Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'France – Intellectual life – 16th century'

To call something 'inverted' or 'topsy-turvy' in the sixteenth century is, above all, to label it as abnormal, unnatural and going against the natural order of things. The topos of the world upside-down brings to mind a world returned to its initial state of primeval chaos, in which everything is inside-out, topsy-turvy and out of bounds: fish live in trees, children rule over their parents, wives command their husband and rivers flow back to their source. This thesis undertakes a detailed account of the development of the topos of the world upside-down in sixteenth-century French literature and visual culture. By examining different uses of this topos - comic, moralising and polemical - it relates the transformations of the topos to religious, social and political conflicts of the period. To explain the shift of this topos from comic and moralising device to satirical and polemical tool, this thesis argues that troubled times produce troubled texts. In order to demonstrate this hypothesis, two kinds of evidence will be examined: Chapter 1 and Chapter 2 present diachronic evidence of the 'polemicisation' of the topos of the world upside-down in literary genres of the period (adages, paradoxes and emblems) and within François Rabelais's body of work; Chapter 3 and 4 provide synchronic evidence of the polemical use of the topos of the world upside-down during the French religious wars in Huguenot and Catholic polemic and in depictions of socio-political turmoil. Charting the variety of uses of the topos of the world upside-down throughout the sixteenth century, this thesis connects the world upside-down and its historical context; and contributes to the scholarship on religious polemic.

This thesis examines the increasing sophistication of sixteenth-century French literary engagement with Virgil's Aeneid. It argues that successive forms of engagement with the Aeneid should be viewed as a single process that gradually adopts increasingly complex literary strategies. It does this through a series of four different forms of literary engagement with the Aeneid: translation, continuation, rejection and reconciliation. The increasing sophistication of these forms reflects the writers' desire to interact with the original Aeneid as political epic and Roman foundation narrative, and with the political, religious and literary contexts of early modern France. The first chapter compares the methods of and motivations behind all of the sixteenth-century translations of the Aeneid into French; it thus demonstrates shifts in successive translators' interpretations of Virgil's work, and of its application to sixteenth-century France. The next three chapters each analyse adaptation of Virgil's poem in a major French literary work. Firstly, Ronsard's Franciade is analysed as an example of French foundation epic that simultaneously draws upon and rejects Virgil's narrative. Ronsard's poem is read in the light of Mapheo Vegio's “Thirteenth Book” of the Aeneid, or Supplementum, which continues Virgil's narrative and carries it over into a Christian context. Next, Agrippa d'Aubigné's response to Virgilian epic in Les Tragiques is shown to have been mediated by Lucan's Pharsalia and its anti- epic and anti-imperialist interpretation of the Aeneid. D'Aubigné's inversion of Virgil is highlighted through comparison of attitudes to death and resurrection in Les Tragiques, the Aeneid and Vegio's Antoniad. Finally, Guillaume de Salluste du Bartas' combination, in La Sepmaine and La Seconde Sepmaine of the hexameral structure of Genesis with Virgil's narrative of reconciliation after civil war is shown to represent the most sophisticated understanding of and most complex interaction with the Aeneid in sixteenth-century France.

The aim of this thesis is to examine the meanings and functions of paradox in the late Renaissance. My understanding of Renaissance paradox, in contrast to that of most critics and historians, rests entirely on contemporary definitions of the term, rather than on its present-day meaning. Paradoxes as they are envisaged in this study begin to appear in the wake of the humanist rediscovery and dissemination of Cicero's Paradoxa Stoicorum. In this work, paradoxes are characterized as 'admirabilia contraque opinionem omnium', a definition that draws attention to two important traits of paradox, repeatedly invoked in the Renaissance: its association with wonder, and its opposition to common opinion. This thesis examines the history of classical paradox as it was revived, expanded beyond the narrow confines of Stoic ethics, and adapted to new purposes so successfully that it became a recognisable genre of polemical writing, with hundreds of works in Latin and the vernacular being described as paradoxes. Previous studies of Renaissance paradox have centred almost exclusively on its literary and vernacular manifestations, and on the paradoxical encomium in particular. My own work charts the rise to prominence and the ensuing transformations of paradox in a range of disciplines: rhetoric and ethics, theology, law, medicine, and natural philosophy. I compare the different associations that paradoxes acquire in all these areas, and the argumentative strategies that they deploy. My analysis of specific examples of paradox is informed by the methods of both literary analysis and intellectual history. Paradoxes, I argue, offered their authors the possibility of departing from established norms and of voicing novel views in a period of intellectual unrest. In their challenge to received and common opinion, they paved the way for more radical ideas in the following century, and they have much to tell us about dissident ways of thinking in the late Renaissance.

