Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'Feminism – Fiction'
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1
Igbaria, Khaled. "Laylá Ba‘albakī and feminism throughout her fiction." Thesis, University of Edinburgh, 2015. http://hdl.handle.net/1842/17974.
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A number of Lebanese women writers of the period of 1950s and 1960s have received considerable attention by scholars. This is not the case, however, for Laylá Ba‘albakī, whom the field has failed to address in any substantive manner. In not paying sufficient attention to Laylá Ba‘albakī, the field has failed to appreciate the distinctly feminist dimension of her work. To date, most scholars have only repeated commonly held views about her and her fiction. By addressing Ba‘albakī’s biography and fiction, this thesis hopes to contribute to a fuller understanding of Lebanese women writers of 1950s and 1960s. It shows that Ba‘albakī joined the group Shi‘r, but none of the Lebanese or Syrian political parties; and that she faced conflict not only with her parents, community and the state, but also, unexpectedly, with the Lebanese women’s groups. This study discusses the reasons why Ba‘albakī was brought before the courts, supporting the view that the underlying reason was political, not moral; and it further explores the reasons why the writer ceased publishing. It now seems probable that she will soon release a new work, after a long hiatus, which may be controversial within Muslim and Arab society. Moreover, this thesis shows that throughout her novels and short stories there is diversity in styles and techniques, and the use of poetic and figurative language which displays the influence of several Arab and Western poets (including her father’s own zajal poetry). Furthermore, the study focuses in particular on feminist themes in her work, and the various literary devices she employs for advancing her feminist agenda. The study of these devices further supports the claim that the court case against her was motivated by politics, not ethics. This thesis opens the doors for new discussions such as the impacts of her being Shiite as and when sources become available.
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Kellar, Pinard Katrina. "Settler Feminism in Contemporary Canadian Historical Fiction." Thesis, Université d'Ottawa / University of Ottawa, 2019. http://hdl.handle.net/10393/39608.
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Canada has seen a veritable explosion in the production and popularity of historical fiction in recent decades. Works by women that present a feminist revision of national narratives have played a key part in this phenomenon. This thesis discusses three contemporary Canadian historical novels: Gil Adamson’s The Outlander (2007), Ami McKay’s The Birth House (2006), and Margaret Atwood’s Alias Grace (1996). By examining these novels through a settler colonial lens and with a specific interest in the critique of settler feminism, this thesis offers readings that can reveal how feminism operates within the confines of the settler fantasy. These readings suggest that women’s historical fiction offers an opportunity to consider different aspects of feminism in the settler setting and to consider different aspects of critiques of patriarchy in settler contexts. This thesis suggests that these novels present a settler women’s history that cannot be properly understood through the simplistic logic of male/female or colonizer/colonized oppositions, and that the ways the novels depict women’s interactions with patriarchal settler structures and institutions can contribute to critical understandings of a colonial history with which Canada continues to reckon.
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Calvert, Bronwen. "Virtual bodies : technology and embodiment in cyberpunk fiction." Thesis, University of East Anglia, 2002. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.273464.
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This thesis offers a new way of reading narratives of cyberpunk fiction. It undertakes to re-evaluate cyberpunk fiction according to a feminist criticism that takes direction from Donna Haraway's cyborg politics and Eve Sedgwick's "deconstructive" reading. Both cyberpunk fiction and its criticism are read "deconstructively" in order to contest the notion that cyberpunk fiction cannot productively be read for feminism. The representation of embodiment and technology in cyberpunk narratives is customarily read in terms of a Cartesian opposition of body and mind, in which the materiality of female bodies is contrasted with the virtuality of male minds. The feminist analysis in this thesis focuses upon the way in which cyberpunk narratives can be seen to problematise both materiality and virtuality, embodiment and technology. Four novels are examined in detail: William Gibson's Neuromancer, Pat Cadigan's Synners, Marge Piercy's Body of Glass, and Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash. In each narrative, conventions of cyberpunk fiction are seen to be subverted and contested. Gibson's novel, which has become accepted as the template of "classic", masculinist cyberpunk fiction, is revealed through this feminist analysis as a narrative which is profoundly ambivalent in its depictions of technologised male and female bodies. This ambivalence continues in the versions of cyberpunk offered by Cadigan, Piercy, and Stephenson. These readings illuminate the way cyberpunk narratives work to deconstruct binary oppositions through their explorations of gendered bodies, technology, virtuality, and disembodiment. The deconstruction, disruption and dismantling of binarisms are conceptualised in the image of the unnaturally embodied cyborg, which unites gendered embodiment and technological augmentation in an imaginary body.
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Fuller, Elizabeth A. "'New femininities' fiction." Thesis, University of Stirling, 2011. http://hdl.handle.net/1893/3573.
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I identify and analyse an emergent sub-genre of contemporary literature by women that I am calling ‘New Femininities’ fiction. This fiction is about the distinctly feminine experience of contemporary domestic life written by women about the lives of heterosexual female characters that are married or in committed partnerships, often with children. These texts are concerned with the nature of the self, with a self that is plural and ‘in process’, and make use of particular narrative devices – ironic voice, unreliable narration, free indirect discourse, and interrogative endings that exceed their roles as simply telling stories. ‘New Femininities’ fictions allow their language the necessary freedom to multiply meanings and enact the narrative conflicts they raise and by so doing, undermine the binary oppositions which structure a gendered world. In this dissertation, I argue the models of existing criticism would do a disservice to these texts because much of the criticism either overvalues the theoretical and ignores the literariness of the text or seeks to identify a ‘feminine’ language the definition of which serves to reinforce and revalue patriarchal notions of femininity. The readings that this fiction requires necessitate a negotiation with established models of feminist literary criticism. I attempt to identify the characteristics of their style that allows them to straddle binary oppositions and to look at the language these authors use without having to label it ‘feminine’ and by so doing establish, build, or reinforce a boundary with some undefined ‘masculine’ language which stands in for all occurrences that are not ‘feminine’. Additionally, I attempt to forge a transformed, adapted concept vocabulary for dealing with this group of writers. To this end, I make use of various discourses to show how the different authors either negotiate with that discourse or prove its inadequacy to describe or explain these new femininities.
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Nicol, Rhonda M. Harris Charles B. "The spaces between feminism and postmodernism in contemporary women's fiction /." Normal, Ill. Illinois State University, 2004. http://wwwlib.umi.com/cr/ilstu/fullcit?p3196671.
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Thesis (Ph. D.)--Illinois State University, 2004.Title from title page screen, viewed May 23, 2006. Dissertation Committee: Charles Harris (chair), Christopher Breu, Janice Neuleib. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 151-163) and abstract. Also available in print.
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Dredge, Sarah. "Accommodating feminism : Victorian fiction and the nineteenth-century women's movement." Thesis, McGill University, 2000. http://digitool.Library.McGill.CA:80/R/?func=dbin-jump-full&object_id=36917.
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The research field of this thesis is framed by the major political and legal women's movement campaigns from the 1840s to the 1870s: the debates over the Married Women's Property Act; over philanthropy and methods of addressing social ills; the campaign for professional opportunities for women, and the arguments surrounding women's suffrage. I address how these issues are considered and contextualised in major works of Victorian fiction: Anne Bronte's The Tenant of Wildfell Hall (1848), Elizabeth Gaskell's North and South (1855), Charlotte Bronte's Villette (1853), and George Eliot's Middlemarch (1871--2).In works of fiction by women, concepts of social justice were not constrained by layers of legal abstraction and the obligatory political vocabulary of "disinterest." Contemporary fiction by women could thus offer some of the most developed articulations of women's changing expectations. This thesis demonstrates that the Victorian novel provides a distinct synthesis of, and contribution to, arguments grouped under the rubric of the "woman question." The novel offers a perspective on feminist politics in which conflicting social interests and demands can be played out, where ethical questions meet everyday life, and human relations have philosophical weight. Given women's traditional exclusion from the domain of legitimate (authoritative) speech, the novels of Gaskell, the Bronte's, and Eliot, traditionally admired for their portrayal of moral character, play a special role in giving voice to the key political issues of women's rights, entitlements, and interests. Evidence for the political content and efficacy of these novels is drawn from archival sources which have been little used in literary studies (including unpublished materials), as well as contemporary periodicals. Central among these is the English Woman's Journal. Conceived as the mouthpiece of the early women's movement, the journal offers a valuable record of the feminist activity of the period. Though it has not been widely exploited, particularly in literary studies, detailed study of the journal reveals close parallels between the ideological commitments and concerns of the women's movement and novels by mid-Victorian women.
