R-3 Repository :: Browsing by Author "Aresu, Bernard"

Browsing by Author "Aresu, Bernard"

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Crossing frames of art and identity: Baya, Cixous, and Beji
(2008) Futamura, C. Wakaba; Aresu, Bernard
Born in North African countries and brought up in transcultural environments, Algerian painter Baya Mahiddine, Francophone author Helene Cixous, and Tunisian writer Hele Beji produce works that challenge national, cultural, and social frames of category. This study demonstrates how the three women explore their complex sociocultural backgrounds and produce original works and ideas that undermine preset conventions. The paper examines Baya, Cixous, and Beji in separate chapters in order to identify the commonalities and distinctions of their personal histories and works. They develop innovative techniques or ideas from a transcultural perspective that illustrates, addresses, and transcends issues concerning a complicated past: a disconnected heritage, an inaccessible homeland, and fading cultural traditions. Despite their divergent origins and motivations, they converge in the project of recreating identity through the creative activities of painting and writing. From a unique "transpective" viewpoint that crosses the boundaries of time, gender, and culture, they re-present and rewrite femininity, memory, and sociocultural realities in a way that surpasses classifications and expectations. Whether due to their sociocultural circumstance or personal conviction, they exercise a liberated creativity in order to contribute important works to the fields of visual arts and Francophone literature. In the process of investigating the significant and original accomplishments of Baya, Cixous, and Beji, this study reveals the location of "truth" of each woman's transcultural identity. Their plural subjectivity lies beyond the confines of a frame and resides in an undesignated "passe-partout," or interstitial, region. Within the spaces of art and literature, the three women discover a place of illusion, a "Ka'aba," where they can enjoy a liberated creativity and express their singularity. As the twenty-first century heads towards an increasingly transnational future, individuals globally must similarly embrace a transpective vision in order to maintain cross-cultural understanding and solidarity.
Death as Poetics of Dislocation in the Global South: René Depestre, Maryse Condé, and Santiago Gamboa
(2017-04-21) Umana, Adriana Umaña; Aresu, Bernard
Fiction writing in the Global South—because of the region’s history and experience with colonialism—has been inextricably linked to questions of self-definition and collective representation. In a context of political and cultural domination, creative writers found themselves in the privileged but constrictive position of being the voice of a national community that was invested in articulating and affirming its cultural particularism. Death as Poetics of Dislocation surveys a gradual distancing from this position in the works of René Depestre, Maryse Condé and Santiago Gamboa and argues that representations of death function as the means to question notions of national exceptionalism and secure entry into a larger world literary space. Whereas the Global South translates both a postcolonial condition and an emancipatory project, it can only accomplish its decolonial purpose when writers cease to locate themselves at the periphery and in reaction to former colonial centers. René Depestre’s reconfiguration of the zombie—a historically charged symbol embodying many of the nation’s troubles—extracts Haiti and Haitians out of a position of isolated victimhood at the margins and proposes instead a view of Haitians as transnational, diasporic heroes whose agency re-enters the world in order to heal it. Similarly, Maryse Condé has recourse to mourning to deconstruct a series of myths that have shaped collective narratives in the French West Indies, ideas that have restricted individual freedom. Through the destabilizing power of grief, she accords a newfound lucidity to characters who had been relegated to silence for the sake of recovering the voice of an idealized community, but whose experience of bereavement propels them to pursue a life unbound by the place of their birth. Violent crime in Santiago Gamboa’s novels gives the writer the necessary means to abandon the exceptionalist and tragic depictions of his native Colombia, which have characterized several generations of writers. His transnational portrayal of human cruelty conveys how contemporary experience cannot be contained within any one set of national borders, but straddles several geographical locations at the same time. Depestre, Condé, and Gamboa’s poetics of death highlight the global dimension of Haitian, Guadeloupean, and Colombian writing and challenge the very idea of homogeneous national cultures and literary traditions.
