Hokenson, Jan W.

The premise of this thesis is that Balzac has been
unjustly dismissed, in contemporary critical studies of
fictional dialogue and psycho-narration, for his
ostensible clumsiness in describing anything other than
superficial communication. The problem is that critics, as
well as certain contemporary novelists, have not recognized
the fact that Balzac, although pre-dating modern theories
of character in fiction, was extremely aware of the
fragility, tenuousness, opacity and misunderstanding of
interpersonal communication. A close study of his novels
refutes the contemporary view.

Critics of Beckett's trilogy (Molloy, Malone Dies, The
Unnamable) have long puzzled over the profusion of
bilabials in the characters' names: Molloy, Moran, Malone,
Macmann. They all share a common initial. "Les Tripedes
de la Trilogie" attempts to offer yet another
interpretation: with its three bases, the letter M suggests
in the context of the trilogy a man and his stick,
reminiscent to Beckett of the three-legged "animal" in the
riddle of the Sphinx. The omnipresent stick, in both its
physical and symbolic functions, is shown to be the crucial
instrument keeping the unstable Beckettian creatures
briefly upright in their "struggle for life." As an
extension of the body, it allows them to fight and to
survive. As a cylindrical rod, it acquires metaphysical
associations with divine or supernatural power.

The relationship between the mother and the child in Duras
is most fully developed in the novels La Vie Tranquille
(1944), Un Barrage contre le Pacifique (1950), Les Petits
Chevaux de Tarquinia (1953), Moderato cantabile (1958),
and L' Amant (1984). The relationship is intense, initially
joyful but ultimately alienated. It dramatizes the
feminine needs of the mother and the filial needs of the
child, always in conflict. It weakens, as the mother undergoes
personal trials, and, as the child grows older,
love turns to hate and despair. This study of the novels
reveals a consistent structure: the mother-child relationship
in Duras is repeatedly depicted as an enslaving experience, comparable in its passionate development to a
foredoomed love affair.

Each character in La Recherche du temps perdu speaks a
distinct idiolect. Only the language of Fransoise has
complex characterological and symbolic functions.
Fransoise's language serves three consistent purposes:
First, it represents the speech of the peasantry or a whole
social class. Second, as exclusively spoken French, it
embodies the long rich history of the French language since
the Middle Ages, constituting indeed a living palimpsest of
the language. Third, as palimpsest, it verbally situates
the character Fransoise as creative counterpart to the
narrating artist Marcel. Fransoise is the French language
through history: she is the "genie linguistique a l'etat
vivant."

An historical profile of semantics, general semantics, and
the philosophy of language in the 1920's and 1930's situates
Beckett's work both philosophically and historically. In
Molloy Beckett portrays the paradoxical nature of human language
as both enlightenment and imprisonment, our sole vehicle
for reasoning, but constituting in itself a limitation
upon reasoning, as well as self-knowledge. The novel as a
whole is about this unbearable gap between experience and
expression, the essentially averbal self and language. This
study traces, through the examination of events and changing
levels of discourse in Molloy, the exact process by which
the characters Molloy and Moran begin to perceive the existence
of a separate reality beyond the reach of language.

Samuel Beckett is generally considered to write in the
pessimistic tradition. For his characters, life is a
process of "dying on" in a chaotic universe. God, if
he exists, is cruelly indifferent. Death has no purpose,
and therefore life is pointless. Suffering is
real, however, and made more painful by the knowledge
that there is neither Savior nor Salvation. Nevertheless Beckett repeatedly examines the Christian concept
of Salvation in his work. Indeed, it has become framework,
linguistic storehouse, source of metaphor, and
spiritual yardstick in much of his canon. The doctrine
of Salvation raises "the old questions" regarding man's
destiny which so preoccupy Beckettian man; their
contemplation has provided the matter for Beckett's
writing, and that writing itself has perhaps saved him
from despair.

La Princesse de Cleves has been described as a mirror of
Versailles in the Valois court presenting Henri II as a
Louis XIV in sixteenth-century apparel. This interpretation
is disproved upon examination of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century
history, the novel in relation to that history, the
author's life as well as her documentary and living sources.
Henri II is clearly portrayed in the novel as the personnage
historians record him to be. He is dissimilar to Louis XIV
in the key areas of character such as self-esteem, selfassertion,
and relations with others. Similarly, the portrayal
of the court of the Valois, including central figures
of importance, is clearly derived from the annals of history,
described in accurate detail save a few minor exceptions.
Finally, through analysis of the characteristics of preciosite
in the novel, the so-called classical La Princesse de Cleves
emerges as a distinctly precieux work, the precieux school
influencing both her general use of history and her development
of plot.

Andre Gide's Les Caves du Vatican is a work of complex
social criticism. Using primarily the metaphor of the
labyrinth and working in satire and comic burlesque, Gide
analyzes the structure and role of the Catholic Church,
the family, and society in general. He dramatizes
multiple forms of hypocrisy and sincerity, lucidity and
blindness, freedom and entrapment. He offers no social
program, and he does not preach. Rather, he mocks
existing structures and raises disturbing questions
about social and moral choice.

Going back to Gilgamesh and Achilles as foundations for surveying centuries of protagonists we now call heroic, while synthesizing and modifying critical forerunners, this study reviews the patterns and the constituent elements of the literary hero both synchronically and diachronically, in order to trace changing figurations of the heroic ideal in Western literature, from texts of antiquity to modernism, and with particular emphasis on Anglo-American and French traditions.

One of the constants in Beauvoir's work is her lifelong attention to the phenomenon of love and the idea of the couple. In her philosophy as well as in her fiction, she develops a binary concept of love. On the one hand is "authentic love," connoting respect and reciprocity; on the other is "inauthentic love," a function of conquest and annexation. Because of her adherence to the tenets of Existentialism, Beauvoir, the feminist, skillfully negotiates between the notions of love and freedom.