French and Francophone Literature Commons^™

Le Gout Qui Reste: Cultural Identity And Belonging In Ook Chung's Kimchi, Taurean James Weber-Laurencio

Dissertations and Theses

The emphasis placed on the questioning of identity in Québécois society since the Quiet Revolution of the mid-twentieth century continues to this day. Whereas this search for a specifically Québécois identity was originally cast in terms of an Anglophone/Francophone divide, the influx of migrants from around the world to the province since the 1970s has rendered such a simplistic, binary discourse impossible. The population of Québéc in general and of Montréal in particular is now multicultural; visible minorities now constitute twenty-six percent of the Montréal populace. While most migrants in Québéc are able to find a niche in Montréal in …

"Vitalité": Race Science And Jews In France 1850-1914, Kendra Beth Hendrickson

Dissertations and Theses

Race science is built on ideas of division and categorization. In the historian's quest to tell the story of race science, certain frameworks have been used that can greatly inhibit our understanding of this fraught topic. The impulse to study race science in the framework of the nation-state has led to certain misconceptions and lends itself to a historical narrative wherein racist concepts stop at artificially imposed borders. In addition, the national framework detracts from the individual's contributions and instead lumps these contributions together on the level of the nation-state, thus opening the door for judgments about whole nations being …

Le Développement Du Moi Et Le Procédé Thérapeutique Dans Les Œuvres De Chrétien De Troyes, Clément Guillaume

Dissertations and Theses

While we can easily acknowledge that many aspects the texts written by Chrétien de Troyes have been studied and discussed through the centuries, it is always possible to apply a new reading to the author's work. Like many authors of the same time period, the author of Le Conte du graal and LeChevalier de la charrette was not only writing for the audience of his time but was also openly targeting an audience set in a different century and social context. This timeless aspect of Chrétien's work is part of what makes his texts intricate and still relevant to this …

Truth And Memory In Two Works By Marguerite Duras, Rachel Deborah Hunter

Dissertations and Theses

Published in 1985, Marguerite Duras' La Douleur is a collection of six autobiographical and semi-autobiographical short stories written during and just after the German Occupation. Echoing the French national sentiment of the 1970s and 1980s, these stories examine Duras' own capacity for good and evil, for forgetting, repressing, and remembering. The first of these narratives, the eponymous "La douleur," is the only story in the collection to take the form of a diary, and it is this narrative, along with a posthumously published earlier draft of the same text, that will be the focus of this thesis. In both versions, …

La Chanson D'Yde Et Olive: A Parable Of A Medieval Self-Made Man, NoéMie Young-Studer

Dissertations and Theses

La chanson d'Yde et Olive, an early fourteenth-century epic poem from the Picard region, exemplifies the medieval custom of text renewal that seeks to adapt pagan materials to fit Christian doctrine. Largely based on the plot of the Ovidian fable Iphis and Ianthe from The Metamorphoses, its main character Yde undergoes a metaphorical transformation from a woman into a man. Moreover, much like the Ovide moralisé, a Christianized adaptation of the Latin original, Yde et Olive's message can be understood as a Christian parable for the purging of the sinful soul. To set up the poem's didactic message, the poet …

"Qui Vauroit Bon Vers Oïr": Voice, Text, And Social Insight In Aucassin Et Nicolette, Lonnie Tristan Renteria

Dissertations and Theses

Aucassin et Nicolette has stimulated much dialogue among scholars. Literary genres clearly express perceptions that are representative of an historical period and culture, and Aucassin et Nicolette's tendency to synthesize literary genres, namely poetry and prose, raises many points relative to the social sphere in which it came into existence. To best illuminate these characteristics in Aucassin et Nicolette, an eclectic approach to the text is in order.

The first chapter explores the manner in which the story is told, focusing on the voice as it is the artist's tool to transmit emphatic information. The poet is performer, …

Images Of Women In Abdelhak Serhane's Le Soliel Des Obscurs, Wendy Grace Cook

Dissertations and Theses

Current trends in North African francophone literature include a movement towards the exploration of alienation and exile, most often in the form of novels written about Maghrebian immigrants in Europe. Yet this alienation exists within the North African context as well, and it is possible to feel alienated and exiled, as well as marginalized, within one's homeland. This question is explored by Moroccan francophone author Abdelhak Serhane in his novel, Le Soleil des obscurs, which is the focus of this study.

The purpose of the research is to examine the four principle female characters in the novel and relate …

Le "Devenir Féminin" Dans La Sociéte Moderne Occidentale À Travers Les Deux Romans De Virginie Despentes, Nadia Louar

Dissertations and Theses

Les deux premiers romans de Virginie Despentes, Baise-moi (1995) et les Chiennes Savantes (1996), attestent de la mutation socio-culturelle qui affecte la societe contemporaine. Son style insolent, son langage corrosif et volontairement Prosaïque confirme et signe I 'évolution dans le monde occidental des valeurs, des désirs et aspirations de 1'homme, et plus crucialement de la femme des années 90. Plus qu'une révolution des moeurs, on assiste dans ses deux premières oeuvres á une véritable mutation culturelle qui bouleverse les rôles et modéles traditionnels des individus dans la société. Ce bouleversement qui s'exprime dans la vie banale, mais définitivement violente de …

L'Être Et Le Paraître À Travers Cinq Romans De Raymond Queneau, Mireille J. Balland

Dissertations and Theses

The writings of Raymond Queneau span a period of more than forty years and reflect the multiplicity of his approaches: essays, songs, poems, scenarios for the cinema, translations (from English to French), journal, and novels.

My study focuses mainly on five novels: Le Chiendent (The Bark Tree), Les Fleurs bleues (Between Blue and Blue), Le Dimanche de la vie (The Sunday of Life), Pierrot mon ami (Pierrot) and Zazie dans le métro (Zazie in the Metro), the one that made him known to a wide reading audience. Queneau contributed to the very rich philosophical and literary scene in France sandwiched …

Within And Beyond Boundaries In Henri Bosco's Le Mas ThéOtime, Barbara Marguerite Schaff

Dissertations and Theses

Spiritual, mystic and natural boundaries haunt the writings of Henri Bosco. Critics such as Bachelard have studied Bosco's interpretation of the natural elements and noted his sensitive portrayal of the protagonists with a focus on their unconscious desires by the use of this device. In Le Mas Theotime Bosco has unleashed his artistic and poetic creativity in addition to his passion for nature. Indeed, of all of Bosco's novels, perhaps this one exemplifies the quintessential harmony of man with nature. As suggested by Jean-Claude Godin: " ... il n'y a que dans Le Mas Theotime oil elles soient veritablement au …

The Quest According To Julien Gracq: A Study Of The Search For The Beyond In Gracq's Three Novels And His Play Le Roi Pecheur, Mary Joanne Johnson Wolter

Dissertations and Theses

Julien Gracq's quest for the "au-delà" is similar in many ways to the Surrealists' attempts to get in touch with the Beyond and to find that mythical and ideal point where binary oppositions are no longer contradictory but complementary. However, he differs greatly from the Surrealists in that his writing is anything but "automatic". Whereas he acknowledges being influenced by the Surrealists' ideas and by the works of certain authors, notably Goethe, Wagner, and Edgar Allen Poe, his works are a unique and carefully constructed web of style techniques, double-entendres, intertextual references, poetic devices, and a deliberate …