Disorienting Forms: Jean Dubuffet, Portraiture, Ethnography
(2015-08-04) Chadwick, Stephanie; Hughes, Gordon; Bader, Graham; Aresu, Bernard
This dissertation explores an under-studied yet key aspect of Dubuffet’s figuration—the intersections between Surrealism, ethnography, and performance in his portraits of writers and artist-intellectuals seeking to transform art, culture, and the human image in the post-WWII context. As I argue, Dubuffet produced his portraits in dialogue with the writings of certain of his key sitters, whose prose extolled alternative art forms as a means to transform Western art and culture. Considering Dubuffet’s portraits in relation to his and his sitters’ writings, as well as arts and ethnographic publications, I reveal his looking, for artistic inspiration, to the very cultural forms that had informed his sitters’ production. Many of these are Oceanic masks and figures found in Surrealist collections. Intriguingly, however, many are Indonesian masks, costumes, and puppets that have received scant attention in art historical studies. Combining a variety of visual sources to produce hybrid figures, Dubuffet aimed, I argue, to both affect the viewer and promote a thought-provoking artistic experience. In foregrounding the physicality of his figures in relation to the painting’s surface, moreover, Dubuffet calls attention to the very structure of the tableau, foregrounding the embodied and enculturated, experiences of the viewer. Chapter One, “Animat[ing] the Material:” Dissociation, Performance, and Ethnography in Dubuffet’s Portraits of Antonin Artaud, considers Dubuffet’s painting in relation to the mad Surrealist’s celebration of the affective qualities of Balinese stagecraft in his book The Theater and Its Double. Chapter Two, “The Hand Speaks:” Dislocation, Creativity, and Meaning in Dubuffet’s Portraits of Henri Michaux, considers these likenesses with regard to an aesthetic of displacement in Michaux’s book A Barbarian in Asia and to a variety of Indonesian masks and puppets. Chapter Three, “Evocations and References:” Assemblage, Translation, and Transformation in Dubuffet’s Portraits of Michel Tapié, considers Dubuffet’s depictions of this painter, critic, and curator in tandem with the Oceanic motifs to which, I argue, Dubuffet turned to produce his hybrid, collage-like figures. “Transmuting:” Collage, Theatricality, and Performativity in Dubuffet’s Self-Portraits, concludes the dissertation with an overview of Dubuffet’s career-long engagement with hybridity, collage, and performativity gleaned through his self-portraiture.
Du poetique au politique: Transfiguration esthetique et depassement chez Baudelaire, Prevert et Cesaire
(2010) Van de Wiele, Aurelie; Aresu, Bernard; Harter, Deborah
This study focuses on how the works of Charles Baudelaire, Jacques Prevert and Aime Cesaire respond to misery and existential anguish in the context of the shift to modernity, and particularly through the changes that modernity brings to philosophical discourses on the human and social condition. I argue that all three writers, although in different ways, explore the qualities of a particular perception of the world as a response to human alienation and social agony. This perception, based on "aesthetic transfiguration," goes beyond the appearance and usefulness of things to capture the aesthetic and metaphorical value of the world around us. I suggest that this vision, to varying degrees and with varying success, makes possible a certain relief from a social world of discontent for those able to achieve it; it also represents the first step toward a more political and collective reaction toward social and human dissatisfaction. My dissertation brings together the works of three very different poets, unveils the evolution of the role of literature in the past two centuries and serves, finally, to illuminate the concept of modernity.
Esthetique de l'horreur: Le genocide rwandais dans la litterature africaine
(2009) Sow, Sadibou; Aresu, Bernard
The Rwandan genocide of 1994 has inspired several works in various fields, including literature. At the same time and since the Holocaust, the literary depiction of genocide and mass murder has raised complex issues about the relationship between ethics and esthetics. Using a multidisciplinary approach, the goal of this dissertation is to place the literary narratives of the Rwandan genocide within the larger context of recent studies on the issues of identity as well as the perpetration of evil. The dissertation, thus, hopes to provide a better understanding of both the universal and specific dimensions of the Rwandan genocide.
