« Le désert progresse » : mirages postmodernes de l’Ouest américain dans les fictions françaises et québécoises

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Degree type
PhD
Graduate group
Francophone, Italian, and Germanic Studies
Discipline
European Languages, Literatures, and Cultures
Arts and Humanities
Subject
Desert
Desertification
French-American Relations
Hyperreality
Narratology
Quebec
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Copyright date
01/01/2025
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Author
Bellec, Marie
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Abstract

This dissertation examines the representation of the American desert in contemporary French and Québécois fiction, where it is often portrayed as an expanding, destabilizing force that overwhelms the narrative space. It investigates how Francophone authors engage with this landscape through a postmodern lens that reflects anxieties about American cultural and geopolitical dominance, while also exploring the desert as a space for narrative experimentation. The analysis engages with how the notion of desertification shifts from its colonial connotations – tied to France’s civilizing mission in the Sahara – to a broader metaphor for environmental collapse and civilizational decline. Drawing on narratological, comparative, and ecocritical methodologies, this study identifies recurring textual strategies, including narrative embedding, the aesthetics of the abyss, and the destabilization of linear temporality. It situates the desert as a narrative and geographic interstice, where Hollywood influence, colonial legacies, and European sensibilities intersect to form a network of aesthetic and ideological tensions. The findings reveal that Francophone fiction moves beyond a simple rivalry with U.S. cultural production, shifting from initial postmodern estrangement to a more autonomous reappropriation of the desert, especially in the Québécois context, where decolonial and ecological concerns reshape the desert imaginary.

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Met, Philippe
Date of degree
2025
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