2,038 research outputs found
Women's life writing 1760-1830 : spiritual selves, sexual characters, and revolutionary subjects
No full textPhDThis thesis uses print and manuscript sources to analyse and interpret women's life
writing at the end of the eighteenth and beginning of the nineteenth centuries. I
explore printed works by Catharine Phillips, Mary Dudley, Priscilla Hannah Gurney,
Ann Freeman, Elizabeth Steele, Mary Robinson, Helen Maria Williams, Mary
Wollstonecraft, Grace Dalrymple Elliott, and Charlotte West and discuss the
manuscripts of Mary Fletcher, Mary Tooth, Sarah Ryan, and Elizabeth Fox. Of these
sources, five have never been analysed in the critical literature and six have received
little attention. Considered as a group, this large corpus of texts offers new insights
into the personal and political implications of different models of female selfhood and
social being.
In chapter one, I compare the religious identities presented in the spiritual
autobiographies of Quakers and Methodists. For these women, religious identification
provides a powerful sense of social belonging and enables public participation.
However, it may also lead to a loss of self in the demand for religious conformity and
self-abnegation. In chapter two, I consider the life writing of late eighteenth-century
courtesans. These women adapt available models of femininity and female authorship
in order to establish themselves as socially connected subjects. However, their
narratives also reveal that dependence on the sexual and literary marketplace puts
female selfhood under pressure. In chapter three, I explore the eyewitness accounts of
British women in the French Revolution. I argue that, for these writers, connecting
personal identity to political history is an enabling source of self-definition but it also
exposes them to the risks of self-fragmentation.
In my focus on the social function of women's life writing, I present an alternative to
the traditional alignment of the eighteenth-century autobiographical subject with the
autonomous self of individualism. These narratives allow us to reconsider the
productive and problematic dialectic between personal expression and representative
selfhood, self-authorship and collective narratives, and individualism and social
being. They suggest that women's life writing has the potential to be both the self-expression
of a unique heroine and the self-inscription of a politicised subject
The marriage of Philip of Habsburg and Mary Tudor and anti-Spanish sentiment in England : political economies and culture, 1553-1557.
No full textPhDThis thesis examines the early part of Mary I's reign, focusing on her marriage to
Philip of Habsburg and the marginalisation of their co-monarchy in Tudor historiography.
By looking at the diplomatic background and political opposition in England, I interrogate
the notion that anti-Spanish sentiment was a central cause of the Wyatt rebellion, arguing that
instead its aetiology lay in female sovereignty and the constitutional uncertainties produced
by it. Dynasticism tended to alienate power from familiar, local and territorial sources of
political authority. Infant mortality and the vicissitudes of the marriage market in this context
threatened discrete 'national' identities with an incipient imperialist internationalism. I analyse
in detail the marriage contract and 'Act declaring that the regal power of this realm is in the
Queen's Majesty', using them as evidence to show that anxieties about property rights were
not related to the repudiation of the Supremacy, repeal of Henrician legislation and return of
papal jurisdiction. The staging of the wedding harped on Philip's inferior status, inverting that
which the marriage ceremony rehearsed. The Castilian writing of England as a romance of
chivalry sublimated a sexual licence which repeated the fears played upon by exiled
polemicists that the kingdom had been transformed into the feminised subject of Spanish
male authority. Anti-Spanish propaganda did not reflect popular xenophobia. It was literate
and sophisticated, related to sectarian struggle and engaged with theories of justifiable
disobedience. Finally, I treat the joint royal London Entry and representations of Philip and
Mary welcoming his assumption of authority in relation to both England and his new quee
Depression and Gender: The Expression and Experience of Melancholy in the Eighteenth Century
No full textThis thesis investigates the life and work of six eighteenth-century writers, two male and four female. It explores their experience of depression through their letters and other autobiographical material, and examines the ways in which they represent melancholy in their poetry and prose. The subject of Chapter Two is Thomas Gray, whose real life persona as the lonely intellectual is also identifiable in his poetry. The Scottish poet Robert Fergusson is studied in Chapter Three. Fergusson’s lively and vigorous mind was shattered in the months leading up to his death, during which time some of his writing became darkly nihilistic. Chapter Four looks at Anne Finch, Countess of Winchilsea, a lifelong depressive who often wrote about her feelings of despair in her poetry. Chapter Five explores Lady Mary Wortley Montagu. She was a courageous and controversial figure, but despite her resilience, on occasion in her letters she reveals her vulnerability and susceptibility to low spirits, a mood which is sometimes expressed in her creative writing. Sarah Scott, whose life and work have not yet been considered in relation to the subject of melancholy, is examined in Chapter Six. Her novel includes several low-spirited and depressed female characters who are continually seeking asylum from a hostile world. Chapter Seven analyses Charlotte Smith, a mother of twelve children whose unhappy marriage ended in separation. Smith wrote extensively about her depression in her letters, prefaces, poetry and novels.