This thesis is an examination of the circulation networks and the patterns of collection of Italian printed books in France in the sixteenth century. Although the cultural relations between the Italian and French territory have been studied, a systematic survey to assess the impact of books on the shaping of the French Renaissance has never been attempted. The first section of this study examines the trade routes and networks which facilitated the circulation of Italian printed books across the French territory. Because of the nature of the French early modern book trade, focused primarily on two major centres (Paris and Lyon), a geographical division has been adopted in investigating this phenomenon. Chapter one explores the trade networks existing in sixteenth-century Lyon, from the powerful Compagnie des Libraires to the activity of the libraires italianisants in the second half of the century. Chapter two examines the importance of Italian editions in Paris. Chapter three is devoted to the circulation of Italian books in the provinces and the impact of large regional centres and trade routes on the availability of books locally. Chapter four investigates private networks and their importance in making specific texts available to French readers. The second section of this study investigates the status and importance of Italian printed books within French Renaissance libraries. Chapter five looks into the development of the French Royal library and the role played by Italian items in defining its identity as an institution. Chapter six examines the presence of Italian books in French aristocratic and courtly collections. Chapter seven is devoted to the libraries of the French literary milieu, analysing the extent to which Italian books were cherished as literary exemplars, particularly with regard to vernacular texts. Chapter eight examines the presence of Italian books in professional collections, with particular attention here given to texts in Latin and other scholarly languages imported from Italy. The conclusion draws all of these strands together, looking at the specific role played by Italian culture, through the printed book, on the development of the French Renaissance. A catalogue of about 2,400 Italian printed books with early modern French provenance is included as an appendix volume. This data provides the evidential basis for this study.

This thesis explores the way music is characterized, used, or accounted for in recent (post-1968) French thought, focusing in particular on the work of Jean-Luc Nancy, Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe, and Alain Badiou. In spite of the differences in their philosophical-theoretical positions, all of these writers invoke music - both directly and indirectly - to negotiate their relationship to ontological, political, ethical and aesthetic concerns, particularly in terms of how it relates to the (im)possibility of a subject, the condition of truth, and the role of philosophical thought itself. The thesis situates these texts in a longer genealogy of musico-philosophical interactions and also brings them into dialogue with recent musicological approaches, thus showing how an inherited idea of what music 'is' is often assumed rather than critically re-evaluated. In short, by tracing the musical-transcendental baggage of an inherited metaphysical conception of music - one which often understands music in close relation to the feminine, (sexual) excess, and the beyond of language and/or the symbolic - the thesis shows that though music is instrumentalized by progressive thinkers as a way of shifting theoretical/philosophical paradigms, it nonetheless does so in a way that has a strong sense of continuity with previous thinking on music. Secondly, the thesis highlights the way in which music in its metaphysical-ontological guise is often conceived as synonymous with Western high art classical music (which is itself constructed as absolute and transcendent, and ontologically independent of its means of (re)production or context) whilst non-literate, popular, folk and world musics - on the occasions that they are considered and not simply ignored or denigrated - are notably considered almost exclusively in terms of their social-cultural or technological contexts. Finally, the thesis demonstrates that much of this takes place through a simultaneous instrumentalization of gender as an organisational category for philosophy, and one which all too often has the consequence of sending women - along with music - to the beyond of pre-, inter-, or post-signification.