L'adaptation cinematographique des oeuvres litteraires (l'exemple de Dostoievski)
(2003) Ershova-Darras, Eugenia Zoltanovna; Aresu, Bernard
This study examines different aspects of the screen adaptation of literary works through the close analysis of three films based on Dostoyevsky's novels: Pierre Chenal's Crime and Punishment, Robert Bresson's Pickpocket, Denys Arcand's Jesus of Montreal. Its originality lies in bringing to light the multifaceted nature of adaptation which is presented not only as a transfer, but also as a phenomenon having different degrees of occurrence, which can range from a simple borrowing to an elaboration of new artistic forms. The study is divided into three parts. It starts with the introduction which discusses adaptation in the light of the theory of Gerard Genette and establishes three major degrees of adaptation: formal, thematic and dialogic. The first part deals with the praxis of formal adaptation, specifically how Pierre Chenal adapted Crime and Punishment, i.e. what he borrowed from the original novel and how he created the atmosphere of nightmare by using expressionist elements such as a slightly deformed set, contrasting lights, projection of shadows. The second part focuses on the thematic adaptation by Robert Bresson who develops in his Pickpocket the themes of transgression, pride, the "will to power", and solitude, which were treated by Dostoyevsky in Crime and Punishment and The Gambler. It also highlights similarities between Bresson's and Dostoyevsky's aesthetic conceptions. The last part examines Denys Arcand's dialogic adaptation which contains a great variety of quotations and references, as well as a multiplicity of voices which composes a modern parable of the Passion. In focusing on the two main voices, the Gospels' voice and Dostoyevsky's voice, this final portion establishes their narrative functions, mode of occurrence, and relationship to one another.
L'esthétique de la traversée: Chaïbia Tallal, Maïssa Bey et Assia Djebar
(2013-11-01) Noury, Nelly; Aresu, Bernard; Goux, Jean-Joseph; Cohen, Gerard
This study shows how the Moroccan painter, Chaïbia Tallal, and the Algerian novelists Assia Djebar and Maïssa Bey have creatively challenged the orientalist representation of the silenced, helpless, and oppressed Arab woman. They simultaneously take issue with the framework of her eroticized portrait, that of the seductive and passive odalisque, always ready to display her nude body to the voyeurism and ‘’controlling’’ gaze of the orientalist painters of the 19th century. In so doing, I argue that these three artists of North African origin offer a de-orientalizing gaze without falling, at the same time, into the trap of reproducing binary categories by merely reversing orientalist discourse. In other words, Chaïbia, Djebar, and Bey generate a renewed and sovereign gaze that refuses to perpetuate the othering of the Other by creating a radical alterity. The first chapter examines how Chaibia’s painting has been framed within the narrative of the ‘’naïve painter’’ which fails to acknowledge, on the one hand, the transgression of her abstract aesthetic which celebrates the liberation of the body of the woman and on the other hand, to highlight her hybrid identity through the fusion of modern Western abstraction and Islamic art. The second chapter focuses on the novel of Maïssa Bey, Cette fille-là (2001), which offers an important reflection on the act of writing as a form of resistance that enables the disoriented female narrator, Malika, to recompose her fragmented identity and to unveil a plural and sororal subjectivity. The last chapter focuses on the historian, filmmaker, and novelist Assia Djebar who has been the target of harsh criticism, following her election as one of the Académie Française’s Immortals in 2005, for portraying Algerian women as helpless victims in need of rescue from the West. However, I argue that in her novel, La Femme sans sépulture (2002), which recounts the story of Zoulikha from Cherchell, a female heroine of the Algerian war of resistance, Djebar refuses to confine the identity of the Algerian woman to the victimhood complex. Djebar offers therefore a recasting of the Algerian struggle for independence through the prism of postcolonialism, which promotes dialogic encounters rather than propagate, as some French intellectuals maintain, the intrinsic and insurmountable difference between the West and the Rest.
L'unite des images dans Capitale de la Douleur de Paul Eluard
(1980) Martin, Karen Elaine; Raaphorst, Madeleine R.; Aresu, Bernard; Nelson, Deborah
The object of this study is to show the unity of Paul Eluard's Capitale de la Douleur (1926) as it is revealed through the imagery in the poetic text. Preliminary observations in the first chapter include a concise biography of Eluard, Eluard's definition of the image and a brief analysis of the vital relationship between word and image in Eluard poems. Principal figures of style in Capitale de la Douleur are discussed as well as specific sonorous effects created through assonance and alliteration. The first chapter closes with a résumé of critical works about Eluard's poetry and an explanation of the method used in this study of Capitale de la Douleur. Chapter Two constitutes the "body” of the thesis, exploring Capitale de la Douleur across the themes and sources of its images in an effort to give objective proof of its unity. All the images are classified and studied according to the following categories: Nature, Common Objects, Weapons, Games, Supernatural Beings, Childhood, Introspective Processes, Personification, Abstract Qualities and the Eyes. The third chapter is a discussion of Eluard's stylistic techniques in Capitale de la Douleur such as exploitation of a single image or of several images (for example, the sun, the bird, the woman and the eyes), overlapping, superimposed and reciprocal images, important figures of style (similes and metaphors) and innovative use of sounds. This study concludes that thematic continuity gives Capitale de la Douleur a strong internal coherence while use of the same source of images in conjunction with varied themes contributes to the unity of the work, linking several themes by means of a stylistic technique.
