French and Francophone Literature Commons^™

A Comparative Critique Of Masculine Domination In Madame Bovary (1856) And Gemma Bovery (1999), Aqeela Hamarthya Czecheska Humayra, Diah Kartini Lasman

International Review of Humanities Studies

This study examines how social construction influences the representation of female autonomy through the transition of medium and temporal context. Its primary focus is to compare the mechanisms of masculine domination in Gustave Flaubert’s classic novel Madame Bovary (1856) with Posy Simmonds’ graphic novel adaptation Gemma Bovery (1999). Utilizing Hutcheon’s adaptation theory (2013) and de Beauvoir’s existential feminism (1949), complemented by Freytag’s dramatic structure analysis (1900) as the main framework, this research proceeds from the premise that the transposition from text to visual medium has significant implications for changes in narrative strategies and plot. This study highlights the differing manifestations …

The Desire Of Strict Souls: The Poetry, Criticism, And Letters Of Paul Valéry And Wallace Stevens, Michael Healy

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation compares the poetic, critical, and epistolary oeuvres of Paul Valéry and Wallace Stevens and the influence of the former on the latter. Valéry famously advocated for the pursuit of “poésie pure” (“pure poetry”) and influenced Stevens especially in this way, though both of them concluded it was not achievable. I establish an approximation of a critical framework based on the work of the following critics and scholars: Wendy Lesser, Wendy Steiner, Anthony Cuda, Michael Clune, Paul Bové, and Liesl Olson. Harold Bloom’s passionate advocacy and deep, sustained engagement with Stevens and his work strongly influenced my choice to …

Trouble In Paradise: Paul And Virginia‘S Snapshot Of Limited Enlightenment Progressivism, Henna Neilson

CAFE Symposium 2026

This project analyzes the 1788 children's story "Paul and Virginia" by Jacques-Henri Bernardin de Saint-Pierre. Written in the pastoral literary genre, it tells the star-crossed love story of Paul and Virginia, childhood friends who live on the French colony Île-de-France (present-day Mauritius). The work exemplifies many highlights of the Enlightenment progressivism, socializing its young readers to criticize the oppressive class systems in Europe. However, the work is limited by the physiocratic view of slavery, which maintained that the slave trade was justified if the enslaved humans were treated "humanely". As a result, Paul and Virginia's slavery plot line includes problematic …

Interspecies Responsivity In Early Modern Drama And Animal Performances, Taylor C. Culbert

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation proposes an expansive, interspecies definition of performance that uses behavior rather than cognition as the decisive feature and illustrates how such a definition can reshape our approach to theatre and performance history. Using the concept of responsivity, which refers to the embodied and affective ways that humans and non-human animals acknowledge and react to one another, I trace human–animal interactions across a variety of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century performance genres, from the aristocratic stag hunt and entertainments involving trained animals to the plays of Molière and Shakespeare. Drawing on my experience training animals, I offer a new perspective on …

Introduction To The Special Issue On "J.R.R. Tolkien And Medieval Poets", Jane Beal Phd

Journal of Tolkien Research

This is an “Introduction” by Dr. Jane Beal to the Special Issue of the Journal of Tolkien Research on the theme of “J.R.R. Tolkien and Medieval Poets” in honor of Richard C. West.

It begins with an overview of previous scholarly work on the intersections of medieval poetry with Tolkien’s literary corpus. It explains the process of creating this special issue, which is a festschrift in West’s honor, and it gives an overview of the contents of each of the seven academic articles included in it by contributors Dr. Anna Smol, Dr. Christopher Vaccaro, Dr. Kristine Larsen, Dr. Deidre Dawson, …