This thesis studies the reception of Aristotle's political thought in sixteenth-century Italy. It focuses on Aristotle's discussion of the dissolution of constitutions in Book 5 of the Politics and aims to show how Aristotle's political thought remained central to late Renaissance political discourse. No comprehensive study of the topic exists. Modern historiography on Renaissance political thought generally downplays the importance of Aristotle in the history of sixteenth-century Italian political thought and emphasises the Roman tradition over the Greek. This research aims to fill the gap in modern scholarship and revise modern interpretation of Renaissance political theory. This thesis is essentially divided into three parts, each part containing two chapters. Part I is largely introductory. Chapter 1 offers a historiographical review of modern scholarship on the reception of Aristotle in the Renaissance and early-modern political thought. Chapter 2 explores the revival of Greek studies in the fifteenth century and the changing perception of Aristotle's Politics in the Renaissance. Part II focuses on Aristotle and Machiavelli. Chapter 3 examines the similarities between Aristotle's analysis of the means of preserving tyranny and Machiavelli's discussion of how to mantenere lo stato in The Prince. Chapter 4 explores the effects that these similarities between Aristotle and Machiavelli had on the reception of Aristotle in Renaissance political thought. Part III centres on Aristotle in the republican and vernacular traditions. Chapter 5 explains the importance of Aristotle's discussion of the dissolution of constitutions to Renaissance republican political thought. Chapter 6 underlines the continuous relevance of Aristotle's Politics in the second half of the sixteenth century. The conclusion sums up the central argument of each chapter and invites us to explore the influence of Aristotle on reason of state literature.

This thesis entitled "Le discours francais sur l'Amerique latine revolutionnaire (1950--1985)" proposes to analyze about thirty texts published in France during the mentioned period in order to extract the primary axis around which the hexagonal representations and discourses which examine Latin America articulate themselves. The corpus gathers chiefly novels and political essays, but it also includes anthropological essays, journalistic commentaries and testimonies. This is a study that relies on the theory of social discourse and on imagology.
This investigation, which perceives itself as an overview of the images elaborated by the French social discourse on Latin America, examines closely the historical moments when there are determinant discursive mutations. Therefore, from 1950 to 1961, a first manner of apprehending the Latin American other is identified. This period was described as a moment of transition during which the French discourse goes from a discursive frame which emphasizes on the theme of nature to a discursive frame which privileges the power relations between social agents. From 1962 to 1974, Latin America becomes for the French writers a geographical region upon which one pours off revolutionary aspirations. The axioms of third worldism, primary discursive formation enhanced by this period, run through the whole of the texts at various degrees. Also, this thesis aims to reveal the figures and spaces which emerge from this whole of contradictory representations. From 1975 to 1985, one witnesses the decomposition of the discursive formations and representations established during the two previous decades. Indeed, several discursive formations during these ten years question not only third worldism and its revolutionary impulses, but also the function of the intellectual.
On a more general basis, this study examines the history of ideas in France from 1950 to 1985. One of its implicit goals is to describe the rules which diversify, give coherence, integrate, exclude, and legitimate a "new" idea in the French social discourse.

