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Pálfi, Ágnes. "The incommunicable secret or the encountered experience: Mystery, ritual, Freemasonry in 18th century French literature." Diss., The University of Arizona, 2001. http://hdl.handle.net/10150/298788.
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The philosophers of the Enlightenment base their ideas on reason while attracting public attention on the futility of religion. The concept of the universe inherited from Antiquity is rejuvenated by contemporary sciences and, at first sight, we would think that nature governs the supernatural. A number of philosophical works, which would today be considered anthropological, deal with the customs and manners of different countries of the world, inevitably describing the religious cults and ceremonies practiced throughout the centuries. To what extent are these rituals kept, neglected or transformed in the century of Enlightenment? What is the connection between the ceremonies of Antiquity and the rituals practiced in the confined space of modern secret societies? Speculative Freemasonry, introduced to France at the beginning of the 18 th century, counts among its members a number of well-known philosophers. Do these enlightened minds, most of whom are adversaries of religion, practice the rituals based on sacred and incommunicable mysteries? These are some of the questions which this dissertation tries to answer in analyzing the philosophers' (i.e. Voltaire, Dupuis, Boulanger, Demeunier) anthropological views; the origins of Freemasonry and the ancient sacred tradition; the founding murder and the sacrificial ritual; freemasonic and initiatory symbols in Ramsay's Voyages of Cyrus (1727); Ramsay's quest and the mysteries in his Discourse (1736); Casanova's Icosameron (1788), a freemasonic utopia, hermetic allegory and symbolic fable. This dissertation attempts to demonstrate that the denial of the mystery and the supposed domination of the world by reason are only the well-known and visible aspect of the 18 th century.
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Ganofsky, Marine. "Night in eighteenth-century French libertine fiction (1730-1789)." Thesis, University of Cambridge, 2012. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.610662.
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Dufresne, Virginie. "De Versailles à Clarens : nature et politique dans les jardins littéraires de l'âge classique." Thesis, McGill University, 2006. http://digitool.Library.McGill.CA:80/R/?func=dbin-jump-full&object_id=99589.
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During the 17th and 18th centuries, the French garden history witnesses the triumph and then the decline of the French formal garden, to which succeeds the fashion of landscape gardening of foreign inspiration. Integrating and nourishing this debate, the literary texts of that period enable to grasp the stakes that it brings up. The garden notably lends itself to the expression of an emerging sentiment of nature, as well it also serves that of a political thought enlightened by new ideas. Effectively, the treatment that these texts give to the garden is a witness to the revival that installs itself in the way of conceiving nature, and the relation that nature holds with man and the art of the gardens. The garden's topic and scenography are a testimony of changes that in turn affect its imaginary and that of the walk. Finally, the critical discourse exploits the analogy that establishes itself between the art of the gardens and the exercise of power, polarizing the debate around the political metaphor.
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Monette, Isabelle. "Récritures de récits criminels en France sous l'Ancien Régime." Thesis, McGill University, 2003. http://digitool.Library.McGill.CA:80/R/?func=dbin-jump-full&object_id=79966.
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Three original stories are the basis for our study of rewriting during the French Ancien Regime: the story of Thibaud de la Jacquiere, that of the "sorcier Gaufridy" and that of the Marquise de Ganges, which Sade will rewrite as a novel. Having all originated from a "canard", they appear in the 1679 edition of the Histoires tragiques of Francois de Rosset, and two of them can also be found in Francois Gayot de Pitaval's Causes celebres. Each of these stories was rewritten by different authors at least three times. Using Gerard Genette's theory of the narrative, we will analyse the processes of transformation that the rewriting operates in the text, as well as the changes it imposes to its original meaning. The number of rewritings of each text---up to five for the Marquise de Gange---is a testament to the importance of textual reappropriation as much as it shows the relevance of a study which brings to light the role of rewriting in the survival of these stories.
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Margrave, Christie L. "Women and nature in the works of French female novelists, 1789-1815." Thesis, University of St Andrews, 2015. http://hdl.handle.net/10023/6391.
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On account of their supposed link to nature, women in post-revolutionary France were pigeonholed into a very restrictive sphere that centred around domesticity and submission to their male counterparts. Yet this thesis shows how a number of women writers – Cottin, Genlis, Krüdener, Souza and Staël – re-appropriate nature in order to reclaim the voice denied to them and to their sex by the society in which they lived. The five chapters of this thesis are structured to follow a number of critical junctures in the life of an adult woman: marriage, authorship, motherhood, madness and mortality. The opening sections to each chapter show why these areas of life generated particular problems for women at this time. Then, through in-depth analysis of primary texts, the chapters function in two ways. They examine how female novelists craft natural landscapes to expose and comment on the problems male-dominant society causes women to experience in France at this time. In addition, they show how female novelists employ descriptions of nature to highlight women's responses to the pain and frustration that social issues provoke for them. Scholars have thus far overlooked the natural settings within the works of female novelists of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Yet, a re-evaluation of these natural settings, as suggested by this thesis, brings a new dimension to our appreciation of the works of these women writers and of their position as critics of contemporary society. Ultimately, an escape into nature on the part of female protagonists in these novels becomes the means by which their creators confront the everyday reality faced by women in the turbulent socio-historical era which followed the Revolution.
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Marques, Mariana Teixeira. "Fanny e Margot, libertinas: o aprendizado do corpo e do mundo em dois romances eróticos setecentistas." Universidade de São Paulo, 2012. http://www.teses.usp.br/teses/disponiveis/8/8147/tde-14092012-105147/.
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O objetivo desta tese é um estudo comparativo dos romances Fanny Hill, or Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure (1748-1749), do inglês John Cleland, e Margot La Ravaudeuse (1750), do francês Jean-Charles Fougeret de Monbron. Os dois romances fazem parte do conjunto de narrativas eróticas libertinas que inundaram o emergente mercado livreiro europeu durante o Iluminismo e contam as memórias de duas jovens prostitutas respectivamente em Londres e Paris em meados do século. Partindo do pressuposto segundo o qual as duas narrativas se organizam num contínuo que oscila entre a sociabilidade e a individualidade, o objetivo desta análise comparativa é compreender como estes dois temas, fundamentais na experiência setecentista e no processo de formação do romance moderno, são formalizados nas memórias de Margot e Fanny Hill através de procedimentos estruturais recorrentes na literatura da libertinagem.The aim of this dissertation is a comparative study of the novels Fanny Hill, or Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure (1748-1749), by John Cleland, and Margot la Ravaudeuse (1750), by Jean-Charles Fougeret de Monbron. Both novels are part of the body of erotic libertine narratives that flooded the emerging European book market during the Enlightenment and tell the memoirs of two young prostitutes respectively in London and Paris during the mid-18th-century. Assuming that the two narratives are organized according to a continuum which oscillates between sociability and individuality, the objective of this comparative analysis is to understand how these fundamental themes in 18th-century life as well as in the rise of the modern novel are formalized in the memoirs of Margot and Fanny through reccurring structural procedures found in libertine literature.
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Morriello, Francesco Anthony. "The Atlantic Revolutions and the movement of information in the British and French Caribbean, c. 1763-1804." Thesis, University of Cambridge, 2018. https://www.repository.cam.ac.uk/handle/1810/274901.