This study shows that the women in particular use their writing on melancholy and depression to express their discontent with the confined way in which they are often expected to live out their lives
"In this moment of alarm and peril": Female Education, Religion and Politics In the Late Eighteenth Century, With special reference to Catharine Macaulay and Hannah More
No full textPhDCatharine Macaulay and Hannah More are conventionally represented as
ideological opposites. Through an analysis which centres on their writings, this
thesis critically examines that representation, and more broadly explores
contemporary perceptions of the roles of women of the middling sort in the late
eighteenth century. It argues that revolution, particularly the French Revolution,
created a climate wherein the duties of women became the subject of increasing
debate. The discussion challenges and builds upon recent work on women's
writing and history, by examining how and why the role of women changed at this
time. This work is concerned with contemporary representations of women, and
concentrates on analysis of primary texts and archival material over a wide range
of genres, including educational treatises, plays, popular tracts, political pamphlets,
historical writing and newspapers - the latter proving a major resource.
Following a critical introduction, the thesis falls into four chapters. Chapter one
discusses the reputation, critical reception and public fame of Macaulay and More,
thereby providing insights into contemporary sexual and social politics. Women
were considered arbiters of morals and manners - believed to play a vital role in
ensuring social stability - and the second chapter examines how the threat of
revolution led to increasing anxiety and debate about the nature of female
education. The third and fourth chapters discuss religion and politics respectively,
and argue that beliefs about the interdependency of Church and State, together with
the feminization of religion, legitimized women's involvement in politics and
enlarged their sphere of influence.
3
The conclusion argues that the political and religious climate provided
opportunities for women to reassess and redefine their roles; while often remaining
within parameters defined by commonly held perceptions of femininity, they
politicized the domestic, extended female agency, and elevated the status of
women
Translating men : humanism and masculinity in Renaissance renditions of patristic texts
No full textPhDThis doctoral thesis focusses upon the translation of patristic works into English in
the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Considering the pragmatic usage of texts in humanist
culture, this research project explores the mobilisation of vernacular versions of the Church
Fathers in response to historical crises. Regarding Renaissance humanism as a gendered
intellectual methodology,I have investigated the way in which these texts particularly aim to
address the needs of men, offering them exemplars to 'cope' with their social circumstances.
The first chapter involves the analysis of Thomas Drant's rendition of Gregory of
Nazianzus' Epigrams (1568) as part of the struggles of the early Elizabethan era. I suggest
that this verse translation may possibly have played a supportive role for Protestant clerics
facing a loss of humanist confidence due to educational deficiencies and the conflict of
learning with the Catholic Louvainist scholars.
The second chapter examines John Healey's version of Augustine's City of God
(1610) in the context of the colonisation of Virginia. I propose that the Augustinian text - and
the included commentary by Vives - may have represented a 'handbook' for the
predominantly male community of planters confronted by (among other problems) the severe
difficulty of establishing a household and fathering the next generation.
The third chapter looks at Tobie Matthew's translation of Augustine's Confessions
(1620) as an aid for Catholic Englishmen in an age of religious persecution. I contend that
this text advertises and advances a passive / feminine form of manhood - which had been
initially propagated by late sixteenth-century recusant ideology - in order to offer succour to
its socially debilitated male readers.
By undertaking an examination of these previously neglected texts, this thesis has
attempted to expand the understanding of Renaissance humanist translation, as well as to
offer a unique insight into the history of gender
The 'true use of reading' : Sarah Fielding and mid eighteenth-century literary strategies.
No full textPhDThe aim of this thesis is to explore, by examining her life and
works, how Sarah Fielding (1710-68) established her identity as an author.
The definition of her role involves her notions of the functions of
writing and reading.
Sarah Fielding attempts to invite readers to form a sense of ties
by tacit understanding of her messages. As she believes that a work
of literature is produced through collaboration between the writer and
the reader, it is an important task in her view to show her attentiveness
toward reading practice. In her consideration of reading, she has two
distinct, even opposite views of her audience: on the one hand a familiar
and limited circle of readers with shared moral and cultural values and
on the other potential readers among the unknown mass of people. The
dual targets direct her to devise various strategies. She tries to
appeal to those who can endorse and appreciate her moral values as well
as her learning. Her writings and letters testify that she is sensitive
to the demands of the literary market, trying to lead the taste of readers
by inventing new forms.