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Hebert, Ann Marie. "Straight Talk: Theorizing Heterosexuality in Feminist Postmodern Fiction." Case Western Reserve University School of Graduate Studies / OhioLINK, 1995. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=case1062614150.
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Braun, Kirsten, and n/a. "Contending With Feminism: Women's Health Issues in Margaret Atwood's Early Fiction." Griffith University. School of Arts, Media and Culture, 2006. http://www4.gu.edu.au:8080/adt-root/public/adt-QGU20070212.153530.
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Margaret Atwood's early fiction provides a valuable insight into issues surrounding the establishment of the women's health movement. From The Edible Woman in 1969 to The Handmaid's Tale in 1985, Atwood's work takes up key issues of the movement during this time. Her fiction explores a number of women's health topics including contraception, abortion, birthing, assisted reproductive technologies, eating disorders and breast cancer. Atwood's interest in the appearance of victims in Canadian literature, however, leads to a rejection of the notion that women are fated victims of patriarchal institutions like medicine. This thesis argues that while she does not deny women can be victims, she refuses to accept that this role is inevitable. Foucault's later constructions of power and resistance are explored with the female protagonists refusing to believe their situations are inescapable. Atwood's recognition of her role as a popular fiction writer and her refusal to wear the 'feminist' label allow her the space to critique the women's health movement. Her early fiction exposes the absolutism of the movement and demonstrates its limitations in accounting for women's diversity.
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Howey, Ann F. "Once and future women, popular fiction, feminism and four Arthurian rewritings." Thesis, National Library of Canada = Bibliothèque nationale du Canada, 1997. http://www.collectionscanada.ca/obj/s4/f2/dsk3/ftp04/nq21579.pdf.
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Lonsdale, Laura. "Feminism, form and the fiction of Rosa Montero and Esther Tusquets." Thesis, University of Birmingham, 2008. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.557100.
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The thesis takes a metacritical VIew of the application of feminist methodology to the fictional writing of Rosa Montero and Esther Tusquets. It places this in the context of current debates concerning the relationship between aesthetics and ideology in readings of literature, drawing on theories of both feminist and democratic aesthetics. Whilst I take the view that the appropriation of the authors' work as feminist is problematic, it is not my concern either to deny its gender-political content or to critique its gender-political stance. Instead, I contend that critical associations between feminism and form have been limiting, relying too strongly on an idiom of subversion, and creating homologies between social and narrative structures. I therefore argue that a different kind of attention to form and language is necessary. Outlining an individual 'aesthetic' for each writer, I aim to describe the 'perceptual values' (Wellek and Warren 1956: 34) according to which political and formal concerns are brought together in the authors' writing. This not only allows for a more nuanced reading of the ways in which politics inhere in their texts, but generates a more democratic understanding of the ways in which gender-political writing inheres in the social and political realm.
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Tolan, Fiona. "Connecting theory and fiction : Margaret Atwood's novels and second wave feminism." Thesis, Durham University, 2004. http://etheses.dur.ac.uk/2972/.
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This thesis undertakes an examination of the manner in which a novelist interacts with a contemporary theoretical discourse. I argue that the novelist and the theoretical discourse enter into a symbiotic relationship in which each influences and is influenced by the other. This process, I suggest, is simultaneous and complex. The thesis demonstrates how the prevailing theoretical discourse is absorbed by the contemporary author, is developed and redefined in conjunction with alternative concerns, and comes to permeate the narrative in an altered state. The novelist's new perspectives, frequently problematising theoretical claims, are then disseminated by the novel, promoting further discussion and development of the theoretical discourse. The thesis focuses on the novels of Margaret Atwood, considering them in relation to the history and development of second wave feminism. "Second wave feminism" is understood as an umbrella term that incorporates a wide variety of related but diverse and occasionally contradictory discourses, centring on the subjects of gender, femininity, and sexuality. The focus of the discussion is dual and presented simultaneously. Atwood's novels are analysed chronologically, and within the parameter of this analysis I demonstrate how her work has been influenced by earlier feminist theories, how it comments upon a variety of contemporary feminist ideas, and how it can be seen to anticipate further discussions within feminist discourse. Finally, I identify moments in Atwood's writing when alternative discourses compete with feminism to create new directions for feminist criticism. Examples of these discourses include Canadian nationalism, liberalism, communitarianism and environmentalism. The specificity of the novelist's interests and politics create a unique site of interaction for feminism which, I argue, benefits feminist theory by challenging, broadening and diversifying its focus. The thesis concludes that the symbiotic relationship of the theorist and the novelist is self-perpetuating and is also necessary and beneficial to both parties.
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Hirst, Miriam Laufey. "Fantasy and feminism : an intersectional approach to modern children's fantasy fiction." Thesis, University of Bolton, 2018. http://ubir.bolton.ac.uk/1968/.
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This thesis compares modern children’s fantasy literature with older texts, particularly Grimms’ fairy tales. The focus is on tropes from fairy tales and myths that devalue women and femininity. In looking at these tropes, this thesis examines how they are used in modern fiction; whether they are subverted to show a more empowering vision of femininity or simply replicated in a more modern guise. Whereas other approaches in this area have addressed the representation of gender in an isolated fashion, this study adopts an intersectional approach, examining the way that different axes of oppression work together to maintain the patriarchal hegemony of powerful, white, heterosexual men. As intersectional theory has pointed out, mainstream feminism has tended to focus only on the needs and rights of more privileged women, who are themselves complicit in the oppression of their more marginalised “sisters”. Intersectional feminism, in contrast, seeks to dismantle the entire system of interlinked oppressions, rather than allowing some women to benefit from it to the detriment of others. The intersectional issues around feminism that this thesis addresses include race, disability, class, and sexuality. There is also an emphasis on female solidarity, which is championed as an effective strategy to weaken the hold of patriarchy and subvert it in its aim to “divide and conquer”. It is this intersectional approach to children’s fantasy literature that is seen as the thesis’s main contribution to knowledge. The primary texts under examination are mainly from the United Kingdom, but also include works from the United States, Australia, and Germany. All of them were originally published between 1980 and 2013. The thesis explores heroism, beauty, magic, and gender performance in these works, showing how such themes can be dealt with in ways that are either reactionary and detrimental or progressive and empowering.
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Braun, Kirsten. "Contending With Feminism: Women's Health Issues in Margaret Atwood's Early Fiction." Thesis, Griffith University, 2006. http://hdl.handle.net/10072/367275.
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Margaret Atwood's early fiction provides a valuable insight into issues surrounding the establishment of the women's health movement. From The Edible Woman in 1969 to The Handmaid's Tale in 1985, Atwood's work takes up key issues of the movement during this time. Her fiction explores a number of women's health topics including contraception, abortion, birthing, assisted reproductive technologies, eating disorders and breast cancer. Atwood's interest in the appearance of victims in Canadian literature, however, leads to a rejection of the notion that women are fated victims of patriarchal institutions like medicine. This thesis argues that while she does not deny women can be victims, she refuses to accept that this role is inevitable. Foucault's later constructions of power and resistance are explored with the female protagonists refusing to believe their situations are inescapable. Atwood's recognition of her role as a popular fiction writer and her refusal to wear the 'feminist' label allow her the space to critique the women's health movement. Her early fiction exposes the absolutism of the movement and demonstrates its limitations in accounting for women's diversity.Thesis (PhD Doctorate)
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
School of Arts, Media and Culture
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Bilik, Rebeka <1995>. "Defying Conventions: A Survey of First-Wave Feminism in Modernist Fiction." Master's Degree Thesis, Università Ca' Foscari Venezia, 2020. http://hdl.handle.net/10579/16670.
