NCube/papyrus huggingface dataset:
Enigmatic *-nt-Stems : an investigation of the secondary -t- of the Greek neuter nouns in *-men- and *-r/n-

This paper aims to provide an explanation of the secondary -t- found in the oblique stem of ancient Greek neuters such as πρᾶγμα, πράγματος and ἧπαρ, ἥπατος. After a brief overview of the Greek data, and a survey of the relevant nominal classes in Greek and Indo- European, previous hypotheses are evaluated. To this end, several problems of nominal morphology are discussed, including the existence of a PIE suffix *-m(e)ntom, the secondary -t-s of certain animate nouns, the ablatival suffix *-tos, the Hittite ergative; and the ablaut of neuter active participles. Certain phonological issues are also addressed. Since the majority of hypotheses formulated to explain the secondary -nt- inflection of Greek neuters date from the nineteenth century, attempts are made to re-evaluate their conclusions in the light of more recent research, particularly that related to ablaut classes. Also considered are a number of twenty-first century works which purport to explain the Greek data as part of a larger Indo- European phenomenon. This paper makes no attempt, however, to explain the PIE origins of either the *r/n-, or of the *nt- stems. It concludes that the best explanation of the Greek declensional pattern is to be found in the analogy between stems in -nt- and those in *-mn- or *-r/n-.

Keyphrases: Ancient Greek, Indo-European, morphology, nouns, neuter, n-stems, nt-stems, historical linguistics, r/n-stems, heteroclitics
Les esclaves dans les lamelles de Dodone

The long-awaited posthumous publication of S. Dakaris, I. Votokopoulou, and A.-Ph. Christidis’ reference work, Τὰ χρηστηήρια ἐλάσματα τῆς Δωδώνης τῶν ἀνασκαφών Δ. Ευαγγελίδη, contains 4216 inscriptions, nearly all unpublished. These inscriptions, being the majority of the oracular tablets found in Dodona, have raised such interest that a team of specialists are now creating a rigorous, more systematic, and open-access digital edition. This thesis is in line with previous scholars’ progress and includes, in its first chapter, a catalog of the oracular questions that have been interpreted by the previous editors as potentially relating to slaves. Readers will find a French translation of the epigraphical texts, as well as comments for each individual inscription. The second chapter consists of a synthesis demonstrating that only a third of all available data actually pertains to slaves. Finally, all slave-related oracular questions are presented in a single table, in the third and last chapter.

Keyphrases: Religion, Divination, Oracle, Slave, Lamella, Dodona, Manumission
Les deux orphelines d'Adolphe d'Ennery et Eugène Cormon (1874) ; "Oculaire", larmes et cécité : le mélodrame achevé

In the first chapter, we seek to characterize Les Deux Orphelines by Adolphe d’Ennery and Eugène Cormon [Paris, Théâtre de la Porte-Saint-Martin, February 29th, 1874] as a melodrama. Starting from the different epithets offered us by critical literature – “classic” (Brooks), “diversifié” (Thomasseau), “populaire” (Ubersfeld) or “retrouvé” (Sarcey) – not forgetting “l’oculaire du clou” (Thomasseau), we finally propose to characterize Les Deux Orphelines as a “mélodrame de l’oculaire des larmes”. This formulation covers three aspects: it integrates the play into the chronology of a genre which accompanied revolutions, beginning with that of 1789 (Przyboś, Le Hir); it emphasizes an esthetic amplified by the tableau (Frantz) arising, however, it seems to us, more from the visual than from the spectacular; finally, it underlines an ethic which is resolutely pathetic. “Ocular”, “tears”? In this play of signs (Brooks) that is melodrama, we are inevitably led to question the link which may exist between the play, the melodrama as a genre and the blindness of Louise, one of the two orphans. In the second chapter, therefore, we study blindness as it is presented in this work. The study of Louise’s character is essential, permitting us, through examples taken from the play and in light of disability studies, to illustrate, while comforting them, the traditional young blind girl in vogue in popular fiction in the 19th century (Weygand, Kudlick, Thompson). However, establishing the parallel with the mute (Brooks) and so envisaging blindness as an “infirmity of style”, –which is the formulation we propose–, the infirmity reveals itself as symptomatic of fin de siècle melodramas, the theatre using representations of blindness to characterize the melodrama as a genre. Interpreted in the logic of outdoing which is melodrama (Angenot), we will show that blindness defies the esthetic and ethic conventions until it challenges the melodrama itself. Even more, interpreted in the framework of theatricality (Féral), we acknowledge that the blindness in Les Deux Orphelines, while fitting into the questioning about seeing that haunted theatrical art of the time, foreshadowed, twenty years before the birth of cinema, the end of the prominence of theatre over other forms of entertainment (Yon). Finally, interpreted in light of a revisited historiography of the 19th century (Fureix et Jarrige), blindness, as opposed to vision and image, signified, in the cultural domain, the public’s resistance to modernity. Thus, served with great talent by d’Ennery and Cormon, two seasoned melodramatic playwrights, blindness, by its dramatic capacity (Stoddard Holmes) coupled with its powerful semiotics, makes Les Deux Orphelines a melodrama to end all melodramas.