When Critics Are Artists: Ekphrasis In Erotic Art Criticism, Joanna A. Ligon

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In “Against Interpretation,” Susan Sontag argues for an erotics of art in art criticism in place of hermeneutics. In this thesis, I examine erotics of art, a focus on form and experiencing art instead of exclusively on content, in practice. Drawing on other essays by Sontag, specifically the essay “Godard” in comparison with the filmmaker Jean-Luc Godard’s own filmic criticism in Breathless, criticism according to an erotics of art becomes a new artwork itself. Subsequently, I present a definition of erotic through Anne Carson and Roland Barthes and juxtapose the term with Hans-Georg Gadamer’s hermeneutics. The comparison ultimately undoes …

Marvelous Ordinariness: Re-Engaging With Realism’S Social Function, Miranda Ochoa Natera

Comparative Literature M.A. Essays

Against Romanticism, European literary realism of the 19th century aimed to provide an objective representation of reality through mimesis that could capture the truth in an objective way. Yet, its positivist approach severely narrowed down the complexity of truth, reality, and the mundane by wrongfully drawing the universal from the particular. A new way of engaging with realist literature from any time period, called Marvelous Ordinariness, rearranges this triad in ways that expand our understanding of our own and other realities portrayed. Using Alejo Carpentier’s description of “lo real maravilloso,” Marvelous Ordinariness unfolds in three layers that resemble Carl Jung’s …

Death, Dreaming, And Diaspora: Achieving Orientation Through Afro-Spirituality, Liz Johnston, Jaime Elizabeth Johnston

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Enslavement, colonization, and the systems that uphold racial injustice were and still are a series of new, unfathomable, and challenging experiences that prompt individuals within the diaspora to seek orientation. How does a human cope with centuries of attempts at the systematic destruction of their humanity, culture, and identity? How can they reclaim that identity, especially when so much of it seems lost? I address these questions by utilizing texts from the expansive body of work regarding ethnographic-historical-religious studies on Afro-spiritual practices to better analyze instances in literature in the ongoing practice of diasporic orientation. In this project, I argue …

Doctors And Saints: Preparing Albert Camus’S The Plague To Address The Dangers Of Christian Nationalism, Christopher J. Williams

Theses and Dissertations

My project is focused on identifying and responding to Christian nationalism in United States politics by utilizing Albert Camus’s novel The Plague. The Plague found heightened popularity during the COVID-19 pandemic and its lasting legacy points to what should be long-term prominence in the public eye. With its popularity and anti-fascist content, The Plague is an appropriate text to utilize for addressing America’s Christian nationalism. My paper functions with a foundation on the work of Kenneth Burke, particularly his focus on literature’s utility as equipment for living.

I use my project to suggest that The Plague is not in an …

Marriage Stories: Legal Reform And The Novel In France And Britain, 1780–1860, Tatiana Nunez-Bright

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

“Marriage Stories” analyzes connections between novelistic form, marriage law reform, and portrayals of virtue in texts by, among others, Stéphanie de Genlis, Mary Wollstonecraft, Sophie Cottin, Claire de Duras, Jane Austen, Honoré de Balzac, Sophie Doin, George Sand, Anne Brontë, and Gustave Flaubert. I argue that the novel was less concerned with abolishing or even critiquing marriage than it was with delineating “good” from “bad” unions, which in turn reflects contemporary discussions about marriage’s role in response to burgeoning social movements. My first chapter considers the epistolary novel in relation to the idea of spouses existing as “one body” culturally …

The Revolting Monster - A Consideration Of Existentialist Themes In Mary Shelley's Frankenstein Through A Comparison To Albert Camus' The Stranger, Felipe Rodriguez Ii

Theses and Dissertations

This Master’s thesis is concerned with analyzing key themes and ideas in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein through an existentialist lens which is made possible through a comparison to themes and ideas in Albert Camus’ The Stranger. I aim to make a contribution to my field by fulfilling a comparison that has long been made since the late 1960s when conversations about British Romanticism and Existentialism were still common. The purpose of my first chapter is to elucidate a new argument about the relationship between these two novels. There is a discernable element of Camusian Revolt exhibited by the Creature in …

Evaluating The Efficacy Of The Christian Reformational Transcendental Model Of Art Criticism As A Literary Theory Through Albert Camus’S The Stranger, Elizabeth Miller