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The aim of this master thesis is to examine the complexities of female characters and their behaviour at the very end of the 19th century and in the post-Victorian, male-dominated society focusing on the selected works of Kate Chopin, Katherine Mansfield and Virginia Woolf. The analysis is based on the notion of “new woman” that represented a new era in women’s history, the psychological differentiation of the human mind in Sigmund Freud’s work and on the philosophy of Simone de Beauvoir and Virginia Woolf’s works defined in The Second Sex and A Room of One’s Own respectively, all the while by placing these aspects in the framework of modernism. This work consists of three chapters. The first chapter introduces each author, their background and experiences which shaped their literary paths. The second chapter will provide a general historical and philosophical overview focusing on the main aspects on which the analysis is based. The third chapter will give a detailed analysis of female characters in the chosen works while comparing and contrasting them through different perspectives. The thesis focuses on the progressive heroines, who fight against the oppressive society which tries to shackle them.
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Bennetts, Anna. "Lilac tractors : a novel ; and, Critical essay: intersections among psychiatry, madness, sexuality and feminism in 'Lilac tractors'." Thesis, Edith Cowan University, Research Online, Perth, Western Australia, 2012. https://ro.ecu.edu.au/theses/550.
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This thesis comprises a novel, ‘Lilac Tractors’ and an essay, ‘Intersections among psychiatry, madness, sexuality and feminism in ‘Lilac Tractors’’. The novel focuses on the relationship of a married couple, Gary, a fly-in, fly-out rig worker, and Sharon, a mature-age university student studying psychology. They live together in Perth’s north at the turn of the twenty-first century, as the outer suburbs are beginning to sprawl. Gary has Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD) and Sharon finds that her growing knowledge of the condition increases her annoyance with him, rather than her compassion. But mostly she is unhappy because Gary is too gentle and the relationship doesn’t provide the power differentiation she requires to feel sexually fulfilled. The novel explores the intersection between his psychiatric condition and their domestic lives while also investigating intergenerational relationships of mothers, fathers, sons and daughters, and complicated forms of inheritance.
Various themes are explored in the novel, including the overarching idea that, in patriarchal societies, there is a common tendency towards control of that which is different or perceived as threatening: women, the mentally ill and the land. This is explored through the juxtaposition of masochistic sexual desire, psychosurgical treatment and the tractors that clear the land next door to Sharon and Gary’s house. The tractors provide a visual reminder of one way that humankind controls the environment.
The critical essay discusses the inspiration for and genesis of ’Lilac Tractors’, which was developed first as a film script and progressed through many versions to become a novel. I discuss my stylistic choices and why I chose to write a work of general fiction that draws on and also violates some key conventions of ‘chick lit’. The essay also refers to relevant feminist theory and criticism to support a discussion on pornography and female sexuality, providing an explanation and rationale for the novel’s depiction of a masochistic relationship. ‘Lilac Tractors’ depicts ‘aberrant sexuality’ within a conventional suburban milieu, which some readers may find challenging or even iv troubling; however, fictional treatments of this kind are important and might potentially open space for frank and serious examination of power in relation to sexual desire.
A key concern of the novel is psychiatry. The essay also discusses two aspects of psychiatry, with a focus in particular on the history and practice of psychosurgery and diagnostic and literary depictions of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder.
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Barton, Tina. "Young Adult Fiction, Feminist Pedagogy, and Convergence Culture: “Fangirling” as a Feminist Act." Thesis, Université d'Ottawa / University of Ottawa, 2017. http://hdl.handle.net/10393/35672.
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JK Rowling’s Harry Potter series, Suzanne Collins’s Hunger Games trilogy, and Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight saga are widely recognized as three of the most successful recent young adult franchises. Although it may not seem so at first, each of these series has a preoccupation with feminist learning; each series’ author, whether explicitly or implicitly, addresses the extent to which their protagonists and fans can learn feminist lessons within, or from, these texts. Each protagonist does seem to undergo some kind of learning experience, and by measuring these against what feminist education scholars such as bell hooks call a feminist pedagogical model, I show that the reality of what is expressed in these texts does not necessarily align with the ways Hermione, Katniss, and Bella have been discussed by critics and fans. Further, I argue that despite their divergence from the didactic nature of earlier feminist young adult fiction, such as that written by Judy Blume, by making connections between young adult fiction and what fan theorist Henry Jenkins calls “convergence culture”, young readers of Rowling’s, Collins’s, and Meyer’s texts, through their critical and creative engagement with online fan activities, are actually participating in a kind of feminist education that interestingly embodies the aims of feminist pedagogy.
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Green, Caroline Ann. ""She has to be controlled" : exploring the action heroine in contemporary science fiction cinema." Thesis, University of Exeter, 2010. http://hdl.handle.net/10036/3052.
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In this dissertation I explore a number of contemporary science fiction franchises in order to ascertain how the figure of the action heroine has evolved throughout her recent history. There has been a tendency in film criticism to view these strong women as ‘figuratively male’ and therefore not ‘really’ women, which, I argue, is largely due to a reliance on the psychoanalytic paradigms that have dominated feminist film theory since its beginnings. Building on Elisabeth Hills’s work on the character of Ellen Ripley of the Alien series, I explore how notions of ‘becoming’ and the ‘Body without Organs’ proposed by Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari can be activated to provide a more positive set of readings of active women on screen. These readings are not limited by discussions of sex or gender, but discuss the body in terms of its increased capacities as it interacts with the world around it. I do not argue for a Deleuzian analysis of cinema as such, because this project is concerned with aspects of representation which did not form part of Deleuze’s philosophy of cinema. Rather I use Deleuze and Guattari’s work to explore alternative ways of reading the active women these franchises present and the benefits they afford. Through these explorations I demonstrate, however, that applying the Deleuzoguattarian ‘method’ is a potentially risky undertaking for feminist theory. Deconstructing notions of ‘being’ and ‘identity’ through the project of becoming may have benefits in terms of addressing ‘woman’ beyond binaristic thought, but it may also have negative consequences. What may be liberating for feminist film theory may be also be destructive. This is because through becoming we destabilise a position from which to address potentially ideologically unsound treatments of women on screen.
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Vincent, Renee Michele. "The Great Radical Dualism: Locating Margaret Fuller’s Feminism in Nathaniel Hawthorne’s Fiction." ScholarWorks@UNO, 2016. http://scholarworks.uno.edu/honors_theses/82.
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The purpose of this thesis is to establish a foundation built on the congruencies between Margaret Fuller’s feminist theory and Nathaniel Hawthorne’s fiction, with the aim of addressing two major points: first, the implications of universalizing gender in the context of identity politics; and second, to show how gender universality is challenged within Hawthorne’s fiction and Fuller’s prose. Given that Nathaniel Hawthorne’s characters depict a range of personal variability, the act of synthesizing Margaret Fuller’s feminist theory with Hawthorne’s fiction functions to link the personal with the political. The overall goal of this study is to substantiate both writers within a feminist discourse and further, as contributory in the fight for gender equality.
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Barlow, Jenna Elizabeth. "Womens historical fiction after feminism : discursive reconstructions of the Tudors in contemporary literature." Thesis, Stellenbosch : Stellenbosch University, 2014. http://hdl.handle.net/10019.1/86303.