Keyphrases: Cormon, Dennery, Pathos, Tableau, Mélodrame, Théâtre de la Porte-Saint-Martin, Blindness, Disability, Melodrama, Modernity, 19th century French Theatre, Two Orphans, Visual Studies
Stills, suivi de, Moins «ça-a-été» que «ça-pourrait-être» : fictions et distorsions de l'autoportrait

Self-portrait in as many film stills as faces coated by a subject that oscillates between a possible past, an uncertained present and an apprehended future, Stills explores this place where dreams and lucidity are combined so that a voice can talk as much about the indiscretion of flowers on the skin as of the masks that cover it. Those are the stories of a world where children are adults before their time, of a never-ending escape, of chosen solidarities that resist the worst and, most of all, death, of a universe where cruelty turns against itself only to regain strength before being spat out more impetuously. Stills questions what one becomes by leaving one's self, leaving one's origins, positioning oneself against the pre-existing image that is still there, and that defines oneself over his will. In Less « that-has-been » than « that-could-be », the thought is disseminated around an absent centre where a reader enters into a relationship of contamination with her corpus with which she sometimes shares her voice. She is writing another self-portrait at the same time that she tries less to define the genre than to analyze it. From the photographic series of Cindy Sherman and the literary works of Clarice Lispector, Carole David, Dorothée Volut and Claude Cahun, the biographical presumptions implied by the practice of self-portrait and the prejudices of authenticity associated with photography are reconsidered in this essay in order to highlight the mutations of the subjects, and the hints of a fictional world that can be found as much in the interstices of the images of Sherman as in between the lines of the texts. Looking at certain characteristics of the self-portrait, such as its elliptical structure, its self-reflexivity, its convergence with the pictorial practice of the genre, the importance of the body of the writer in his writing, the goal is here to consider the implications of seriality on the deployment of narrative in a genre that is based more on description than on narration, and to reintroduce the ethical dimension of the sexual gender in this practice which carries the broader reflection of a community that incarnates in the singular.

Keyphrases: Cindy Sherman, Clarice Lispector, Claude Cahun, Dorothée Volut, Carole David, Self-portrait in literature, Photography, Women’s representation
Purgatoire suivi de Devant le temps

Following the vagaries of memory, the play Purgatory traces back the story of Margaux, a young painter, and of her relationship with Mikaël. Margaux and Mikaël find comfort in the status quo of their relationship and sink into promises for the future that culminate in a burlesque wedding. The arrival of Laxmi and Munni, two hijras from India charged with their mythology and millennial history, and the end of the relationship with Mikaël will trigger Margaux’ descent in an infernal disintegration of her identity. Purgatory questions notions of gender and identity and perceptions of reality and time. Between the here and now of the performance and the time and space of fiction, the flow of events is interrupted by memories, the presence of omniscient subtitles and other moments, that are real or imagined.  Through the lens of Paul Ricoeur’s theory on time and narrative, the essay Devant le temps proposes the intermedial study of time in the play Purgatorio by Romeo Castellucci. On one hand, the analysis of the narrative, juxtaposed with Dante’s Purgatory, reveals three temporalities that translate the character’s alienation in the face of the violence of their existence. On the other hand, based on Chris Salter and Josette Féral’s definitions of representation and performance, the analysis of the modes of performance reveal a passage from stagnation to transformation, a process that recalls the conversion of the souls in Dante’s poem.  In short, the narrative, the modes of performance and the metatheatrical value of the various media on stage contribute to distanciate the spectator from the representation and to bring him back in the present time (Lehmann). The play portrays a complete conscience of time, as imagined by saint Augustin and Dante, which is, according to Masciandaro, a time unique to the artistic experience.