Labyrinths of Echo: Repetition, otherness, and autobiography in the narratives by Makine, Gary, Sijie, and Sarraute
(2009) Stepanova, Natalya; Aresu, Bernard
This study focuses on the four first-person narratives: Andreï Makine's Le testament français , Romain Gary's La promesse de l'aube , Dai Sijie's Balzac et la Petite Tailleuse chinoise , and Nathalie Sarraute's Enfance . Using the myth of Echo and its strategic ambiguities of identity and language as the point of departure, this analysis identified various theoretical texts by Gilbert Durand, Julia Kristeva, Philippe Lejeune, Milan Kundera, and Mikhail Bakhtine, which focus on similar issues. The application of their analyses to the four literary texts revealed veritable labyrinths of echoes: traumatic childhood memories, rich intertexts, complicated relationships with the Other, and hesitations between two genres.
Mythical magnitude: Selected short fiction of Marguerite Yourcenar (France)
(1988) Frederick, Patricia E.; Aresu, Bernard
During the decade of the 1930's Marguerite Yourcenar's metaphysical thinking expressed itself through myth, an, as the writer herself affirms, many of her characters thus represent "figures of mythical magnitude." With the object of revealing this "mythical magnitude" or universal aspect of her short fiction, our study, which relies upon the theories of Mircea Eliade, Gilbert Durand and C. G. Jung, offers a symbolic reading of three of Yourcenar's early works, all originally published in the 1930's: the Nouvelles orientales, Lew Coup de Grace and "Anna, Soror dots" (Comme l'Eau qui coule). Despite the worldwide recognition the author's novels have received, these examples of her early fiction have been largely overlooked by scholars. Included in the Nouvelles orientales (1938) are ten tales which share a great deal more than an Eastern orientation and whose particular positions in the collection are far from arbitrary. Linking all of the stories is the foundation of alchemical thought and mythical symbolism upon which they are all constructed, and their placement in the work is based upon a precise pattern of solar imagery. The concluding tale, revealing the disparity between Oriental and Occidental thought, leads to our examination of two longer narratives set in Europe, Le Coup de Grace (193) and "Anna Soror dots" (1934), both of which also rely upon Alchemy and Myth in their presentation of themes which parallel those found in the Nouvelles orientales. A central element in all three works is the contrast they present between a "diurnal" and a "nocturnal" conception of time, the former represented by Western or Christian thought and the latter, by Eastern philosophy, mysticism or the hermatic sciences. In addition to disproving comments regarding the anti-feminist aspects of Yourcenar's writing, our study of her short fiction ultimately signals the fundamental originality of these early narratives and firmly establishes them as masterpieces of French literature.
