Cette etude concerne les procedes narratologiques de representation de l'espace americain decrit et analyse a l'interieur de trois romans quebecois des annees quatre-vingt: Les Fous de Bassan (1982), ...L'Ete Rebecca (1985), Une histoire americaine (1986). Le corpus romanesque etabli regroupe ainsi des textes qui rendent compte a divers degres d'un coefficient d'americanite posee en termes d'extra-territorialite compte tenu de lieux narratifs dont les referents geographiques sont localises aux Etats-Unis. Pareil objet d'etude invite a une problematisation theorique de l'espace litteraire et a sa reconceptualisation dans la mesure ou cette constituante textuelle est utilisee comme visa d'entree dans la matiere romanesque. Or, l'espace se concoit au sein des operations d'analyse comme une composante du recit qui participe a la construction du sens et qui regularise les categories non spatiales de l'appareil discursif. A partir de ce postulat theorique dont les principes essentiels sont enonces par Juri M. Lotman dans La Structure du texte artistique (1973), nous formulons une methode d'analyse fondee sur l'articulation de l'espace narratif et des categories narratologiques developpees dans Figures III par Gerard Genette (1972), qui vise a rendre compte des virtualites informantes des figures spatiales sur le plan du discours narratif. Dans le contexte de la mise en discours de lieux romanesques qui regissent l'organisation syntagmatique de l'histoire s'effectuent des choix narratifs informes par les categories spatiales modelisantes. L'examen de ce systeme de relations permet de decrire les mecanismes narrotologiques de l'espace saisi par la lunette du temps, du mode et de la voix, categories posees par Genette comme les figures du recit. Il s'agit de demontrer comment des lieux rememores, anticipes, vus et dits par le discours participent a la syntagmatique du sens. La description des procedes de mise en discours des lieux americains dans les textes etudies conduit a l'identification de formes spatiales signifiantes. Ainsi, le parallelisme thematique entre la Californie et l'Ethiopie et les structures antithetiques de la Floride et de Griffin Creek dans les ecrits de Jacques Godbout et d'Anne Hebert se constituent en figures de sens du recit tandis que la territorialisation des personnages dans le texte de Rene Lapierre suscitee par une Nouvelle-Angleterre aux frontieres inviolables rend compte de deplacements constants. Depuis la Floride des Fous de Bassan en passant par la Nouvelle-Angleterre de L'Ete Rebecca jusqu'a la Californie d'Une histoire americaine s'actualise un discours spatial dont les modes de figuration des lieux sont porteurs de sens. Les manifestations etatsuniennes du corpus romanesque articulent sur le plan imaginaire une extra-territorialite indicatrice des transformations structurelles de la societe quebecoise. L'americanite evoquee par les textes de la fiction contemporaine a pour ainsi dire renouvele la forme romanesque dans la mesure ou de nombreux ecrivains situent desormais l'action de leurs recits outre-frontiere, en toute Amerique, depuis un espace quebecois, qui est partie integrante du tout nord-americain sur le plan geographique.
The mythological aspects of Zola's work have been described as the very foundation of his novels by such eminent critics as David Baguley, Jean Borie and Naomi Schor. Yet the differences between ...human mothers and maternal spaces in the mythic context remain to be examined. Baguley points out that the earth in La Terre is the central character, la Terre-Màre, that the mythic perspective surpasses the human dramas, comprising the essence of the novel. The centrality of the earth in a novel about fertility and production naturally leads to questions about this displacement of human drama by the mythic and its effects on Zola's mother characters. This paper undertakes the analysis of maternal spaces of Les Rougon-Macquart in regard to the themes of generativity and the obstetrics that structure them, exploring themes of creation, regeneration and reproduction as production-related activities, with emphasis on male participation and male usurpation of female functions.
