Master of Arts, Miami University, 2018, French, Italian, and Classical Studies

This thesis, written in English, aims to demonstrate that many of Joachim du Bellay's poems in Divers jeux rustiques and Vers Lyriques disclose a conscious way of perceiving the environment. A detailed analysis of `D'un vanneur de ble aux vents' reveals how the poem questions the privileging of humans in their relationship with the environment by dismantling the environment-human binary. I examine the symbolism of Roman mythology in `A Ceres, A Bacchus et A Pales' and `D'un berger a Pan' in order to explain how this symbolism represents the dependency of humans on their environment and creates the possibility of converting arduous rural chores into meaningful and pleasurable activities. Lastly, I explain how the poem `Au Fleuve de Loire' can be read as a cartographic poem that highlights the economic, literary, and environmental importance of the Loire river. I conclude that these poems exemplify a consciousness that rejoices, reinforces, and recognizes the role of the environment in the lives of its inhabitants.

Committee: Elisabeth Hodges Dr. (Advisor); Korta Jeremie Dr. (Committee Member); Klosowska Anna Dr. (Committee Member) Subjects: Literature

BA, Oberlin College, 2021, History

My thesis examines the fluid boundaries between French historical and literary writing in the 19th century, and the shifts in “historical consciousness” that occurred in both fields as the century progressed. I examine three exemplary French writers—Jules Michelet, a historian, and Honore de Balzac and Emile Zola, both novelists—considering each primarily as a historical thinker, regardless of whether they considered themselves to be one. I argue that as the 19th century progressed, the broad shift in French institutions towards positivist epistemological and explanatory frameworks was reflected in literature, as well as in history. Both disciplines, one increasingly academic and one primarily cultural, were affected in strikingly similar ways by the influence of positivism and scientism, providing a distinct aesthetic and rhetorical lens through which the impact of post-1848 positivism can be understood. As positivism infiltrated the practice of history, pushing the discipline farther into the realm of science, so too did it affect the historical thinking of prominent novelists. Additionally, I argue that the shift in historical consciousness reflects broader social fragmentation as France vacillated between various forms of government and their attendant social ideologies across the century. As political regimes and ideologies came and went, novelists, like historians, turned to rationalist frameworks, rather than idealistic or metaphysical ones, to explain their rapidly evolving political, social, and cultural moments. In addition to analyzing the impact these shifts had on historical consciousness in France, my thesis attempts to understand how historical thinking changes in response to shifts in institutional authority and ideology.

Committee: Annemarie Sammartino (Advisor); Leonard V. Smith (Advisor) Subjects: European History; European Studies; History; Literature; Philosophy

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2014, French and Italian

In this dissertation, Michele Gerring analyzes scenarios in which the integration of the Maghrebi-French occurs in contemporary French settings, to a variety of degrees, as seen in several works of Beur novels and films, and select issues of the magazine, "Paris-Match," constructing a “spectrum of hospitality,” based on the theories that best contextualize the polar ends of hospitality, Derridean hospitality theory and Foucauldian power theory. After establishing her theoretical foundations in Chapter 1, she examines integration as it is depicted in Beur novels and films revealing Foucauldian-like relationships between the Maghrebi-French and the French of European descent in Chapter 2; integration as it is viewed in settings of mixed hospitality in Chapter 3, and integration as seen in novels and films featuring more favorable circumstances for the Maghrebi-French, akin to situations of “Derridean” hospitality, in Chapter 4, before analyzing the predominately-distrustful relationships revealed in some of "Paris-Match"'s portrayals of the French suburban riots of 1990-1991, 2005, 2007, and 2010, in Chapter 5. Gerring's study of Maghrebi-French integration, as it is depicted in this corpus of works, demonstrates that Derrida's concept of the mutually-beneficial guest-host relationship, part of his hospitality theory, in which the “guest” and the “host” act in the best interest of the other party, can be useful in encouraging the French of European descent and the Maghrebi-French to consider the point of view of the other party, thereby improving conditions for the other party, as well as their relationship. Additionally, instances in which hyper-ethical behavior is practiced, as individuals or representatives of larger entities take the perspective of the other party, developing empathy for them, even when there has been conflict between the parties, as exemplified by certain characters in the works analyzed in this dissertation, reveal that this exercise (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Jean-François Fourny Ph.D. (Advisor); Cheikh Thiam Ph.D. (Committee Member); Jennifer Willging Ph.D. (Committee Member); Karlis Racevskis Ph.D. (Committee Member) Subjects: Foreign Language; Language; Literature; Minority and Ethnic Groups; Modern Language; Modern Literature; North African Studies; Romance Literature

