Sortir de soi : récit de formation et apprentissage de l'altérité dans la série de bande dessinée Paul de Michel Rabagliati

RÉSUMÉ: Ce mémoire porte sur quatre tomes de la série de bande dessinée Paul de Michel Rabagliati, soit Paul a un travail d'été (2002), Paul en appartement (2004), Paul à la pêche (2006) et Paul au parc (2011). Ces bandes dessinées sont étudiées en tant qu'elles reconduisent la structure narrative du roman de formation telle qu'instituée dans le roman européen au tournant du XIXe siècle. Elles sont ainsi définies comme un cycle où les différents apprentissages du héros s'articulent et se synthétisent au sein d'un grand récit de formation, reconduit de Paul a un travail d'été à Paul au parc en passant par Paul en appartement et Paul à la pêche. Selon l'hypothèse évaluée, l'apprentissage ultime de ce grand récit de formation consisterait en la nécessité pour l'individu et tout particulièrement pour l'artiste de se tourner vers l'autre, de sortir de soi pour aller à la rencontre de l'altérité et de témoigner de la réalité. -- Mot(s) clé(s) en français : oeuvre de Michel Rabagliati, poétique du récit de formation, identité du héros contemporain, bande dessinée québécoise, narrativité contemporaine. -- ABSTRACT: This thesis examines four volumes of the graphic series Paul by Michel Rabagliati: Paul a un travail d'été (2002 ; Paul has a summer job, 2003), Paul en appartement (2004 ; Paul Moves Out, 2005), Paul à la pêche (2006 ; Paul goes fishing, 2008) and Paul au parc (2011 ; Paul Joins the Scouts, 2013). An analysis of how the series perpetuates the traditional narrative of personal development, as established by the European novel at the turn of the 19th century, is presented. This narrative is thus defined as a life course during which the hero articulates and synthesizes his various lessons learned within a single tale of personal development, beginning with Paul a un travail d'été and continued through Paul en appartement, Paul à la pêche and Paul au parc. According to the proposed hypothesis, the ultimate lesson from this overarching tale of personal development is the necessity for the individual, and especially the artist, to open up to others, to seek out the experience of otherness, and to thereby bear witness to reality

Les personnages comme maîtres d'œuvre du récit de l'actualité dans le journal Le Fantasque de Napoléon Aubin (1837-1845)

Le début du XIXe siècle est une période marquée par de nombreux bouleversements politiques, dont les rébellions des Patriotes et l'Acte d'Union qui s'ensuit, impliquant une forte présence de la censure dans la presse canadienne de l’époque. Afin de contourner ce couperet de la censure, plusieurs journaux politiques effectuent un glissement du factuel au fictionnel. L'exemple le plus remarquable de ce choix de la littérarité est le journal Le Fantasque, édité par Napoléon Aubin et publié de 1837 à 1845 dans la ville de Québec. L'actualité y est rapportée à travers le prisme de la fiction, qui se déploie principalement par le biais des personnages. Le flâneur fantasque constitue la figure centrale et créatrice du journal. Par le récit de ses promenades et rencontres et par l'insertion de lettres presque toujours fictives de protagonistes de l'actualité, le flâneur donne accès à une multitude de voix disparates qui se font les porte-paroles de l'actualité. Ce passage systématique par les personnages fait du journal une œuvre et de l'actualité un récit. Nous étudions le système de personnages qui anime Le Fantasque de 1837 à 1842 et l’effet de son utilisation sur le récit de l’actualité et la lecture. Notre analyse s'inscrit dans le champ prolifique des études sur la presse et s’appuie principalement sur l’analyse de textes. Elle vise à ajouter aux connaissances sur les débuts de la littérature canadienne, à montrer sa vitalité et son ouverture au monde. Nous désirons aussi apporter des outils pour l'analyse de la forme journalistique et la reconnaissance des qualités littéraires de plusieurs textes publiés dans Le Fantasque.Many political upheavals occurred in the early nineteenth century, including the rebellions of the Patriots and the Act of Union that followed, involving a strong presence of censorship in the Canadian press of this time period. In order to avoid the censorship, several political journals shifted from the factual to the fictional. The most notable example of this choice of literariness is the newspaper Le Fantasque, edited by Napoleon Aubin and published from 1837 to 1845 in Quebec City. In this journal, the news is reported through different characters and stories. The flâneur is the central character of Le Fantasque. By the story of his walks and meetings and by inserting fictional letters, the flâneur provides access to a multitude of disparate voices, which are acting like spokespersons of the news. The use of characters makes the newspaper a literary text, and the news a story. In this thesis, we study the system of the characters which is developed in Le Fantasque from 1837 to 1842 and the effect of its use on the news and on the act of reading. Our analysis was primarily based on the analysis of texts. It aims to add to the understanding of the early Canadian literature, to show its vitality and openness to the world. We also want to provide tools for the analysis of journalistic form and recognition of literary qualities of several texts published in Le Fantasque