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The subfield of art criticism and theory within Christian reformational philosophy, a descendent of the neo-Calvinist theology developed through the work of Dutch Reformer Abraham Kuyper and others, is becoming increasingly diverse. Recently, scholars such as Leland Ryken, Glenda Faye Mathes, and Philip Graham Ryken have built upon twentieth-century theologian Francis Schaeffer’s worldview approach by popularizing a transcendental model of art criticism, an approach that applies the transcendentals of truth, goodness, and beauty to works of art. However, the transcendentals, while widely discussed in the fields of philosophy, theology, and, to a lesser extent, art theory, have not been explicitly …

True Love Waits: A Barthesian Reading Of Desire And Delay In Flaubert And James, Yasmin Patel

Scripps Senior Theses

This thesis explores the theme of amorous waiting in the literature of Gustave Flaubert and Henry James. Roland Barthes' definition of waiting, as articulated in A Lover's Discourse, is used as a tool to examine the waiting conditions of characters in Madame Bovary, The Beast in the Jungle, and The Ambassadors. By using the Barthesian framework, this thesis identifies and analyzes different forms of gender-based waiting and their distinctive consequences. However, it also notes that the primary texts further complicate the relationship between romantic waiting, gender, and autonomy. Ultimately, this analysis shows us that amorous waiting goes beyond a simple …

Snapshots Of A Fictional Past: Photographic Nostalgia In The Early 20th Century Art Novel., Harry A. Jones Iv

Theses and Dissertations

In this dissertation I argue that the proliferation of a mass codependent relationship with nostalgia in the twentieth century shares a parallel history with the widespread adoption of the reproducible image being used by collective audiences as a supplement for natural memory, or what Proust names “voluntary memory.” This conflict between nostalgia-hungry consumers and artists inspired groups such as Alfred Stieglitz’s Photo-Secessionists and artistically minded authors like Henry James, who employed increasingly complex photographic and literary practices to resist the images’ tendency to debase the aesthetic quality of their own work. Authors such as Marcel Proust and William Faulkner used …

Gambling: The Dialogue Of Excess In Lanval And The Franklin’S Tale, Fanrui Shao

Comparative Literature M.A. Essays

Marie de France’s Lanval and Chaucer’s The Franklin’s Tale are two medieval stories based on the Breton form of poetry called the lai. Both texts focus on rash actions, in particular thoughtless utterance, committed by virtuous foreigners, and the consequences that ensue. On the surface, the outsiders suffer xenophobia and the disfavor of the local patriarchy. But their true problem is the “excess” that they carry with them. Communities censor the circulation of this excess, i.e., all people, objects and relationships that either come from outside or deviate from local norms. Reading excess in these tales through the lens …

Women’S Acts Of Childbirth And Conquest In English Historical Writing, Emma O. Bérat

Medieval Feminist Forum: A Journal of Gender and Sexuality

This essay explores how female characters in historical literature written in high to late medieval England shape land claims, political history, and genealogy through their acts of childbirth. Recent scholarship has shown how medieval writers frequently imagined virginal female bodies – religious and secular – in relation to land claim, but less work exists on how they also used the non-virginal bodies of mothers and vivid descriptions of childbirth to assert rights to land and lineage. This essay examines three birth stories associated with conquest or claims to contested lands from Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Historia Regum Britanniae, William of …

Translatio Materiae: Spenser, The Humanists, And A Poetics Of Matter, Victoria Florio Pipas

Dartmouth College Master’s Theses

In this paper, I propose that sixteenth-century humanist descriptions of Rome’s decay, together with paradigms of translatio imperii and studii, shaped Edmund Spenser’s poetic conceptualization of matter. I identify a new translatio in Spenser’s corpus, translatio materiae—matter’s movement or change—born from Spenser’s contact with Joachim du Bellay’s sonnet sequence, Les Antiquitez de Rome (1553). Translatio materiae runs through Spenser’s corpus as depicted matter’s resurrection from states of decay into material afterlives as narrative object or poetic device. Where early humanists, with recourse to the division between earthly mutability and heavenly permanence, lament Rome, Spenser favors matter’s potential for …