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This dissertation examines how news and information circulated among select colonies in the British and French Caribbean during a series of military conflicts from 1763 to 1804, including the American War of Independence (1775-1783), French Revolutionary Wars (1792-1802), and the Haitian Revolution (1791-1804). The colonies included in this study are Barbados, Jamaica, Guadeloupe, Martinique, and Saint-Domingue. This dissertation argues that the sociopolitical upheaval experienced by colonial residents during these military conflicts led to an increased desire for news that was satiated by the development and improvement of many processes of collecting and distributing information. This dissertation looks at some of these processes, the ways in which select social groups both influenced and were affected by them, and why such phenomena occurred in the greater context of the 18th and early 19th century Caribbean at large. In terms of the types of processes, it examines various kinds of print culture, such as colonial newspapers, books, and almanacs, as well as correspondence records among different social groups. In terms of which groups are studied, these include printers, postal service workers, colonial and naval officials, and Catholic missionaries. The dissertation is divided into five chapters, the first of which provides insight into the operation of the mail service established in the aforementioned colonies, and the ways in which the Atlantic Revolutions impacted their service in terms of the different historical actors responsible for collecting and distributing correspondences. Chapter two looks at select British and French colonial printers, their print shops, and the book trade in the Caribbean isles during the 18th century. Chapter three delves into the colonial newspapers and compares the differences and similarities among government-sanctioned newspapers vis-à-vis independently produced papers. It uses the case of the Haitian Revolution to track how news of the slave insurrection was disseminated or constricted in the weeks immediately following the night of 22 August 1791. Chapter four examines the colonial almanac as a means of connecting colonial residents with people across the wider Atlantic World. It also surveys the development of these pocketbooks from mere astrological calendars to essential items that owners customized and frequently carried on their person, given the swathes of information they featured after the American War of Independence. The final chapter looks at the daily operations of Capuchin and Dominican missionaries in Martinique and Guadeloupe at the end of the 18th century and how they maintained their communications within the islands and with the heads of their Catholic orders in France, as well as in Rome. Overall, this project aims to fill in some of the gaps in the literature regarding how select British and French colonial residents received and dispatched information, and the effect this had in their respective Caribbean islands. It also sheds light on some of the ways that slaves were incorporated into the mechanisms by which information was collected and distributed, such as their encounters with printers, employment as couriers, and use as messengers to relay documents between colonial officials. In doing so, it hopes to encourage future discussion regarding how information moved in the British and French Caribbean amid periods of revolution and military conflict, how and why these processes changed, and the impact this had on print culture and mail systems in the post-revolutionary period of the 19th century.
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Velescu, Elena. "La représentation des catastrophes naturelles en littérature et peinture dans l’espace culturel franco-allemand entre la deuxième moitié du XVIIIe siècle et le début du XIXe siècle." Thesis, Paris, EPHE, 2015. http://www.theses.fr/2015EPHE4048.
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Ce travail vise à rendre compte des relations créées entre les événements naturels de forte intensité et dont les conséquences destructrices les ont fait nommer catastrophes naturelles, en partant du fameux tremblement de terre de Lisbonne, en 1755 jusqu’au milieu du XIXe siècle, avec l’avènement des nouvelles techniques et sciences, ce qui a engendré un nouveau rapport entre l’homme et la Nature. Ce changement de la représentation de la catastrophe en littérature, mais aussi dans la peinture s’appuie sur des mutations culturelles dans le plan religieux, scientifique et esthétique, dont les traces évidentes nous avons essayé d’expliciter dans ce travail. L’enjeu de cette thèse est d’analyser les métamorphoses du discours écrit et visuel de la période mentionnée, et d’attirer l’attention sur le passage entre l’horreur suscitée par un événement catastrophique et la dimension sensorielle et la fascination provoquée par le spectacle des phénomènes naturels. Toutefois, nous avons recherché le symbolisme des motifs attachés aux grands mythes de l’humanité, tels le Déluge, le thème de transgression-punition-rédemption inscrit dans la catastrophe, qui se transforme dans un nouveau concept, un objet d’analyse, de réflexion et de contemplation, qui nous incite à voir différemmentThis research aims to report on the relationships created among natural events of high intensity which can be categorized as natural disasters due to their destructive consequences starting with the famous earthquake of Lisbon in 1755 until the mid-nineteenth century, the advent of new technology and science, which created a new relationship between man and nature. This change in catastrophe representation in literature but also in the painting is based on religious, scientific and aestethetic changes, the key elements that we explored in this work. The aim of this dissertation is to analyze the metamorphoses of writing and visual discourse of the above-mentioned period and draw attention to the transition from horror triggered by a catastrophic event to a sensory dimension and fascination caused by the spectacle of natural phenomena. We also examined the symbolism of the motifs attached to the great myths of humanity, such as the Flood, the theme of transgression-punishment-redemption part of the disaster, which generates into a new concept, an object of analysis, reflection and contemplation, which inspires us to see the catastrophic events differently
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Danon, Rachel. "Voix de marronnage dans la littérature française au XVIIIé siècle." Thesis, Grenoble, 2012. http://www.theses.fr/2012GRENL044.
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Cette thèse vise à comprendre les postures de résistances et de fuites que les esclaves africains ont constamment opposées au système colonial esclavagiste. Faute de témoignages directs, du fait de l’absence d’équivalent français aux slave narratives anglophones, nous avons tenté d’exhumer ces paroles étouffées en analysant leurs reconstitutions dans les textes d’auteurs français du XVIIIe siècle qui les ont recueillies et mises en scène, entre 1730 et 1792. Nous avons essayé de comprendre les multiples formes de résistances actives auxquelles ont participé ces sujets historiques, qui ne sont souvent représentés par l’historiographie que comme des victimes passives.Notre travail étant d’ordre littéraire, nous avons problématisé les structures et les formes de l’énonciation présentes dans ces textes secondaires et apparemment dérivés, appartenant à une grande variété de genres. Qu’est-ce qui parvient à y filtrer des voix du marronnage, à travers leurs multiples modalités de transmission, traduction, trahison ? De quels types de résistances à l’oppression esclavagiste et coloniale portent témoignage ces textes écrits en français à l’époque des Lumières ? En quoi les outils de l’analyse littéraire peuvent-ils nous aider à éclairer leurs enjeux historiques, politiques et culturels ? Ces questions sont abordées à travers une analyse fine de quelques récits de rebellions, de prises de paroles, de détournements, de fuites, et autres formes de résistances relevant du marronnage, tels que ces récits apparaissent dans la langue des colons. En conclusion, nous tentons de relier ces textes anciens à certaines écritures récentes de littérature caribéenneThis dissertation, entitled Maroons’ Voices in 18th-Century French Literature, attempts to understand the various modes of resistance and escape which African slaves have constantly opposed to the colonial system of slavery. In the absence of slave narratives in French, our goal was to hear their lost voices through a close analysis of their echoes within texts written by a number of French authors who staged them, with many diffractions and deformations. Emphasis is put on the agency expressed in these countless forms of resistance, by populations who are too often misrepresented as passive victims.This study being literary in nature, it focuses on the structures and forms of enunciations encountered in these apparently derivative works written between 1730 and 1792, in order to frame the refracted presence of maroons’ voices through their transmission, translation, and deformations. What types of resistance to colonial oppression filter through these indirect and often ambivalent forms of literary testimony? How can a literary sensitivity help us grasp their historical, political and cultural stakes? Such questions are discussed through a series of close readings of selected narratives of escape, denunciations, struggles, rebellion and vengeance, taken from a variety of literary genres, all written in the colonizers’ language. In conclusion, these texts written 300 years ago are revisited in the light of recent developments in Caribbean writings
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Woloshen, Richard Allen. "L’individu exceptionnel dans Les liaisons dangereuses." Thesis, University of British Columbia, 1985. http://hdl.handle.net/2429/25532.