John Bellenden's Chronicles of Scotland (1531-r. 1537) is a humanist Scots translation of Hector Boece's Scotorum Historia (1527). As the first full-scale printed national history in the vernacular, the Chronicles assumed a pivotal role in sixteenth-century Scottish literary culture. Despite its contemporary importance,however, relatively little critical attention has been paid to Bellenden's work itself, primarily due to the misconception that it is a neutral translation of the Scotorum Historia. However, as Bellenden successively revised his text in several stages with stylistical, ideological and material alterations, the Chronicles needs to be evaluated as an individual literary work. The Chronicles reveals much about translation practice, cultural attitudes and book history in early modern Scotland. This thesis situates John Bellenden as a leading vernacular humanist whose concern to heighten the quality of vernacular Scots gave major impetus to the vernacular tradition in Scottish historiography. Chapter 1 shows how Bellenden's overall translation policy is indebted to humanist literary precepts and shows how its embodiment evolves through the course of his revision work. The following three chapters, which deal with Books 1, 12 and 16 of the Chronicles respectively, demonstrate the changing nature of Bellenden's translation and revision practice. A comparative analysis of the first manuscript version, three intermediary manuscript versions and the final printed version exhibits how Bellenden's attitude towards the Chronicles is affected by his ultimate respect for humanistic quality, and his consideration of his patrons and his audience. Chapter 5 examines the contemporary reception of the Chronicles. The conclusion seeks to reevaluate the congruity of the Chronicles with the contemporary cultural milieu and its influence on subsequent historiography and literature within and outwith early modern Scotland.

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).

My dissertation examines the cultural history of the Renaissance Venetian maritime empire. In this project I bring into conversation two historiographical subfields, the intellectual history of Venetian Renaissance humanism and the colonial history of the early modern Mediterranean, which have previously developed separately. In doing so, I examine the relationship between power and knowledge as it unfolded in the early modern Mediterranean. The ways in which Venetian Renaissance intellectual culture was shaped by its imperial engagements - and, conversely, how Venetian approaches to governance were inflected by humanist practices - are the central axes of my dissertation. In the first part of the dissertation, I examine the ways in which writing and textual collecting were used by elite Venetian readers to represent the geopolitical dimensions of their empire. I consider a group of manuscripts and printed books which contain technical, navigational, and cartographic writing and images about Venetian mercantile and imperial activity in the Mediterranean. In the second part, I undertake two case-studies of Venetian patrician governors who were trained in the humanist schools of Venice, before being posted to colonial offices in Dalmatia and the Aegean, respectively. I examine how their education in Venice as humanists influenced their experience and practice of governance in the stato da mar. Their personal texts offer an alternative intellectual history of empire, one which demonstrates the formation of political thought amongst the men actually practicing and experiencing imperial governance. Overall, I aim to build a picture of the ways in which literary culture, the physical world of the stato da mar, and political thought came to be entwined in the Venetian Renaissance; and then to describe how these dense relationships worked for the Venetian administrators who experienced them in the Mediterranean.

Faisant leur apparition au cours du XVIIIème siècle dans les provinces françaises, les sociétés savantes se sont développées et multipliées tout au long du XIXème siècle.Cette thèse a pour but d’identifier quelles sociétés savantes ont été créées en Normandie, dans le département de la Manche, entre 1755 et la Première Guerre Mondiale. Ce travail a consisté dans un premier point à déterminer comment elles ont été fondées, organisées, dirigées et financées. Dans un deuxième point, nous avons cherché à identifier quels types de personnes ont été impliquées, où elles vivaient et quelles étaient leurs activités professionnelles. Dans un troisième et dernier point, nous avons voulu comprendre quelles activités menaient les sociétés savantes de la Manche, notamment le fonctionnement de leurs réunions privées et publiques, et comment elles parvenaient à diffuser des connaissances auprès d’un plus large public grâce, par exemple, à leurs publications ou à leur participation à la vie culturelle locale
Appearing during the 18th century in French provinces, knowledge societies have developped and multiplied throughout the 19th century.This thesis aimes to identify which knowledge societies have been created in Normandy, in the department of Manche, from 1755 to the First World War. This work consisted, in a first point, of determining how they were established, organized, ruled and financed. In our second point, we tried to identify what kind of people were involved, where they lived and what their professional activities were. In our last point, we wanted to understand what kind of activities were practised by Manche knowledge societies, especially how their private and public sessions worked, and how they managed to spread knowledge to a larger audience thanks to, for example, their publications or their involvment in local cultural life

