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Gender Benders: Shakespeare's Rosalind And Woolf's Orlando, Katrina Armenteros

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

English Renaissance playwright, William Shakespeare and twentieth century modernist author, Virginia Woolf’s works, “As You Like It” (1599) and “Orlando” (1928), respectively posit a vision of gender that transcends the physical sex of the body. The play’s heroine, Rosalind, and the novel’s protagonist, Orlando, each challenge the stability of the binary categories of male and female, demonstrating how gender is not absolute but rather a constantly adapting and evolving construct. This thesis traces the development of Rosalind and Orlando by analyzing and comparing both protagonists’ journeys towards concordia discors, considering how gender transformation plays a pivotal role in helping …

La Representación De La Masculinidad Y La Violencia De Género En La Novela Española De La Posguerra, Alfredo M. Pastor

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

While it may be argued that aggression against women is part of a culture of violence deeply rooted in Spanish society, the gender-related violence that exists in today’s Spain is more specifically a legacy of Franco’s dictatorship (1939-1975). Franco’s Spain endorsed unequal gender relations, championed patriarchal dominance and power over women, and imposed models of hegemonic and authoritarian masculinities that internalized violence by rendering it a feature inseparable from manhood and virility.

This dissertation provides a comprehensive analysis of masculinity and gender violence in Franco’s Spain, by analyzing the novel as the primary cultural vehicle of social criticism and political …

Simply Genre Films: Extracting “King Lear” From “House Of Strangers” And “Broken Lance", Sophia G. I. Funk

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this thesis is to evaluate and refute Yvonne Griggs’ claims that the films “House of Strangers” (1949) and “Broken Lance” (1954) are as Griggs deems “genre-based adaptations” of William Shakespeare’s “King Lear.” I argue that the films, although they have some essential elements of “King Lear,” lack intentionality and reception, pivotal components in determining viability as a Shakespearean film adaptation. Using Griggs’ book as my critical background, I will show that these films are better classified under their respective genre categories, Western and film noir, not as “King Lear” genre adaptations. I will …

Jane Smiley's "A Thousand Acres": A Feminist Revision Of "King Lear", Diana Lombardic

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Jane Smiley retells the tale of “King Lear” through the perspective of one of the evil sisters, in her novel “A Thousand Acres”. While the literary canon places William Shakespeare and his plays at the top of the list, I disagree that the canon should denote what is considered “classic” and what would be disregarded. Jane Smiley's novel is not canonized, but why? Her feminist revision of “King Lear” answers why Goneril and Regan were so evil. I argue that “King Lear” (both the text and the play) does not provide the evidence of dysfunction that Smiley's novel exhibits. “A …

Anti-Romance: How William Shakespeare’S “King Lear” Informed John Keats’S “Lamia”, Shelly S. Gonzalez

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this thesis is to analyze John Keats’s “Lamia” and his style of Anti-Romance as informed by William Shakespeare’s own experimentation with Romance and Anti-Romance in “King Lear.”

In order to fulfill the purpose of my thesis, I explore both the Romance and the Anti-Romance genres and develop a definition of the latter that is more particular to “King Lear” and “Lamia.” I also look at the source material for both “King Lear” and “Lamia” to see how Shakespeare and Keats were handling the originally Romantic material. Both Shakespeare and Keats altered the original material by subverting the …