In the New Covenant: Jewish Writers and the American Idea, Sam B. Girgus identifies a major trend in twentieth-century Jewish-American letters. He contends that writers ranging from Anzia Yezierska ...to Philip Roth participate in the rhetorical tradition of the American jeremiad. Drawing on the work of Sacvan Bercovitch, Girgus claims that modern Jewish-American writers working within this tradition challenge their fellow Americans to live up to their country's ideals and potential by lamenting their departure from the American errand. The primary aim of this dissertation is to situate one of the most popular Jewish-American writers, Edna Ferber, within the tradition that Girgus identifies. As I demonstrate, Ferber assumed the role of an American Jeremiah in her fiction and non-fiction to protest against the marginalization of minority groups, revealing how their under-representation counters America's egalitarian ideals. The first chapter treats Ferber's semi-autobiographical text, Fanny Herself, showing how the novel defines her mission as a Jewish-American author. It also addresses Ferber's critique of corporate culture and its gospel of efficiency. The second chapter examines Ferber's feminist jeremiad by focusing on the Emma McChesney stories. This study then turns to Ferber's most explicit manifestation of her commitment to, what Girgus calls, the New Covenant with an analysis of her 1939 autobiography, A Peculiar Treasure. In the fourth chapter, I concentrate on two of Ferber's most popular Westerns, Cimarron and Giant. In these novels, she exposes the evil realities hidden behind the façade of the popular Western by revealing how Anglo-chauvinism and sexism won the West. The fifth chapter explores the politics of sentiment, melodrama, miscegenation and passing in Show Boat. In the conclusion to this study, I discuss the political implications of Ferber's popular narratives. Overall, I argue that Edna Ferber takes on the role of an American Jeremiah not only to protest against the marginalization of women, people of color and Jews but also to subsequently remind her readers that their marginalization undermines America's principles and ideals.
This thesis examines the character of the unhappy bride in three French novels of the 19th century: Le Lys dans la vallee (1836) by Honore de Balzac, Madame Bovary (1857) by Gustave Flaubert and ...L'Assommoir (1877) by Emile Zola. It compares the heroines' tragic destinies based on the following points: childhood; education; marriage; the philosophy of love and psychology; and escapism and death. We are shown that it is education that leads to the philosophy of love, which is filled with ideas of platonic love, and that unhappy marriages involve compensation. Research by psychoanalyst Karen Horney is applied to the characters found in the novels to explain their deviant behaviour (masochism, bovarism, narcissism, detachment). Each heroine demonstrates a tendency towards the ideal and illusions inherited from romanticism. Their fates are sealed with the failure of their dreams and the victory of reality over fantasy.
This thesis concerns itself with contemporary realism and its relation to the theory that seeks to define it. The theoretical assumptions made by both realist practitioners and theorists alike begin ...with the notion that “reality” can be “produced” by language. This notion, however, has been questioned and indeed discarded by many theorists of both reality and fiction. In response to this, contemporary realists such as Tim O'Brien, Lorrie Moore, Ian MacMillan and Kathryn Harrison have altered their stance toward reality. Rather than attempting to produce, or to move toward an objective description of reality, these writers seek to cover up, or obscure the reality that they represent. In this thesis I discuss and synthesize a number of theories of realism, pointing out many of their overriding similarities. I discuss such wide ranging theorists of realism as Fredric Jameson, Georg Lukàcs, J. P. Stern, and Cristopher Nash. Also, I mount a discussion concerning the nature of reality, or the Real, outlining theories forwarded by Slavoj Žižek, Jacques Lacan, Jean Baudrillard and Walter Benjamin. The purpose of these discussions is to show how theories of realism and theories of reality are essentially incompatible. It is this incompatibility that this thesis seeks to redress by drawing on both the stylistic innovations made by contemporary realists and philosophical innovations made by the aforementioned theorists.
The second half of the 19th century witnessed the emergence of institutionalized disciplines with specific areas of expertise and methodological standards. In the same period, writers—chief among ...them Baudelaire and Flaubert—sought to define literature as an autonomous field of activity with its own legitimacy. Scientific and literary endeavors have a priori little in common. Yet, writers rely at times on scientific knowledge. What makes science so appealing to them? I explore these issues by considering the case of Baudelaire's and Flaubert's dialogue with medicine. Baudelaire and Flaubert are drawn to medicine, in particular psychiatry, because its topics of interest intersect with their own literary interests. In addition, medicine provides them with a perspective (the “clinical gaze” and the “medical view of life”) that promotes the virtues of precision and impassivity. Both authors turn medical knowledge into a polemical weapon against sentimental effusion and romantic subjectivism. Yet, these borrowings—and herein lies the paradox—go along with a fierce critique of medicine. Flaubert and Baudelaire denounce physicians for their arrogance and thirst for prestige. They lay bare the narrow-mindedness, hidden moralism and bourgeois conformism underlying medical assumptions about human nature and sensibility. In particular, they reject medical theories that depict artistic creation as a by-product of pathology. At stake is the autonomy of their art. Their aesthetics—based on hard work, willpower and lucidity—are an attempt to pull artistic creation from medicine's grasp. In developing a critical dialogue with medicine, Baudelaire and Flaubert achieve an increased awareness of their artistic identity. From this viewpoint literature defines itself through its confrontation with other forms of knowledge. Both authors rank literature's cognitive contribution as equal or even superior to that of medicine. The rivalry is particularly strong in areas where both disciplines compete for cognitive legitimacy. Debates on the issue of sensibility are exemplary in this regard. Baudelaire and Flaubert turn sensibility into an aesthetic category and deny physicians any competence in this matter: artists only, the true “masters of sensibility,” have the insights and therefore the capacity to explore its intricacies.