Keyphrases: temps, performance, Romeo Castellucci, Purgatorio, Dante, Divine Comédie, theatre, time, intermedial studies, representation, Divine Comedy
L’Escalier dans les arts : un dispositif de (dé)montage

Giving rhythm to our daily routine, the staircase that we climb and descend, like a musical scale, can be opened up like a fan of possibilities, especially in art. An architectural feature meant to permit passage from one level to another, it channels bodies and the flow of information, giving way to a change of state. Seeing how the writer Georges Perec uses the staircase to gather the collective life of a building, in this case the dwelling in La Vie mode d’emploi, we understand that the stairs are a gateway to people’s stories, an access to perspectives from which narratives are born. Taken for granted most of the time, the staircase can be a powerful and dramatic tool, a structure suspended between two planes, designed to create suspense. Its delayed temporality animates the shadow plays of anticipation as well as memory, akin to vertigo in space, the stairs being the source from which all rays of imagination project.  In brief, we’ll study how the literary and visual poetics of Georges Perec, Julio Cortazar and Marcel Duchamp takes a common place and reinvests it as a means to articulate new forms of motion, of the collective and its representation.

Keyphrases: design, suspense, art et architecture, Marcel Duchamp, Julio Cortazar, Georges Perec, stair(s), art and architecture, intermediality, user manual, literary analysis
La représentation de la guerre dans deux albums québécois pour la jeunesse : Nul poisson où aller et Tu me prends en photo par Marie-Francine Hébert

Québec's youth literature has evolved well over the past few years, especially from the 1970s onwards. A new theme has emerged in youth literature since 1990: war, despite the debate surrounding the treatment of sensitive subjects among young people. The authors (and illustrators) have endeavored to evoke and represent the war in their works in a way adapted to their public. This study aims to understand how warfare is presented to young children in two albums, by Marie-Francine Hébert, featuring a young girl who is the victim of a conflict of which she does not understand the stakes: Nul poisson où aller (2003) and Tu me prends en photo (2011). After a brief overview of the issues raised by difficult subjects, such as war, in literature for a young audience, this paper examines the mechanisms and methods used by Hébert and the illustrators in order to make the reality of war understandable and non-traumatic for young readers. The two works have in common the use of unspoken and implicit, as well as a very visual narrative, which avoids talking directly about violence. But they are distinguished by a different orientation given to the testimony and give rise to narratives that complement each other by speaking differently of the same object.

Keyphrases: Album, Marie-Francine Hébert, Nul poisson où aller, Tu me prends en photo, Youth literature, Children literature, War
La femme antérieure, suivi de, Taxidermie littéraire

Work : The previous Woman The story follows the evolution of a grief over one year. From moments before the death of the mother to the funeral of another woman of the family, the narrator dismembers her memory to separate real souvenirs of those who could have been manipulated by the mother narrative.  Essay: Literary taxidermy Based on the work of Jo Malin on auto/biography and the analysis of Annie Ernaux Une femme and Anaïs Barbeau-Lavalette La femme qui fuit, the essay suggests the concept of literary taxidermy. This conception would enable to analyse grief writings as vivid portraits fixing the identity of the deceased through the text. Analyzing other interpretations practices of grief and the dead body, the essay calls upon the work of French philosopher Jacques Derrida on the Economy of the Gift, to shed light on the writing process leading to those texts who could bear the title of literary taxidermy.

