Publicação
The counter-discourses of femininity
| Resumo: | This thesis is devoted to Elizabeth Bowen‘s search for the new counter-discourses of femininity that encompass undeniably important questions of subjectification and identification. It analyses the two chosen novels: The House in Paris (1935/1976) and Eva Trout, or Changing Scenes (1968/1999) as the primary bibliography and as Elizabeth Bowen‘s successful exercises in laying the foundations for her precursory philosophy of narrativization of identity through the analysis of the following processes: the search within the external and internal relations of selfhood and otherness and a better understanding of the founding concepts of maternity, femininity, and gender. It uses various theories of feminist scholarship postulated during the last thirty years of the twentieth century until the first decade of the new century. Moreover, the thesis focuses on the ideas of narrative, hermeneutical and dynamic approaches to the themes of identity and gender. The theoretical deliberations are, thus, based on the writings of Nancy Chodorow, Julia Kristeva, Elizabeth Grosz, Mikhail Bakhtin, Gilles Deleuze, Felix Guatarri, Emmanuel Levinas, and Paul Ricoeur among many others. The thesis ventures to prove the existence and understanding of the new discourses of identification that can be found in Bowen‘s fiction, and which, I believe, re-position the female subject within existing narratives of culture and consequently power. Here, the female subject is seen as purely different in itself, disseminating life, multiple and dynamic, which opposes the traditional understanding of male/female binary opposition. Only this way can one reach a better understanding of the personal and subjective topography that can offer a solution to the growing threat of desiccation and displacedeness of every I. Above all, the thesis defends the idea that identity is built upon narrative hermeneutical processes that require the subject to respond to the necessity of translating, understanding and welcoming the other. This way an attempt to de„sire‟ the language can be made to make claim for the new discourses of femininity understood as desiring, fluid and autonomous. |
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| Autores principais: | Sanches, Zuzanna Iwona Zarebska, 1981- |
| Assunto: | Bowen, Elizabeth, 1899-1973 Romance irlandês - séc.20 Feminismo e literatura Psicanálise e mulheres Identidade (Psicologia) na literatura Teoria feminista Maternidade Análise literária Teses de doutoramento - 2010 |
| Ano: | 2010 |
| País: | Portugal |
| Tipo de documento: | tese de doutoramento |
| Tipo de acesso: | acesso aberto |
| Instituição associada: | Universidade de Lisboa |
| Idioma: | inglês |
| Origem: | Repositório da Universidade de Lisboa |
| Resumo: | This thesis is devoted to Elizabeth Bowen‘s search for the new counter-discourses of femininity that encompass undeniably important questions of subjectification and identification. It analyses the two chosen novels: The House in Paris (1935/1976) and Eva Trout, or Changing Scenes (1968/1999) as the primary bibliography and as Elizabeth Bowen‘s successful exercises in laying the foundations for her precursory philosophy of narrativization of identity through the analysis of the following processes: the search within the external and internal relations of selfhood and otherness and a better understanding of the founding concepts of maternity, femininity, and gender. It uses various theories of feminist scholarship postulated during the last thirty years of the twentieth century until the first decade of the new century. Moreover, the thesis focuses on the ideas of narrative, hermeneutical and dynamic approaches to the themes of identity and gender. The theoretical deliberations are, thus, based on the writings of Nancy Chodorow, Julia Kristeva, Elizabeth Grosz, Mikhail Bakhtin, Gilles Deleuze, Felix Guatarri, Emmanuel Levinas, and Paul Ricoeur among many others. The thesis ventures to prove the existence and understanding of the new discourses of identification that can be found in Bowen‘s fiction, and which, I believe, re-position the female subject within existing narratives of culture and consequently power. Here, the female subject is seen as purely different in itself, disseminating life, multiple and dynamic, which opposes the traditional understanding of male/female binary opposition. Only this way can one reach a better understanding of the personal and subjective topography that can offer a solution to the growing threat of desiccation and displacedeness of every I. Above all, the thesis defends the idea that identity is built upon narrative hermeneutical processes that require the subject to respond to the necessity of translating, understanding and welcoming the other. This way an attempt to de„sire‟ the language can be made to make claim for the new discourses of femininity understood as desiring, fluid and autonomous. |
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