The thesis opens with an overview of Sarah Fielding's career,
followed by a consideration of her critical attention to the roles of
reading. I go on to examine the narrative structures and strategies
she deploys, with a particular emphasis on her use of the epistolary
method. The following chapter deals with her attention to the reading
of the moral message tangibly embodied in her educational writing. It
is followed by an analysis of the activity which earned her a reputation
as a learned woman. Various as the forms of her works are, they invariably
reflect her attempt to balance herself between the two demands of
inventiveness and familiarity
Images of Self: A Study of Feminine and Feminist Subjectivity in the Poetry of Sylvia Plath, Anne Sexton, Margaret Atwood and Adrienne Rich, 1950-1980
No full textPhDThe thesis explores the poetry (and some prose) of Plath, Sexton,
Atwood and Rich in terms of the changing constructions of self-image
predicated upon the female role between approx. 1950-1980.1 am
particularly concerned with the question of how the discourses of
femininity and feminism contribute to the scope of the images of the
self which are presented.
The period was chosen because it involved significant upheaval and
change in terms of women's role and gender identity. The four poets'
work spans this period of change and appears to some extent generally
characteristic of its social, political and cultural contexts in America,
Britain and Canada. (Other poets' work, for example Rukeyser, Lorde,
Levertov, is included too. ) The poets were not chosen to illustrate a
pre-feminist vs. feminist opposition since a major concern is to explore
what I see to be the symbiotic relation between femininity and feminism
(as also between orthodoxy and heresy). However the thesis is organised
chronologically because periodisation is important for a consideration
of the poetry's social setting.
In wanting to connect the poetry with cultural and political
circumstances as much as possible I have taken Edward Said's assertion
of a text's position of 'being in the world', its potential as a cultural
product to help reshape reality, and its value as a 'powerful weapon of
both materialism and consciousness'. This is the starting point for the
study which is circular and cumulative in shape, fundamentally thematic,
though each chapter is a chronological exploration of the work of one
specific poet, beginning with Plath and completing with Rich. A
conclusion attempts to pull the strands of each together and consider
the implications raised.
The thesis has four general concerns which run through its particular
focus on each poet. The first involves the relations between cultural
practice and ideology; the second involves the ideology of gender
(through exploration of femininity and feminism); the third involves
authorial ideology (through the construction of self-image in relation to
femininity and feminism) while the fourth involves these concerns in
terms of the overall arena of women's struggle for meaning and selfdetermination
in cultural practice.
More specific elements of the study include collating and comparing
self-images and attempting to make connections or chart changes where
images such as witch, queen, handmaid, shamaness, goddess, earth mother,
whore, madwoman, etc., re-occur. Usage of myth (particularly Persephone).
the Gothic, 'and articulation of lesbian desire are also explored. The
emergence of a female 'hero' self-image, in opposition to 'victim', seems
to be a corollary of the impact
,
of feminism in Rich's poetry
particularly, but this tendency can be traced back through Plath. I
explore the celebration of nature and the power of essentialism in the
construction of heroic female images, particularly in the figure of the
mother flowing with milk at the centre of 'ecriture feminine'.
The concluding chapter suggests that femininity did not constitute
such a repressive constraint on self-image and writing practice for
women as perhaps might be supposed; and that feminism, while opening up
many empowering changes for women, has raised further disturbing and
unresolved questions about identity, and even helped, in some of its
aspects, to create a new 'orthodoxy' in which various aspects of
experience cannot easily be articulated. My example is Rich's later work
where it seems to admit itself limited by its own initially liberating
strategies and looks further on towards new 'heresies.
Virginity matters: power and ambiguity in the attraction of the Virgin Mary
No full textThis thesis seeks to account for virginity as the source of Mary's power to attract. The point of departure is the syncretistic culture of the classical world. Here, patristic use of Old Testament typology recognises the distinctive work of grace in Mary's virginity, thus allowing it to become the determining quality by which her experience is subsequently perceived and universalised. The thesis divides its exploration into the three categories by which Mary is portrayed in the gospels - woman, spouse, mother - concluding its investigation with the end of the nineteenth century and its new understanding of human identity in gender and sexuality. In each category the thesis attempts to identify ways in which the attraction of virginity has functioned through ambiguity (Mary as virgin and mother, mother and spouse of her son) as a positive quality of potency and freedom, rather than as a strictly biological human condition with negative association in contemporary culture. In order to assess the extent of Mary's attraction in periods that lacked the modern forms of articulating self-awareness, the thesis has considered the fabric of devotional practice in religious texts, art, drama and ritual, seeking to allow the perceptions of earlier periods of history (a medium in itself) to challenge our own. As expressions of attraction to Mary, these media have yielded an insight into the power of virginity as a statement of paradisal, heavenly life accessed by grace through male and female human experience. They have also shown virginity to be a source of power that can be exploited for political ends. Finally, the thesis suggests that the power of Mary's virginity has been subversive and liberating in Church and society, thus indicating its neglected significance as a statement about the ambiguity of our nature as human, gendered, and sexual beings
"different sentiments & different connections supports them" : sensibility, community, and diversity in British women's Romantic-period poetry
No full textWith diversity
as an overarching theme, women writers' responses to the
cultural
feminisation and developing social climate of
late eighteenth- and early
nineteenth-century Britain
are explored through analyses of their poems on
sensibility, community, and abolition.