Keyphrases: Annie Ernaux, Anaïs Barbeau-Lavalette, Jacques Derrida, Mother, Grief, Auto/biography, Creative writing, Taxidermy, Jo Malin
Figures gynandres chez Catulle Mendès : Les Oiseaux bleus, Méphistophéla et Monstres parisiens

In the fictional works of Catulle Mendes, many characters with troubled identities can often found. Standing on a thin line between the feminine and the masculine, they are distinguished from the rest by their physical appearances as well as by their psychic singularities, occupying a special place in the Mendesian universe. Are they women, are they men? On several occasions, the reader is overcome with doubt about the character’s gender. If we know Catulle Mendes' fascination with masculine androgyny, his interest in the cases of female androgyny, described by Peladan as "gynandry," has largely gone unnoticed in critical studies so far. Far from the positive image of the androgynous male fictionalized by the writers of the second half of the nineteenth century, the "androgynous-female" is rather monstrous or even diabolical. The gynandry, a virile woman who maintains close ties with the end-of-century dandy, is distinguished by her representation as a marginal figure who is at the center of many intrigues, where glorification and fear of the feminine intermingle. The study of these "women-men" takes on its full meaning and allows us to glimpse into a new facet of Mendes’s work, in which the question of a hybrid feminine, symbol of the reconfiguration of the sexe and sexual identities, constitutes a living and complex matter.             In order to carry out our study, we chose to rely on three works by Catulle Mendès, each of which depicts a different gynandrous character: Méphistophéla, Les Oiseaux bleus and Monstres parisiens. With the use of literary history, studies on decadentism, gender studies and queer theory, we will examine the gynandrous roles in the end-of-century imagination, as well as the themes and motives associated with it.

Keyphrases: Décadence, Monstres, Catulle Mendès, Androgyny, Gynandry, Decadence, Monster
Interventions d’enseignement et d’implication des parents dans les soins de leur nouveau-né prématuré afin de favoriser leur sensibilité parentale

The development of sensitivity in parents of preterm infants hospitalized in a neonatal unit may be delayed due to the stress associated with preterm birth (Amankwaa, Pickler and Boonmee, 2007), in addition to preterm infants’ behaviors which interfere with the way they communication with their parents (Bozette, 2007). Several interventions relating to one or more components of parental sensitivity as defined by Bell: "discovery, emotional contact, physical proximity, communication and engagement" (Bell, 2008, p.40) can be found in the scientific literature. These interventions include the teaching of infants’ signs of stress and stability (Browne and Talmi, 2005, Maguire, Bruil, Wit and Walther, 2007, Melnyk et al., 2006, Milgrom et al., 2013, Newnham, Milgrom and Skouteris, 2009, Ravn et al., 2011, Steindhardt et al., 2015) as well as parents’ clothing exchange, embedding and skin-to-skin contact all included in the Family Nurture Intervention (FNI) (Hane et al., 2015), in addition to infants’ stimulation of senses (Holditch-Davis et al., 2014; White-Traut et al., 2013), which have all shown a positive effect on the establishment of parental sensitivity. The purpose of this project was to develop and implement a clinical intervention based on Bell's (2008) evaluation and intervention model of parental sensitivity. The intervention included a teaching of preterm infants’ signs of stress and stability as well as a combination of four parental involvement interventions (les nommer) promoting the sensitivity of parents of preterm infants in a neonatal unit. Following the clinical intervention, parents seems to have a better understanding of their preterm infant’s behaviors, a better communication and more physical contacts with their infant, to be more involved in his/her care and able to recognize their infant's emotions. The clinical intervention appears to have also helped to reduce parental stress and increase their confidence in their parental role.

Keyphrases: Interventions, Preterm newborn, Neonatology, Parental involvement, Parental sensitivity, Education
L'action médiatrice du langage et ses effets dans Matroni et moi, Oreille, tigre et bruit et Révolutions d'Alexis Martin

In his work, Alexis Martin has been using language as a "prism", as Lise Gauvin defines it. In this perspective, a language modulates itself to reveal several simultaneous speeches regarding its form, the words it conveys and the language metamorphosis that it creates. This independent expression produced by language thus reveals the author's nuanced opinion on language, intersecting with Gauvin's concept of linguistic superconsciousness, which is made possible through a variety of processes like sound technologies - processes that come from what Hervé Guay defines as heteromorphic dialogism. The author is able to use these various processes to add and combine voices to his own. This juxtaposition of not only voices, but also languages and non-theatrical forms of expression, creates an expansion of that very theatrical form and characterizes how Alexis Martin uses language as a mean of mediation - the very subject of this master's thesis.