This thesis analyses processes of discursive European identity formation in three cultural journals: Esprit, from France, the British New Left Review and the German Merkur during the time periods 1989-92, and, a decade later, during 2003-06. The theoretical framework which the thesis brings to bear on this analysis is that of the European Public Sphere. This model builds on Jürgen Habermas’s original model of a “public sphere”, and alleges that a sphere of common debate about issues of European concern can lead to a more defined and integrated sense of a European identity which is widely perceived as vague and inchoate. The relevancy of the public sphere model and its connection to the larger debate about European identity, especially since 1989, are discussed in the first part of the thesis. The second part provides a comparative analysis of the main European debates in the journals during the respective time periods. It outlines the mechanisms by which identity is expressed and assesses when, and to what extent, shared notions of European identity emerge. The analysis finds that identity formation does not occur through a developmental, gradual convergence of views as the European public sphere model envisages. Rather, it is brought about in much more haphazard back-and-forth movements. Moreover, shared notions of European identity between all the journals only arise in moments of perceived crises. Such crises are identified as the most salient factor which galvanizes expressions of a common, shared sense of European identity across national boundaries and ideological cleavages. The thesis concludes that the model of the EPS is too dependent on a partial view of how identity formation occurs and should thus adopt a more nuanced understanding about the complex factors that are at play in these processes. For the principled attempt to circumscribe identity formation as the outcome of communicative processes alone is likely to be thwarted by external events.

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

Examining board: M. Anthony Molho (I.U.E.) ; M. Mario Rosa (École Normale Supérieure de Pise) ; M. Bernard Dompnier (Univ. de Clermont-Ferrand) ; Mme Nicole Lemaitre (Univ. Paris-I Sorbonne) ; M. Gérard Delille (I.U.E.)
Defence date: 19 December 2002
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Defence Date: 07/09/2009
Examining Board: Prof. Martin van Gelderen (European University Institute) supervisor; Prof. Vittor Ivo Comparato (Università di Perugia); Prof. Sebastian Conrad (European University Institute); Prof. Maurizio Viroli (Princeton University) external supervisor
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From the outset of his intellectual life Doria had been a civil philosopher interested in reflecting, in a secular manner on the foundations of civil society thereby departing from the more traditional discussions that took as their framework moral philosophy and natural law theories. Unlike other Catholic thinkers, when discussing happiness Doria was not interested in debating religious issues such as salvation, revelation, or the states of beatitude or contemplation and how these might give meaning to ‘ happiness’. For this reason this thesis explores Doria’s varying and evolving conceptions of human nature and happiness, trying to follow their development and their role in shaping Doria’s political thought. A further aim is to ascertain the implications of these developments and to analyse Doria’s discussions of the foundations of the civil life, his understanding of men as individuals, their sociability and the legitimation of human politics. I am interested in elucidating to what extent he believed that men act as moral beings in Doria’s political philosophy, which features of their psychologies he considers decisive in judging men’s rationality and morality, i.e. how he grounds their judgements and acts in order to justify their legitimacy. In short the key question here is: How, in other words, does Doria ground his theory of human agency and men’s freedom to act in politics? Doria is writing at a critical moment in the history of civil and moral philosophy not only in the Neapolitan but also, in the European context.

