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Romancing Visual Women: From Canon To Console, Roberta Sabbath

English Faculty Research

This dissertation juxtaposes the romantic modal treatment of powerful, admired women which canonical male authors and feminist authors and critics construct with those constructed by contemporary women for the visual mass media of video, broadcast television, and computer. The discourse of the former produces the figure of a fragmented woman who is rare, supernatural, marginalized, and impossible. The discourse of the latter produces the figure of a psychologized woman who is typical, natural, mainstream, and possible. To examine the discourse of impossibility, I use three canonical works: Augustine's Confessions; Chretien de Troyes' Perceval; and Dante's Divine Comedy. I also survey …