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Nous espérons montrer dans cette thèse que le développement du type de l'individu exceptionnel dans les romans du dix-huitième siècle en France est le résultat des courants philoso-phiques et artistiques de la période. Les Liaisons dangereuses de Laclos reflète mieux que tout autre roman du siècle ces deux influences, mais elles se font aussi sentir dans Manon Lescaut de Prevost, La Vie de Marianne de Marivaux, et Jacques le fataliste de Diderot.
L'introduction démontre que les philosophes du siècle désiraient le bonheur personnel de l'individu, la tolérance et la raison au lieu de l'ascétisme, l'intolérance et la foi aveugle qui dominaient la pensée du dix-septième siècle. Les philosophes voyaient l'aristocratie comme un obstacle à la réalisation d'un meilleur monde car cette classe ne voulait pas un changement de l'ordre établi. Puisque la pensée d'une période influeence souvent l'art, le fait que les romanciers du dix-huitième siècle adoptaient le point de vue des philosophes en critiquant l'aristocratie n'est pas surprenant. L'individu exceptionnel devient par la suite un moyen idéal pour voiler de telles critiques aussi bien que pour satisfaire des instincts créateurs chez les romanciers.
Dans le premier chapitre nous indiquons que Prévost, Marivaux et Diderot critiquaient l'aristocratie à mesure qu'ils analysaient les raisons pour lesquelles les personnages princi-paux de leurs romans étaient exceptionnels. Des influences à l'extérieur du roman comme le conflit philosophique entre la raison et la sensibilité semblent définir à première vue la nature extraordinaire de Des Grieux, Marianne et Mme de la Pommeraye; ces individus veulent nous convaincre qu'ils sont spéciaux à cause de leur sensibilité ou de leur intelligence. Cependant des influences à l'intérieur du roman, comme la forme, nous donnent les vrais clefs du caractère unique de ces personnages. Les protagonistes racontent leur propre histoire au lecteur et leur talent de duper autrui afin de se montrer dans une image flatteuse est ce qui les distingue enfin des autres. Néanmoins, les protagonistes se sentent obligés de se faire valoir car la société leur est presque toujours hostile.
Le deuxième chapitre introduit les protagonistes des Liaisons dangereuses, le vicomte de Valmont et la marquise de Merteuil. Chacun d'eux se croit un libertin sans pareil et dans ce chapitre nous étudions comment ils exploitent leur sagacité pour prouver leur supériorité l'un à l'autre. Nous expliquons la tradition libertine qui est la base de la philosophic personnelle de Valmont et de Merteuil. Le roman est dans la forme épistolaire; les protagonistes échangent des lettres. La forme du roman, une influence à l'intérieur, révèle encore une fois que ce que Valmont et Merteuil croient les rendre exceptionnels est illusoire. C'est de nouveau leur capacité de tromper autrui et eux-mêmes dans leurs lettres sur leur qualité spéciale qui est vraiemnt leur qualité distinctive.
Les lettres soutiennent l'illusion de l'invincibilité de Valmont et Merteuil dans le deuxième chapitre, mais elles les détruisent dans le troisième chapitre en leur révélant toutes leurs faiblesses émotionnelles. La rivalité entre les libertins s'intensifie vers la fin du roman et l'influence de la raison sur leur conduite s'affaiblit. Nous voyons que la façade intellectuelle cède rapidement à la force des émotions violentes, longuement supprimées. La forme épistolaire du livre révèle done que cette oeuvre suit l'exemple des romans précédents du siècle. L'illusion du point de vue du protagoniste et la réalité du point de vue du lecteur existent en meme temps; cette juxtaposition indique une attitude des romanciers envers la société contemporaine.
Dans la conclusion nous montrons que cette attitude est une critique de l'aristocratie qui ne permet pas aux protagonistes
de se réaliser complètement car chaque protagoniste symbolise le bouleversement de l'ordre établi. Des Grieux, Marianne, Mme de la Pommeraye, et surtout Valmont et Merteuil outragent la société en brisant les règles de conduite qu'ils devraient suivre. Qu'ils n'atteignent pas le bonheur personnel malgré leurs efforts reflète le sentiment de frustration que les romanciers veulent partager avec le lecteur. Prévost, Marivaux, Diderot et Laclos créent des romans dans lesquels les influences de la philosophic et de l'art romanesque de l'époque aident ces auteurs à critiquer une société décadente et à créer un personnage unique. Les Liaisons dangereuses est l'exemple le plus brillant des possibilités inhérantes à cette combinaison d'influences.Arts, Faculty of
French, Hispanic, and Italian Studies, Department of
Graduate
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Gaubert, Benoit Céline. "Le goût d'écrire et de lire dans le conte de fées français des 17° et 18° siècles. Fantaisies de l'écriture, du livre, de la bibliothèque et de la lecture." Thesis, Sorbonne Paris Cité, 2017. http://www.theses.fr/2017USPCA086.
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L’étude du conte de fées de 1690 à 1789, période de la mode du genre en France, montre que la matière merveilleuse s’est constituée dès ses débuts avec des éléments de pratiques lettrées transposés du réel mais aussi et surtout transformés de manière fantaisiste. Les premiers conteurs (1690-1704) érigent en effet le genre selon une poétique complexe mariant l’oralité des temps naïfs et l’écrit, signe d’une pratique sociale et culturelle du conte. Les conteurs suivants en apportent des infléchissements plus parodiques, des imitations et des variations notamment orientalisantes. L’ensemble des auteurs est concerné mais à des degrés divers, Perrault, Choisy et Fénelon étant moins prolixes en la matière que Madame d’Aulnoy, Pétis de la Croix ou le chevalier de Mailly.Le pays merveilleux dévoile ses arcanes, son secret de fabrication métatextuelle à travers des scènes plus ou moins fugaces de lecture, d’écriture et d’évocations de bibliothèques féériquesThe study of the fairy tale over the years 1690-1789, when the genre was in fashion in France, shows that, from its inception, the subject matter grew up with elements of realistic literary practice which were largely reshaped by imagination. The first storytellers (1690-1704) set up the literary genre according to a complex poetics allying the orality of naive times with literacy, which is the mark of a social and cultural practice of the story. The contributions of the forthcoming storytellers are imitations, parodies or are tinged with Orientalism. All the writers are affected, but to varying degrees: Perrault, Choisy and Fénelon are less inventive in this respect than Madame d’Aulnoy, Pétis de la Croix or the Chevalier de Mailly. The wonderland reveals its mysteries and the secret of its metatextual layout through more or less fleeting scenes of book reading or writing conjuring up a magical library
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André, Valérie. "Le roman de libertinage, 1782-1815: de l'exhumation à la réhabilitation?" Doctoral thesis, Universite Libre de Bruxelles, 1996. http://hdl.handle.net/2013/ULB-DIPOT:oai:dipot.ulb.ac.be:2013/212334.
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Cesarino, Michel. "Piedade, sadismo, sedução : a libertação do corpo mistificado : (um estudo sobre A Religiosa, de Diderot)." [s.n.], 2009. http://repositorio.unicamp.br/jspui/handle/REPOSIP/269885.
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Orientador: Alexandre Soares CarneiroDissertação (mestrado) - Universidade Estadual de Campinas, Instituto de Estudos da Linguagem
Made available in DSpace on 2018-08-15T00:48:31Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Cesarino_Michel_M.pdf: 982667 bytes, checksum: 68875905efd598fa317ae80bdac20754 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2009
Resumo: Este trabalho é um estudo sobre algumas das temáticas de La Religieuse (A Religiosa), de Diderot, baseado numa abordagem pictórica. Conceitos como o de anamorfose e o de naïveté na pintura, presentes na arte do século XVIII são usados nessa abordagem. A trajetória de Suzanne Simonin, protagonista do romance, expõe histeria, homossexualidade, melacolia e loucura através de três conventos, como conseqüências do corpo submetido a bloqueios em suas tendências naturais; parte disto é aqui desenvolvido. Além disso, abordo a questão do pathétique e da ilusão naquele romance, utilizados para cativar e comover o leitor como se ele estivesse num espetáculo teatral.