Setting The Stage: The Phantom Of The Opera And Gothic Space, Zitaanne Reno

Honors Program: Senior Projects (Public)

First published from 1909 to 1910, Gaston Leroux’s The Phantom of the Opera tells the story of Erik, the titular deformed composer, and his dark love for a beautiful soprano. Similar to Victor Hugo’s The Hunchback of Notre Dame, another French story involving a deformed man in love with a beautiful woman, the setting is a crucial aspect of the novel. Examining the Palais Garnier, a labyrinthine building composed of staircases, passageways, trapdoors, and a subterranean lake, in conjunction with Notre Dame, a cathedral utilizing traditionally gothic architecture, reveals how the opera house functions as a gothic space. Rather …

The Provocative Strangeness Of Camus's L'Etranger And Coetzee's Disgrace, Phyllis E. Vanslyck

Publications and Research

Albert Camus’s L’Etranger (1942) and J. M. Coetzee’s Disgrace (1999), are two of the most controversial novels of the twentieth century. Their contested and exhaustive critical reception suggests that readers continue to be hailed by these texts in complex ethical ways. In each text, a white male protagonist engages in a violent encounter with an individual identified as Other. If they initially arouse discomfort by appearing to divest others of their alterity, these characters ultimately recognize and preserve that otherness, inviting readers to consider the requirement that we privilege others over ourselves in order to become subjects.

Honoré De Balzac’S Portrayal Of The Feminine Condition In The Wild Ass’S Skin, Père Goriot, And The Lily Of The Valley, Brooke V. Musmeci

Honors Theses

In 19th century France, women appeared to be second class citizens. They were often limited in their abilities to have independence and secure their own wealth. This perception of women perhaps justifies why, as Honoré de Balzac’s novels illustrated the realities of French society, he attempted to characterize women’s struggles to obtain control and power in their lives. In his novels The Wild Ass’s Skin (1831), The Lily of the Valley (1835), and Le Père Goriot (1835), Balzac sought to prove how women could improve their lot.

Firstly, in studying how women had been relegated to second-class citizens under their …

The Scientific Romances Of Jules Verne And H.G. Wells: Imperialism Disguised As Progress In The Early Days Of Science Fiction, Timothy Ferris

Theses and Dissertations

Frequently in their respective oeuvres, Verne and Wells write in a rhetoric of conquest that almost always translates to discovering a more efficient means of taming wild, non-European environments. These goals extend not only to the lands that their protagonists explore, but also to human beings and other life that may populate them. Indeed, the underlying focus—the one that is masked behind the thrill and adventure of both Wells and Verne—is none other than the march of progress as understood by middle-class Europeans in the latter half of the nineteenth century. Progress can produce positivistic optimism, and it can also …

"If They Don't Tell You, The Hair Will": Hair Narrative In Contemporary Women's Writing, Darina Pugacheva

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

The history of colonial and racial oppression made hair stories and testimonials fundamental to understanding hair as a unifying element particular for women of African descent in the post-slavery era. Seen as such, their hair narrations provide the first-person perspective of their life experiences while at the same time inviting a critical investigation of colonial and racial oppression. Contemporary women writers develop these types of narrations into a special language of hair that helps them tell a story that is not apparent or straightforward. This literary device that uses hair to uncover deeper social and political issues is bound up …

Looking At Shadows: Four French Texts In English Translation, Kalena M. Hermes

World Languages and Cultures

This project present four French texts in English translation that share the theme of loss. This theme is perhaps one of the most poignant and relevant; loss is an experience that every human will encounter, and as people we continue across time to grapple with what it means for us and how to deal with it. These four texts will bring the perspectives of four authors to light in English. When we study how other countries and cultures deal with common human issues, we are able to gain new views on these issues. This project will make these texts accessible …

The Child Ethnographer In The Field: Examples From English, Spanish, And French Caribbean Literature, Emily Ann O'Dell

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

In this dissertation I consider the child to be an ethnographer in works of fiction and autofiction from the Caribbean islands. Through their liminality as culturally and developmentally betwixt or between, their cultural malleability, their linguistic fluidity, and their curiosity, the child becomes a "native" ethnographer who is capable of translating the culture (both linguistically and culturally) for the reader in order to establish understandings of Caribbean cultures. This is accomplished through the creation of hybridized or creolized texts that have many of the same characteristics as postmodern ethnographies.