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Thesis (PhD)--Stellenbosch University, 2014.ENGLISH ABSTRACT: Historical fiction is a genre in a constant state of flux: since its inception in the nineteenth century, it has been shaped by cultural trends and has persistently responded to the way in which history is popularly conceptualised. As such, historical novels have always revealed as much about the socio-political context of their moment of production as they do about their historical settings. The advent of feminism was among the most significant movements which shaped the evolution of the women’s historical novel in the twentieth century, prompting as it did a radical shift in historiographic methodology. As feminist discourse became embedded in popular culture in the latter decades of the twentieth century, this shift in turn allowed authors of historical fiction the opportunity to reconsider the ways in which women have been traditionally represented in both historical narrative and fiction. The historical novel thus became a site for exploring the female perspective of history, a perspective that had been denied or ignored by more male-centred historical narratives. This dissertation will assess the impact wrought by the popularisation of feminist discourse on the genre of women’s historical fiction during the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. An examination of a selection of contemporary women’s novels set during the Tudor era will prove particularly useful in executing this assessment, not least because of the Tudors’ unprecedented popularity as the focus of literature and film in the last decade. More significantly, the women of this period have proven to be ideal subjects for their authors to imaginatively reconstruct in the mould of third wave feminist icons in the twenty-first century. By examining how Tudor women have been represented in the contemporary historical fiction of Jean Plaidy, Philippa Gregory, Mavis Cheek, Suzannah Dunn and Emily Purdy, this dissertation will demonstrate the ways in which popular feminist discourse has impacted on the development of women’s historical fiction in the last century, focusing specifically on texts published within the last decade. Three key aspects of the genre will be assessed in detail in this regard: the author’s self-conscious feminist intervention in the characterisation of her historical heroines; the shift in the narrative perspective adopted and the deployment of postmodern literary devices; and the representation of female sexuality. The evolution of the genre as a whole will also be examined in some detail, and the shifting parameters of modern feminisms will be interrogated in order to fully understand their manifestations in popular culture.
AFRIKAANSE OPSOMMING: Historiese fiksie is ’n voortdurend veranderende genre: sedert die ontstaan daarvan in die negentiende eeu is dit beïnvloed deur kulturele neigings en het dit aanhoudend bly reageer op die manier waarop die geskiedenis populêr gekonseptualiseer word. As sodanig het historiese romans altyd net soveel oor die sosiopolitieke konteks van hulle produksiemoment as oor hul historiese milieus onthul. Feminisme was een van die betekenisvolste bewegings wat gedurende die twintigste eeu die evolusie van die historiese roman vir vroue sou beïnvloed, en het sodoende aanleiding gegee tot ’n radikale verandering in historiografiese metodologie. Namate feministiese diskoers in die latere dekades van die twintigste eeu deel van die populêre kultuur geword het, het hierdie verandering op sy beurt die skrywers van historiese fiksie die geleentheid gegun om die maniere waarop vroue tradisioneel in sowel historiese narratief as fiksie uitgebeeld is, te heroorweeg. Die historiese roman het dus ’n terrein geword waarop die vroulike perspektief op die geskiedenis verken is, naamlik ’n perspektief wat deur meer manlik-gesentreerde historiese narratiewe ontken of geïgnoreer is. Hierdie verhandeling sal die impak evalueer wat die popularisering van feministiese diskoers op die genre van historiese fiksie vir vroue gemaak het tydens die twintigste en een-en-twintigste eeue. ’n Ondersoek na ’n seleksie van kontemporêre vroueromans wat in die Tudor-tydperk afspeel, is veral nuttig in hierdie verband, onder andere as gevolg van die Tudors se ongekende gewildheid as die fokus van letterkunde en film in die afgelope dekade. Wat meer veelseggend is, is dat dit blyk die vroue van hierdie tydperk was ideale subjekte wat verbeeldingryk deur hulle outeurs gerekonstrueer kon word in die vorm van derdegolf-feministiese ikone in die een-en-twintigste eeu. Deur te ondersoek hoe Tudorvroue uitgebeeld is in die kontemporêre historiese fiksie van Jean Plaidy, Philippa Gregory, Mavis Cheek, Suzannah Dunn en Emily Purdy sal hierdie verhandeling die impak demonstreer wat populêre feministiese diskoers in die afgelope eeu op die ontwikkeling van historiese fiksie vir vroue gemaak het, met die fokus spesifiek op tekste wat in die afgelope dekade gepubliseer is. In hierdie verband sal drie sleutelaspekte van die genre uitvoerig geassesseer word: die skrywer se selfbewuste feministiese ingryping in die karakterisering van haar historiese heldinne; die verskuiwing in die vertellingsperspektief en die ontplooiing van postmoderne letterkundige tegnieke; en die uitbeelding van vroulike seksualiteit. Die evolusie van die genre as geheel word ook beskou, en die veranderende parameters van moderne feminismes word ondervra sodat hul manifestasies in die populêre kultuur ten volle verstaan kan word.
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Alkhider, Hela Saleh. "Beyond Feminism: The Discourse of Positionality and Transnationalism in Alice Munro's Short Fiction." OpenSIUC, 2021. https://opensiuc.lib.siu.edu/dissertations/1909.
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This dissertation offers a new exploration of the relationship between geographic awareness and literary realism in Alice Munro’s depictions of female identity-formation. It demonstrates how Munro, the winner of the 2013 Nobel Prize in Literature, uses the discourse of place and positionality not just as a Canadian regionalist writer, but also as a writer implicitly concerned with the paradigms of intersectionality as advanced in Susan Stanford Friedman’s 1998 book Mappings and in the recent work of feminist geographers. These theories shed light on Munro’s efforts to represent her female protagonists’ individual and communal identities authentically. Following an introduction in which I explain how Munro’s cautious statements about feminism relate to these recent geopolitical theories, my chapters examine groupings of Munro’s stories through concepts associated with locational feminism. Chapter 2 compares Munro to one of her major influences, the American regionalist writer Willa Cather, through the concept of geopolitical space. Chapter 3 applies this concept more closely to Munro’s portrayals of female maturation in Lives of Girls and Women and The Moons of Jupiter, focusing on a thematic tension between belonging and alienation. Munro sees women’s dilemmas of identity as deeply connected to their sense of place and their definitions of their home places and positions. Chapter 4 examines how issues of place and space, especially regarding what Munro calls “home ground,” affect the construction of relational identity in the title story of Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage, and in several stories from the collection Runaway. Chapter 5 demonstrates how Munro employs the tropes of women’s mobility and travel -- usually seen as tools of empowerment -- to depict their unsettled lives, characterized by instability, insecurity and imbalance. Because these experiences have to do with multiple nodes of difference, Munro’s depictions of mobility as a mixed reality overlap with recent theories of transnational feminism. Chapter 6 deals with the question of narrative agency vis-à-vis locational identity and positionality in her collection, Who Do You Think You Are? In sum, the dissertation argues that Munro’s realistic focus on women’s lives and experiences, and her emphasis on strategic place-awareness rather than the goal of equality, does carry an inspiring message to her readers about the nature of empowerment in today’s world.
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McAlpine, Kirstie Alexandra. "Eloquent ruptures : silence as strategy in contemporary North American women's fiction." Thesis, University of Newcastle Upon Tyne, 1998. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.264424.
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Leone, Eden. "Rhetorical Inquiry: Feminist Argumentative Modes and Expectations in Detective Fiction." Bowling Green State University / OhioLINK, 2015. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=bgsu1429225599.
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D'Errico, Jon. "Enormous changes : narrative strategies in Grace Paley's short fiction." Virtual Press, 1988. http://liblink.bsu.edu/uhtbin/catkey/539790.
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Grace Paley's fiction has suffered from being labeled as (alternately) post-modernist and feminist. There is a critical assumption that post-modernist and feminist works are plotless because they are nontraditional. Plot has been defined in Aristotelian terms, and those terms have colored the thinking of critics who attempt to discuss non-Aristotelian plots. Ironically, even feminist critics who are keenly aware that language is empowerment use the traditional language of literary criticism to describe nontraditional plots.As a result, post-modernist and feminist narrative modes are seen as fragmentary. This judgment often as not is simply a reaction to the Aristotelian emphasis on the unity of plot. Literary "unity" is not, however, an antonym for "fragmentation." To assume that nontraditional works such as Paley's are fragmented is to ignore the stories. The opposite of literary unity is not fragmentation, but amalgamation.Similar critical assumptions are that Paley's work is plotless and carries no implicit meaning. Careful readings of the stories in question lay both of these assumptions to rest. The point here is to make reading and understanding the stories the first priority. To use the stories as merely a chance to apply theory is to do both theory and the stories a disservice.Department of English
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Wannisinghe, Mudiyanselage Jayantha. "Emerging femininities in selected Sri Lankan English fiction." HKBU Institutional Repository, 2019. https://repository.hkbu.edu.hk/etd_oa/676.