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 1979, Graduate School

Committee: Not Provided (Other) Subjects: Literature

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 1971, Graduate School

Committee: Not Provided (Other) Subjects: Education

Master of Arts, The Ohio State University, 1915, Graduate School

Committee: Not Provided (Other) Subjects:

Master of Arts, Miami University, 2023, French, Italian, and Classical Studies

This paper written in French examines the works of two female comic artists, Zeina Abirached and Brigitte Findakly, who grew up in the Middle East during periods of political instability and social tension. Abirached's book Le Piano Oriental combines her own life with that of her great-grandfather, while Findakly blends her childhood and adult experiences with a broader portrait of her country and society in Coquelicots d'Irak. Both artists incorporate their personal stories into the historical context of their native and adopted countries. Through their use of autofiction, autobiography and captivating visual storytelling, these two graphic novels demonstrate the transformative power of Art in bringing together and unifying fragmented identities, facilitating healing and reconciliation, and commemorating destroyed and/or forgotten pasts. Art is showcased as a means of expression for bicultural identities and as a vital need. By exploring personal experiences, Abirached and Findakly use original narrative techniques and exploit the rich linguistic and visual elements of their medium to express the transformative power of art in unique ways, offering powerful critiques of war, sexism, prejudice, and inequality.

Committee: Mark McKinney (Committee Chair); Audrey Wasser (Committee Member); Elisabeth Hodges (Committee Member) Subjects: Foreign Language; Literature; Romance Literature

Master of Arts, Miami University, 2021, French, Italian, and Classical Studies

Obsession et voyeurisme : il semblerait bien que les deux concepts soient profondement lies l'un a l'autre, en ce sens qu'ils semblent tous deux repondre a un mecanisme ou une volonte de possession et de domination, notamment lorsque l'on pense aux effets qu'ils ont sur la femme. Obseder a propos de la femme et faire preuve de voyeurisme, c'est en quelque sorte lui dire < sois belle et tais-toi >, la ramener a sa soi-disant condition elementaire d'individu toujours deja incomplet de par l'absence de phallus, tant dans sa dimension physique que symbolique, et par extension des lors la reifier et la reduire au silence. Aussi ce travail de recherche se proposera-t-il d'etudier la representation de ce silence ainsi que de cette reification comme consequences de l'obsession et du voyeurisme masculins dans les romans La Jalousie d'Alain Robbe-Grillet (1957) et Le Ravissement de Lol V. Stein de Marguerite Duras (1964). Ici deux narrateurs, l'un anonyme, l'autre Jacques Hold, qui sont avant tout deux voyeurs : comment reduisent-ils les femmes qu'ils aiment (respectivement A… et Lol V. Stein) au silence a travers leurs voyeurismes respectifs ?