Abstract: This work is about La Religieuse (The Nun) of Diderot, based on a pictoral approach. Concepts like anamorphose and that of naïveté, both of them presents in the art the 18th century were used in such approach. The course of Suzanne Simonin, protagonist of the novel, exposes hysteria, homosexuality, melancholy and madness through tree convents as consequences of the submited body to obstructions in its natural tendencies; part of this is developed here. Besides that, I make an approach to the subject of pathétique and illusion in that novel, both used to captivate and move the reader as if he was at a theatrical spectacle.
Mestrado
Teoria e Critica Literaria
Mestre em Teoria e História Literária
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Jeffroy-Meynard, Marie-Nicole. "FROM BAROQUE TO ROCOCO: PUBLIC TO PRIVATE SPACE IN THE HÔTEL DE SOUBISE." Scholarship @ Claremont, 2018. http://scholarship.claremont.edu/scripps_theses/1204.
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I will build an argument utilizing the Hôtel de Soubise as a case study for the way in which the division between exteriors and interiors depicts the shifting cultural fabric of 18th-century French society.
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Mason, Jon-Kris. "French language, and French manners, in eighteenth-century British literature." Thesis, University of Sheffield, 2011. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.577523.
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Eighteenth-century social and political relationships between Britain and France have long enjoyed great scholarly interest, and the linguistic influence of French on English is being defined with increasing precision. Until now, however, there have been only brief stylistic considerations of the literary role played by French in eighteenth-century English prose literature. My thesis seeks to address that deficiency by investigating the literary usage and significance of French language in English literature. As the period is noted for the explosion of interest in language and its cultural ramifications; this study continuously considers the metonymical function of French usage as a signifier of broader social corollaries. This thesis attempts to forge a link between identifiable social attitudes and their incarnation in specific linguistic usage. I initially set out a context of opinion on French language and culture, and attitudes to borrowing and imitation, derived from journal, essay and treatise. Such a context demonstrates that France is unrivalled as the 'other' against which British identities were forged. Rates of lexical borrowing from French reached an historical low in the eighteenth century, and the proliferation of grammars and dictionaries bespoke a desire to define, limit, and control language. Yet the language of the developing novel, I argue, was inflected with French idiom, an idiom that offered a uniquely rich and potent strain of evocation and association. Writers of the novel, from Richardson and Smollett, to Brooke, and Burney, deploy French flexibly but with precision; each author exercises great control in borrowing idiom for purposes ranging from plot development and characterisation, to satire and pathos. My research explores those constructs, and because I found that the question of literary French usage is gendered, much of my thesis is structured along lines of gender. The letters of Lord Chesterfield, Samuel Johnson, and William Shenstone, Fanny Boscawen, Hannah More, and Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, form counterpoints to the novel, and establish areas both of commonality and divergence between French usage in the fictional and familiar prose of men and women. In its final chapter, this study turns explicitly to the wider social concerns underlying preceding discussions, viz. the significance of French usage to English manners and morals in the novels ranging from John Cleland's Fanny Hill to Charlotte Lennox's The Female Quixote. This thesis necessarily incorporates extensive but germane quotation, and embraces historical sociolinguistics, social history, stylistics, literary theory, and practical literary criticism. While this study cannot claim to be comprehensive, it seeks to open out a field of study hitherto neglected.
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Cox, Fiona Mairi. "Virgil's presence in twentieth century French literature." Thesis, University of Bristol, 1996. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.296691.
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Nixon, Andrea. "Mongolian musical terminology from the 13th to the 18th century." Thesis, University of Cambridge, 1988. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.315140.
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Bouagada, Habib. "Orientalism in translation: The one thousand and one nights in 18th century France and 19th century England." Thesis, University of Ottawa (Canada), 2005. http://hdl.handle.net/10393/26857.
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The objective of this study is to show how translation contributes to the "Orientalist" project and to the past and present knowledge of the Orient as it has been shaped by different disciplines such as anthropology, history and literature. In order to demonstrate this, I have decided to compare the Arabic text Alf Leyla wa Leyla (The One Thousand and One Nights) with the French translation by Antoine Galland (1704-1706) and the English translation by Sir Richard Burton (1885).
According to Edward Said, the Orientalist project or Orientalism is mainly a French and British cultural enterprise that has produced a wide-ranging wealth of knowledge about an Orient that has been represented as an undifferenciated entity with despotism, splendour, cruelty, or even sensuality being its main attributes.
I have chosen these translations because they come from places with a long Orientalist tradition. In 18th century France, the age of the Belles infideles, Galland is a man of the Enlightenment who appears to be a precursor of Orientalism as embodied in Montesquieu's Lettres persanes and Votaire's zadig. A century later, Burton's The Arabian Nights, backed by a deep knowledge of Islam, is published. Burton is an official in the service of the British Empire---an empire that takes pride in having the highest number of Muslim subjects.
The evolution of Alf Leyla wa Leyla and its translations is followed by an analysis of the shifts applied to the representations of Oriental elements found in it (social and religious practices). These shifts as well as the annotations that refer to Arabo-Islamic culture are related to Galland and Burton's intellectual development and to the socio-historical context of their respective translations.
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Fresco, Gabriella Petrone. "Shakespeare's reception in 18th century Italy : the case of Hamlet." Thesis, University of Warwick, 1991. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.357494.
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McRae, A. "The useful journey : Travellers through life in eighteenth-century French and English fiction." Thesis, University of Reading, 1986. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.373763.
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Margolin, Arianne. "Mouvement relatif et cosmologie dans l'écriture de la "science nouvelle", 1610-1759." Thesis, Aix-Marseille, 2018. http://www.theses.fr/2018AIXM0728.
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Ma thèse examine le rôle du mouvement relatif comme un dispositif littéraire dans les expériences de pensée cosmologiques envisionnées par les grands vulgarisateurs coperniciens de l'âge classique : Galilée, Kepler, Descartes, Cyrano de Bergerac, Voltaire et la marquise du Châtelet. La première moitié de la "révolution copernicienne" (1610-1759) témoigne non seulement la naissance de la lunette astronomique, mais surtout une réévaluation de la peinture cosmologique médiévale, selon laquelle l'univers (le Monde) comprenait trois domaines séparés : les cieux, l'enfer et la Terre, dont chacun possède son propre système de lois physiques. En 1610, Galilée et Kepler tournèrent leur télescope vers la Lune en remarquant que sa surface montagneuse et tachée ressemblait à "une autre Terre" et que ces deux corps tournaient l'un autour de l'autre, une affirmation implicite de la pluralité des mondes, une doctrine libertine interdite par l'Eglise ainsi que par le Synode luthérien. Mais en dépit du risque de l'excommunication et de la mort, Galilée et Kepler abordèrent les expériences de pensée illustrant le mouvement relatif dans le Dialogue sur les deux grands systèmes du Monde (1632) et le Songe (1634). Ces oeuvres inspirent également les grands vulgarisateurs de l'âge classique, notamment Descartes et Cyrano, et les hommes de lettres au laboratoire de Cirey durant la première moitié du siècle des Lumières, Voltaire et son amie, la marquise du Châtelet, qui reprennent leurs idées à la recherche de nouvelles expériences de penséeMy dissertation explores the role of relative motion as a literary device in thought experiments on cosmology imagined by the great Copernican popularizers Galileo, Kepler, Descartes, Cyrano de Bergerac, Voltaire, and Madame du Châtelet. The first half of the Copernican Revolution (1610-1759) not only involved the development of the telescope, but also a re-evaluation of the medieval cosmological picture, according to which the Universe (the World) was divided into three discrete realms: The heavens, hell, and the Earth, each having its own sets of physical characteristics. In 1610, Galileo and Kepler pointed their telescopes toward the Moon and remarked that its craterous and mountainous surface resembled ‘another Earth’ and observational evidence that demonstrated terrestrial motion on its axis and arouns the Sun, indirect affirmations of the plurality of worlds, a doctrine banned by both the Catholic Church and the Lutheran Synod. Yet despite the risk of excommunication and death, Galileo and Kepler introduced thought experiments illustrating relative motion in the Dialogue on the Two Chief World Systems (1632) and the Somnium (1634). These works inspired the two great 17th-century French popularizers and thought experimenters of science, Descartes and Cyrano, and the 18th-century laboratory of Cirey (Voltaire and Du Châtelet) to explore and refute their ideas by use of thought experiment
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Lees, James Christopher. "Clemens Wenzeslaus, German Catholicism, and the French Revolution, 1768-1792." Thesis, University of Cambridge, 2013. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.608113.
