NCube/papyrus huggingface dataset:
Le bivouac d’Austerlitz selon Louis-François Lejeune : les guerres napoléoniennes entre construction identitaire et construction historique

Painter, soldier, and memorialist Louis-François Lejeune (1775-1848) conceived his battle paintings and his memoirs, Souvenirs d’un officier de l’Empire (1851), as historical testimonies of the Napoleonic period, destined for posterity. This twinning of paintings and memoirs mirrors the duality of Napoleonic propaganda as a whole, which disseminates a single version of military events with the help of unprecedented information tools such as the Bulletins de la Grande Armée. This written narrative, already thought of as historical, is picked up again in the paintings commissioned by the government. This master’s thesis argues that Lejeune contributes in a unique way to this historical narrative, first at an individual level by constructing his identity from his participation in the Napoleonic wars, and also at a state level. His Bivouac d’Austerlitz, presented at the 1808 Salon, was commissioned by the government as part of a larger order. It is shown that this painting fits first into Lejeune’s career, then into his cycle of battle paintings, and finally into the narrative of Austerlitz that Napoleon himself promoted. The episodic form of this painting can be explained by the deliberate pairing of written and pictorial narratives, which borrows from the 30th bulletin de la Grande Armée where Napoleon recounts the victory at Austerlitz. This painting thus contributes to the historical construction of the battle. As deep transformations threatened the academic genre hierarchy at the turn of the nineteenth century, the duality of Lejeune’s persona as soldier and painter helped promote the historical function given to paintings under Napoleon.

Keyphrases: Louis-François Lejeune (1775-1848), Bulletins de la Grande Armée, Battle painting, Memorialists, Battle of Austerlitz (December 2nd 1805), Napoleon (1769-1821), Salon of 1808, History painting, Napoleonic wars
La corporéité des rapports de pouvoir dans un exercice de co-création médiatique : voir autrement

Among our current hetero-normed society (Butler 1990), visual representations are always tainted with prescribed and gendered cultural codes that are impossible to get rid of. These images actualize and convey power relations (Foucault 1973) that we unconsciously incorporate through our personal identifications and artistic practices.   This master's degree in film studies aims, on the one hand, to contribute to the development of a critical and situated (Haraway 1988) research-creation methodology (Boutet 2018) as an academic research exercise by questioning power relations, and, on the other hand, to offer an alternative to nude photography through the conception of an ephemeral light and sound installation.  My research question includes a political approach and a research methodology. On the one hand, how does a collaborative autoethnographic research-creation (Chang, Hernandez and Ngunjiri 2012) allows us to rethink the power relations within an artistic practice in order to create images of a female body without reproducing some heteronormative reflexes? On the other hand, how does a critical and self-reflexive feminist queer approach can develop strategies of resistance and consequently avoid the gendered cultural codifications of its context?   I argue that by dematerializing the body though a light and sound ephemeral installation practice, based on a collaborative methodology, it would be possible to offer resistance to the heteronormative reflexes currently involved in the visual representation of a female body. This artistic form that intentionally stands out from a traditional visual storytelling would thus become a way of resisting the Male Gaze (Mulvey 1993).   My project is a methodological inquiry that investigates the intuitive and qualitative approach of collaborative autoethnography as an inclusive method that allows us to question the ethics of representation. Within the framework of a research-creation methodology, the creative process is regarded as an academic research and allows me to include my other parallel artistic practices into a protean master’s thesis.

Keyphrases: Queer, Installation, Collaborative Autoethnography, Research-creation, Corporeality, Power Relations
La Promenade Masson : une étude de l'évolution du paysage alimentaire

The increase in the cost of housing is a phenomenon observed in several Canadian cities and Montreal is no exception. Even within the Quebec metropolis, this growth is taking place in certain boroughs such as Rosemont-La Petite-Patrie. Indeed, the increase in the cost of housing is significant and leads researchers to speak of residential gentrification. This study deepens the reflection of this process of socio-economic transformation of the district by integrating the commercial aspect of gentrification. Indeed, for several years now, the commercial development of Promenade Masson has been oriented towards offering better quality, more refined and more upscale products. Through various initiatives, merchants are even going so far as to offer a shopping experience to the consumer to create an emotional link between the consumer and the business. This is what leads us to consider the food landscape as a dynamic and complex space that is in keeping with David Harvey's tripartite conception of space. Thus, we approach the food landscape by considering its absolute, relative and relational dimensions. Following this contextualization, we question the link between commercial gentrification and the evolution of the food landscape. This research project also identifies 1) the social, demographic and economic evolution of the neighbourhood between 1996 and 2016; 2) the evolution of the food stores on Promenade Masson since the 2000s and 3) the mobilization of the food landscape by consumers.