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THESIS submitted by Wannisinghe Mudiyanselage Jayantha to Hong Kong Baptist University for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy and entitled "Emerging Femininities in Selected Sri Lankan English Fiction" May 2019. The study documents the rise of emerging Sri Lankan feminine subjectivities as portrayed in post-independence novels in English by Punyakante Wijenaike, Nihal de Silva, and Chandani Lokuge. It attempts to interpret the rise of socially constructed traits of new womanhood and shifting gender norms responding to significant transformations in post-independence Sri Lanka economy and society during which the nation has rapidly shifted from a traditional rural economy to an industrialized since the 1978 free market reforms embraced with policies of globalization and neoliberalism. The selected novels are historicized by means of specific data indicating that any compensations traditionally afforded to Sri Lankan women through the collusion of colonialism with patriarchy are being challenged by the current globalization of opportunity and risk, even as Sri Lankan women continue to engage in the far older struggles for respect in traditional contexts and spaces (Wijenaike), take up arms in service in the name of nation-building projects (De Silva), or search for greater life opportunities by means of out- migration and eventual return (Lokuge). Challenges to conventional colonial-patriarchal ideology, with attention to specific objects symbolizing alternative (or even "deviant") femininity long preceding modernity, are the central focus of Punyakante Wijenaike's Giraya and Amulet. The use of a Marxist-feminist approach, localized in the setting of the walauwe, allows for the examination of potentials and limits for women's subjectivities as they emerged in the earliest 1970s-era post-independence novels. Nihal de Silva's The Road from Elephant Pass explores the fictionalized portrayal of women soldiers, conscripted to the LTTE in the early 1980s, and the effects of a revolutionary posture upon traditional gender roles. The tension in de Silva's novel between the political liberation project as national/romantic allegory uniting Sinhala and Tamil causes as ultimately endorsing patriarchal claims of Anderson's "imagined communities" thesis in the dramatic context of women's participation in the civil war. Using a "Fourth World" sovereignty frame, the final chapter of the project analyzes the potential rewards and risks of diasporic experience, for women protagonists in Chandani Lokuge's If the Moon Smiled and Turtle Nest. Collectively, the analyses indicate how Sri Lankan novels in English have documented the struggles, potentials, and continuing vulnerabilities around the emergence of new feminine subjectivities for post-independence Sri Lankan women.
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Emanuel, Elizabeth F. "An examination of embodied female identity in contemporary crime fiction by women writers." Thesis, Queensland University of Technology, 2016. https://eprints.qut.edu.au/98017/5/Elizabeth%20Emanuel%20Exegesis.pdf.
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This practice-based dissertation explores issues relating to women's identity and embodiment within the framework of the crime fiction novel and contends that the genre offers women writers the opportunity to question, undermine, and redirect existing values related to the construction of the female image.
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Jones, Mary C. "Fashioning Mobility: Navigating Space in Victorian Fiction." UKnowledge, 2015. http://uknowledge.uky.edu/english_etds/24.
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My dissertation examines how heroines in nineteenth-century British Literature manipulate conventional objects of feminine culture in ways which depart from uses associated with Victorian marriage plots. Rather than use fashionable objects to gain male attention or secure positions as wives or mothers, female characters deploy self-fashioning tactics to travel under the guise of unthreatening femininity, while skirting past thresholds of domestic space. Whereas recent Victorian literary and cultural criticism identifies female pleasure in the form of consumption and homosocial/erotic desire, my readings of Victorian fiction, from doll stories to the novels of Charlotte Brontë, Wilkie Collins, and Marie Corelli, consider that heroines find pleasure in deploying fashionable objects – such as dolls, clothes, cosmetics, and jewelry – which garner access to public space typically off limits for Victorian women. In the first chapter, girls use dolls to play in wilderness spaces, fostering female friendships. Muted dress provides a cloak of invisibility, allowing the heroine to participate in the pleasure of ocular economies in the second chapter. The third chapter features a female detective who uses cosmetics to disguise her infiltration of men’s private spaces in order to access private secrets. Finally, the project culminates with jewelry’s re-signification as female success in the publishing world.
Tracing how female characters in Victorian fiction use self-fashioning as a pathway, this study maps the safe travel heroines discover through wild landscapes, urban streets, and professional arenas. These spaces were often coded with sets of conditions for gendered interactions. Female characters’ proficient self-styling provides mobility through locations guarded by the voices of neighbors, friends, and family who attempt to keep them in line with Victorian gender conventions. Female characters derive an often unexplored pleasure: the secret joy of being where they should not and going against what they are told. In the novels I examine, female protagonists navigate prolific rules and advice about how to arrange and manage their appearances, not to aspire to paragons of Victorian beauty and womanhood but in order to achieve physical and geographic mobility outside domestic interiors.
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McIntyre, Heather Dawn. "Mystical Motherhood: Blending Ecstatic Religious Experience with Feminist Discourse in Appalachian Fiction." Bowling Green State University / OhioLINK, 2010. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=bgsu1276621461.
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Marshall, Sharon Margaret. "The Aeneid and the illusory authoress : truth, fiction and feminism in Hélisenne de Crenne’s Eneydes." Thesis, University of Exeter, 2011. http://hdl.handle.net/10036/3249.
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In 1541, writing under the pseudonym Hélisenne de Crenne, the French noblewoman Marguerite Briet produced a translation of the first four books of Virgil’s Aeneid that remains largely unknown. As a female author, Hélisenne provides a sixteenth-century woman’s perspective on the Aeneid, an on classical literature more generally, and the uniqueness of her translation in this respect makes her work extremely significant, particularly given the relatively recent interest in women and other marginal voices within the field of classics. This thesis contributes to an understanding of the need for a holistic approach to Classical Reception Studies, through a thorough examination of Hélisenne’s translation not only with regard to her gender but also the social, historical and literary climate in which she writes. Focussing on the mise en livre, as well as the text, my approach also stresses the need to reevaluate the relationship between the author and the text that we often assume in classics is more direct than is actually the case. Through such an examination of her Eneydes, Hélisenne emerges as a serious participant in the humanist tradition who engages with classical literature in such a way as to question masculine textual authority and the notion of an objective truth, whilst deliberately implicating herself through her translation in a web of authorities who are not to be trusted.
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Skyes, Gillian E. "The new woman in the new world : fin-de-siècle writing and feminism in Australia." Phd thesis, Faculty of Arts, 2002. http://hdl.handle.net/2123/16473.
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Glasburgh, Michele M. "Chick lit: the new face of postfeminist fiction?" Thesis, School of Information and Library Science, 2006. http://hdl.handle.net/1901/349.
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This study is a content analysis of ten chick lit books, a genre of women’s fiction. Books were analyzed for five postfeminist characteristics as defined by Susan Faludi’s backlash theory, outlined in Backlash: The Undeclared War Against Women and in further research on popular culture’s notions of womanhood: 1) negative reaction to second wave feminism, 2) focus on the individual instead of a collective sisterhood, 3) desire for more traditional femininity through domesticity, consumerism, romance, and motherhood, 4) female identity crisis causing fears of a man shortage, a loudly ticking biological clock, and career burnout, and 5) feelings of anxiety over ability to make the correct future decisions. Analysis has found that chick lit does generally reinforce the notions of postfeminism/backlash, however the characters displayed anxiety over how to incorporate feminine paths into their lives and generally disregard motherhood.
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Ess, Courtneigh. "n Interseksionele lees van Bettina Wyngaard se misdaadtrilogie (An intersectional reading of Bettina Wyngaard’s crime-fiction trilogy)." Thesis, University of the Western Cape, 2021. http://hdl.handle.net/11394/8183.