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Randall, Lesa Beth. "Representations of syphilis in sixteenth-century French literature." Diss., The University of Arizona, 1999. http://hdl.handle.net/10150/284029.
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Syphilis caused unprecedented terror as it rapidly spread through Western Europe at the onset of the sixteenth century. In France, a flourish of literary production specifically about syphilis provides an important record of various reactions to what constituted the first known experience of deadly disease, sexually transmitted. This dissertation examines three types of literary representations of syphilis in texts dating from 1500-1550, by authors as familiar as Rabelais and Jean LeMaire de Belges, in addition to many that remain anonymous. With a foundation of anthropological theories of sickness as danger and pollution, psychoanalytic theory is employed to elucidate the thought processes that led to the pervasive blaming and scapegoating of women, the most common social reaction to syphilis seen in this literature. Organization of texts on the same subject into separate units was achieved by considering the tone with which they deal with syphilis. Chapter One presents and analyses Le Triomphe de Treshaulte et Puissante Dame Verolle, the only known Renaissance compilation of texts about syphilis. Reliance on allegory and myth to explain the origins and causes of syphilis make this text a prime example of socially sanctioned literary reaction to the disease, clearly the most polite discourse found to date. Chapter Two examines the cornucopian representations of syphilis found in Rabelais. As a monk, physician and writer, Rabelais had a unique and varied perspective on the disease. His text imitates, reverses or mocks most common reactions to syphilis while advancing the important message of 'temperance in all things' that forms and informs his works. Twelve popular poems, mostly anonymous, are presented in Chapter Three. Analysis of vivid, realistic descriptions of loss associated with syphilis and a discourse of warning whose foundation rests on the denigration of women demonstrate that these texts were both cathartic and didactic. A compilation and translation of the works discussed in chapters one and three appear as special appendices, so that these cultural artifacts may be considered in future studies of social reaction to deadly, sexually transmitted disease in Renaissance France.
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Gilby, Emma. "Sublimity and selfhood in seventeenth-century French literature." Thesis, University of Cambridge, 2004. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.426498.
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Kim, Minchul. "Democracy and representation in the French Directory, 1795-1799." Thesis, University of St Andrews, 2018. http://hdl.handle.net/10023/15874.
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Democracy was no more than a marginal force during the eighteenth century, unanimously denounced as a chimerical form of government unfit for passionate human beings living in commercial societies. Placed in this context this thesis studies the concept of ‘representative democracy' during the French Revolution, particularly under the Directory (1795–1799). At the time the term was an oxymoron. It was a neologism strategically coined by the democrats at a time when ‘representative government' and ‘democracy' were understood to be diametrically opposed to each other. In this thesis the democrats' political thought is simultaneously placed in several contexts. One is the rapidly changing political, economic and international circumstances of the French First Republic at war. Another is the anxiety about democratic decline emanating from the long-established intellectual traditions that regarded the history of Greece and Rome as proof that democracy and popular government inevitably led to anarchy, despotism and military government. Due to this anxiety the ruling republicans' answer during the Directory to the predicament—how to avoid the return of the Terror, win the war, and stabilize the Republic without inviting military government—was crystalized in the notion of ‘representative government', which defined a modern republic based on a firm rejection of ‘democratic' politics. Condorcet is important at this juncture because he directly challenged the given notions of his own period (such as that democracy inevitably fosters military government). Building on this context of debate, the arguments for democracy put forth by Antonelle, Chaussard, Français de Nantes and others are analysed. These democrats devised plans to steer France and Europe to what they regarded as the correct way of genuinely ending the Revolution: the democratic republic. The findings of this thesis elucidate the elements of continuity and those of rupture between the Enlightenment and the French Revolution.
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Brovedan, Corinne. "Images of women in seventeenth-century French novels." Thesis, Queen Mary, University of London, 1995. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.283299.
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Hamilton, Juliet Elizabeth. "Representations of folly in late thirteenth century French literature." Thesis, Royal Holloway, University of London, 2000. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.323134.
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Kemp, Simon Robert. "Crime-fiction pastiche in late-twentieth-century French literature." Thesis, University of Cambridge, 2003. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.619787.
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Harris, Joseph. "Cross-dressing in seventeenth-century French literature and culture." Thesis, University of Cambridge, 2002. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.398507.
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LiBassi, Marguerite. "Specularity in Late Nineteenth-Century French Literature and Art." ScholarWorks@UNO, 2002. http://scholarworks.uno.edu/td/4.
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In the mid-to-late 1800s, French writers and artists resolved to shed their Romantic skins in favor of new self-conscious "husks"--to borrow Baudelaire's poetic term--that is to say: Naturalism, Realism, Impressionism and Symbolism. Some of the older reformers found themselves in an awkward, transitional stage contrary to the younger vanguardists who bore no allegiance to the past. The first group included Baudelaire, Flaubert, Courbet, Manet, Degas and Pissarro while the latter listed among its most successful members: Zola, Mallarmé, Huysmans, Morisot, Monet, Renoir and Cézanne. This thesis argues that specularity--a sort of mirror mimesis--was part of the fertile, artistic exchange between these representative writers and artists who shaped nineteenth century French literature and plastic arts during a period of turbulent social and political change. It is important not to conventionalize specular-mimesis into an automatic looking glass response between literature and art. Its primary function in this thesis is to single out, investigate and inter-relate literary and artistic chefs-d'oeuvre which, at times, bear remarkably similar hallmarks, for one reason or another. Given that cultivated conversation was highly esteemed by the Parisian bourgeoisie and held to be an elegant art form by salon and soirée intellectuals, four Dialogues constitute the internal structure of this paper. Each Dialogue is preceded by its own Cadre which serves to introduce and familiarize the reader, using a mise-en-scene framework, with background information that supports the discourse.
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Borilot, Vanessa. "Feminine strategies of resistance comparative study of two XIXth century French literary pieces and two XXth century French Caribbean writings /." Access to citation, abstract and download form provided by ProQuest Information and Learning Company; downloadable PDF file, 111 p, 2009. http://proquest.umi.com/pqdweb?did=1885467531&sid=2&Fmt=2&clientId=8331&RQT=309&VName=PQD.
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Souchier, Marine. "Le statut de grand dramaturge au XVIIe siècle : Corneille, Racine et Molière, figures vedettes d’une histoire littéraire en construction (1640-1729)." Thesis, Sorbonne université, 2018. http://www.theses.fr/2018SORUL121.