Keyphrases: Promenade Masson, Rosemont-La Petite-Patrie, Production of space, Food landscape, Commercial gentrification
La foi en l’obscur : le sacré sale et le mysticisme du jeu chez Georges Bataille

It was in the first half of contemporary 20th century when France was well secularized that Georges Bataille (1897 - 1962) constructed a scandalous - deeply Nietzschean - thought. The body is then conceptually not only at the center of Bataille's preoccupations, it now thinks of itself through its scandalous reality: eroticism, exhilarating and dirty. We are witnessing a sacralization of debauchery of all kinds and this is how Bataille's philosophical singularity operates. Indeed, a sacred thing does not exist in the sublime sky, in any deity or, in other words, in the heights, but in its exact opposite wich his the low, the excess, the eroticism and the dirty. This inversion in the order of the world is the desecration itself. This is why, with Mary Douglas, I was able to link two ideas that seemed contradictory to me: the dirty and the sacred. Knowing that Bataille is also a writer (Sade is a major influence), I can include a few stories to perfectly illustrate these two opposites. This is one of the most fundamental characteristics of the work I have mentioned: all of Bataille's works are paradoxical and antinomic.   It is precisely from this same observation that I approach the question of mysticism in Bataille works. With the question of the sacred, the conception of mysticism involves an implicit critique of Christianity (opposition of sky and earth, for example). It is the instant and its hazard - the absence of purpose - that opens necessarily the way to experience as writing communicates its essence while making it more intelligible. From there precisely, Bataille developed the idea of chance in agreement with Nietzsche. Nietzsche becomes at the same time very present in the conception of the mysticism of Bataille. We can just think about the figure of the superhuman that we can associate with the sovereign man or even the will of power that we can compare to the will of chance. From then on, Bataille puts forward a mystic game, by placing himself in this radical game, from which the luck evoked by Bataille can emerge and which is nothing else than the possibility of experience itself. Finally, it is clear that the mental and physical fragility that are triggered in Bataille mystical experience also hide a form of self-sacrifice in the name of enjoyment but also in the name of the text.

Keyphrases: Georges Bataille, Chance, Friedrich Nietzsche, Sacred dirty, Mysticism game, Dionysiac mysticism, Eroticism, Exhilarating, Hazard, Sovereing man, French literature (1900 – 1950)
Souverainetés du littéraire dans trois écrits de Marguerite Duras

How can one show the unspeakable, contradictions and paradoxes —  and why would one attempt to do so ? For Marguerite Duras, whose work carries aporias, the answer to this fundamental question lies in literary writing. In this dissertation, we will question the notion of literary sovereignty (Menke), which allows us to think the crisis of non-aesthetic discourses (historical, judicial, journalistic, for example) in Duras' work, as well as the engagement of the author through her writing, which alone can bear her opposing and violent positions, but also "the black mourning of life, the commonplace of all thought". First, we will study the singularity of Duras' engagement ; if the political engagement in her public life is marked by many upheavals, we will be able to observe, from the analysis of the text "Sublime, forcément sublime Christine V." (1985), how an engagement (Sartre, Barthes) through literature appears in the author's writing. This writing also bears a certain oracular capacity, establishing clairvoyance as one of the sources of literary sovereignty. Through the study of "La mort du jeune aviateur anglais" (1993), we will then explore the particularity of the posture and enunciation (Meizoz) of Duras, as well as the possibility of the confrontation of  aporia that literary discourse offers. The word of the other and the word of the dead is appropriated for the benefit of the mythical narrative, evacuating the historical and documentary dimensions of testimony in order to move towards a universalizing parable. Finally, through an analysis of La douleur (1985) and its paratext, we will see how the rewriting of texts before their publication inscribes them in an strong commitment, more akin to the project of literary engagement that Duras weaves in the last ten years of his career. Duras' writing in this work shows how literary discourse can represent the crisis of thought and of other discourses. This crisis of discourse and thought, which can be found in the three texts studied in this dissertation, will allow us to think about literary sovereignty in Marguerite Duras' writing.