Defence date: 14 October 2000
Supervisors: Prof. dr. J. Brewer ; Prof. dr. H. de Ridder-Symoens
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Defence date: 2 October 2006
Examining board: Prof. Laurence Fontaine (Supervisor EUI), CNRS-EHESS, Paris ; Prof. Allen J. Grieco, Harvard University Center for Italian Renaissance Studies ; Prof. Massimo Montanari, European University Institute
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Defence date: 24 February 1995
Examining board: Haim Burstin (Università di Siena) ; Olwen Hufton (Institut Universitaire Européen) ; Dominique Julia (E.H.E.S.S., supervisor) ; Daniel Roche (E.H.E.S.S., external supervisor) ; Paolo Viola (Università di Palermo)
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Defence date: 5 June 2013
Examining Board: Professor Antonella Romano, EUI (Directeur de thèse) Professor Esteban Buch, EHESS Professor Danièle Pistone, Université Paris Sorbonne-Paris IV Professor Lucy Riall, EUI Professor Sophie-Anne Leterrier, Université d'Artois
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This thesis investigates the changing conditions in the European art market after the Congress of Vienna (1815). It focuses mainly on the socio-professional development of the Italian composer Gioachino Rossini and analyses his first visit to Paris in 1823 from a social, cultural and political point of view. It redefines the issue of grandeur in the context of urban renewal (Paris as a capital city) and a political regime in search of legitimacy (the Restoration period). Rossini's first visit to Paris is examined in reference to his life experiences as well as the changing geopolitical face of Europe at the time. First, a micro-analysis of his stay in Paris explores the construction of this symbolic event and makes a prosopography of the various institutional, political and artistic actors involved. Second, this thesis examines the reasons for Rossini's occupation of the French cultural arena. France's cultural policies are highlighted by concentrating on the French Restoration government's strategies in bringing Rossini to Paris. This thesis also examines the other side of the coin, namely how market logic was established in theatrical productions and amongst authors and institutions, and how this marked the progressive dismantling of the privilege system in Parisian theatres. To do so, the thesis analyses the play: Rossini à Paris ou le grand dîner, the Scribe's libretto of which describes a banquet given in Rossini's honor during his stay in Paris. Third, the debates connected to Rossini's visit reveals how musical "traditions" are radicalized around a national paradigm. Crossing varied and original sources (correspondences, scores, play librettos, newspapers, institutional sources), this thesis contributes significantly to the study of the relationship between the artist, the power and their representations.

