:80/R/?func=dbin-jump-full&object_id=83139.
Full textAbstract:
This thesis analyzes the representation of the Shoah in French-language Quebec literature. It first presents the numerous difficulties involved in the fictional representation of this genocide, which relate primarily to writers' authority: lacking the legitimacy of "true" witnesses, writers who address the topic run the risk of betraying the memory of those who were persecuted. The thesis then demonstrates that, despite theoretical obstacles, many novels and poems from Quebec touch upon the Shoah and express a feeling of guilt towards the victims as early as the 1950's. The last chapter postulates that since the 1980's, fiction has acquired a greater legitimacy and narrative forms used to represent the Shoah have diversified, due to the gradual disappearance of direct witnesses as well as the interval of time separating writers from the tragedy.
44
Mcavoy, Meghan. "Critical nationalism : Scottish literary culture since 1989." Thesis, University of Stirling, 2016. http://hdl.handle.net/1893/23242.
Full textAbstract:
This thesis is a critical study of Scottish literary culture since 1989. It examines and interrogates critical work in Scottish literary studies through a ‘critical nationalist’ approach. This approach aims to provide a refinement of cultural nationalist literary criticism by prioritising the oppositional politics of recent Scottish writing, its criticism of institutional and state processes, and its refusal to exempt Scotland from this critique. In the introduction I identify two fundamental tropes in recent Scottish literary criticism: opposition to a cultural nationalist critical narrative which is overly concerned with ‘Scottishness’ and critical centralising of marginalised identity in the establishment of a national canon. Chapter one interrogates a tendency in Scottish literary studies which reads Scottish literature in terms of parliamentary devolution, and demonstrates how a critical nationalist approach avoids the pitfalls of this reading. Chapter two is a study of two novels by the critically neglected and politically Unionist author Andrew O’Hagan, arguing that these novels criticise an insular and regressive Scotland in order to reveal an ambivalent, ‘Janus-faced’ nationalism. Chapter three examines representations of Scottish traditional and folk music in texts by A. L. Kennedy and Alan Bissett, engaging with the Scottish folk tradition since the 1950s revival in order to demonstrate literature and music’s ambivalent responses to aspects of literary and cultural nationalism. Chapter four examines texts by Janice Galloway, Alasdair Gray and James Kelman, analysing the relationships they construct between gender, nation and class. Chapter five examines three contemporary Scottish texts and elucidates an ethical turn in Scottish literary studies, which reads contemporary writing in terms of appropriation and exploitation.
45
Coll-Vinent, Sílvia. "The reception of English fictional and non-fictional prose in Catalonia (1916-38), with particular reference to Edwardian literary culture and associated debates concerning the novel in England, France and Catalonia." Thesis, University of Oxford, 1996. http://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:e715592b-063c-4a02-9bbb-d89078ec1719.
Full textAbstract:
The present study opens up the field of Catalan connections with English literature. The importance of Edwardian influences on the general transmission of English authors and works is demonstrated. Original data on the reception of G.K. Chesterton, the Edwardian figure with a most remarkable impact in Catalonia, is brought to light (Chapter 1, Appendix 1), followed by discussion of the presence of H.G. Wells and G.B. Shaw and an account of the reception of Well's early fiction (Chapter 2); their influence sheds new light on the aspiration of an élite to modernise Catalan culture. Catalan translations of English fictional works produced in the period 1918-38 (Chapter 3, Appendix II) are linked to the reception of the roman anglais in the context of the crisis of the roman à thèse, and the meditating influence of French criticism is revealed. The values of romance, adventure, and the common man (from Defoe to Stevenson, from Stevenson to Conrad) constitute the recurrent thread associated with the English tradition and with the Edwardian fictional canon, as these were mediated from France to Catalonia. This panorama of transmission enhances an understanding of Catalan views of the novel, in the light of Edwardian values (Chapter 4), as exemplified in Carles Riba's critical appraisal of two Catalan authors, in the appeal of Joseph Conrad's narrative technique and its influence on J.M. de Sagarra, as well as in the comparison of Frank Swinnerton's Nocturne (a best-seller of 1917) and its Catalan counterpart, M. Teresa Vernet's Les algues roges. This thesis also includes a chronology of the reception of Chesterton and a list of Catalan translations of English works of fiction.
46
Daly, Robert. "The scholar as scientist : Iurii Tynianov and the OPOiaZ." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2016. https://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:9a362e24-fc5b-447c-a740-8284a66c2a35.
Full textAbstract:
The present work deals with the literary-theoretical work of the Petrograd Formalists - those who participated in the OPOiaZ in the 1910s and early 1920s - with a focus on that oflurii Tynianov. It attempts to unpack the representation of their literary-theoretical work as 'science' [nauka] by exploring how that category was constructed in dialogue with their evolving conception of literature. It is argued in the first chapter that, for the duration of their project, they conceptualized the 'language of nauka' - and their own prose by association - in accordance with the laws of their theory of language. It is argued in the second chapter that, as the Formalists developed a theory of literary history as an endless succession of 'revolutions' in the period 1919- 24, they tried to make their theorization of that process take a correspondingly revolutionary form, one in which the sciences of nature and those of history would become one. It is argued in the third chapter that, as the Formalists came to theorize the connection between literature and life in the period 1924-30, they practised a new 'type' of nauka in the form of the authorial collection of articles, one in which their own work was historicized in a 'literary' manner. It is concluded that, for the OPOiaZ, nauka came into being as a function of its object: as the Formalists transformed their conception of literature, their realization of nauka was correspondingly transformed. The conclusion then problematizes the categorization of Formalism as a purely 'scientific', extra-'literary' movement, since emphasis is placed on their authorship of that categorization, and raises broader questions about the origin of modem 'literary theory'.