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Magister Artium - MABettina Wyngaard se misdaadfiksie-trilogie, bestaande uit die romans Vuilspel (2013), Slaafs (2016) en Jagter (2019) het ’n vernuwende uitwerking in die Afrikaanse literatuur gehad. Dit kan hoofsaaklik teruggevoer word na die skrywer se gebruik van ’n (swart) lesbiese protagonis. Wyngaard is ook die eerste swart Afrikaanse vroue-outeur wat haar tot hierdie genre gewend het. Haar misdaadtrilogie toon ’n sentrale bemoeienis met die vroulike subjek se ondergeskikte posisie as deurgaans onderdruk weens verskeie identiteitsaspekte (waaronder ras, gender, klas, seksualiteit, kultuur en nasionaliteit tel). Die simbiotiese verhouding tussen identiteit en mag is dus ’n prominente tematiek in die trilogie. Hierdie bemiddeling tussen identiteit en mag toon raakpunte met die interseksionaliteitsteorie soos voorgestel deur Kimberlé Crenshaw (1989). Sy voer aan dat subjekte onderdruk word deur die tussenspel van identiteitsmerkers en sisteme van onderdrukking wat inherent is daaraan. In hierdie verhandeling word die representasie van die vroulike subjek in Wyngaard se misdaadtrilogie uit ’n interseksionele invalshoek in oënskou geneem. Vanweë die gebruik van literatuur as subjek van analise in hierdie verhandeling, word swart feministiese denkskole oor die letterkunde ingereken as ontledingsinstrumente om Wyngaard se trilogie binne die ruim trajek van swart feministiese fiksie te posisioneer. Terselfdertyd word Wyngaard se subjektiwiteit as swart vroue-outeur krities bekyk omdat sy deur middel van haar tekste verantwoordelik is vir beeldskepping en voorstellings van vroulike subjekte. Aangesien Wyngaard se fiksie dikwels identiteitsaspekte ondervang wat verband hou met haar eie subjektiewe identiteit, sal die wyse bekyk word waarop selfdefiniëring en selfaktualisering in haar trilogie tot stand gebring word.Soos reeds genoem, het Wyngaard grense in die Afrikaanse letterkunde versit deur haar tot misdaadfiksie as genre te wend. As deel van populêre fiksie, staan misdaadfiksie tradisioneel bekend as ’n behoudende genre met ’n resepmatige onderbou wat, só beskou, nie gebruik word om progressiewe argumente in te voer nie. Hierdie aspek van die genre staan dus oënskynlik in kontras met die feministiese aard van Wyngaard se misdaadfiksie-trilogie. In hierdie verhandeling word gevolglik ook die funksionaliteit van genre en die impak daarvan op die beeldskepping van die vroulike subjek bekyk. Maniere waarop Wyngaard gevestigde genrekonvensies oorskry in ’n poging om feministiese benaderings te berde te bring, word in die besonder bestudeer.
South Africa
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Anim-Addo, Joan Lilian. "Breaking the silence : first-wave Anglophone African-Caribbean women novelists and dynamics of history, language and publication." Thesis, Goldsmiths College (University of London), 2001. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.368878.
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O'Reilly, Sally Anne. "Dark Aemilia and inventing Shakespeare." Thesis, Brunel University, 2012. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.571794.
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Motivation: When I set out to write a novel about Shakespeare’s Dark Lady, I wanted the focus to be on her, not the Bard. However, as I developed the idea, I realised that his character was an essential component of the narrative. So how should I set about ‘inventing’ such an iconic character? In addition, how relevant were earlier versions – biographical and fictional – to this project? Though I found a wealth of material about Shakespeare and his plays, I discovered there is a substantial sub-genre of Shakespeare invention. As a writer new to historical fiction, this felt a little like putting Jesus Christ into a story – and it turned out that some writers have given Shakespeare a distinctly Messianic character. Methods: In order to invent my own version of Shakespeare, I needed to assimilate what had gone before. The line between fact and fiction was blurred, but I clarified what was known and what unknown, and established what was myth. I then researched fourteen fictional versions of Shakespeare, starting with Kenilworth (Sir Walter Scott, Constable & Co, 1821) and ending with Shakespeare’s Memory (Jorge Luis Borges, Penguin, 2001). Results: My discovery was that the invention of history is a complex imaginative and intellectual process, but each writer solves a succession of challenges in their own way. Identifying these challenges helped me to create a new Shakespeare, and to clarify my own reasons for writing this particular novel. Conclusions: Far from being a form which is nostalgic, escapist or conservative, historical fiction is continually re-inventing itself in the light of the events and ideas which are contemporary to the writer. The continuing evolution and re-acquisition of the character of William Shakespeare is an illustration of its perennial significance.
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Davis, Mary McPherson. "Feminist Applepieville architecture as social reform in Charlotte Perkins Gilman's fiction /." Diss., Columbia, Mo. : University of Missouri-Columbia, 2007. http://hdl.handle.net/10355/5071.
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Thesis (M.A.)--University of Missouri-Columbia, 2007.The entire dissertation/thesis text is included in the research.pdf file; the official abstract appears in the short.pdf file (which also appears in the research.pdf); a non-technical general description, or public abstract, appears in the public.pdf file. Title from title screen of research.pdf file (viewed on October 25, 2007) Includes bibliographical references.
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Hipolito, Helaine Aparecida [UNESP]. "Aventuras de Diófanes: as aventuras do romance português." Universidade Estadual Paulista (UNESP), 2004. http://hdl.handle.net/11449/94148.
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O trabalho propõe-se a analisar a obra Aventuras de Diófanes, de Teresa Margarida da Silva e Orta, publicado em Portugal, em 1752. O romance, que teve, por mais de dois séculos, o nome de sua verdadeira autora ocultado, é um importante documento acerca dos valores de uma época marcada pela repressão e por perseguições, em uma sociedade conservadora e moralista. Julgada, sumariamente, durante muito tempo, como um texto de pouco valor literário, a obra de Teresa Margarida permaneceu relegada ao esquecimento. Em razão disso, a leitura proposta procura fazer aparecer, através da análise estritamente literária, as nuances inovadoras e mesmo transgressoras da narrativa da autora, em relação ao contexto em que vivia, e contra o qual, sutil e alegoricamente, combatia.
The aim of this paper is to analise the novel Aventuras de Diófanes, by Teresa Margarida da Silva e Orta, published in Portugal in 1752. The name of its author was concealed for more than two centuries. This is an important document concerning the portuguese society because the novel reflects the repression and persecution in a strict and moralist county. At first this novel was left aside considered a weak work. As a result of this the proposed reading intends to show by means of a strictly literary analysis the inovative and even transgressor perspective of the author’s narrative towards the period in which she lived and against which she fought subtly and alegorically.
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Ryd, Gunilla. "Ténicas och estrategicas literarias en "Leonora" de Elena Poniatowska." Thesis, Linnéuniversitetet, Institutionen för språk och litteratur, SOL, 2012. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:lnu:diva-18691.
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The subject of this thesis is Leonora written by Elena Poniatowska. The aim of the study is to analyze the literary technique and strategy used in constructing this book which depicts the life of a famous painter, Leonora Carrington. The analysis concentrates on two aspects: the extent of its feminist character and whether it can be classified as a fictional biography or a biographic fiction. In order to arrive at a conclusion on these issues a brief summary of literary and feminist theory is presented as well as a short description of relevant aspects of the surrealist movement. According to the author Leonora does not pretend to be a biography but rather a tribute to a great woman and artist. This esay however sustains that the book is a feminist fictional biography. In fact it builds upon books written by Carrington herself with a highly autobiographical content as well as on biographical texts. Both the author and her protoganist are well-known for their feminist stand and the analysis shows how feminist theory or thinking is reflected both on behalf on the writer as well as in the construction of the hero and certain aspects of her life that build up this biographical fiction.
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Blomgren, Elin. "S(mothering) the subject formation in Jamaica Kincaid ́s Annie John : Female subject formation in postcolonial Caribbean fiction." Thesis, Södertörns högskola, Institutionen för kultur och lärande, 2018. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:sh:diva-37501.