Using the qualitative methodology of grounded theory, this dissertation documents the development of an emergent theory based on how using specific symbolist vocal techniques influence an actor's ...performance. This study explores actor strategy when performing a symbolist vocal performance piece, voluntary research respondents' perspectives on actor affect, and actor strategy when learning to utilize specific vocal techniques in a symbolist production. Using vocal techniques based on Maurice Maeterlinck's writings and the author's own performance research, actor/respondents applied symbolist vocal techniques including silences, whispered echoing, choral song, shared lines, breathing sequences and liturgical chanting to the research production of Maeterlinck's The Blind. The emergent theory suggests that the pleasure of sound and a feeling of communion with other actors' voices influence an actor's process in the performance of a symbolist play. Actors note that staying within the “comfort-zones” of their typical approach to acting (including emotional honesty, play analysis and physical movement) hinders their performance in a symbolist play. Instead actors tend to alter their acting approach to a symbolist piece considering the work from a more group oriented and intuitive process, focusing only on the way sound affects the body and mind. In essence, the influence is not so much the symbolist vocal technique as it is the actor/respondent's willingness to find pleasure in a new performance style by focusing on the group rather than the individual, the aural rather than the visual or physical. Finally, this dissertation examines various directorial and vocal techniques that proved beneficial to the actor/respondents in their work with the symbolist vocal style. While discussing possible challenges actors face when working with the symbolist vocal style, this dissertation poses possible solutions to those problems both from a directorial and an acting standpoint.
La Terre d'Emile Zola a ete publiee en 1887. Vers 1900, un jeune romancier polonais--Wladyslaw Stanislaw Reymont, sous l'influence du naturaliste francais, s'est mis a ecrire la "version" polonaise ...de La Terre. Pourtant, ce projet a echoue, Reymont etant decu par le manque de realisme et le naturalisme livresque de sa production. L'ecrivain polonais a donc brule ses manuscrits. Apres plusieurs annees, il a recommence son travail; cette fois, son style litteraire a ete marque par son originalite et son independance. Ainsi, le resultat des efforts de Reymont a ete la production d'une des plus grandes oeuvres de la litterature polonaise--Les Paysans--qui a recu le prix Nobel en 1925. Le roman reymontien peut etre interprete comme une sorte de reponse a La Terre car l'on y trouve des elements qui peuvent etre reconnus comme les constituants du naturalisme zolien et, meme, quelques scenes qui ressemblent a La Terre. Neanmoins, l'approche de l'ecrivain polonais est a l'oppose du pessimisme zolien ... Dans cette etude, nous allons d'abord reveler l'objectif qu'avait Reymont en ecrivant son oeuvre pour ensuite comparer certains aspects des Paysans avec certains motifs de La Terre sur la base de la theorie darwinienne. Nous proposons de demontrer que Reymont etait loin d'accepter la theorie d'Emile Zola. Ensuite, nous allons nous demander pourquoi les deux romanciers ont peint les portraits de leurs paysans de facon si differente. (La "realite" du paysan francais etait-elle vraiment differente de la "realite" du paysan polonais?) Nous examinerons les situations de production contextuelle de La Terre et des Paysans afin de resoudre le probleme des differences dans les attitudes de Zola et de Reymont a l'egard de la question de la verite romanesque.
