The late seventeenth century was a crucial era in establishing territorial claims on the North American continent. In order to strengthen France's hold on the Quebec colony, Louis XIV sent 770 women across the Atlantic at royal expense in order to populate New France. Since that time, these women known as the filles du roi, have often been reduced to a footnote in history books, or else mistakenly slandered as women of questionable morals. This work seeks to clearly identify the filles du roi through a study of their socioeconomic status, educational background, and various demographic factors, and compare the living conditions they had in France with those that awaited them in Canada. The aim of this undertaking is to better understand these pioneer women and their reasons for leaving France, as well as to identify the lasting contributions they made to French-Canadian culture and society.

The purpose of this study is to explore the influence of history and culture on the passage of the comic book to the animated film. Although the comic book has both historical and cultural components, the latter often undergoes a cultural shift in the animation process. Using the Smurfs as a case study, this investigation first reviews existing literature pertaining to the comic book as an art form, the influence of history and culture on Smurf story plots, and the translation of the comic book into a moving picture. This study then utilizes authentic documents and interviews to analyze the perceptions of success and failure in the transformation of the Smurf comic book into animation: concluding that original meaning is often altered in the translation to meet the criteria of cultural relevance for the new audiences.

This thesis seeks to examine the respective histories of London and Paris, two of the most influential and iconic cities in the world, in order to better understand how each respectively developed and their impact upon modern urban planning. Comparisons are made between, not only the history, but also the noble classes and gentry, religions, and cultural values which influenced the development of each capital city. Additionally, this thesis also seeks to explore how the development of Paris can still greatly assist modern developers in the twenty-first century.

This thesis is an examination of the printed media in France (1955-1963), as represented by two mainstream newspapers: Le Monde (left-centrist) and Le Figaro (right-centrist). Using these newspapers, as well as Gallup polls recorded at the time, this study explores correlations of what was reported in newspapers and how French public opinion evolved during the course of the war. These two major sources of information are shown to have given contradictory information, thus accounting for some of the paradoxes found in public opinion polls. Specifically, the paradoxes analyzed in the study concern the Front de Libération Nationale (FLN) and the Pieds-Noirs (the European population of North Africa).

This thesis contains four chapters. The first chapter gives an overview of the current situation concerning same-sex parent families in France. This involves discussions of the PACS (Pacte civil de solidarité), adoption, and marriage, as well as the societal influences that caused the massive negative response to the Taubira law. The second chapter goes into more detail concerning portrayals of homosexuality in French media throughout the years. There is a focus, however, on one of the earliest portrayals of lesbianism in French literature: The Nun by Diderot. Lastly, the third chapter involves further explanation of the history of homosexuality and same-sex parent families. This chapter explores these ideas specifically in the context of French history, as well as how conditions for same-sex parent families have changed in recent years. The fourth and final chapter presents conclusions of the research.

Numerous laws are being directed toward subduing the visible presence of Islam throughout France, and in return French Muslims are becoming bolder in the projection of their faith. This thesis examines the presence of Islam in France throughout history and in contemporary French civilization. Specifically, this thesis addresses the issues regarding the visible presence of Islam in France through such institutions as mosques and how they are the key symbols representing the prominence of Islam in France. It looks at what lies in the collective French mind that creates such an influence on today's policies and outlook, as well as identifies the key characters that dominate the current affairs surrounding Islam in France. The thesis reviews the country's past relations with the visible presence of Islam through the controversies surrounding the construction of famous mosques. In addition, this thesis underlines key areas where both the State and the Muslim population must make concessions in order to avoid further conflict.

The problem with which this study is concerned is that of citing the themes which occur most often in the essays of Maurice Maeterlinck, and of tracing the development of these themes in selected representative essays. Since no detailed study of the essays has appeared since the time of Maeterlinck's death, the major sources of information are the essays themselves.

The problem dealt with in this discussion is the various aspects of the theme of purity in Le Voyageur sans bagage, Antigone, L'Alouette and Becket ou l'Honneur de Dieu, by the French playwright, Jean Anouilh. The purpose of this discussion is to clarify Anouilh's concept of the search for purity and to shed light upon the various interpretations of the theme of purity in these four plays.

This thesis explores the use of English loanwords in French discourse found on seven France-based corporate websites and the website of one government ministry in France. The following overarching question guided this research project: To what extent are English loanwords used in French for marketing purposes or other reasons? As expected, the results varied greatly from website to website, but it is clear from my analysis of this relatively small corpus that the use of English is widespread in French discourse. In this thesis, I allowed myself to engage in some speculation based on my own background and experiences. I acknowledge that further research is needed in order to provide a more comprehensive analysis of English loanwords in French since this is a very complicated topic that can be approached from many different angles.