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This essay investigates Jamaica Kincaid´s the book Annie John (1985) and its protagonist Annie John´s search for a coherent self-and/or a de-colonized identity through a subject transformation. Using postcolonial feminism, including theorists such as Homi K. Bhabha and Stuart Hall, I suggest that the protagonist Annie John does not perform a subject transformation as she is unable to embrace the state of hybridity needed to perform such a transformation. Annie John is a colonial subject drawn to the two worlds in which she resided, the East and West- and cannot create herself in the presence of them both. I conclude that Annie John´s mother, under the influence of colonialism and patriarchy, is part reason as to why Annie John is unable to perform this transformation. With the help of postcolonial feminism, I find that as Annie John cannot recover her mother from this double oppression of colonialism and patriarchy. The conclusion of this essay proposes that the protagonist Annie John does not manage to create a subject formation as she is not able to reside in a state of hybridity between her own culture and that of her colonizer.
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Adams, Bridget E. Adams. "Who Built Us This Way: Stories." Bowling Green State University / OhioLINK, 2018. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=bgsu1529480623667407.
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Meoto, Elvira N. Huff Cynthia Anne. "The evolution and formation of identity a case study of West African women's fiction from 1960s to 1990s /." Normal, Ill. : Illinois State University, 2007. http://proquest.umi.com/pqdweb?index=0&did=1432770681&SrchMode=2&sid=2&Fmt=2&VInst=PROD&VType=PQD&RQT=309&VName=PQD&TS=1216232418&clientId=43838.
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Thesis (Ph. D.)--Illinois State University, 2007.Title from title page screen, viewed on July 16, 2008. Dissertation Committee: Cynthia A. Huff (chair), Ronald L. Strickland, Paula Ressler. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 270-282) and abstract. Also available in print.
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Rau, Petra-Utta. "Moving dangerously : desire and narrative structure in the fiction of Elizabeth Bowen, Rosamond Lehmann and Sylvia Townsend Warner." Thesis, University of East Anglia, 2000. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.327523.
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This thesis explores how constructs of gender and sexual identity in both psychoanalytic and fictional writing between the wars affect the fonn and structure of a text. The keen interest Bowen, Lehmann and Townsend Warner show in mental processes and patterns of sexual development, allows us to read across psychoanalytic and fictional discourses and rigid genres. While the psychoanalytic texts utilise elements of the Bildungsroman, the fictional narrative often enacts the pathologies of the story in an erotics of fonn. The intersection of scientific and narrative discourses coincides with a modernist debate about the limitations of conventional modes of representation in Edwardian and realist texts. The shifts between earlier modernist gestures of moving away from realist modes and structures and a later return to a more conciliatory approach of utilising them for modernist agendas, can be interpreted as a specific anxiety of origins. Shifting between modernist and realist modes of writing, and between nineteenth-century and early twentieth-century concepts of sexuality and gender produces peculiarly hybrid texts which negotiate this anxiety in various fonns of ambivalence and in-between-ness. Through the examination of six novels by Rosamond Lehmann, Elizabeth Bowen and Sylvia Townsend Warner, the thesis examines this anxiety in the difficulties psychoanalytic and fictional texts have in talking about the maternal, placing them in the context of socio-cultural ambiguities about femininity and motherhood during the interwar period. The thesis opens with a discussion of the possibilities and limitations of crossing between post-structuralist, psychoanalytic and historicist readings of modernist texts and provides a brief biographical framework for the three women writers in so far as it relates to gender, sexuality and the maternal. The following six chapters are divided into two parts grouping the first novels against the mature work in order to trace changes in the ways of representing sexuality, gender and maternal ambivalences through form, plot and structure. The first part discusses Rosamond Lehmann's Dusty Answer (1927), Elizabeth Bowen's The Hotel (1927) and Sylvia Townsend Warner's Lolly Will owes (1926), while the second part examines The Weather in the Streets (1936), The Death of the Heart (1938) and Summer Will Show (1936) retaining the order of authors. The conclusion summarises the findings, contemplates its implications for the discourse on modernism and broaches the divergencies of Bowen's, Lehmann's and Warner's fictions in the 1940s.
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Berg, Annika. "Att bli subjekt i sin egen historia : En studie i Alice Lyttkens Flykten från vardagen och - kommer inte till middagen." Thesis, Södertörn University College, School of Gender, Culture and History, 2008. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:sh:diva-1543.
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Alice Lyttkens (1897-1991) was a very popular author in Sweden during several decades in the middle of the twentieth century. She was most famous for her historical novels. During her first period as a novelist in the 1930s, however, she wrote contemporary fiction, reflecting the situation of contemporary Women. The traditional view of the two sexes as “complementary” permeated the interwar period. Complementary at this time was presupposed as an asymmetrical and hierarchical relation between the two sexes. The male was seen as superior to the female in being strong when she was weak etc. According to the Swedish researcher Kristina Fjelkestam’s dissertation Ungkarlsflickor, kamrathustrur och manhaftiga lesbianer this view was close at hand in representations of femininity. In this paper I discuss how the protagonists in Alice Lyttkens novels Flykten från vardagen (1933) and - kommer inte till middagen (1934) relate to this social norm, or ”doxa”. By making such an analysis I come to the conclusion that this ”doxa” is represented in both novels, but strongly challenged by the protagonists in their actions and life choices. The narrator also questions the predominated complementary view and demonstrates the protagonist’s thoughts and feelings throughout the novels. The author there by emphasizes a critical feminist attitude. The narrator is also critical of the superficial so-called modern characters, which apparently is under the influence of the ”doxa”.
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Souza, Narrira Lemos de. "Contingência ciborgue e tecnologias do corpo: personagens para repensar a ciência." Universidade Federal de Goiás, 2015. http://repositorio.bc.ufg.br/tede/handle/tede/5345.
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Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de Goiás - FAPEG
Donna Haraway’s political myth is the theme of this research, the investigation implies to understand this character as agent of feminist and social transformation trough three possible images. Firstly, we intend to know, in our society, who is cyborg, knowing that we are talking about a capitalist and western society. There is a historical retrospective about cybernetics, computation and medicine; there is also basics conceptions to the better understanding of the research. We conclude that the cyborg is not only a myth, there are cyborgs looking for a formal identity in some governments. After that, we research the cyborg in the imagination of Science Fiction in some movies and televisions sitcoms, we want to know, after all, if these cyborgs are fiction or reality and if there is a border between this categories. Finally, we look into the cyborg of feminist theory, where the political myth is the meanly agent of Science transformation. We conclude that new characters are need to re-build a Science in which the Man is not the center of the history.
O mito político do ciborgue de Donna Haraway é tema desta pesquisa. A investigação trata de compreender este personagem como um agente de transformação social feminista através de três possíveis imagens. Primeiramente, procuramos entender quais são os ciborgues de nossa sociedade ocidental capitalista. Há um resgate histórico da cibernética, computação e medicina; há, também, conceituações básicas para a continuidade da pesquisa. Chega-se à conclusão de que o ciborgue não é apenas um mito, há ciborgues reivindicando uma identidade reconhecida pelos seus governos. Posteriormente, investigamos o ciborgue na imaginação do cinema de ficção científica, queremos saber, afinal, se estes ciborgues são ficção ou são realidade e se há uma fronteira entre essas duas categorias. Finalmente, debruçamo-nos sobre o ciborgue da teoria feminista crítica da ciência, em que o mito político é agente principal das transformações da ciência. A conclusão a que chegamos é que novos personagens são necessários para que se possa construir uma ciência em que o Homem não seja o centro da história.
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Mello, Marlova Soares. "Três leituras de ficção científica : uma dissertação sem título." reponame:Biblioteca Digital de Teses e Dissertações da UFRGS, 2017. http://hdl.handle.net/10183/172970.
