Un dialogue marginal au seuil et dans les mailles de "Les Amours de Psyche et de Cupidon" de Jean de La Fontaine.
Item
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Title
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Un dialogue marginal au seuil et dans les mailles de "Les Amours de Psyche et de Cupidon" de Jean de La Fontaine.
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Identifier
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AAI3037401
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identifier
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3037401
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Creator
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Gonthier-Fishman, Catherine.
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Contributor
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Adviser: Alex Szogyi
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Date
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2002
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Language
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French
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Publisher
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City University of New York.
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Subject
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Literature, Romance
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Abstract
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Through an analysis of the various ways in which Jean de La Fontaine, in Les Amours de Psyche et de Cupidon, engages his readers in a dialogue, this dissertation seeks to bring his innovative aesthetics intentions and oppositional political ideas to light.;Throughout his writings La Fontaine addresses himself personally to his reader, thus initiating a kind of dialogue. This occurs in three major contexts: the dedication and the preface---elements of what Gerard Genette calls the paratext---and within the work itself. Those three contexts, and the different ways in which a dialogue with the reader is initiated in each of them, form the basis of this study.;Psyche's dedication to the duchesse de Bouillon is examined as a socioeconomic and cultural, emblematic and thematic index of the work itself and, thus, as a new perspective from which to read the main text. As the author's dialogue continues in the preface to the work, the employed discourse become more literary and theoretical, since it is addressed to a more composite and critical group of readers.;The study of the dedication and the preface to Psyche also provides a context in which to review the history, the meaning and the importance of the paratext in the seventeenth century French literature in general and in La Fontaine's work in particular. A new paradigm for reading the poet's is suggested---one that closely analyzes his numerous dedications and prefaces---thus revealing a pioneering literary theoretician.;In addition, the analysis of the complex author-reader relationship that develops through the various narrative levels of Psyche uncovers also La Fontaine's unflinching aesthetical and political questioning.;Finally, it is suggested that the cool reception of Les Amours de Psyche et de Cupidon in the seventeenth century was due to the fact that this long and complex 'fable-tale' may have been aesthetically and politically ahead of its time.
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Type
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dissertation
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Source
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PQT Legacy CUNY.xlsx
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degree
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Ph.D.
