UMD Theses and Dissertations

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Camus and Sartre: The Unsettled Conflict on Violence and Terror
(2008) Ahmed, Nadine Sara; Brami, Joseph; French Language and Literature; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
The broad purpose of this paper is to bring attention to the subject of terrorism. In the paper two plays by are compared which both treat this matter somewhat differently. The first play is "Les Mains Sales" by Jean Paul Sartre and the second play is "Les Justes" by Albert Camus. The two authors who are both descendents of the existentialist time period have quite differing views on the subject. Sartre was known for his belief in action while Camus was known to be more of a pacifist. Both of these issues are portrayed in the paper. This paper also goes one step further because it looks at the literary aspect of both plays yet also places them and their theories into today's context. Both of the plays look terrorism from the eyes of the terrorist. This is something that is not very common even today in the middle of the all the terror that exists around the globe. However the issues and theories presented here bring some insight into the terrorists mind and how that affects the world today.
SEA CHANGES: ABSENCE OF THE FEMININE PRESENCE AND ITS REPLACEMENT IN VERNE'S VINGT MILLE LIEUES SOUS LES MERS
(2009) Chattin, Gena Rae; Mossman, Carol; French Language and Literature; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
The following work will examine masculine representations, the absence of feminine presence, and the elements that replace it in Jules Verne's 1870 novel Vingt mille lieues sous les mers. Maternity is of particular interest in this novel. Representations of family, when they can be found, are usually seen through inanimate objects, sterile eggs, or the corpses of mothers, potentially reflecting 19th century fears of the collapsing traditional family. To understand the implication this feminine absence and replacement, relationships between the primary male characters will be considered based on the type of masculinity each represents and how their roles affect the narrative. This will lead into a discussion of reproduction and sterility, which will dovetail into an analysis of representations of femininity and maternity with an eye toward what this says about Verne's entire body of work and future potential research in this area.
Myth and the Maternal Voice: Mediation in the Poetry of Vénus Khoury-Ghata
(2009) Braswell, Margaret Anne; Brami, Joseph; Modern French Studies; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
Born under the French Mandate in Lebanon, Paris-based Francophone poet and novelist Vénus Khoury-Ghata represents a generation of Lebanese writers who have witnessed Lebanon's evolution from a newly independent state to a twenty-first century nation struggling to survive the devastation of civil war and regional conflict. Like many of her compatriots who have chosen exile and whose mother tongue is Arabic, Khoury-Ghata's negotiation between two languages and cultures nurtures an oeuvre that reflects the tensions and provocations of a dual Franco-Lebanese identity. An examination of her poetry represents an opportunity to direct more attention to a poet whose passionate representation of her native country and the pathos of the human figure memorializes in verse personal and collective tragedy. Khoury-Ghata's narrative-driven poems reveal the dynamics of accommodating differences by promoting encounter and integration, while recognizing that confrontation is not entirely unavoidable. Seeking to reconcile the distance and the passage of time that separate the poet from her origins, as well as linguistic and cultural differences that divide self and society, her approach evokes the contemporary poet's quest for a rapprochement, however ephemeral, with the Other, often in the context of an autobiographical project that merges History and myth. Her consistent evocation in writing and interviews of her dual identity invites an examination of her verse in the framework of theoretical notions based on binary structures. Informed by surrealist and magical realist strategies, as well as French and Arab poetic legacies, Khoury-Ghata's verse expresses a paradigm of inversion that renders the common narrative fantastic, transforms the ordinary housewife into a supernatural heroine, and sanctifies the abject. Evocations of language and myth affiliated with this subversive dynamic encourage the investigation of their significance in the framework of binary structures that privilege the negative and the nocturnal. Julia Kristeva's theory of poetic language provides one method for the analysis of Khoury-Ghata's portrayal of the maternal figure and maternal language as negative and subversive feminine forces. This study will underscore how the poet's integration into her text of signifiers of Arabic, orality, and pre-verbal impulses, weaves the maternal voice and gestures into a mythical narrative. In addition, French myth critics such as Gilbert Durand and Pierre Brunel propose various reflections on the development of mythical structures, archetypes, and themes, whose evocations in Khoury-Ghata's verse underscore a poetic strategy of the recovery and revival of her Lebanese origins linked to a broader Mediterranean culture. Durand's isotopic classification of images according to a dichotomous paradigm of the diurnal and nocturnal throws into relief the archetype of the nocturnal Grande déesse whose enigmatic (re)productive power suggests correspondences with the maternal dynamic in Kristeva's semiotic theory, as well as the surrealist médiatrice, and Wendy Faris' conception of the mystical feminine in magical realist strategies. The theme of mediation persists in the poet's mythico-poetic approach that promotes the contact and fusion of contrary forces in diverse "narratives in verse" representing cosmogonic myth, the myth of the primitive Other, biomythography, folktale and fable, and the interaction of myth and memoir. This inquiry demonstrates the durability and plasticity of binary structures of myth and language that mediate personal and collective identities challenged by the potential polarization of languages, cultures, and genders.