Narrative reflexivity and orphic reflection in Anne Hebert's novels
(1996) Sager-Smith, Marie-Christine; Aresu, Bernard
Anne Hebert has produced a variety of works which act like a mirror with multiple reflection effects. The main themes of love, death, and of writing are integrated in the majority of the novels, in the framework of a fictitious autobiography of a character. Reconstructing the past, the main character daydreams and looks at a mirror which reveals changes. The reflection of this person in the plot is doubled at the level of the writing which reflects itself through the process of autorepresentation. Lucien Dallenbach's theory expressed in The Mirror in the Text, helps us bring out the components of autorepresentation in the novels by Anne Hebert. The first chapter deals with the reflection of the enunciation taking into account the aspects of the production and of the reception of a text as well as the variety of textual metaphors. The second chapter concerns the reflection of the fiction. It analyzes the position and the importance of the "mise en abyme" in the novels as well as the different degrees of the text. The concept of "hypertextuality" in Gerard Genette's Palimpsest allows us to define the relationship Anne Hebert's novels maintain with other French, British and American literary texts. The problem of the origin of the work of art and of poetic creation forms the subject of the third chapter. The texts reflect their origin, which in Anne Hebert's novels stem from an encounter of the main character with death, thus reenacting Orpheus's plight. Via a real or a mental trip to the kingdom of the dead, the main characters draw their possibilities of art. At the same time they compensate for the absence which death has produced in the act of narration. The presence of orphic poets and texts appearing in Anne Hebert's works through intertextuality and "hypertextuality" enhance the characters' orphic experience in the fiction. To a varying degree, all the novels renew and reflect the orphic myth of creation and liberation.
Paul Smail's "Casa, la casa": A critical translation
(2005) Kilpatrick, James; Aresu, Bernard
This work examines principles and theories of literary translation such as literal and non-literal fidelity to the original writing, translational transparency and visibility, and the concepts of "foreignization" and "domestication" in a translated text. Conclusions drawn here are used as a basis to perform a critical evaluation of Smile, the 2000 version of Paul Smail's Vivre me tue . A comparative analysis of the French novel to the English discusses some of the problematic areas of this translation and endeavors to provide alternative translations that would prove more accurate and effective. Subsequent chapters of the dissertation consider the cultural and linguistic difficulties inherent in the Casa, la casa translation and present the ways in which these difficulties were resolved. Round-Trip Barbes, the translation of Casa, la casa, attempts to remain faithful to the original both literally and literarily---to render the strict and full meaning of the author's words while striving to maintain in English the author's style of writing. The translation includes extensive notes offering insight into the socio-cultural and political environment of contemporary France as well as the various news events that, in many ways, shape the narrative. Annotations also signal to the reader the numerous occurrences of intertextual citation and allusion that Smail's work incorporates.
Rebellion and nihilism in the works of Leila Sebbar and V. S. Naipaul
(2005) Stranges, Peter Bartles; Aresu, Bernard
This study proposes that Leila Sebbar and V. S. Naipaul, two widely-read contemporary novelists, intuitively understand Albert Camus' idea of revolt, using it to legitimate their non-essentialized, transcultural models of individual and collective identity. This dissertation views an Algerian teenager's rendezvous with Nobel Prize-winning author V. S. Naipaul in Les Carnets de Sherazade as a magical portal through which Leila Sebbar allows us to see her fiction as a subversion and a reappropriation of the liberal philosophical principles underlying V. S. Naipaul's novels and travel journals. Although they interpret the increasing visibility of cultural, racial, and religious fundamentalisms in Western and non-Western societies as signs of a gathering nihilistic storm, neither Sebbar nor Naipaul believe that these epistemologically bounded ideologies of revolt are invincible. Instead, both depict rebellion, an epistemologically open-ended and altruistic form of revolt, as the exclusive means through which post-colonials across the globe can experience individual and communal wholeness---liberty, equality, fraternity, and peace---amidst the eponymous mixing of different peoples and truths in the late twentieth century. Chapter One explores the concepts of rebellion and nihilism in Albert Camus' The Rebel and Francis Fukuyama's The End of History and the Last Man. It also investigates the uncanny philosophical and thematic parallels in Leila Sebbar's and V. S. Naipaul's works. Chapter Two analyzes the theme of the returned gaze in Sebbar's Sherazade and Le Fou de Sherazade. It shows how Sherazade, Sebbar's title character, resists Orientalism and Islamic orthodoxy in a rebellious manner. The Algerian teenager challenges the "master's" desire for supremacy without denying his or her dignity. Chapter Three investigates the relationship between Sebbar's fiction and Lettres parisiennes: autopsie de l'exil, her correspondence with Canadian author Nancy Huston. It demonstrates that Sebbar's formulation of exile as a hybrid, contingent identitarian space in Lettres parisiennes is coterminous with Camus' notion of rebellion. Chapter Four is a detailed study of Sherazade's encounter with V. S. Naipaul in southwestern France in Les Carnets de Sherazade. Using Anne Donadey's model of mimicry, it claims that Sebbar subverts the British-Caribbean writer's representations of the ex-colonized's subjectivity and revalidates his underlying faith in rebellion.