Defence Date: 24/04/2009
Examining Board: Professor Heinz-Gerhard Haupt, European University Institute (Supervisor); Professor Enrique Ucelay-Da Cal, Universitat Pompeu Fabra (Second Supervisor); Professor Michael Keating, European University Institute; Professor Anne-Marie Thiesse, EHESS
PDF of thesis uploaded from the Library digital archive of EUI PhD theses
Dans le premier chapitre je définirai mon approche de la question nationale en m’appuyant sur certaines théories classiques du nationalisme. Je m’attacherai longuement sur le lien entre langue et nation, que je mettrai en perspective historique. En particulier, j’examinerai le cadre conceptuel et philosophique dans lequel l’idée politique de nation a vu le jour, à la fin du XVIIIe siècle. Et je le ferai en ayant toujours présent à l’esprit l’évolution des études linguistiques, notamment à partir du début du XIXe siècle. Dans le deuxième chapitre, après avoir traité des idées linguistique en France depuis le XVIIIe siècle, je considérerai le contexte français dans la première moitié du XIXe siècle. Je porterai une attention particulière à la politique culturelle française depuis la Révolution de 1789, et notamment aux politiques linguistiques des différents gouvernements. Je parlerai donc des enquêtes linguistiques et ethnologiques qui accompagnent l’intérêt nouveau pour les traditions populaires, mais aussi de leur dimension politique. J’expliquerai comment elles emboîtent le pas à la quête des origines nationales. Finalement, j’aborderai le renouveau qui caractérise l’historiographie française depuis les années 1820 pour montrer comment l’histoire du Midi de la France s’insère dans le grand tableau de l’histoire nationale. Après ces chapitres de préliminaires historiques et théoriques, avec le troisième chapitre, on abordera l’émergence de la question de la langue d’oc à travers les travaux d’une lignée d’historiens, antiquaires, lexicographes, etc. qui depuis le XVIIIe siècle relancent l’intérêt pour les 'langues du Midi' en France. Je parlerai de Raynouard, le fondateur des études de langue romane, et de ses successeurs qui ont dessiné le cadre théorique dans lequel s’inscrira le débat pendant presque tout le siècle. Débat qui mettra en jeu de nom de la langue : langue romane, langue d’oc, provençal, et dans lequel la renaissance provençale promue par le groupe des félibres joue un rôle capital. Je parlerai longuement de son principal protagoniste, Frédéric Mistral, dont la personnalité, le génie poétique et le talent d’organisateur poussent le provençal sur le premier plan de la scène littéraire française. Dans le quatrième chapitre, je franchirai la frontière pyrénéenne pour découvrir comment la question linguistique et nationale a été abordée en Catalogne. Le choix de m’occuper de la question linguistique catalane est dû à plusieurs raisons : tout d’abord à la proximité linguistique et culturelle que ce pays voisin a avec les pays de langue d’oc. En deuxième lieu, au fait que, quelques années durant, les Provençaux et les Catalans ont partagé intérêts, revendications et rêves d’une confédération de peuples latins. Enfin, à la curiosité de voir comment le débat sur la langue catalane a été résolu en faveur d’une vision résolument nationale de la langue, de sorte qu’elle devient à la fois fondement et instrument de revendications politiques. Dans le cinquième chapitre je ferai retour en France et je m’arrêterai surtout dans le Languedoc, où la création de la Société des Langues Romanes à Montpellier donne une tournure différent au débat sur la langue d’oc. Créée presque trente ans après le Félibrige, la SLR fait sortir la discussion sur la langue du domaine poétique : ses intérêts linguistiques et philologiques la prédisposent en fait à des conceptions de la langue et à des projets de normalisation, surtout orthographique, antagonistes à ceux du Félibrige. Toujours en Languedoc, mais cette fois-ci à Toulouse, une autre initiative voit le jour visant à mettre en question la prééminence des Provençaux au sein du Félibrige : la Lauseto, organe des félibres rouges et apôtre de la 'Cause languedocienne', engage une véritable opposition idéologique au félibrige catholique et légitimiste de matrice provençale. Je terminerai le chapitre par une petite 'promenade' en Italie, où la questione della lingua est au centre d’un débat animé qui nous servira de point de comparaison. Dans le sixième chapitre je resituerai le débat dans le cadre étatique français. Je passerai d’abord rapidement en revue la longue question de la décentralisation culturelle. J’analyserai l’état de l’enseignement supérieur en France, je traiterai du débat sur la réforme universitaire, pour passer ensuite à l’institution académique des études philologiques et à leur importance pour le processus de construction d’un imaginaire national français. Dans ce contexte, je m’arrêterai longuement sur les querelles linguistiques qui divisent les linguistes de la SLR et les philologues de la Romania, sur leur opposition idéologique et sociologique. J’achèverai le chapitre sur la constitution des études de dialectologie en France. L’épilogue, finalement, où je traiterai de l’échec du mouvement renaissentiste de langue d’oc et de son 'repli' sur une idée latine utopique.

This dissertation explores the numerous literary representations of the femme de lettres during the first half of the nineteenth century in order to illustrate the complexities of women’s entrance into the male-dominated domain of literature and also to suggest the impact these fictional characters might have had on the reception of actual women writers as well as their omission from the century’s literary canon. The works that will be included in this analysis include: Mme de Staël’s Corinne, ou l’Italie, Stendhal’s Le Rouge et le noir, Honoré de Balzac’s Béatrix, La Muse du département and Illusions perdues, Delphine de Girardin’s La Canne de M. de Balzac, Napoline and La joie fait peur and George Sand’s Histoire de ma vie, Lettres d’un voyageur and Un Hiver à Majorque. In compiling such diverse works of literature, it becomes clear that both male and female authors from the early nineteenth century were unable to envision a publicly embraced female genius. Although almost all of the fictional femmes de lettres in this study faced a destiny of professional silence, the reasons given for their failures are split between the male and female authors. For the male authors, the woman as a successful intellectual, artist or author was ultimately impossible because of her inability to combine her female body and psyche with the “masculine” pursuit of knowledge. Conversely, the female authors wrote characters whose inability to fully embrace a public literary or artistic career stemmed from society’s unwillingness to tolerate her exceptionality rather than from an inherent disconnect between genius and the female sex.
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