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Dès la fin du XVIIe siècle, Corneille, Racine et Molière se voient attribuer une supériorité indiscutable sur l’ensemble des autres dramaturges contemporains. Cette hiérarchie dont l’histoire littéraire actuelle a hérité continue à nous faire admettre comme une évidence la précellence accordée à ce trio de « classiques » et les études consacrées aux auteurs dits « mineurs » interrogent rarement le statut d’auteur « majeur ». Nous avons souhaité étudier le processus d’élaboration du statut de grand dramaturge. Cette thèse met ainsi en lumière les différents aspects et manifestations de cette construction, dont elle retrace les étapes du vivant des auteurs — des années 1640 à 1680 —, tout en identifiant les facteurs permettant de comprendre pourquoi ces trois dramaturges bénéficièrent d’un tel statut, au détriment de leurs confrères et concurrents. Ce travail observe ensuite l’immédiate postérité de nos auteurs — des années 1670 à 1720 —, afin de montrer comment la hiérarchisation et la classification à l’œuvre dans le double processus de majoration et de minoration desdramaturges posent les bases de l’histoire du théâtre français. Pour comprendre la constitution du panthéon des grands dramaturges, nous analysons les mécanismes d’écriture de l’histoire du théâtre dit « classique » et faisons émerger le processus de mythification qui préside à l’apparition de la « triade sacrée » Corneille- Racine-Molière. Nous expliquons alors comment l’histoire du théâtre français s’écrit à la gloire de ces auteurs, à partir et autour de leurs trois figures, classicisées et transformées en symboles du « siècle de Louis XIV »From the late 17th century, Corneille, Racine and Molière are given an undeniable superiority over all other contemporary playwrights. This hierarchy, from which current literary history has inherited, continues to make us consider the pre-eminence granted to this “classical” trio as obvious and the studies devoted to the so-called “minor” authors rarely question the “major” author status. Our goal has been to study the elaboration process of the great playwright status. Thus, this PhD thesis highlights the different aspects and manifestations of this construction, retracing its stages during the authors’ lifetime — from the 1640s to the 1680s — while identifiying the factors allowing to understand why these three playwrights were given such a status, at the detriment of their colleagues and competitors. Moreover, this work studies our authors’ immediate posterity — from the 1670s to the 1720s — in order to show how the hierarchy and classification at work in the “majoration” and “minoration” process lay the foundation of French theater history. To understand how the great playwrights’ pantheon was built, we analyze the writing mechanisms of “classical” theater history and bring out the process of mythification that leads to the birth of the “sacred triad” Corneille-Racine-Molière. We then explain how the French theater history is written in praise of these authors, from and around their three figures, classicized and converted into symbols of “the age of Louis XIV”
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Swank, Andrea H. "Virtually corporal : the polite articulation of the female body in the 18th century novel /." free to MU campus, to others for purchase, 1997. http://wwwlib.umi.com/cr/mo/fullcit?p9841339.
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Longust, Bridgett Renee 1964. "Reconstructing urban space: Twentieth-century women writers of French expression." Diss., The University of Arizona, 1996. http://hdl.handle.net/10150/282108.
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This dissertation examines the importance of urban space in the works of feminist writers from France, Quebec, the Maghreb and Francophone West Africa. Each author writes women as subjects of their own experience in the city, identifies the representations of power and gender in urban landscapes, restores a feminist voice to the polis and supports women's claim to enfranchisement in urban space. My analysis is based upon the fundamental premise that urban space reflects power dynamics and is, like gender, a social and political construction borne of a dominant patriarchal ideology. The urban type of the female flaneuse, or ambulant heroine, is prevalent in several of the texts. These are women whose personal trajectories through the metropolis serve as a common referant to define their identity. Exploitation, disciplinary surveillance and disillusion characterize (1) Claire Etcherelli's urban dystopia in Elise ou la vraie vie. (2) Annie Ernaux's observations of life in the periphery of Paris in the Journal du dehors are centered on the market economy of the city and women's status as commodity. The deviant behavior of (3) Andree Chedid's virtually homeless, elderly heroine in La cite fertile thinly veils a provocative inquiry into the notion of urban identity. (4) Christine de Pizan and the Quebecoise writer, (5) Nicole Brossard both employ the metaphor of construction--architectural and textual--and share utopian visions of women's writing as the site for feminist praxis and cultural transformation. (6) Nina Bouraoui's cloistered Algerian heroine in La Voyeuse interdite and the women in (7) Assia Djebar's novels dare to defy and transgress the boundaries which exclude women from the urban realm in the Maghreb. (8) Calixthe Beyala's novels depict young African women struggling with issues of identity and survival in metropolises dominated by a repressive, patriarchal mentality. Throughout the texts, the city appears in multiple guises: as a text, a body, a marketplace, and a prison. For these authors, writing on the city constitutes a feminist act asserting women's right to claim a voice in that space. These works situate the city as a locus of cultural and political critique, whose spatial configurations reflect the social constructions of gender.
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Downing, Lisa Michelle. "Desire and immobility : situating necrophilia in nineteenth-century French literature." Thesis, University of Oxford, 1999. http://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:ccbb5b9e-58da-4d36-901b-bd71112f3c05.
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Hübner, Regina Beate. "State medicine and the state of medicine in Tokugawa, Japan : Kōkei saikyūhō (1791), an emergency handbook initiated by the Bakufu." Thesis, University of Cambridge, 2015. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.708725.
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Leavens, Janet Kristen. "Figures of sympathy in eighteenth-century Opéra comique." Diss., University of Iowa, 2010. https://ir.uiowa.edu/etd/844.
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Eighteenth-century opéras comiques often turn around moments of sympathy--moral and affective bonds through which the Enlightenment imagined a natural basis for the social order as well as the pleasures and transformative potential of art. Through musico-literary analysis informed by models of moral and aesthetic relationality that I derive from Dubos, Marivaux, Rousseau and Diderot, I argue that opéras comiques written and performed between 1835and the Revolution feature three distinct forms of sympathy: 1) a worldly-sensuous sympathy most typically found in the common subgenre of the sentimental pastorale and characterized by a happy blending of moral and sensual connections; 2) an amorous intersubjectivity found occasionally in sentimental comedies and characterized by a sometimes empowering, sometimes trying encounter with an other experienced as a site of subjective freedom; and finally 3) a sacrificial sympathy found most frequently in Michel-Jean Sedaine's sometimes pointedly anti-worldly, morally sober lyric dramas and characterized by an obstacle-triggered leap into an identificatory, affective imagination.
Although there is much that distinguishes these forms of sympathy, they are all shaped by eighteenth-century empiricist assumptions as to the existence of a basic relationality between the self and his or her social environment and thus resist a standard critical model that sees such emotional ties as merely the effect of some more fundamental separation between self and other.
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Bird, Stephen. "The politicization of Voltaire's legacy in nineteenth-century France." Thesis, Royal Holloway, University of London, 1997. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.265855.
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Martin, Julia School of English UNSW. "Self and subject in eighteenth century diaries." Awarded by:University of New South Wales. School of English, 2002. http://handle.unsw.edu.au/1959.4/18787.