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Essa dissertação é o resultado dos questionamentos e das inquietações suscitadas a partir do encontro das narrativas de ficções científicas e das ideias feministas. Esses pulsares teóricos transpassam em alguns momentos minha trajetória acadêmica, tentando, concomitantemente, conciliar e incorporar essas duas formas literárias. A discussão basilar advém da leitura de The Female Man, de Joanna Russ, em um encadeamento sutil com a minha perspectiva enquanto sujeito mulher em contato com esses universos. Por fim, busca-se desvendar os fragmentos narrativos que estão impregnados de poderosas imagens subversivas e palavras transgressoras que convocam as leitoras e leitores a repensar, resistir e reformular a realidade ao seu redor.This thesis is the result of questioning and restlessness raised by the encounter of science fiction narratives and feminist ideas. These theoretical pulses trespass at some moments my academic trajectory, trying concomitantly to harmonize and to embody these two literary types. The underlying discussion comes from the reading of The Female Man, by Joanna Russ, inside a sutil chaining with my perspective as woman subject in contact with these universes. Lastly, It seeks to unravel the narrative fragments that are impregnated with powerful subversive images and transgressive words that invite male and female readers to rethink, resist and reshape the reality around them
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Limér, Emelie. "Flygande bildar och kvinnliga rättigheter : Feministiskt synsätt inom science fiction." Thesis, Blekinge Tekniska Högskola, 2018. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:bth-16473.
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I detta arbete har kreativitet, design och motivationen som krävs för att förändra världen tillsammans används, med förhoppningen att det är det den kommer göra. I undersökningen har jag sett närmare på feminism och dess plats i media, mer specifikt science fiction. Då media är så vidspritt och välanvänt borde detta vara exemplariskt för att förmedla ett mer jämställt synsätt och förena en annars splittrad förtryckt grupp. Det är detta jag har gett mig in i för att bevisa och använda mig utav. Genom att använda mig utav kritisk spekulativ design, prototyputveckling och grafisk design har jag, genom en gestaltning, även sett över hur man kan anpassa science fiction efter det feministiska perspektivet, och hur man kan utnyttja detta utomordentliga sätt att förbättra världen.In this thesis, I have used the creativity, design and motivation that is required to, together, change the world, with the hope that this is what it will do. In the study, I have looked closely at feminism and its place in the media, more specifically in science fiction. Using something as widespread and well-used as the media, it should be exemplary to convey a more equal outlook, and unite an otherwise splintered and oppressed group. This is what I have addressed, in order to prove it and use it. With the aid of critical speculative design, prototype development and graphic design, I have, through a figuration, also seen how we can adapt science fiction to the feminist perspective, and how we can take advantage of this exceptional way, to improve the world.
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Henninger, Katherine. "Ordering the façade : photography and the politics of representation in contemporary Southern women's fiction /." Digital version accessible at:, 1999. http://wwwlib.umi.com/cr/utexas/main.
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Andersson, Lorraine. "Which witch is which? A feminist analysis of Terry Pratchett's Discworld witches." Thesis, Halmstad University, School of Humanities (HUM), 2006. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:hh:diva-543.
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Terry Pratchett, writer of humorous, satirical fantasy, is very popular in Britain. His Discworld series, which encompasses over 30 novels, has witches as protagonists in one of the major sub-series, currently covering eight novels. His first “witch” novel, Equal Rites, in which he pits organised, misogynist wizards against disorganised witches, led him to being accused of feminist writing. This work investigates this claim by first outlining the development of the historical witch stereotype or discourse and how that relates to the modern, feminist views of witches. Then Pratchett’s treatment of his major witch characters is examined and analysed in terms of feminist and poststructuralist literary theory. It appears that, while giving the impression of supporting feminism and the feminist views of witches,
Pratchett’s witches actually reinforce the patriarchal view of women.
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Forss, Christoffer. "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland : A Feminist Bildungsroman." Thesis, Linnéuniversitetet, Institutionen för språk (SPR), 2013. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:lnu:diva-27301.
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This thesis has two aims. The first one is to elucidate how Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1865) functions as a Bildungsroman, and the other one is to demonstrate how the novel also has a coming of age aspect based on feminism. Whilst Alice matures in the traditional sense, she also in parallel does so as a stronger female fighting for gender rights with signs of feminism. The feminist angle as well as the surreal world of Wonderland makes the novel a not very obvious Bildungsroman in a genre dominated by male protagonists. For Alice to be a young female child who ends up in a fantasy world thus makes her a very fascinating character. The central hypothesis of this thesis is that what Alice is exposed to and reacts to in Wonderland generally reflects the genre of a Bildungsroman and also specifically a feminist Bildungsroman. Theoretical framework is based on the ideas of Franco Moretti, Mikhail Bakhtin, Thomas Jeffers, Carol Lazzaro-Weis, George Eliot and Elizabeth Drew Stoddard, as well as novels by Eliot and Stoddard. This includes dynamic protagonists, unpredictable development, symbols of modernity, the quest for universality, and minor characters who make sure that the protagonist develops, as well as feminist struggle by means of disregarding the ‘cult of true womanhood’ in a genre and society dominated by men.
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Hipolito, Helaine Aparecida. "Aventuras de Diófanes : as "aventuras" do romance português /." Assis : [s.n.], 2004. http://hdl.handle.net/11449/94148.
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Orientador: Odil José de Oliveira FilhoResumo: O trabalho propõe-se a analisar a obra Aventuras de Diófanes, de Teresa Margarida da Silva e Orta, publicado em Portugal, em 1752. O romance, que teve, por mais de dois séculos, o nome de sua verdadeira autora ocultado, é um importante documento acerca dos valores de uma época marcada pela repressão e por perseguições, em uma sociedade conservadora e moralista. Julgada, sumariamente, durante muito tempo, como um texto de pouco valor literário, a obra de Teresa Margarida permaneceu relegada ao esquecimento. Em razão disso, a leitura proposta procura fazer aparecer, através da análise estritamente literária, as nuances inovadoras e mesmo transgressoras da narrativa da autora, em relação ao contexto em que vivia, e contra o qual, sutil e alegoricamente, combatia.
Abstract: The aim of this paper is to analise the novel Aventuras de Diófanes, by Teresa Margarida da Silva e Orta, published in Portugal in 1752. The name of its author was concealed for more than two centuries. This is an important document concerning the portuguese society because the novel reflects the repression and persecution in a strict and moralist county. At first this novel was left aside considered a weak work. As a result of this the proposed reading intends to show by means of a strictly literary analysis the inovative and even transgressor perspective of the author's narrative towards the period in which she lived and against which she fought subtly and alegorically.
Mestre
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Hoosic, Erica. "Chaosmomalia." Kent State University / OhioLINK, 2019. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=kent1575545373034738.
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Swanpitak, Ruttapond. "Representations of Female Sexuality and Subjectivity in the Fiction of Wang Anyi, Tie Ning and Chi Li." Thesis, University of Sydney, 2020. https://hdl.handle.net/2123/24087.
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The literary works of Chinese women writers became an important component of literature in the 1980s and 1990s, developing new trends, techniques and perspectives, and revealing the multiplicity of women’s experiences and private lives. The thesis seeks to fill a gap in studies of Chinese literature by examining post-Mao fiction published from 1986 to 2000 by Wang Anyi, Tie Ning and Chi Li from a poststructuralist feminist perspective, and offering fresh insights into their treatment of sexuality, subjectivity and femininity. In doing so, it contributes to the feminist study of Chinese women’s writing and to a better understanding of contemporary Chinese culture in relation to patriarchy, misogyny, feminism and transgression. Specifically, this thesis investigates how these three prominent authors positively assert the notion of sexual difference and form an alternative subjectivity that destabilises traditional humanistic beliefs in the patriarchal system. It analyses their creations of different representations of female subjectivity. It analyses how they negotiate women’s identities and spaces among diverse historical forces in their writing, challenging dominant gender narratives. While all the textual analyses in this thesis are commonly informed by poststructuralist feminist notions of female subjectivity, differences, transgression and spatiality, they demonstrate the writers’ different treatment of feminist themes in social, political and economic aspects. Wang Anyi highlights sexual awakening, the tension between sexual desire and social morality, and women’s self-preservation. Tie Ning discloses the negative effects of political forces on women, including female victimisation and male violence, and valorises women’s self-realisation and self-transformation. With a particular focus on economic aspects, Chi Li pays attention to women’s self-sufficiency and self-affirmation, internationally inspired ideals of femininity, urban consumer culture and sisterhood.