LES CARAFES DANS LA VIVONNE : L'EMPLOI INTERTEXTUEL DES GENRES LITTÉRAIRES FIN-DE-SIÈCLE DANS A LA RECHERCHE DU TEMPS PERDU
(2008-12-01) Lozinsky, Elena; Brami, Joseph; French Language and Literature; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
This study examines the use of fin-de-siècle literary genres in A la recherche du temps perdu with four questions in mind: where, how, and to what degree do the literary genres associated with symbolism and decadence appear? What is their relationship to earlier Proustian texts? What role do they play in the overall construction of the novel? What is their relationship to earlier literary genres present in the work? In answering these questions, I argue that the complex layers and fragments that the fin-de-siècle genres represent are essential to the very existence of the novel. The reading that emerges shows how Proust's intertextual echoes, references, quotes, and allusions work within its primary subject, the literary vocation of the narrator, in whose voice many of the references are made. Intertextuality becomes, in this view, the literary foundation of the work. Along the way, I uncover a fundamental element of Proust's writing process, showing how his work on seemingly disparate fragments from his reading and writing past led to the creation of a single, integrated work. We see how the self-referential intertextuality so particular to La recherche foreshadows the discoveries literary theory would make throughout the second half of the 20th century. I begin with a discussion of Proust's view of the literary world of the period 1873-1913, especially symbolism and decadence. I then establish a typology of genres typical of this period and present the specific intertextual relations between this literature and La recherche. I go on to analyze in detail the role of fin-de-siècle theater , especially symbolist drama, in the work. A second in-depth analysis uncovers the genesis and function of Proust's use of the prose poem. Finally, I take a close look at the mythological elements in the novel -- proposing a new interpretation of the title Within a Budding Grove, -- analyzing their roots and raising Proustian points of departure from symbolist and decadent aesthetics. In truth, the use of fin-de-siècle literary genres must be seen as a point of departure writ large, as it gave rise to a new genre, that of the Proustian novel itself.
Albert Camus and the Political Philosophy of the Absurd
(2008-05-12) Bowker, Matthew Hamilton; Alford, Charles F; Government and Politics; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
Compared to the unmistakable impact of absurd theatre, literature, and art on contemporary European and American cultures, the philosophy, morality, and politics of the absurd have remained relatively obscure. Few interpretations of Albert Camus' philosophic contribution have successfully defined the meaning of absurdity, its components and dynamics, or its moral and political consequences. This dissertation attempts to clarify these areas of absurd thought by applying the logic of ambivalence to Camus' philosophy of the absurd, revealing its compelling diagnosis of extremism and indifference, its experiential grounding for post-traditional values, and its unique appeal for moral and political maturity. After reviewing the recent history of the concept of absurdity in Nietzsche, Kierkegaard, Sartre, Nagel, and elsewhere (Chapter 2), I offer detailed analyses of Camus' absurd and the contributions of his scholarly critics (Chapter 3). I introduce the concept of ambivalence in the work of Eugen Bleuler, Sigmund Freud, Melanie Klein, Otto Kernberg, and relevant sociological and political researchers (Chapter 4) to argue that the absurd is best understood not in skeptical or existential terms, but as an ambivalent 'position' with respect to countervailing desires, primarily a desire for unity and a kind of principium individuationis (Chapter 5). These ambivalent desires are implicated in the moral and political tensions between self and others, absolutes and limits, creation and destruction, even good and evil. Applying this interpretation to Camus' The Stranger and its main character, Meursault (Chapter 6), and to The Myth of Sisyphus, The Rebel, The Plague, and other works (Chapters 7 and 8), I argue that the destructive ideologies Camus decried may be understood as defenses against the ambivalence of the absurd, while an absurd morality demands mature and creative resolutions of contradiction, resistance against defensive reactions, and deliberate moral and emotional identifications with others and enemies. Analyses of two controversial cases, Camus' defense of Kaliayev and the 'fastidious' Russian assassins of 1905 and Camus' unpopular stance on the Algerian War (1954-1962), are offered as miniature case-studies to ground conclusions about the meaning of absurd morality and politics (Chapter 9).