Rapid, one-pot procedure to synthesise 103Pd:Pd@Au nanoparticles en route for radiosensitisation and radiotherapeutic applications

The radioisotope palladium (103Pd), encapsulated in millimetre-size seed implants, is widely used in prostate cancer brachytherapy. Gold nanoparticles (Au NPs) distributed in the vicinity of 103Pd radioactive implants, strongly enhance the therapeutic dose of radioactive implants (radiosensitisation effect). A new strategy under development to replace millimetre-size implants, consist in injecting radioactive NPs in the affected tissues. The development of 103Pd@Au NPs distributed in the diseased tissue, could increase the uniformity of treatment (compared with massive seeds), while enhancing the radiotherapeutic dose to the cancer cells (through Au-mediated radiosensitisation effect). To achieve this goal, it is necessary to develop a rapid, efficient, one-pot and easy-to-automatise procedure, allowing the synthesis of coreshell Pd@Au NPs. The novel synthesis route proposed here enables the production of Pd@Au NPs in not more than 4h, in aqueous media, with minimal manipulations, and relying on biocompatible and non-toxic molecules. This rapid multi-step process consists of the preparation of ultra-small Pd NPs by chemical reduction of an aqueous solution of H2PdCl4 supplemented with ascorbic acid (AA) as reducing agent and 2, 3-meso-dimercaptosuccinic acid (DMSA) as a capping agent. Pd conversion yields close to 87% were found, indicating the efficiency of the reaction process. Then Pd NPs were used as seeds for the growth of a gold shell (Pd@Au), followed by grafting with polyethylene glycol (PEG) to ensure colloidal stability. Pd@Au-PEG (TEM: 20.2 ± 12.1 nm) formed very stable colloids in saline solution as well as in cell culture medium. The physico-chemical properties of the particles were characterised by FTIR, XPS, and UV-vis. spectroscopies. The viability of PC3 human prostate cancer cells was not affected after a 24-h incubation cycle with Pd@Au-PEG NPs to concentrations up to 4.22 mM Au. Finally, suspensions of Pd@Au-PEG NPs measured in computed tomography (CT) are found to attenuate X-rays more efficiently than commercial Au NPs CT contrast media. A proof-of-concept was performed to demonstrate the possibility synthesise radioactive 103Pd:Pd@Au-PEG NPs. This study reveals the possibility to synthesise Pd@Au NPs rapidly (including radioactive 103Pd:Pd@Au-PEG NPs), and following a methodology that respects all the strict requirements underlying the production of NPs for radiotherapeutic use (rapidity, reaction yield, colloidal stability, NPs concentration, purification)

Deep Self-Taught Learning for Handwritten Character Recognition

Recent theoretical and empirical work in statistical machine learning has demonstrated the importance of learning algorithms for deep architectures, i.e., function classes obtained by composing multiple non-linear transformations. Self-taught learning (exploiting unlabeled examples or examples from other distributions) has already been applied to deep learners, but mostly to show the advantage of unlabeled examples. Here we explore the advantage brought by {\em out-of-distribution examples}. For this purpose we developed a powerful generator of stochastic variations and noise processes for character images, including not only affine transformations but also slant, local elastic deformations, changes in thickness, background images, grey level changes, contrast, occlusion, and various types of noise. The out-of-distribution examples are obtained from these highly distorted images or by including examples of object classes different from those in the target test set. We show that {\em deep learners benefit more from out-of-distribution examples than a corresponding shallow learner}, at least in the area of handwritten character recognition. In fact, we show that they beat previously published results and reach human-level performance on both handwritten digit classification and 62-class handwritten character recognition