Theses and Dissertations from UMD
Permanent URI for this communityhttp://hdl.handle.net/1903/2
New submissions to the thesis/dissertation collections are added automatically as they are received from the Graduate School. Currently, the Graduate School deposits all theses and dissertations from a given semester after the official graduation date. This means that there may be up to a 4 month delay in the appearance of a give thesis/dissertation in DRUM
More information is available at Theses and Dissertations at University of Maryland Libraries.
Browse
3 results
Search Results
Item Gynocolonial Legacies: Lasting Influences of the French Founding Mothers in North America(2023) Robinson, Elizabeth W; Baillargeon, Mercédès; French Language and Literature; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Within the annals of history, women have begun to emerge as silent architects and resilient figures who have navigated the labyrinthine constructs of patriarchal systems. Their stories are finding their way to the light of day and taking up more space than they have previously. Such is the case with the historical figures of les filles du roi in New France, and the Casket Girls in Louisiana. In this dissertation, I embark on a comprehensive analysis of literary works from Quebec and Louisiana and the representation of these historical figures within them. Through the stories about the women transported to the French colonies in the late 17th century and early 18th century to serve the patriarchy as wives and mothers, this study extends beyond mere literary and historical analysis and explores the influence of these women in shaping cultural identity reinforced by patriarchal norms.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.Item Shades of Gay: Representations of Male Same-Sex Desire in French Literature, Culture, and Ideology from 1789-1926(2014) Gomolka, Carl Joseph; Orlando, Valérie; French Language and Literature; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)"Shades of Gay: Representations of Male Same-Sex Desire in French Literature, Culture, and Ideology from 1789-1926," provides a critical overview of ways of representing homosexuality in France from the late eighteenth to the early twentieth centuries. More specifically, I contend that the emergent nineteenth-century gay subculture influenced not only the way socio-political and medico-juridical sources represented and defined sexual and gender identity but that nineteenth and early twentieth century authors followed suit, contributing to the construction and deconstruction of social definitions of sexual and gender identity through literature. The first chapter of my thesis, titled "Preparing the Palette: Gay Male Literature from 1792-1910," surveys the works of nineteenth century authors who created the framework for a homosexual epistemology that would structure representations of homosexuality during and after the nineteenth century. In the second chapter, entitled "Through the Looking-Glass: Representations of Fin-de-Siècle Homosexuality in the Works of Jean Lorrain," I explore the influence of science on representations of homosexuality, especially with regard to criminal and degenerate images of the homosexual in the works of Jean Lorrain. My third chapter, entitled "Scandalous Sexualities: the Baron Jacques d'Adelswärd-Fersen and the World of Apologetic Impropriety," addresses the relationship between scandal, journalism, and literature in the works of Jacques d'Adelswärd-Fersen. This chapter also questions whether Akadémos, the journal orchestrated by Fersen, can be considered France's first gay journal. The fourth chapter, entitled, "For the Love of Boys: Ephemeral (Homo)sexuality and Platonic Politics in the Works of Achille Essebac" pioneers an analysis of the works of Achille Essebac, the first such study in English. The final chapter, titled "The Trouble with Normal: the Politics of the Closet in the Works of André Gide," analyzes the dichotomies silence/disclosure and desire/restraint in the fin-de-siècle and early twentieth century works of André Gide, contradictory notions that are of particular interest in the context of sexual and gender identity study. Ultimately, I contend that the authors examined in my dissertation pull from social, ideological, cultural, as well as political representations of sexuality and gender to create an antagonistic and pugnacious literature that contributes to the contemporary definition of homosexuality.