47
Borbor, Taraneh. "Towards a new geographical consciousness : a study of place in the novels of V.S. Naipaul and J.M. Coetzee." Thesis, University of Sussex, 2011. http://sro.sussex.ac.uk/id/eprint/7143/.
Full textAbstract:
Focusing on approaches to place in selected novels by J. M. Coetzee and V. S. Naipaul, this thesis explores how postcolonial literature can be read as contributing to the reimagining of decolonised, decentred or multi-centred geographies. I will examine the ways in which selected novels by Naipaul and Coetzee engage with the sense of displacement and marginalization generated by imperial mappings of the colonial space. My chosen texts contribute to the decentralizing tendencies of postcolonialism by deconstructing the tropes of boundaries from the perspective of those who have been marginalized on the basis of their race, gender or geographical origins. The work of Edward Said, bell hooks, Edward Soja, Gillian Rose and Homi Bhabha provide a means for me to explain how the displaced subjects relate to places in the postcolonial context. Accordingly, Coetzee's and Naipaul's visions of place and geography are examined in this study in relation to the situational complexity of their habitats. Naipaul's view of place in terms of the binary oppositions between the colonial and metropolitan places is discussed in relation to the sense of displacement that is generated by his colonial upbringing. On the other hand, Coetzee's view of place as the product of imperialist divisive discourses is also interpreted against the historical contest over land and belonging in South Africa. It is argued that both writers contribute to the decentralizing mission of postcolonialism by locating themselves in the margins and advocating sensitivity towards the tropes of boundaries that subject people to displacement and marginalization. Part I discusses A House for Mr Biswas, The Enigma of Arrival, Half a Life and Magic Seeds. I will explore how Naipaul's sense of marginality results in his view of the world in terms of a binarism between the centre and the margin. However, I will argue that among these novels, the last three acknowledge that the longing for homeliness is an unlikely quest for a displaced subject, and that the imperative of the postcolonial world requires the displaced to see the world as unhomely, changing and hybrid. Part II interprets Coetzee's experience of apartheid in South Africa as a legitimate reason for resisting the ways in which the dominant powers in the social and cultural spheres implement marginality. In Waiting for the Barbarians, and Life and Times of Michael K and Foe, Coetzee deconstructs boundaries and asserts the entitlement of the displaced and the marginalized to the land and its representation. The distinctive approaches taken by these two canonical writers remind us of the increasing necessity, yet the complexity, of moving towards a decentralised and dynamic view of the world.
48
Seekins, M. Elizabeth. "L'importance d'autrui : une etude des themes existentialistes dans le roman Tous les hommes sont mortels par Simone de Beauvoir = The importance of others: a study of existential themes in the novel All men are mortal by Simone de Beauvoir /." Fogler Library, University of Maine, 2007. http://www.library.umaine.edu/theses/pdf/SeekinsME2007.pdf.
Full text
49
Prud'homme, Annie-Claude. "Le réel merveilleux chez Yves Thériault et Alejo Carpentier /." Thesis, McGill University, 2003. http://digitool.Library.McGill.CA:80/R/?func=dbin-jump-full&object_id=79972.
Full textAbstract:
This thesis is concerned with the "Americanity" of Quebec literature and the existence of a cultural formation specific to the New World, based on a context of renewal, distancing and rupture with respect to European influence. The "real maravilloso" is perceived as an inherent American mode of expression, and its presence is examined in the work of Yves Theriault and Alejo Carpentier. An analysis of the short stories, Contes pour un homme seul (1944) by Theriault and "Histoire de lunes" (1933) by Carpentier, and of the novels Agaguk (1958) and Le royaume de ce monde (1949), allows us to compare the evolution from primitivism to the "real maravilloso americano", revealed in the novel through the "figures of the Other" and the status of the character, characterized by duality (contrast between the primitive forces and civilized world), its quest, its integration with nature, and the importance of sacred ritual.
50
Duguay, Sylvain. "Le dialogue homosexuel dans Les feluettes de Michel Marc Bouchard /." Thesis, McGill University, 1999. http://digitool.Library.McGill.CA:80/R/?func=dbin-jump-full&object_id=30163.
Full textAbstract:
This thesis proposes to apply Queer theory as the framework for examining Michel Marc Bouchard's play Les Feluettes. This study is built around two methodological axes, one being the analysis of dialogue; the second, the application of Queer theory. Dialogue and staging are scrutinized in an effort to discover the Queer. The links between sex, power, language and knowledge will be specifically studied. The intention is to show how their relationship, based on opposition, can be modified by a subversive discourse. By way of introduction, a brief discussion of Queer theory will be presented to familiarize the reader with its origins, sources of inspiration and strategies of deconstruction. The first chapter will focus on the homosexual's interior monologue. Chapter two will focus on the homosexual's dialogue with other homosexuals. The third, and final chapter, will round out the analysis by studying the dialogue between the homosexual and heterosexuals. (Abstract shortened by UMI.)