"Discurso, identidad nacional y literatura en Edgardo Rodriguez Julia" is a study on Puerto Rican national identity and its historical literary discourse. The works of this Caribbean author depict ...not only the cultural, political and economic woes of the island, but also the manipulation of those dilemmas by the colonial powers-that-be in Puerto Rico. If one takes those issues into account, then Edgardo Rodriguez Julia's literary production is the most integral and comprehensive contribution to Puerto Rican literature. His writings rescue the image of national identity in a novel and liberating manner. Today, the author's works constitute a primary source of information that can help one understand the cultural and political process in Puerto Rico as it relates to the Latin American Caribbean. The aesthetic values of his chronicles and novels, as well as the analytical format of this writer's essays are original in that they display style, a critical aperture and new images concerning national identity. The author's narrative exhibits a vast, knowledgeable assimilation of diverse cultural discourse and an acute awareness of the complex historical search for nationality. The writer unveils more ways to answer the island's perennial historical inquiry by stating in his own words: "I only want to understand who we (Puerto Ricans) are and how we live. Most of all, why we are the way we are." The dissertation is divided into four chapters and a general bibliography. Chapter I, Historiografia y literatura: mitologizacion de la nacionalidad puertorriquena, reviews the image of the "great Puerto Rican family" as discursive expression derived from the dominant social class which excludes African and Indigenous ethnicity. Chapter II, Las cronicas de Edgardo Rodriguez Julia en la literatura puertorriquena, analyzes the images referring to nationality, women and family as symbols by considering the literary tradition and the social processes from where they originate. Chapter III, El gesto "parejero" y liberador, is an overview of the literary and ideological relations between Rodriguez Julia and the generation of writers from the 1930's. This chapter compares the literary dialogue from Antonio S. Pedreira's work entitled Insularismo with Rodriguez Julia's chronicles. Chapter IV, Dos posesas (escritura e historia) is an in-depth study of Rodriguez Julia's novels: La renuncia del heroe Baltasar (1974); La noche oscura del Nino Aviles (1984); El camino de Yyaloide (1994) and Cartagena (1997). In all of these works, the author inserts American ontology within the universal realm so as to understand violence and its ontological origins in the Americas. This has been a result of European philosophical development dating back to the Renaissance era that justified its dominance in the political arena throughout Latin America. The novel Cartagena continues the ontological search, but it differs in that the work links the political and colonial with the social psychological nature of its characters' portrayals. This study incorporates the critical methodologies of Roland Barthes, Michel Foucault, Michel de Certeau and Jean de Chesneaux, among others, due to their contributions in the fields of historiography and mythology.
This dissertation examines the role of scientific elements and scientific language in the novels of the Japanese writer Abe Kobo (1924-1993). Abe is best known for the grotesque or surreal elements ...in his work, but his novels also contain a great deal of scientific material, including characters, plot elements, and technical language drawn from a range of scientific disciplines. I argue that by combining the scientific with the grotesque, Abe blurs the line between fiction and science, challenging our stereotypes about the order or rationality of science and the empty fantasies of fiction. Chapter one begins by surveying distinctions between science and literature in a range of aesthetic theories from the Renaissance down to Abe's own critical writing. Chapters two through four undertake close readings of three novels: Dai yon kanpyoki (Inter Ice Age 4, 1959), Tanin no kao (The Face of Another, 1964), and Mikkai (Secret Rendezvous, 1977). Following a method suggested by Mikhail Bakhtin's theory of novelistic heteroglossia, each reading identifies a number of distinct dialects or voices in the work, some scientific and some more fantastic, and each associated with a particular perspective or world view. Each reading shows how these voices divide, interact, conflict, or recombine into new hybrids; then it explores what this says about comparing and reconciling the scientific and literary perspectives that these voices represent. The conclusion that emerges from Abe's work is that we sometimes need to adjust the balance between the scientific and the literary in our language, our society, or ourselves. I relate this to Abe's criticism of the narrow rationality he called "nichijo," and to three other critical concepts: Bakhtin's ideas of authorship and "consummation;" characterizations of postmodernism by Jean-Francois Lyotard, Fredric Jameson, and others; and theories of parody advanced by Bakhtin, Jameson, and Linda Hutcheon. The final pages apply what we have learned from Abe's novels to a reading of the "Sokal hoax," a critical controversy that brings together these issues of style, parody, postmodernism, and literature versus science.
