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Full-Text Articles in English Language and Literature
Imagining Woman Otherwise, Or Nothing: Sexuation As Discourse In Lacanian Thought, Rahna Carusi
Imagining Woman Otherwise, Or Nothing: Sexuation As Discourse In Lacanian Thought, Rahna Carusi
Rahna M Carusi
My dissertation looks at the connections between Lacan’s four discourses and the sexuation graph in order to claim that sexuation is discursive and that, as Lacan presents it with the phallus as its quilting point, the sexuation graph is a narrative based on patriarchal hegemony, which is one of many possible narratives. I argue that through the hysteric’s discourse and a removal of the phallus as the Symbolic-Imaginary quilting point, we can begin to formulate new narratives of sexuated subjectivities. The textual objects I use for this project are literary and filmic works where women are the central topic or …
A Biocultural Approach To Literary Theory And Interpretation, Nancy Easterlin
A Biocultural Approach To Literary Theory And Interpretation, Nancy Easterlin
Nancy Easterlin
Combining cognitive and evolutionary research with traditional humanist methods, Nancy Easterlin demonstrates how a biocultural perspective in theory and criticism opens up new possibilities for literary interpretation. Easterlin maintains that the practice of literary interpretation is still of central intellectual and social value. Taking an open yet judicious approach, she argues, however, that literary interpretation stands to gain dramatically from a fair-minded and creative application of cognitive and evolutionary research. This work does just that, expounding a biocultural method that charts a middle course between overly reductive approaches to literature and traditionalists who see the sciences as a threat to …
The Tripled Plot And Center Of Sula, Maureen Reddy
The Tripled Plot And Center Of Sula, Maureen Reddy
Maureen T. Reddy
Critics of Sula frequently comment on the pervasive presence of death, the uses of a particular cultural and historical background, the split or doubled protagonist (Sula/Nel), and the attention to chronology in the novel. However, as far as I am aware, no one has presented a reading of Sula that explores the interrelatedness of these elements; yet it is the connections among them that most usefully reveal the novel's overall thematic patterns. Sula can be, and has been, read as, among other things, a fable, a lesbian novel, a black female bildungsroman, a novel of heroic questing, and an historical …
Rachel Carson, Karen Stein
Rachel Carson, Karen Stein
Karen F Stein
Rachel Carson is the twentieth century's most significant environmentalist. Her books about the sea blend science and poetry as they invite readers to share her celebration of the ocean's wonders. Silent Spring, her compelling expose of the damage caused by the widespread aerial spraying of persistent organic pesticides such as DDT, opened our eyes to the interconnectedness of all living beings and the ecological systems we inhabit. Carson's work challenges the belief that science and technology can control the natural world. She calls us to rekindle our sense of wonder at nature's power and beauty, and to tread lightly on …
Reproducing The Line: 1970s Innovative Poetry And Socialist-Feminism In The U.K., Samuel Solomon
Reproducing The Line: 1970s Innovative Poetry And Socialist-Feminism In The U.K., Samuel Solomon
Samuel Solomon
This dissertation considers the experimental group of ""Cambridge poets"" in the 1970s and explains how and why their somewhat obscure body of work was a battleground for cultural politics. I focus on the writing of women who bridged Cambridge poetry and socialist-feminist politics even as they worked at the margins of both communities. I argue that this poetry took shape at a unique conjuncture – the history of literary study at Cambridge, the varied British reception of Marxist thought and political action, the rise of Conservatism, and the increasing influence of feminism – that made radical poetics a hotly contested …