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Mary Florendo Perry interviewed by Steven McKay
Get PDFIn this interview conducted in person, Mary Florendo Perry speaks with Dr. Steven McKay, a member of the Watsonville is in the Heart project team. Perry discusses her family's immigration story from the Philippines and Mexicali. She also discusses their labor working in the agricultural fields and canneries. Perry also talks about her time in college at Vassar College. She also offers memories of her uncle who lived in a camp with other Filipino bachelors. Lastly, she discusses her knowledge of the Watsonville Race Riots
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
"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.
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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
On Refusing to Care as a Feminist Ethic:A Response to ‘Reactionary Feminists’ Louise Perry and Mary Harrington
Get PDFIt is long established that care is a feminist issue, even as feminists of different philosophical and political stripes disagree regarding the value of care as a guiding ethic. Into the debate on care comes ‘reactionary feminism,’ a recent UK-based movement which argues that the technological advances of the sexual revolution have prioritized liberal freedom and alienated women from caring roles with deleterious effects. The most prominent ‘reactionary feminists’ are Louise Perry, author of The Case Against the Sexual Revolution (2022), and Mary Harrington, author of Feminism Against Progress (2023). This article reads Perry and Harrington with and against feminist writing that offers radical ways of thinking about care and freedom beyond domesticity and heteronormativity. These include the Laboria Cubonix Collective’s manifesto, Xenofeminism (2018) and my own concept of ethical ‘self-fulness,’ propounded in my 2019 book, Selfish Women. Together, these constitute, respectively, collectivist and individualist ripostes to the reactionary feminists. <br/
The manuscript miscellany in early Stuart England : a study of British Library Manuscript Additional 22601 and related texts
No full textPhDThis thesis is an intensive study of a manuscript miscellany dating from the early years
of the reign of James VI and 1: British Library Manuscript Additional 22601. Compiled
by someone who had close links to the court, but who was also likely to have been
associated with the Inns of Court and possibly with the south-west of England, the
miscellany contains verse (including that of King James) and prose in a wide range of
genres, with a particular interest in the political culture of the period. My thesis
provides a description of the manuscript's contents as a whole and then goes on to focus
on texts from three specific genres: the letter, political prose, and poetry. Studying
these individually and in their immediate context, it goes on to trace their appearance in
a number of other contemporary miscellanies held in British and North American
archives.
The two primary contentions of the thesis are (1) that manuscript miscellanies need to
be treated as coherent wholes, whose arrangement to some extent determines the
meaning of the texts they contain and (2) that in the process of transmission from one
manuscript to another texts and their meanings are significantly modified. The act of
transcription is thus also an act of interpretation. Building on work by Peter Beal, Mary
Hobbs, Harold Love, Henry Woudhuysen and others, the thesis aims to expand our
understanding both of the culture of scribal publication and of the ways in which that
culture engaged with the political, religious and literary life of the nation
'Pilings of Thought Under Spoken': The Poetry of Susan Howe, 1974-1993.
No full textPhDThis thesis discusses the poetry published by contemporary American poet Susan
Howe over a period of almost two decades. The dissertation is chiefly concerned with
articulating the relationship between poetic form, history, and authority in this body
of' work. Howe's poetry dredges the past for the linguistic effects of patriarchy,
colonialism and war. My reading of the work is an exploration of the ways in which a
disjunctive poetics can address such historical trauma. The poems, rather than
attempting to reinstate voices lifted from what Howe has called "the dark side of
history", are a means of reflecting the resistance that the past offers to contemporary
investigation. It is the effacement, and not the recovery, of history's victims, that is
discernible in the contours of these highly opaque texts. Notions of authority are most
often addressed in the poetry through the figure of paternal absence, which has a
threefold function in the work, serving to represent social authority, an aporetic
conception of divinity and an autobiographical narrative. Alongside the antiauthoritarian
currents in the writing - critiques, for example, of the doctrine of
Manifest Destiny or of scapegoating versions of femininity - my thesis stresses Howe's
engagement with negative theology and with a strain of American Protestant
enthusiasm that has its roots in 17th century New England. The dissertation explores
the dissonance caused by the co-existence in the poetry of elements of political dissent
and religious mysticism. Finally, I consider Howe's engagement with literary history
and authors such as Shakespeare, Swift, Thoreau and Melville. The manner in which
Howe deploys the words of others in her work, I argue, allows for a mixture of textual
polyphony and a more conventional notion of authorial 'voice'
Virginity matters: power and ambiguity in the attraction of the Virgin Mary
Get PDFThis 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
Sarah Fielding: Satire and Subversion in the Eighteenth-Century Novel
No full textThis study of Sarah Fielding (1710―68) is an original contribution to Fielding scholarship that has a dual purpose: to support those who are striving to re-introduce her to the modern literary landscape in an effort to restore her eighteenth-century literary standing, and to firmly establish Fielding as an early feminist writer. It is argued here that throughout her oeuvre Fielding challenged prevailing traditions that denied women a choice, particularly in education, employment and marriage. These themes are also considered in the political treatises of Mary Astell (1666―1731) and Mary Wollstonecraft (1759―97), who are now widely recognised as feminist writers.