To determine a
focus for
expressive criticism
and recover Romantic women writers
from the social and historical
contexts that have
previously succeeded in highlighting
male literary
achievements, women's poetry is
considered a distinct
contribution to Romanticism. This dissertation analyses poems
written
by Joanna Baillie, Anna Barbauld, Harriet
and Maria Falconar, Frances
Greensted, Frances Greville, Elizabeth Hands, Eliza Knipe, Isabella Lickbarrow,
Hannah More, Amelia Opie, Priscilla Pointon, Mary Robinson, Mary Scott, Helen
Maria Williams, Ann Yearsley, and Mary Julia Young.
Although literature brought together the public and private spheres, sensibility
mediated
between the two and served as a social currency
for
women.
The
various
applications of sensibility are apparent
in its dual-gendered nature,
its link
with
reason, and the significance of economic
language. A
new genre of the "Address to
Sensibility" was prominent
in the period and
followed
a
loose formula
which
defined
sensibility,
traced its
personal
impact,
and
determined
a
link between the Romantic
culture and
heightened
emotion.
Through
explorations of poems on
intellectual
coteries, patronage, creative
influence, Reviews, and
literary
critique,
it is
evident that women poets' affiliations
with the literary
community were marked
by
a
discomfort based on their literary
associations,
the anxiety about their public reception, and the social
differences in the
literary
community.
However, the development
of social,
intellectual, literary,
and
critical communities alleviated this discomfort
and contributed
to women's
participation
in literary
culture.
In
addition, women poets expressed sensibility and used images of community
in diverse ways in their works against slavery and the trade.
Abolitionist
poetry acts
as a case study of the particular motifs,
highlighted throughout, such as the
amalgamation of masculine and
feminine, the political and economic applications of
sensibility, the association of
feeling
with reason and community, and the assertion of
individuality
amidst commonality.
Women
poets' petitions
to alleviate the sufferings
of slaves paralleled arguments
for the improvement
of
British
society to benefit
women.
The poems discussed signify the complexity of the issues of sensibility,
community, and diversity
'The cracked mirror': Anne Sexton's poetics of self-representation
No full textThis thesis re-evaluates the work of the poet Anne Sexton (1928-1974), concentrating, in particular, on the indeterminacies, contradictions and aporia which it finds to be characteristic of her ostensibly frank and self-revelatory writing. The study is based on a close textual
analysis of Sexton's writing, is informed by oststructuralist theories, and is sustained by an
examination and discussion of archive collections of her previously unpublished papers. In seeking an understanding of Sexton's poetics, the thesis identifies and interrogates the strategies of denial and obfuscation apparent in her own explication of her work - principally, by scrutiny of the unpublished, and previously unresearched, drafts of a series of lectures
which she delivered in 1972. Chapters One and Two consider the origins of `confessional' or - Sexton's preferred term - 'personal' poetry and reassess her place within contemporary poetry. They suggest that
Sexton's writing is engaged in a process of negotiation and contestation, both with the boundaries and expectations of confessionalism, and with the strictures of T. S. Eliot's theory of `impersonality'. In support of these arguments, Chapter Two offer a reading of Sexton's
little-known poem, `Hurry Up Please It's Time', alongside its intertext, Eliot's The Waste Land. Chapter Three reassesses received views of the supposedly beneficial interrelationship between confessional speaker and reader. It examines Sexton's appropriation of dramatic
masks and personae and her use of metaphors of striptease and prostitution, and suggests that these are employed simultaneously to appease and to repel an intrusive audience. Similarly, Chapters Four and Five trace Sexton's problematisation of two previously-accepted tenets of confessional poetry: its status as autobiography and its truthfulness, drawing attention to the techniques employed in order to give the impression of both. Chapter Six considers Sexton's
problematic engagement with a language which is not malleable, transparent, and referential but, rather, is experienced as uncooperative and occlusive. Finally, the thesis recuperates Sexton from the common charge of narcissism, arguing that it is the writing, rather than the poet, which is self-reflexive and self-conscious. In this respect, it concludes that her work - perhaps unexpectedly - anticipates many of the tendencies of postmodernist writing
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