This thesis analyzes and demonstrates the similarities and differences between some of the national symbols of France and the United States. This includes the shared and borrowed aspects of each one and the ways in which each culture is reflected through, and built around them. The flags, national anthems, and several national icons such as France's Marianne and Uncle Sam are discussed. This analysis deals with the historical contexts and cultural meanings of the symbols, showing the changes each has undertaken in form and in national and international importance. Through the study of national symbols, this thesis reveals the similarities along with the differences between the two nations, which are often perceived as being highly dissimilar and even opposing in belief systems, cultures, and histories.

This study shows similarities in the attitudes of and literary influences upon Maurice Maeterlinck and Nathaniel Hawthorne, especially in Maeterlinck's drama Pelleas et Melisande and Hawthorne's novel The Scarlet Letter. Circumstantial evidence indicates Maeterlinck's familiarity with Hawthorne's novel. Since no previous comparative study of Pelleas et Melisande and The Scarlet Letter exists, the works themselves are the major sources of information.

The problem with which this investigation is concerned is that of revealing certain liberated female traits that are to be found as early as the seventeenth century in certain plays of Moliere. A study of the major events in Moliere's life and of the social climate and salons of his time, together with a close analysis of the plays themselves, is necessary to understand this important aspect of his works. In essence, this study attempts to show how Moliere's women emerge as independent individuals who refuse the role society usually assigns them. Although these female characters are products of the seventeenth century, their actions and attitudes are used in this thesis to indicate a foreshadowing of the twentieth-century, liberated woman.

The purpose of this study is to ascertain the major aspects of the theoretical structure of Sartrian existentialism and to examine the portrayal of these in Sartre's fiction. The theoretical investigation is based largely on Sartre's "L'Être et le néant" and "L'Existentialisme est u humanisme." The fictional works are "La Nausée," the trilogy "Les Chemins de la liberté," and "Le Mur." The study is prefaced by an examination of the term existentialism and a brief historical comparison of essentialist and existentialist philosophy. The aspects of Sartrian existentialism discussed are: the question of the existence of God and its importance to Sartre's philosophy; the premise of existence preceding essence; the fact of contingency on absurdity and its attendant nausea; the doctrines of freedom and responsibility; the dilemma of choice, anguish, and commitment; and the themes of authenticity, transcendence, and death.

Translation and subtitling has always been a complicated dimension of the motion picture industry for years. The problem of dealing with linguistic elements in films and conveying them to audiences of different languages across the globe encompasses many difficulties regarding forms and structures of other languages. One of the more highly researched topics in French linguistic studies has been the use of address pronouns and a range of aspects related to their use and interpretation. Many studies have been conducted over the last sixty years in order to determine and understand these variables. An analysis of several of these studies reveals the many complexities involved in second-person pronoun choice in the French language and the development of the idea of pronoun choice as an act of social identity. The focus of this study is to provide an analysis of the use of formal and informal address pronoun use in the French subtitling and dubbing of an American film, Maid in Manhattan, in order to add, on a broader level, a way to differentially examine perceived norms in a variety of contexts within this medium.

This thesis is intended to give a panorama of technology in foreign language pedagogy. Although my field of study is French, the computer applications under scrutiny do not relate solely to the teaching of French. This paper begins with a criticism of the rigid listen-and-repeat language laboratory concept while tracking the rise of communicative language learning theory; follows the microprocessor revolution in language consoles; documents the development of computer-assisted instruction; showcases software evaluations of computer-assisted language learning; explores telecommunications; discusses satellite dishes and other computer peripherals; presents the results of a survey of Texas universities; and concludes with the presentation of the evolving language media center.

This study offers a partial reduplication of a 2006 study by Williams, which focused primarily on the analysis of the quality of translation produced by online software, namely Yahoo!® Babelfish, Freetranslation.com, and Google Translate. Since the data for the study by Williams were collected in 2004 and the data for present study in 2012, this gives a lapse of eight years for a diachronic analysis of the differences in quality of the translations provided by these online services. At the time of the 2006 study by Williams, all three services used a rule-based translation system, but, in October 2007, however, Google Translate switched to a system that is entirely statistical in nature. Thus, the present study is also able to examine the differences in quality between contemporary statistical and rule-based approaches to machine translation.