Ending and "Copping Out": Completeness and Closure in the Plays of Sam Shepard
(2006-05-16) Couch, Joseph Dennis; Richardson, Brian; English Language and Literature; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
This dissertation analyzes the interpretive dilemmas arising from treatments of completeness and closure in Sam Shepard's plays, an undertaking that raises two key questions about its own academic exigence. Shepard's plays expand the discourse on closure by providing dramatic texts to which the terms "the open work," "the sense of ending," "anti-closure," and the reading of texts in socio-political contexts can apply. More significantly, Shepard's theory of closure as a "cop-out" to resolution complicates the previous discourse on closure with texts that complementarily deny formal and thematic closure in ways that previous critics do not explore. The "unloosened ends," specifically, that each ending does not resolve not only draw attention to the unresolved status of an American socio-political theme but actually implicate the audience in the larger and false cultural assumption that the theme was closed before the start of the play and now need the audience's help offstage and therefore outside the boundaries of the text to resolve the issue. In terms of categories within the context of closure in drama, Shepard's endings combine Schmidt's categories of "unmediated" and "ironic" as a reflection of their thematic implication of the collective American audience's "cop-out" regarding the assumed closed discourse on a socio-political issue. Additionally, the endings "frustrate" the audience's expectations for closure thematically and formally even when they provide a moment of "cessation" in Schlueter's terms. The reason lies in the fact that the "consensus" required from the audience, as Schmidt claims, relies on the audience to close the work by closing the discourse on the issue that the endings suggest that the audience should recognize as open and unresolved. The issues of fate, home, family, and memory cannot truly reach a moment of cessation, Shepard's interrogations of closure reveal, until the audience makes the discourse cease by not "copping-out" to the false sense of closure that America's conventional society, both on and offstage, provides.
Nathalie Sarraute: Le pacte de lecture
(2005-12-12) Silver, Jocelyne R; Cottenet-Hage, Madeleine; French Language and Literature; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
This study explores the various strategies used by the French writer Nathalie Sarraute, associated with the «Nouveaux Romanciers » in the middle of the twentieth century, in order to establish a contract between the author and her readers by systematically and explicitly inscribing the narrator and the narratee or the sender and the receiver in her text. One of the objectives of this contract is the enactment of a reading pedagogy whereby Sarraute leads her reader into the decoding of the text. The study examines 1) the two zones of «transaction » which inform the relationship between the author and the reader prior to the reading process: the paratext and the generic codes. 2) the narrative strategies that bind the narrator and the narratee in the text. 3) the demands made upon the reader in the process of reading and interpreting the text. This study uses a multidisciplinary approach which draws on key currents in the sociology of literature, such as Pierre Bourdieu's field theory and Alain Viala's sociopoetics, as well as in theories of narrative, i.e. narratology (Gérard Genette and Gerald Prince) and literary pragmatics (Dominique Maingueneau).
Spaces of Passion: The Love Letters of Jean Giono to Blanche Meyer
(2004-05-06) Le Page, Patricia Allard; Brami, Joseph; French Language and Literature
ABSTRACT Title of dissertation: SPACE OF PASSION: THE LOVE LETTERS OF JEAN GIONO TO BLANCHE MEYER Patricia A. Le Page, Doctor of Philosophy, 2004 Dissertation directed by: Professor Joseph Brami Department of French and Italian This dissertation offers a first analysis of a collection containing more than one thousand letters that Jean Giono wrote to Blanche Meyer over a thirty year period from 1939-1969. The correspondence, which was first opened to the public in January 2000, is housed at Yale University's Beinecke Library. It has never been mentioned by Giono's biographer or critics in spite of the light it sheds on his creative process. The liaison revealed by the letters leads to a discovery of the extraordinary role that Blanche played in Giono's creative life. She was the only person to be so profoundly involved in his writing as the idealized image with whom he shared his internal dialogue. As the beloved "other" who inspired Giono's lover's discourse, she allowed him to express and examine his ideas and thus to clarify his thinking and move forward with his work. What strikes the reader upon reading the letters in conjunction with Giono's novels, is the extent to which Giono's life and his fiction were inspired by the myth of courtly love and how deeply his life and work were intertwined. Identifying and explicating the myth is significant because it provides an essential key to a renewed understanding and appreciation of Giono as a writer, a reinterpretation of the conception of love and sexuality he expresses in his novels, and a resolution of several important contradictions in his life and work. All of this leads to a reassessment of the legend invented by the writer himself and disseminated by his critics, that Giono was a self-taught provincial writer whose work was outside the intellectual mainstream. The letters reveal that Giono was a complex man of letters whose life was informed by the reading of literature and centered around writing and reflection. Moreover, the correspondence read as a meta-discourse along with his novels, provides a unique portrait of the artist engaged in the experience of passionate love which was for him the penultimate human experience and the apotheosis of the myth.