Rehabilitating the Witch: The Literary Representation of the Witch from the "Malleus Maleficarum" to "Les Enfants du sabbat"
(2012) Blomquist, Lisa Travis; Aresu, Bernard
The representation of the witch in French literature has evolved considerably over the centuries. While originally portrayed as a benevolent and caring healer in works by Marie de France, Chrétien de Troyes, and the anonymous author of Amadas et Ydoine , the witch eventually underwent a dramatic and unfortunate transformation. By the fifteenth century, authors began to portray her as a malevolent and dangerous agent of the Christian Devil. Martin Le Franc, Pierre de Ronsard, Joachim du Bellay, François Rabelais, and Pierre Corneille all created evil witch figures that corresponded with this new definition. It was not until the eighteenth century, through the works of Voltaire and the Encyclopédistes, that the rehabilitation of the witch began. By the twentieth century, Anne Hébert, Jean-Paul Sartre, Maryse Condé, and Sebastiano Vassalli began to rewrite the witch character by engaging in a process of demystification and by demonstrating that the "witch" was really just a victim of the society in which she lived. These authors humanized their witch figures by concentrating on the victimization of their witch protagonists and by exposing the ways in which their fictional societies unjustly created identities for their witch protagonists that were based on false judgments and rumors. Hébert attacks Sigmund Freud's association of the witch and the hysteric, Sartre utilizes his witches to expose many of his existential ideals, Condé highlights the role that racism played in witchcraft, and Vassalli strives to rewrite history by telling the story from the point of view of his witch character. Each twentieth-century author provides a story that deconstructs the very nature of the witch as this had been constructed over time, and shows how witches expose the problems associated with understanding one's place in the world in both their individual and their social dimensions. The witch, for these authors, challenges dominant norms and reveals how much our identities are influenced by our interactions with other individuals. And, because the witches in each text are marginal beings, they expose the repressiveness of their particular environments and the idiosyncrasies of their cultures. In all these ways, or so these 20 th -century authors contend, we as modern readers, can relate to their situations and learn from their stories.
Subjectivites feminines et reecriture des histoires antillaises dans l'oeuvre romanesque de Maryse Conde, Simone Schwarz-Bart et Myriam Warner-Vieyra
(1999) Anagnostopoulou, Maria; Aresu, Bernard
French Caribbean along with other Third World intellectuals have examined from different perspectives not only the oppositions, but also the interconnections between the colonial subject and the colonized other. In their discussions, which are enlightening to all other respects, the role and the significance of women are, nevertheless, undermined or even totally forgotten. In this work I am focusing on "autobiographical" novels written by three Guadeloupean authors, Maryse Conde, Simone Schwarz-Bart and Myriam Warner-Vieyra, who address the absence of female discourse on and from history. In their books, the female subject constitutes itself through its search for historical rehabilitation. This rehabilitation is hindered by a past of violence against the female body. Physically abused, during slavery and even after, the Caribbean woman succeeds in organizing her resistance. The latter functions as a "detour" that challenges the authority of colonial and patriarchal structures. Her confidence is nevertheless tested when she tries to build the cultural "arriere pays" she lacks. Although the idea of a return to Africa seems appealing at first, her trip to the maternal land turns out to be nothing more than the discovery of a world she does not understand and that is slowly disappearing in the midst of political turmoil. Her constant wanderings lead her to Europe or to America but fail to provide her with a real sense of identity. Twice colonized, victim of an endless movement of migration, she remains a prisoner of the Hegelian dialectics of the master and the slave. She finds, however, a way to penetrate the realm, ferociously protected by her oppressors, and uses their tools to deconstruct the legend of the impenetrability of colonial power. The realization of her hybrid subjectivity allows a new relationship with the island. This land of exile becomes also associated with images of a nourishing and caring mother and, therefore, helps her establish her own genealogy and create her own myths. Finally, writing becomes crucial in the process of constructing female subjectivity. Language and narrative structure build the foundations for the development of a "poetics of relation" that privileges plurality and fragmentation.

Browsing by Author "Aresu, Bernard"

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