Keyphrases: Marguerite Duras, Engagement, Posture, Sovereignty, Authorship, Voice, Myth, Event, Rewriting, French literature
Sémiotique du jugement esthétique dans Le Côté de Guermantes de Marcel Proust

This master explores the production of meaning through aesthetic judgments in The Guermantes Way, the third volume of Marcel Proust’s In Search of Lost Time. The narrator of this text, who admires creators like Elstir, Wagner and Hugo while despising Vibert, Auber and other artists like Bornier, develops a rich aesthetic discourse that contradicts the taste of most of the novel’s characters, whose artistical opinions are mostly exposed in the long social scenes that constitute a good context for artistic conversations as well as an obstacle to what Kant calls the « purity » of judgment. The signification of these passages relies on the presence of a code that, across In Search of Lost Time, provides instructions to the reader about the value of the different aesthetic unities to be judged as well as about the right way to appreciate a work of art. The analysis of this system’s structure (broken down in units, predicates, modalities, settings and processes) is an aspect of our work, which also consists of two lines of research. First, the aesthetical aspect is related to the position of the judgments between two poles : the one of the « pure aesthetic » inspired by Kant’s Critique of Judgment, which is a way of trying to make free and disinterested judgments prioritizing formal characteristics, opposed to the one of a « popular aesthetic » developed in Bourdieu’s La Distinction, which tends to judge a work with the same criteria used in judging an object in everyday life. Then, our narrative line of research explores the character building and the sociological function of artistic opinions. We answer those questions by analysing successively the pictorial, musical and literary aesthetical judgments in The Guermantes Way.

Keyphrases: Marcel Proust, The Guermantes Way, Aesthetical judgments, Taste, Sémiotique, Semiotics, Painting, Music, Literature
La représentation de l’enfance dans deux romans de Calixthe Beyala

This dissertation draws its research hypothesis from an observation, that of the scarcity of studies on childhood in the fictional works of the writer Calixthe Beyala. Indeed, it emerges from our readings that this theme has so far remained on the fringes of critical concerns, although it is one of the novelist's favorite subjects. The studies that do exist are marked by their very general or fragmentary character. This dissertation therefore proposes to question childhood as it is represented in two novels that fall under the generic category of childhood stories. All the interest and relevance of the question are based on the perspective in which it is situated, that is to say in clear demarcation with the conventional conceptions of childhood in Europe (Rousseau, Novalis) or those which prevailed in traditional Africa (Senghor, Camara Laye) which make childhood a privileged moment of life, at the same time idyllic, carefree and joyful. The romantic universe of Beyala, on the contrary, presents unhappy, vulnerable, confused children, in search of landmarks, carrying the burden of their misfortunes resulting from the inconsistency of the family, the adult and the society whose structures and the practices dispossess them of their childhood. In this light, the reflections that are carried out in this dissertation revolve around the deconstruction of the conventional imagination of childhood, a paradoxical and confusing imaginary, in view of the dysfunctions within the family and society that characterize the universe of childhood in our corpus. Our study is based on theoretical approaches such as character analysis and narratology. It analyzes, through their characteristics, their actions and their relational network, the diegetic journey of the children's characters in order to discover the meanings attached to their construction. The narrative modalities and strategies involved, on the other hand, show the centrality of the child, both as a character and as a narrator of his story, with the implications such as the predominance of his point of view. The study also opens up on the social issues that feed the two narratives and reveals the critical discourse on society that underlies this writing of childhood.

Keyphrases: childhood story, French-speaking African literature, characters, narrative modalities
L'émancipation spectatrice dans le théâtre d'Olivier Choinière

This master’s thesis addresses three works of the Quebec playwright Olivier Choinière, Beauté intérieure, Projet blanc and Manifeste de la Jeune-Fille with the aim of highlighting the possibilities of spectator emancipation. From his very beginnings, Choinière has held a critical discourse on the theater spectator, and he consequently seeks to include and involve him in his creations. In the light of the theories of reception and especially those of Jacques Rancière in Le spectateur émancipé, this master’s thesis aims to assess the emancipatory possibilities of Choinière's work by analyzing the different means he uses to include the spectator, both formally and politically. At the heart of Rancière's theory is the spectator paradox, which refers to the various means used by contemporary playwrights to force spectator activity and which, according to him, undermine his emancipation. This dissertation will therefore analyze Choinière's work, paying particular attention to the possible reproduction of this paradox in order to establish a degree of probable spectator emancipation in the three chosen pieces.