Committee: Audrey Wasser Dr. (Advisor); Elisabeth Hodges Dr. (Committee Member); Anna Klosowska Dr. (Committee Member) Subjects: Foreign Language; Gender Studies; Literature

Master of Arts, Miami University, 2020, French, Italian, and Classical Studies

This thesis, written in English, is an analysis of melancholia and its relation to desire in the following nineteenth-century works: "El Desdichado" by Gerard de Nerval, Rene by Francois-Rene de Chateaubriand, and Charles Baudelaire's "L" invitation au voyage." This analysis will take a psychoanalytical approach, and will study how maternal, sororal, and feminine objects of desire relate to the melancholia that is represented on the pages of these works. In order to do so, we must dive into Sigmund Freud's "Mourning and Melancholia," which explains the inner functions of melancholia and the ego contained in all four works. Another psychoanalytic text that will be used is Julia Kristeva's Black Sun: Depression and Melancholia. This thesis seeks to prove that "L' invitation au voyage" is a melancholic poem that is driven by incestuous desires for a maternal figure, as well as a sororal figure, and that the melancholia found in Rene shares similar influences. It will also seek to prove that "El Desdichado" shows evidence of a triumph over melancholia caused by a feminine object of desire. Lastly, all three texts will be analyzed in parallel with Freud's text to demonstrate its accuracy especially in terms of the ego.

Committee: Jonathan Strauss (Committee Chair); Elisabeth Hodges (Committee Member); Anna Klosowska (Committee Member) Subjects: Language; Literature; Modern Language

Master of Arts (MA), Ohio University, 2019, French (Arts and Sciences)

An analysis of three major works by Sartre and their role on the evolution of humanism as coined by the philosopher in 1945.

Committee: Lois Vines (Committee Chair); Chris Coski (Advisor); Betsy Partyka (Committee Member) Subjects: Literature

MA, University of Cincinnati, 2017, Arts and Sciences: French

Since its creation in the 16th century and its industrialization in the 19th century, the local and national French press has served as a means to educate, influence, and raise the awareness of the French people. Stories published in Paris and throughout all of France have long served to influence the opinions of the French public with the purpose of strengthening pre-existing values or swaying the public toward a specific manner of thinking or viewing certain issues. In order to do this, newspapers had a specific set of tools that they used to create detailed, vivid accounts of current events and to encourage a specific paradigm of thought among the population: temoignage (the witnessing of events) and reportage (the reporting of these events to the public). After building on the foundation of these techniques, newspapers would use a combination of rhetoric, factual evidence, and sociological and psychological cueing to sway opinions and win the support of the French public. This methodology succeeded in influencing three notable writers of 19th-century France, Stendhal, Emile Zola, and Marcel Proust, who subsequently issued their own versions of temoignage and reportage in response. Unlike literature, poetry or theater, journalism is intended to keep the public up to date on current events and happenings in their communities, yet as demonstrated here, it was, and continues to be, a medium to tell another kind of story and to influence the reader to lean toward a particular point of view. Some canonical literary works are unapologetically unrealistic, designed to create an entirely new world for the reader, but some of the most impactful, moving and inspiring literature in history is drawn from the writer's reaction to true events. The newspaper articles that tell about these happenings cannot be recounted purely by means of fiction and belief; for a work to generate and sustain a convincing mental picture in the mind of the reader, there must be a bas (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Jeff Loveland Ph.D. (Committee Chair); Michael Gott Ph.D. (Committee Member) Subjects: Language

Master of Arts, Miami University, 2017, French, Italian, and Classical Studies

This thesis, written in French, proposes itself as an inquiry into the intersection of literature and philosophy as it takes place in the work of Maurice Blanchot. Its starting point is negativity as the instrument of both dialectic and poetry. Following the path set in the famous article < La Litterature et le droit a la mort >, we linked language and death through the negative capacity that they share. More so, we found out that they represent the possibility for an experience of negativity, but this experience cannot be conceived as an access to negativity nor to its experience, but as a presence of an absence. Then, informed by Blanchot's critical interpretation of negativity, we approached two literary texts as narrativization of this experience of negativity. Our reading L'Arret de mort and La Folie du jour exposed the narrative potential of the Blanchotian understanding of negativity. Through the encounter with the other, the limit of reason and the limit of the narrative itself, we followed Blanchot's text in their approach to the obscurity that it is trying to reveal. Following that motion of unveiling obscurity, interruption, exteriorization, and the neuter became the main focuses of our analysis of Blanchot's narratives.