In the English Caribbean Xuela provides an ethnographic perspective of Dominican …

Review Of The Labour Of Literature In Britain And France, 1830-1910, Eds. Marcus Waithe And Claire White, Palgrave, 2018, Sue Norton

Books/Book Chapters

Book Review of The Labor of Literature in Britain and France: 1830-1910, eds. Marcus Waithe and Claire White, Palgrave, 2018

Understanding Proust, Rio Turnbull

Modernist Short Story Project

French author Marcel Proust was at the forefront of exploring the literary device “stream of consciousness” as its usage began to rise in the early 1900s. He seemed particularly interested in using “stream of consciousness” to delve into memory. What may be the most articulate statement of Proust about his philosophy of memory, according to O’Brien, is as follows: “Yes, if memory, thanks to oblivion, could not contract any link, throw any chain between it and the present minute, if it stayed in its place, on its date, if it kept its distance, its isolation in the hollow of a …

Amédée Pichot And Walter Scott’S Parrot: A Fabulous Tale Of Parroting And Pirating, Céline Sabiron

Studies in Scottish Literature

Describes the background and origin of Le perroquet de Walter Scott (Paris, 1834), by the French writer and translator Amédée Pichot, who had visited Scott (and Scott's home at Abbotsford) in 1822, discussing the complex interrelationship in Pichot's work between parody, translation, and piracy, and also considering more briefly Pichot's work as anticipating the better-known parrots in Flaubert and Julian Barnes.

Desire, Curiosity, And The Search For Truth In Proust, Moreno, And Bechdel, Santiago Parga Linares

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Marcel Proust’s influence on twentieth century literature is broad and has been well documented. This dissertation attempts a comparative reading of À la recherche du temps perdu that places it in contrast with Colombian writer Marvel Moreno’s 1987 novel, En diciembre llegaban las brisas, and Alison Bechdel’s 2006 comic memoir, Fun Home. Starting from a Deleuzian reading of the Recherche, this dissertation proposes the notion of the “proustian truth seeker”, a thematic and stylistic phenomenon which can be traced in all three writers. The characteristics of the truth seeker can be used to understand the ways in …

Text In The Natural World: Topics Of Evolutionary Theory Of Literature, Laurence A. Gregorio

Gettysburg College Faculty Books

The study of literature has expanded to include an evolutionary perspective. Its premise is that the literary text and literature as an overarching institution came into existence as a product of the same evolutionary process that gave rise to the human species. In this view, literature is an evolutionary adaptation that functions as any other adaptation does, as a means of enhancing survivability and also promoting benefits for the individual and society. Text in the Natural World is an introduction to the theory and a survey of topics pertinent to the evolutionary view of literature. After a polemical, prefatory chapter …

Claiming Primordial Landscapes: Science And Imperialism In Turn-Of-The-Century Science Fiction Novels, Kaitlin S. Andersen

All NMU Master's Theses

This thesis argues that the relationship between nineteenth-century geology and paleontology play a role in imperial ambitions of countries and characters in science fiction novels. Two novels are analyzed— Journey to the Centre of the Earth by Jules Verne and The Lost World by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle—using the theories of Edward Said and Michel Foucault. I pay specific attention to the idea of knowledge serving as power in imperial exploration, and how the control of knowledge allows for the empowerment of imperialist characters in the texts.

By reading the novels as imperial narratives, I have found that the scientific …