America, Viet Nam, and the Poetics of Guilt
(2004-05-03) Hill, Matthew Blake; Wyatt, David M.; English Language and Literature
The "war poem" has, since Homer, served as a means for non-combatants to access the experience of warfare; evolving over time, the genre reflects and revises cultural attitudes toward war. Since the Great War, the war poem has become a tool of political protest, a declamation of war's destructiveness and a plea for understanding on behalf of the soldiers forced or duped into fighting it. As a "literature of trauma," this poetry is often seen as therapeutic exercise through which veterans can transcend the "nightmare" of war through cathartic expression. The American poetry written on Viet Nam challenges this interpretive model. Previous war poetry casts the soldier as war's ultimate victim. From Sassoon's Christ-like trench soldiers to Jarrell's eviscerated ball-turret gunner, it is what happens to the soldier, not what the soldier does that is the primary poetic focus. The violence the soldier does is a marginal concern in these poems, subordinated to a larger metaphysics of war's suffering. In Viet Nam war poetry, however, this sublimation seems impossible: the poems are overwhelmingly concerned not with the overall victimizing experience of "war," but rather with the soldier's acute sense of personal moral transgression. Many Viet Nam veteran poets resist the catharsis of an uncomplicated victimhood; instead of transcending the war experience, they dwell in it, asserting their place in the horror of war as both a victim and as an active agent of its suffering. This dissertation argues that American veteran poetry on Viet Nam is governed by a "poetics of guilt," an obsessive poetic need to articulate a sense of personal responsibility for the atrocity of modern war. The five poets discussed hereinMichael Casey, Basil T. Paquet, John Balaban, Bruce Weigl, and Yusef Komunyakaaexplore and formalize this sense of intensely personal, private guilt, creating war lyrics that, while advancing the traditional anti-war political agenda of modern war verse, resist the cathartic "renewal" or "transcendence" that in some way relieves the individual of responsibility for perpetuating war. The Introduction is an overall history of individual culpability in modern war poetry. Subsequent chapters deal with the moral isolation of American GIs, the use of images of "merging" as a response to suffering, "survival guilt" and the elegy, the attraction to violence, and the mechanics of repressing empathy.
Fact, Fiction, and Fabrication: History, Narrative, and the Postmodern Real from Woolf to Rushdie
(2003-11-13) Berlatsky, Eric Lawrence; Richardson, Brian; English Language and Literature
While most accounts of Western attitudes towards history in the nineteenth century suggest that Victorians had a faith in its origin, teleology and meaning, twentieth-century assessments of history more often suggest the opposite. Both poststructural theory and postmodern historiography in the wake of Hayden White's Metahistory present a relativist view of the possibility of either objectivity or material referentiality in historical discourse, particularly through the medium of narrative. From this perspective, historical narrative is defined as a discursive creation that obscures the material relations of its production and as an instrument of ideology and oppression. "Fact, Fiction, and Fabrication" investigates what political and ethical repercussions this attitude towards and theorization of history has and how much contemporary fiction typically labeled "postmodern" both initially reflects and ultimately denies this model. This study argues that the assessment of contemporary postmodern fiction as reflecting poststructural models of endless textuality denies an important element of the novels studied: their commitment to the possibility of accessing material reality and the importance of such access both for the construction of an ethics and for political agency. By looking closely at contemporary novels that explicitly theorize history and historiography, it becomes clear that they instead insist on a sense of the "real" at least in part because of these political concerns. These novels, which I label "postmodernist historical fiction," insist that although an inviolable origin, teleology, and even consistent referentiality cannot be obtained in historical reference, there can be a provisional referentiality and access to the real without a return to the classical history of foundationalism, immanence and teleology that contributes to hegemony. These texts are also tied together by their deployment of nonnarrative methods that counter the deformation of the real that takes place within narrative discourse according to White, among others. The primary texts considered are Art Spiegelman's Maus, Milan Kundera's The Book of Laughter and Forgetting, Virginia Woolf's Between the Acts, Graham Swift's Waterland, and Salman Rushdie's Midnight's Children.

UMD Theses and Dissertations

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