Date of Award

Fall 2022

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Department

French

First Advisor

Cadieu, Morgane

Abstract

Erudition, as a rich intellectual dialogue with literature and ideas, is what allows the individual “d’exercer sa liberté,” according to French author Céline Minard. In this dissertation, I examine what it means to consider erudition as fundamental not just to intellectual freedom, but to experience itself. Here, I argue that erudition, far from a retreat from reality, is a means of engaging more deeply with the world. As a union of experience and expertise, erudition is a means to understand and to grapple with the constraints upon us, and, as it manifests in fiction, it is also a means to loosen those constraints. I arrive at this vision of erudition via an analysis of its manifestation in contemporary French-language fictions, with close attention to works by Mathias Énard, Aurélien Bellanger, Emmanuel Carrère, Maylis de Kerangal, and Céline Minard.

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