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This thesis investigates new ways of reading eighteenth century British diaries and argues that these narratives do not necessarily rely upon the idea of the self as a single, unitary source of meaning. This contradicts what has traditionally been viewed as the very essence of autobiography (Gusdorf, 1954; Olney, 1980, 1988). Close readings of the diaries of John Wesley, Mrs Housman, James Boswell and Hannah Ball (all written between 1720 and 1795) show that they construct 'generalised', rather than 'unique' subjects of narrative. The self is seen to be an amalgam of common characteristic more than being a core of psychological impulses. In order to understand the 'generalised' rather than 'unique' subject found in these diaries, this thesis surveys and uses reading strategies informed by theories that can accommodate fragmented narrative forms like diaries. It also investigates the religious and philosophical underpinnings of eighteenth century autobiographical narratives to determine how the self, and consciousness, were popularly perceived in the period known as the Enlightenment (c. 1690-1810). As they are often marked by missing pages, deletions and heavy editing, careful strategies are required in order to 'read with' eighteenth century diary narratives (Sandoval, 1981; Huff, 2000; Raoul, 2001). This practice invites an engagement with philosophical debates about 'self'-the living human being who writes the diary, and the 'subject'-the 'I' produced by narrative. The thesis argues that more than any other type of written narrative, diaries demand an acknowledgement that the subject of narrative does refer to a self that lives in day-to-day relations. Not to acknowledge this is to 'write off experience altogether' (Probyn,1991:111) and exclude the political dimensions of autobiography from the analysis. The thesis concludes that by seeking to answer the questions of 'What am I?' and 'What are we?' rather than the Romantic or psychological question of 'Who am I?', eighteenth century diary narratives create complex relationships between time, subjective and narrative that transcend most theorisations of autobiography to date. This presents an exciting direction forward for a field of scholarship that has been overly concerned with defining its limitations.
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Vendrix, Philippe Pierre 1964. "Quelques aspects de l'historiographie musicale en France a l'epoque baroque (French text)." Thesis, The University of Arizona, 1988. http://hdl.handle.net/10150/276706.
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L'historiographie musicale trouve dans la France de l'epoque baroque un champ ideal de developpement. Ce phenomene est lie a la conjonction de differents facteurs: le modele fourni par l'histoire generale, l'heritage humaniste, les mouvements polemiques, les tentatives de refonte de l'histoire de l'Eglise. Les musicographes, de Salomon de Caus (1615) a Jacques Bonnet-Bourdelot (1715), etablissent les fondements d'une critique historique et l'appliquent dans des ouvrages qui annoncent l'expansion de la musicologie a l'age des Lumieres.
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Weitmann, Susan. "Tenebrous femme fatale : the making of the métisse in nineteenth-century metropolitan French literature." Thesis, University of Edinburgh, 2007. http://hdl.handle.net/1842/2147.
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This thesis examines representations of the ‘métisse’ in nineteenth-century metropolitan French literature to determine the figure’s function and significance in the texts that display her and the larger society that imagines her. By ‘métisse’, I refer specifically to a woman of ‘black’ and ‘white’ ‘racial’ mixture whose identity, in the context of the texts that figure her, both legitimates and deconstructs distinct and discrete ‘racial’ identity. As such, she is a useful figure through which to investigate and unpack conceptions of ‘race’. I will suggest that her innate performative ability – a product of her deceptively white exterior – demonstrates the discursive nature of identity that can be seen as constructed and parodied rather than as a simple ontological category. I use the term ‘tenebrous’ to describe the ‘métisse’ because it conjoins the two constitutive aspects of her signification – her ambiguity and her colour. Her fundamentally ambiguous identity is crucial to her figuration as an erotic and dangerous femme fatale. Unknowable and protean, she attracts and simultaneously disconcerts or terrifies her prey. Concurrently, the term ‘tenebrous’ highlights the explicit colouring of her body by all of the authors who imagine her so as to mark her as identifiably different, and to explain her essential bestial, primitive, and dangerous sexuality. This thesis locates the ‘métisse’ at the crossroads of discourses of race, class, gender, and sexuality. In an era when fears of personal and social degeneracy and decline were capturing the collective imagination, the ‘métisse’, as a figure of frightening alterity and deceptive similitude, embodies deviancy. Primarily portrayed as a natural courtesan due to her essential yet hidden ‘black’ blood, the ‘métisse’ attracts ‘white’ men with her seductive body, but her malign sexuality corrupts, dilutes, or kills them. Associated with the working-class, the prostitute, the criminal, and the savage, the ‘métisse’ fits into a larger discourse that seeks to postulate the normative identity of ‘white’, bourgeois masculinity. Her ability to dilute the ‘purity’ of her ‘white’ male victim articulates a general contemporary fear of pathological sexuality and, through it, invisible degeneration. Using the comparative framework of ‘case studies’, I will examine Eugène Sue’s Les Mystères de Paris, Émile Zola’s Thérèse Raquin, Arthur Gobineau’s Essai sur l’inégalité des races humaines, Pierre Loti’s Le Roman d’un spahi, a selection of poems from Charles Baudelaire’s Les Fleurs du Mal, as well as the critical and biographical studies centring around the figure of Jeanne Duval, Baudelaire’s long-time and muchmaligned ‘métisse’ partner. The wide variety of texts and the diverse list of authors will demonstrate the surprising currency of this literary figure in the collective imagination of nineteenth-century metropolitan France, as well as twentieth-century literary criticism. By focussing upon well-known and significant French authors, I will reexamine the cultural heritage to which these writers contributed with specific attention to the investigation of cultural assumptions, desires, and fears pivoting around the theme of mixed-race.
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Baldridge, Kalyn Rochelle. "L'auguste Autrichienne| Representations of Marieantoinette in 19th Century French Literature and History." Thesis, University of Missouri - Columbia, 2017. http://pqdtopen.proquest.com/#viewpdf?dispub=10629008.
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Maria Antonia Josepha Joanna, or as she is most well-known, Marie-Antoinette (1755-1793) spent her entire life under the watchful eye of many. Fashioned from birth as an Austrian aristocrat, she was transported to France at age fourteen to meet and marry the future king of France. From the onset of her arrival, French writers made attempts to capture what they observed. However, personal bias, political leanings, and accepted rumor led them to do more than record what they saw. Rather than simply narrate a scene, these early witnesses of Marie-Antoinette became the interpreters of her thoughts, motives and feelings. As these interpretations grew, they became widely accepted as truth and eventually became the agents leading to Marie-Antoinette’s demise, as previous biographers and historians of Marie-Antoinette have amply discussed.
In this dissertation I suggest going beyond an analysis of the literature that led to Marie-Antoinette’s death, and examining the numerous times that Marie-Antoinette’s story was reinterpreted during the century after her death. I will examine nineteenth-century texts from several different authors and genres, including: the historical biographies of Christophe de Montjoye, Lafont d’Aussonne, Alcide de Beauchesne, Edmond and Jules Goncourt, and Horace de Viel-Castel; the eye-witness testimonies of Jean-Baptist Cléry, Henriette Campan, and Rosalie Lamorlière; the historical fiction of Elisabeth Guénard Brossin de Méré and Alexandre Dumas; and finally the archival compilations of Emile Campardon and Gaston Lenotre. I will examine each author’s choice of genre, as well as how contemporary trends in literature, historical studies and even politics influenced their interpretation of Marie-Antoinette.
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Toscano, Angela Rose. "Resemblances: on the re-use of romance in three 18th-century novels." Diss., University of Iowa, 2018. https://ir.uiowa.edu/etd/6512.
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This study examines three 18th-century novels and their connection to the romances of the 17th century, the middle ages, as well as the Greek romances that flourished during the Roman Empire. I argue that the novel and the romance differ, not because the novel possesses some intrinsic formal, structural, or thematic essence wholly and disjunctively different from the romance, but rather because the two forms have been arbitrarily differentiated over a long contentious history for ideological and not categorical reasons. Thus, I define the novel not as a form or a genre, but as a mode and medium—a way and means of expressing story rather than as a structural, shaping category of story. Romance, on the other hand, is a type of story particularly interested in how to deal with difference. It asks: How do I deal with difference without annihilating or exiling it or myself in the process? When the romance gets subsumed into the novel as the dominant mode of prose fiction, it re-inscribes this ethical aspect of the romance’s structure through the use of resembling conventions and tropes.