It is further argued that Fielding’s subversion in fiction of the English patriarchal system is underscored by her unorthodox performance in the literary arena. This is fully explored alongside her use of sentimentalism as a literary tool with which she challenges her seemingly inhumane society. Fielding’s interest in ‘the Labyrinths of the Mind’ (in modern terms, human psychology) will also be addressed as will her placement in the history of feminism and her placement in the sentimental novel tradition. Fielding’s performance as a literary critic will be compared with the few female authors who, like her, dared to publish literary criticism during her writing career. Accordingly, extracts from Fielding’s novels and her two critical pamphlets will be thoroughly examined.
An updated biography of Fielding that is also included here will provide evidence for a further claim, that her fiction is autobiographical in part. A comprehensive account of Fielding’s performance as a literary critic forms the final chapter of this work. It is the first full-length examination of her contribution to the genre and includes an appraisal of her recently unearthed critical pamphlet entitled A Comparison Between the Horace of Corneille and The Roman Father of Mr. Whitehead (1750) that is yet to be formerly attributed to her. Ultimately this study of Fielding will go far beyond what has previously been written about this remarkable eighteenth-century author, particularly regarding her feminist activity
Dress, Distress and Desire: Clothing and Sentimental Literature.
No full textPhDThis study explores representations of the adorned female body in sentimental
literature. In particular, it addresses the intersection of the discourses of dress, fashion
and sensibility and the political anxieties such intersections expose. These concerns are
located within current critical debate upon the implications of the feminine sentimental
ideal for women readers and writers. Building upon recent scholarship, the introduction
argues that sensibility was predicated upon a concept of the body as an index of feeling.
This argument is subsequently complicated, through a reading of More's `Sensibility'
(1782), which points to the potential of dress to function as both an extension of the
corporeal index and metaphor for sensibility's propensity to lapse into affectation. Dress,
as More implies, not only exposed but embodied the paradox status of sensibility as a
symbol of selfhood externally expressed, and possibly affected mode of display. The
opening chapters explore, in greater depth, the perceived antagonism between dress and
the sentimental body. Chapter One centres on Pamela (1740) and the heroine's
contentious appearance in her homespun gown and petticoat. Chapter Two explores
textual representations of dressmakers and milliners, whose damning association with
fashion ensured that they became personifications of and further justifications for
critiques of dress as a form of social and moral encryption. Subsequent chapters on
ladies' magazines and Fordyce's Sermons to Young Women (1765) discuss how writers,
across various genres, responded to this antagonism by suggesting ways in which the
adorned female body might become a synecdoche of sentimental virtue. Such texts,
however, reveal the fault line upon which they and, by extension, sensibility rest. In
analogising appearance and worth, writers had to uncomfortably acknowledge that, once
outlined in print, such ideals became accessible to readers, potentially rendering virtue as
easy to put on as a gown or petticoat. The final chapter addresses the escalating
synonymy of fashion and sentiment in the 1790s, as critics argued that the distinction
between genuine feeling and its performance had blurred to obscurity. Edgeworth's
Belinda (1801) is read, in this context, as a counter-sentimental novel, which attempts to
divorce the two through the rehabilitation of the woman of fashion as a woman of `true'
sensibility: a wife and mother
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