Keyphrases: Théâtre contemporain, Spectateur émancipé, Olivier Choinière, Quebec theatre, Contemporary theatre, Reception theories, Emancipated spectator
Quand proférer, c’est faire : resignifications des filles « ingouvernables » chez Josée Yvon, Chloé Savoie-Bernard et Catherine Lalonde

Based on the performative force of insults that shapes the writing of three Quebec poets, this dissertation explores the discursive strategies through which they reverse the stigmatization of women embedded in injurious speech. Such vocabulary as “fées mal tournées”, “plotes de riche”, “crisse de folles”, “bâtardes”, “sorcières” and “chiennes” is plentiful in Filles-commandos bandées (1976) by Josée Yvon, Royaume scotch tape (2015) by Chloé Savoie-Bernard and La dévoration des fées (2017) by Catherine Lalonde. The poets all create voices that reclaim insults in order to “re-signify” them, as Judith Butler conceives in Excitable Speech (1997). Being both the insulted and the insulting, they seize the power that animates insults to deflect them, endowing them with unexpected meanings and transforming them into neutral and even positive terms of identification. Taking up the insults received, the writers intertwine them with the powerful characters of the Amazon, the witch and the fairy, and shape figures who reject the corsets that enclose not only their body, but also their speech. These “girls”, at times violent, vulnerable, suffering or frightening, all shine with sovereign irreverence. In that, they appear to be incarnations of Kathleen Rowe’s Unruly Woman (1995), a symbol of insubordination. Carried away by the affects that inhabit them, their excessive, desiring, desacralized and sometimes grotesque, even abject bodies, are filled with impulses and violent fantasies. This research thus examines the ways in which the “girls” of Yvon, Savoie-Bernard and Lalonde appropriate the power of anger and, positioning themselves between vulnerability and ungovernability, reveal themselves as both threatening and unifying.

Keyphrases: insult, linguistic performativity, unruly woman, feminism, gender studies, contemporary Quebec poetry, women’s writing
Intertextualidad y espacio social : de Lima la horrible a Yo amo a mi mami

Since the colonial period, the elite groups have kept the authority of power in Peru by creating economic and racial differences. The social structure benefits a minority to the detriment of the majority. The minority dominance is carried out exclusively from Lima, and this supremacy causes the administrative, social and economic centralism of the capital.   Our research problem reflects on how the literary text establishes the relationships between the centralism in Lima, the organization of the urban space, and the social inequalities in Peru. Many Peruvian authors have devoted their literary production to this topic. In our study, we analyze two literary works: Lima la horrible (1964) by Sebastián Salazar Bondy, and Yo amo a mi mami (1999) by Jaime Bayly, paying specific attention to how Bayly's work refers through a series of intertextual strategies to that of Salazar Bondy.  The space of the city of Lima serves as the substrate for the dialectics of the storyline in both Bayly’s novel and Salazar Bondy’s essay. The space operates as leit motive and transtextual structure. It is our hypothesis that Lima la horrible is a palimpsest of Yo amo a mi mami, and that the discourse presented in Salazar Bondy's work is embedded in Bayly´s novel. In these works the representation of the urban space emerges from the lived experience of the authors, who question the sociocultural foundations of their country.

Keyphrases: Lima, Salazar Bondy, Bayly, intertextuality, lived space, urban space, centralism
Ruptures et continuités : figures de l’oralité dans la littérature contemporaine

Orature is still an under-exploited concept in the literary field. Traditionally linked to the less educated classes, oral literature was ignored by research on the so-called serious literature. During the 20th century, a new approach of Homeric poems emerged from classical philology specialists. This approach presupposed a strong influence of a previous oral tradition on Homer’s epics. Both the form and the substance of those epics are tied to an oral conception of the self and literature. The idea of collective writing reappears, but not in the way it was conceptualized before. The question was no longer whether or not Homer was the sole author of the texts bearing his name. Rather, this research sought to conceive the literary process leading to the writing of The Odyssey as a collective creation, from earlier sources of the myth to its ongoing transmission, a process that exceeds any single life span. In revitalizing this perspective, researchers paved the way to a new perception of literature. This renewal overlaps with the emergence of new written traditions. Slavery and colonialism collapsed in conjunction with the will to independence, and the cultural issue arose against the backdrop of this political context. Those decolonizing populations were left with foreign languages and an unrelated writing-based structuring of society. The initial oral traditions present in those communities merged with literacy, and the contemporary era is filled with emergent literary traditions. These new literatures bear the marls of orality which constitute the orature component. In this contest, my study focuses on two aspects. First, I analyze the western comprehension of orature as exemplified in the Homeric epics. Secondly, I examine the remnants and practices of orature in emergent literary traditions, especially in the French Antilles’ literature. Studying those two elements allows for a better comprehension of the phenomenon of orature. Which underscores the collective and sociopolitical dimension of literature.

Keyphrases: orature, tradition, literature, writing, oral literature, Homer, French Antilles