In analyzing how resemblances are treated in three 18th-century novels—Charlotte Lennox’s The Female Quixote, Sophia Lee’s The Recess, and Eliza Haywood’s Love in Excess—my dissertation focuses on the novel’s re-use of the romance to explore anxieties about difference and sameness, about moral issues related to personhood, and about the tension between the individual and the collective. These texts ask: How do we cope with and incorporate the difference of the other when privilege in rank and perception is assumed by the subjective self? This question informs familiar and social relations of all kinds. It illuminates the 18th century’s scientific assumption that reality can be dissected via objective observation. It influences views of aesthetics, of gender and sexual politics, of creativity and the conflation of originality with novelty and of repetition with derivativeness.
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Harper, April. "Images of adultery in twelfth and thirteenth-century Old French literature." Thesis, University of St Andrews, 2003. http://hdl.handle.net/10023/14654.
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This thesis examines literary images of masculinity and femininity, their function and depiction in marriage roles and homo-social relationships in the context of crisis: wifely adultery. The study is heavily reliant upon vernacular texts, especially Old French works from the twelfth and thirteenth century including works from the genres of romance, lais, fables, and fabliaux. Latin works including historia and prescriptive texts such as customaries, penitentials, etiquette texts and medical and canon law treatises are also used to contextualise themes in the Old French literature. The introduction summarises modern literary and historical criticism concerning sexuality in the Middle Ages. It then discusses the influences of the Church, philosophy, medicine, natural theory and society on medieval definitions of sexuality to contextualise the literature which is focal to this thesis. The following four chapters each consider a single character in the adulterous affair: the adulteress, the husband, the lover and the accuser. The literary images of each character are analysed in detail revealing the diversity of depictions between and also within genres. This enables the identification of medieval sexual constructs, challenging some previous critiques of representations of sexuality in the Middle Ages. The final chapter explores the language by which the sexual act is presented. Furthermore, it shows how language is used and occasionally abused in committing, prosecuting and evading punishment for adultery and how it can be wielded as a weapon of women. Through the focus of a body of literature rich in depictions of sexuality, this thesis questions the misogynist overtones often attributed to medieval literature. The diversity of images shows that the literature illustrates a wide range of opinions and ideas reflective of the complexity of sexuality in medieval society.
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Carroll, Elizabeth Anne. "Automata, artificial bodies, and reproductive futurisms in nineteenth-century French literature." Diss., University of Iowa, 2015. https://ir.uiowa.edu/etd/1956.
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This dissertation is an analysis of the role of the automaton in late-nineteenth century French novels by Émile Zola, Jules Verne, Villiers de l’Isle-Adam, and Rachilde. Designed to resemble naturally produced people and animals, these living machines were animated by steam or electricity and used to explore the changing relationships between humans, animals, and machines.
My analysis focuses on a specific type of automaton, the bachelor machine—feminized and sexualized machines that often resemble women and replace them in romantic and sexual relationships. My research is informed by the nineteenth century clinical approach to medicine that assumed that the body, particularly the female body, was a penetrable space to be dissected and diagnosed. By focusing on female sexuality and reproduction, women in the nineteenth century were considered biological machines, valued only for their reproductive capabilities. Under the male scientific gaze, the hysterical female body was a site of diseased sexuality that was replaced by bachelor machines and other mechanized women. I label these fictional bachelor machines “reproductive futurisms” and consider their role in evolutionary debates which increasingly link anthrogenesis and technogenesis.
The female automata presented in these novels are examples of a new type of representational text in which artificial femininity is a hybrid of technical mastery and artistry. Female automata are fabricated using technologies of re-production including: sculpture, wax casts, photography, the hologram, the phonograph, and early films. These technologies of re-production change the ways in which the human body and voice are captured and reproduced. Furthermore, many of these technologies of re-production mimic dissection techniques and result in the fragmentation of the female form. This study makes a contribution to the fields of nineteenth century French studies and gender and sexuality studies.
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Grist, Elizabeth Rosalind. "The salon and the stage : women and theatre in seventeenth-century France." Thesis, Queen Mary, University of London, 2001. http://qmro.qmul.ac.uk/xmlui/handle/123456789/1464.
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This thesis is a study of the links between female emancipation and the theatre in seventeenth century France. Since both were considered problematical by some religious moralists, the discussion is situated in the context of religious criticism. The approach is broadly chronological and focuses in particular on the work of women playwrights. The religious background is summarized in the Introduction. Part One surveys the cultural climate, discussing links between salon society and the theatre including women's involvement as patrons; their presence in the auditorium and on stage; and the concept of 'bienséance', examined here in the context of the 'querelle du Cid'. Part Two considers the function of the stage as a place where women could literally try out different roles. It examines ways in which women were portrayed in a selection of plays from the 1630s to the 1670s (including works by Mairet, Rotrou, Corneille and Molière), discussing the images of 'la femme forte' and 'la precieuse', and the contribution made by playwrights to the contemporary debate on female emancipation. Part Three is devoted to the work of six women playwrights who had their work published or performed in France between 1650 and 1691 (Madame de Saint-Balmon, Marthe Cosnard, Françoise Pascal, Marie-Catherine Desjardins, Madame Deshoulieres and Catherine Bernard) and one whose only play was performed in England (Anne de La Roche-Guilhen). The discussion focuses not only on the plays themselves and their inspiration, but on what is known of each author's background and literary career, her contacts in literary society and the reception of her work. The involvement of women in the theatre proved of mutual benefit, contributing to its popularity and providing opportunities for their greater freedom and intellectual development.
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Wardle, Nancy E. "Representations of African identity in nineteenth and twentieth century Francophone literature." Columbus, Ohio : Ohio State University, 2007. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc%5Fnum=osu1180554301.
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Ruck, Elaine Heather. "An index of themes and motifs in twelfth century French Arthurian poetry." Thesis, University of Reading, 1989. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.328882.
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Rose, Kathryn Germaine. "Digesting Modernism: Representations of Food and Incorporation in Nineteenth and Twentieth-Century French Fiction." Thesis, Harvard University, 2013. http://dissertations.umi.com/gsas.harvard:11175.
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This dissertation examines the link between food and writing about food in French modernist texts in nineteenth and twentieth-century French novels, tracing the central role of food in realist fiction as an encoder of bourgeois discourse to its persisting, yet altered, role in modernist texts. While the propagation of gastronomy and culinary discourse through realist texts presupposes and relies on the seamless conversion of diners into readers and the meal into text, this dissertation has at its root the exploration of the narrative potential inherent in the creation of space in conspicuous "second-order" consumption, leaving the diner and the reader, and the meal and the text, side-by-side, in play. I reflect on how the deliberate alignment and co-staging of the meal and the word (or the diner and the reader), rather than their conflation and collapse, throws into relief not only the act of incorporating the meal, but also the extradiegetic moment of incorporating the text, or a (self-)consciousness of the meal as text. I explore how this shift in the staging of food and eating is not only a hallmark of the play that characterizes modernist novels, which inscribe self-conscious moments of their own creation and consumption within the narrative itself, but also a key element in understanding the shifts from realism to modernism, as the meal remains central to both while at the same time crystallizing key differences in how narratives are crafted in each.Romance Languages and Literatures
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McCluskey, Phil. "French military occupations of Lorraine and Savoie, 1670-1714." Thesis, St Andrews, 2009. http://hdl.handle.net/10023/712.
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