Keyphrases: Alexis Martin, Fin XXe siècle, Linguistic Superconsciousness, Heteromorphic Dialogism, Quebec Theatre, Late 20th Century
Les amants funambules, suivi de Sur le fil des langages : la désorientation sexuelle du patient Guibert

Polyphonic in nature, Hervé Guibert’s ‘AIDS writings’ – especially his two first volumes To the friend who did not save my life and the The compassion protocol – explore the effects of the disease on the suffering subject’s relations. In that sense, they weave together discourses, and modulate the author’s stylistic work to perform the ambivalence of relations between subjects – at times strange, paradoxical, and unsettling – as they jointly fight against the epidemy’s devastation. This is the case of relations to self (to one’s own body – and soul – as it decays), the often-ambiguous rapport to Others (whether caregivers, lovers, friends or parents), and relations to sociopolitical, scientific, and cultural challenges subjects face in their intimate combat against suffering, exclusion, and death (think of the ethics of medical body, the Authorities, and groups defending sick people’s rights).  Is it possible to write retrospectively, today, the interdiscursive and inter-identity relations that were at the heart of Guibert’s writing? That gave a body and a voice to the contaminations at work during the ‘AIDS years’? How to write the contemporaneity of those relations to a suffering self, ambiguous and polymorphous? These intersubjective performances, at the heart to one’s relation to the Other: from care to fantasy, through pulsion of sexuality and death? Is it possible to invest, again, these struggles, both intimate and collective, against illness – against death within oneself, within the other, the other’s death within oneself – through the enmeshing of languages and discourses? Whether they are scientific, romantic, ethical, or literary?  This creative portion of this thesis, Les amants funambules (The tightrope walking lovers), walks the thin line that connects together languages, to offer an answer to these question in the form of a interdiscursive and inter-identity performance: it is a collection of short stories that stretches, on the one side, towards Guibert’s ‘AIDS years’, and on the other towards a rhythmical stylistic research, ‘contemporaneous’ in its relation to the past.  The essay, Sur le fil des langages (On the thread of languages), will continue walking forward on the interdiscursive rope, to contribute an essayistic performance regarding the sexual disorientation of patient Guibert:  a young HIV-positive gay man of 35 years of age sees his sexual, personal, and social identities disseminate – as he relates with his own body, with that of his caregivers, his lovers, and his family – while his bodies continues its process of decay, as sickness confuses him, at the risk of making him fall from the tightrope of languages. In such a context, where bodies-languages threaten to tumble into the silence of death, may salute emerge from literature?   Keywords : Hervé Guibert, AIDS, illness, care relationship, interdiscursivity, sexual identities

Keyphrases: Hervé Guibert, AIDS, illness, care relationship, interdiscursivity, sexual identities
Sentimental et engagé : le roman Aïcha la rebelle d’Halima Ben Haddou

Halima Ben Haddou is one of the first morocan women who have written novels in french. When her first novel, Aïcha la rebelle, was published in 1982, it got a great success. However, this novel has been forgotten later by critics. Aïcha la rebelle’s generic hybridity makes it difficult to be classified among conventional literary genres; it makes us wonder whether it is a sentimental novel or a committed one, or it is simply what is called women’s writing. This thesis aims to study three important dimensions of Aïcha la rebelle: the sentimental dimension, the committed dimension, and the feminine dimension. First of all, we examine how Aïcha la rebelle novel approaches the traditional sentimental novels while breaking certain generic conventions. Then, we analyze the engaged aspect of the novel by examining themes such as colonialism and identity issues. Finally, we see how Aïcha la rebelle develops the idea of certain specific feminism and feminine writing which touches the eastern feminine universe.

Keyphrases: Engagement, North african literature, Romance novel, Colonialism, Women’s writing