The primary purpose of this study is to demonstrate that the most consistent themes in the selected novels are love and happiness. The novels are: Bonjour tristesse, 1954; Un certain sourire, 1956; La chamade, 1965; Les merveilleux nuages, 1961; Un profil perdu, 1974; Aimez-vous Brahms, 1959; Le garde du coeur, 1968; and De guerre lasse, 1985. Sagan challanges her heroines, and her readers, to find happiness. Each of the heroines handles the individual search for love and happiness in her own specific way. Throughout the novels, love represents pain and suffering as Sagan describes the emptiness of life in modern society. Her works show the futility of love in a world preoccupied by superficial things.

Many critics consider Mariama Bâ as a feminist writer, but the reader of her two novels might wonder what characterizes her work as such. Therefore, the aim of each chapter, in order of appearance, is to analyze first the genres, then the elements of African tradition and Western modernity, the characters of both works and the themes of the novels, with the intention of defining the author's feminism, which takes its source in dichotomies, paradoxes and contradictions. In order to expose the author's point of view on the condition of women, it appears important to situate the diegesis in its context. Also, the study is supported by references on the Senegalese culture, by genres, narrative and feminist theories and by critiques on the work itself.

This study analyzes negative particle variation (i.e., the variable presence or absence of the negative particle ne) in synchronous French chat discourse within a labovian-inspired framework. Selected morphosyntactic, lexical, and phonological constraints are considered. Multivariate analyses performed by GoldVarb 2001 revealed that subject type (i.e., NP, [- overt] subject environment, pronoun) and the phonological environment preceding the position of neregardless of its presence or absenceare determining factors in the variation. In addition, discursive-pragmatic effect was explored in a sub-sample of data. The results indicate that ne is seldom present in verbal negation during explanatory discourse style, yet it is very likely to be retained in ludic, emphatic, and proverbial styles.

This study of the variable use of ne in synchronous electronic French discourse follows the methodological guidelines and the theoretical framework proposed and subsequently elaborated by Labov for analyzing variable features of language. This thesis provides a quantitative variable rule (i.e., VARBRUL) analysis including age as a factor group (i.e., independent variable), thereby making a new contribution to this area of inquiry. The data (50,000 words from the vingtaine 'twentysomething' channel and 50,000 words from the cinquantaine 'fiftysomething' channel) are a subset of 100,000 words from a corpus of one million words collected in 2008 by the thesis director from the public chat server EuropNet. This study aims to answer the following overarching question: To what extent does age-compared to other factors-influence the variable use of ne in verbal negation in synchronous electronic French discourse? In order to answer this question, and possibly others, the VARBRUL analysis will include age, subject (e.g., noun vs. pronoun), type of second negative particle (e.g., pas 'not', jamais 'never', personne 'no one'/'nobody', and so forth), as well as verbal mood/tense.

This study analyzes students' use of the French second-person pronouns tu (T) and vous (V) in small-group (2-3 students) inter-learner online chat sessions. The influence of internal linguistic factors (i.e., turn type and morphosyntactic environment) on learners' appropriate vs. inappropriate use of these pronouns is considered. The study also investigates the influence of Instructional Level on tu-vous use and the extent to which students from different instructional levels provide various types of peer assistance (e.g., lexical, morphosyntactic, and sociolinguistic/pragmatic) . Pronoun use was extremely unstable for learners of all levels, and a Kruskal-Wallis analysis revealed that Instructional Level did not significantly affect appropriate T/V use overall. Instructional Level and Syntax did, however, significantly affect interrogative T/V use, as shown through multivariate analyses. Peer-assisted performance was limited to lexical retrieval. Pedagogical recommendations are presented for teaching and learning second-person pronouns in French.

The Quebec of the Quiet Revolution invites a fascinating sociocultural study, and this analysis provides an overview of major changes there during the 1960s and 1970s. The author analyzes how artistic, literary, and musical contributions of the era reflected the public's sentiments toward this metamorphosis. References to political cartoons, plays, poetry, songs, and non-fiction works such as essays and manifestos illustrate attitudes toward the shifting role of the Catholic Church, the arrival of a Liberal government following an ultra-conservative administration, the feminist movement, economic and education reform, and the transformation of Quebec's identity through fierce debates over the status of French and English in the province. Policies enacted by Quebec Prime Ministers, especially Maurice Duplessis, Jean Lesage, and René Lévesque were pivotal to the emerging society. Events such as Vatican II, the publication of the Encyclical letter Humanae Vitae, and the efforts of Catholic Action revealed two concurrent strains of Catholicism present in Quebec and the extent to which the Church had become disconnected from society. This study examines major feminist aims within the historical and literary context and considers how collective efforts were critical to advancing their agenda. Ambitious economic measures enabled Quebec's francophone population to catch up to …