Committee: Jonathan Strauss Dr (Advisor); Audrey Wasser Dr (Committee Member); Elisabeth Hodges Dr (Committee Member) Subjects: Literature; Philosophy

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2017, French and Italian

This dissertation is a study in physical and spiritual transformation in medieval French and Occitan literature from the eleventh through the fifteenth centuries. By considering the Ovidian and biblical tropes of metamorphosis and transfiguration that are present in medieval French and Occitan literature, particularly in works such as Robert le diable, Flamenca, La Vie de Sainte Marie l'Egyptienne, the various Tristan narratives, and the works of Chretien de Troyes, one can have a clearer understanding of the influence that both Ovidian and biblical narratives had on medieval French and Occitan literature. By examining Ovidian metamorphic trope of metamorphic degradation and exploring the instances in which this trope appears in medieval French and Occitan literature, one can arrive at a greater appreciation for the influence that Ovid and his works exercised on medieval authors and readers. It is also possible to foster a greater appreciation for transformation by examining instances of disguise, costuming, and clothing presented in medieval French and Occitan literature it is possible to further explore the tropes of transformation as one gains a clearer appreciation for the role that clothing and disguise play in transformation narratives.

Committee: Sarah-Grace Heller Ph.D (Committee Chair); Jonathan Combs-Schilling Ph.D (Committee Member); Leslie Lockett Ph.D (Committee Member) Subjects: Literature; Medieval Literature; Middle Ages

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2017, French and Italian

This dissertation reconstructs a narrative trajectory of French-Canadian girlhood in the twentieth-century through literature and film, revealing the French-Canadian girl as temporary sovereign of the contested borderland of her own body. In the works studied in this project, the girl-body emerges as a corps frontalier, a gendered borderland between childhood and womanhood, a space of no-longer/not-yet-ness that disrupts stable, traditional structures of identity and subjectivity. The girl herself, inhabitant of that body, is a troublesome subject-in-process, a figure marked by ambivalence, uncertainty, fluidity, and potentiality. She resists categorization as either child or woman, seeking instead to claim sovereignty over the territory of her body and her destiny as a girl. In many ways, she is like French-Canadian society, perpetually and actively en devenir, always working to define herself. Life in that unstable zone is at once exhilarating and exhausting, and appears untenable – but must this be the case? Or can a new conception of girlhood align with new conceptions of Quebecois(e) nationality to make it possible for both to retain the active potentiality of being mineur(e)? In order to better understand the relationship between feminine adolescence and French-Canadian identity, this project traces the evolution of girlhood as narrated in a set of literary and cinematic works. Chapter 1, a reading of Louis Hemon's Maria Chapdelaine (1913) and Gabrielle Roy's Bonheur d'occasion (1945), addresses the conflict between traditional notions of feminine destiny in French-Canadian culture and the more subversive individual desires of the girls expected to follow those notions, revealing the heavy expectation of almost literal self-effacement imposed upon girls as French-Canadian society prioritizes survivance. The second chapter brings together Anne Claire Poirier's film La fin des etes (1964) and Anne Hebert's novel Kamouraska (1970) to engage with the question (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Danielle Marx-Scouras (Advisor); Jennifer Willging (Committee Member); Wynne Wong (Committee Member) Subjects: Canadian History; Canadian Literature; Canadian Studies; Film Studies; French Canadian Culture; French Canadian Literature; Gender; Gender Studies; Literature; Womens Studies

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 1977, Graduate School

Committee: Not Provided (Other) Subjects: Education

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 1976, Graduate School

Committee: Not Provided (Other) Subjects: Literature

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 1972, Graduate School

Committee: Not Provided (Other) Subjects: Education

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 1970, Graduate School

Committee: Not Provided (Other) Subjects: Language

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 1968, Graduate School

Committee: Not Provided (Other) Subjects: Folklore

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 1968, Graduate School

Committee: Not Provided (Other) Subjects: Literature