UMD Theses and Dissertations
Permanent URI for this collectionhttp://hdl.handle.net/1903/3
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Item Fictions of Hybridity in the Anthropocene: Literature and Science in the Works of Rétif de la Bretonne(2021) Bezilla, Charlee Myranda; Benharrech, Sarah; French Language and Literature; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Experiments in genetic engineering have raised environmental, medical, and ethical questions concerning the manipulation of biological processes. Does modifying an organism in this way change its nature? What do increasingly complex relations between human and machine, organism and technology, mean for human identity and our relations with non-human lifeforms? These questions rest on uneasy but persistent dichotomies of nature and culture, of the humanities and the sciences, and on notions of modernity and progress central to ecocriticism and the environmental humanities. Conceptions of humans as distinct from nature—what anthropologist Philippe Descola names the “nature/culture” divide—are deeply imprinted in the Western psyche and reflected in disciplinary divisions separating the humanities and the sciences, what Bruno Latour calls the “Internal Great Divide.”These questions about hybrid beings, manipulating nature, and the nature/culture divide were particularly pertinent in eighteenth-century French literature and natural history, a period coinciding with the nascence of biological science wherein many thinkers locate the beginnings of the “Anthropocene,” an epoch in which human activity has markedly affected earth systems. Drawing on methods from literary studies and ecocriticism, I examine how literary texts engage debates on the mutability of species, the nature of man, and anxieties about governing populations that remain relevant today. Through the lens of Nicolas-Edme Rétif de la Bretonne’s 1781 novel La Découverte australe par un homme-volant, I engage close readings of the novel alongside natural historical texts to consider the possibilities of “hybridity” as a tool for understanding literary production, the relationships between humans and nonhumans, and how the domains of fiction and science can come together. I find that these texts posit hybridity as a promising intervention, despite growing concerns about degeneration stemming from crossbreeding experiments. After analyzing the formal aspects of the “hybrid” text and its paratexts in Chapter 1, in Chapter 2, I examine how the novel incorporates, interrogates, and extends contemporary theories about the nature of humans and animals. Chapter 3 explores the manipulation of hybrid creatures and proto-eugenicist politics in La Découverte australe alongside key texts from the period to trace how the novel engages contemporary discourses of perfectibility and degeneration. Chapter 4 shows how the novel promotes mechanical technology, along with biological hybridization, as tools of imperialism and societal improvement at a pivotal moment leading up to the industrial revolution.Item Coureurs de Bois, Backwoodsmen As Ecocritical Motif in Four Works of French Canadian Literature(2015) Rehill, Anne Collier; Orlando, Valérie K.; Frisch, Andrea M.; French Language and Literature; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)The 17th-19th century French Canadian fur traders and interpreters called coureurs de bois and later voyageurs were known for their independence of spirit and connection to the wilds. They can also be seen as an ecocritical motif because, in addition to participating in the environmentally abusive fur trade, they also show the way forward through intercultural connections and business relationships with Amerindians. The four novels analyzed here--Taché's Forestiers et voyageurs: Moeurs et légendes canadiennes (1863); Hémon's Maria Chapdelaine (1916); Desrosiers' Les Engagés du Grand Portage (1938); and Maillet's Pélagie-la-Charrette (1979)--portray woodsmen operating in a collaborative mode within the realistic context of the need to make money. They participated in both ruthless capitalist exploitation and greater intercultural acceptance, as exemplified in Desrosiers' two opposing main characters. They entered folklore through the 19th century literary efforts of Taché and others to construct a distinct French Canadian national identity, then in an unstable and continually disrupted process of formation. Because coureurs linked the natural and human worlds as well as radically different human cultures, their entry into literature involved their Amerindian business partners, thus making intercultural connections an aspect of the national identity that Taché strove to construct and mirror. From a modern perspective, such cultural intersections pertain to the ecocritical acknowledgment of the need to respect global populations' widely varying modes of survival. Serres' Contrat naturel offers a broader proposal: that the human population, from the position of its diverse needs and power over the environment, should reach a silent contract with the rest of the planet that also acknowledges and respects its needs. The coureurs de bois and voyageurs portrayed in the works studied here embody both the problem and the way forward. They and their Amerindian partners occupy the perhaps unique position of contributing to environmental damage as well as greater understanding of the cultural other, which holds the promise of collaboration and the joint search for realistic solutions. Thus, in ways both positive and negative, coureurs de bois and voyageurs, far from perfect models, continue to serve as guides, even in today's tremendously diverse field of ecocriticism.