Women defending themselves: Cuban Romantic feminine voices (poetry and short stories)

Throughout history, women have played an important role in literature. Nevertheless, since Sappho's poetry until now, feminine voices have had to struggle for recognition of their works. ^ Before the nineteenth century, women were almost ignored in Spanish literature. Society kept them as “ángeles de la familia,” taking care of their homes, husbands, and children. Some of them, such as María de Zayas y Sotomayor in Spain and Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz in Mexico, complained about their situation in their writings. However, they expressed their fight not as a generation but as individuals. ^ In the nineteenth century, the ideas and ideals of Romanticism, were brought to Latin America from Europe. Cuba was among those countries where the new movement took roots. Initiated by Gertrudis Gómez de Avellaneda, a group of women began to participate in literary reunions, and to found newspapers and magazines where works authored by women, dedicated to feminist ideas, were published. They indeed through literature started to live out womanhood in order to intellectually leave the ideological prisons where society had been keeping them. ^ This study scans the literary works of all Romantic women writers in Cuba. It specifically analyzes poetry and short stories, and investigates how these authors expressed themselves in their works against the patriarchal society, where they lived and wrote their books. An eclectic critical method has been used. ^ Findings were very revealing. Only three of the fourteen writers studied in my dissertation had been previously mentioned by major critics. Most of them had been ignored. However, the greatest discovery was that they prompted something new: For the first time they projected themselves as a group, as a collective consciousness, and this fact established a difference with former women writers in Cuban literature before Romanticism. In other words, they produced a “Renaissance” in Cuba's literature. In spite of how they lived between 1820 and 1900, their struggles for women's rights have linked them to our current times. ^

A ?Perfect Circle'? Alchemy in the Poetry of Hester Pulter

Archer, Jayne, 'A ?Perfect Circle'? Alchemy in the Poetry of Hester Pulter', Literature Compass (2005) 2(1) pp.1-14 RAE2008

Poetry and feminine crafts in the letters of the young Marquise of Alorna (1750-1839)

abstract : Taking as a starting point the association between embroidery and language conveyed by the Greek myth of Filomela and Procne, this article examines the relationship between social status and ornaments like embroidery and lace. In order to illustrate this relationship an example is selected form the letters exchanged between the Marquise of Alorna and her Father where a connection is established between the production of these 'feminine' crafts, women's culture and womens writing, in the XVIIIth Century

Feminine transports and transformations : textual performances of Australian women convicts and emigrants from 1788 to 1850

While scholars have critiqued early representations of the white colonial female in the form of the novel, short story, or historical narrative, analyses of poetry tend to be located only on that produced in Australia and often in light of a nascent national identity. This article examines how poetic renditions of the desolate woman might be viewed as part of imperialism's mythologising process, displacing more worrying versions of womanhood in relation to the new colonies. While social anxieties over the identity of the white colonial female would result in highly controlled productions of the female convict and female emigrant, this article demonstrates how they also prove unstable and point to a disruptive reality beyond language.

The work of death in Brontë's and Dickinson's poetry

Death determines distinctly different, almost inverse, responses and outcomes for Emily Dickinson and Emily Brontë. Death is an imaginative poetic solution for Dickinson, demonstrating her belief that art is the only way to transcend death. But death is the ultimate solution for Brontë, for whom freedom of the imagination leads to mystical unity and continuity.

The literary dawn: re-reading Louisa Lawson's poetry and politics

Scholarship on Louisa Lawson and the Dawn has necessarily often focussed on the important and wide-ranging achievements of her feminist work for women's legal, social and political rights. Indeed, as Audrey Oldfield notes, "Louisa Lawson was one of the most important figures in the New South Wales woman suffrage movement" (261). However, I want to focus here on the periodical publishing context of the Dawn as a means of pointing to further discussions of Lawson's significance as a poet. Megan Roughley has noted that the Dawn "was a forum for political causes, especially the movement for the emancipation and enfranchisement of women, and, as importantly to Louisa, the temperance movement" (ix), with influential articles appearing on a wide range of important issues including divorce reform. Yet, Lawson's construction of the Dawn was also highly literary from its first issue, with editorial choices and literary references reflecting her awareness of political and feminist literary culture. In addition to references such as the above quotation from Tennyson, Lawson included an epigraph from Joseph Addison's play Cato in the list of contents: "A day, an hour, in virtuous liberty, is worth a whole eternity in bondage." Citing Addison, a significant figure in the American Revolution, demonstrates Lawson's linking of radical class politics with feminism, as well as highlighting the importance of literary dialogues to Lawson's publishing work. Likewise, the concerns of Lawson's poetry are clearly situated within a continuing female tradition, and Lawson's poetry, when examined in the feminist literary context of the Dawn, reveals a radical and sophisticated poetics.

The women of Homer /

Photocopy.

Women and the Moral Politics of Dress in Twentieth Century Tehran

This research examines the politicization of women’s clothing under the Pahlavi monarchy and the Islamic Republican of Iran from the 1930s-1990s. I distinctively focus on the governments’ use of women’s clothing to define their idea of Iranian nationalism and how their sumptuary policies affected women’s lives. I assess the motives behind the sumptuary laws for each regime, and argue that both governments situated women as symbols of national health and honor, and used them as visualizations for the success of their platforms. Despite different interpretations of morality, my research suggests that both governments created these laws to “purify” their “corrupt” nation, using the same rhetoric. Paradoxically, this led to a sexualized culture that exists today in Tehran. I analyze a wealth of primary sources including women’s magazines, political cartoons, poetry, newspapers, extant clothing, photographs, legislation, autobiographies, speeches, passports, Revolutionary-era books written by Iranian intellectuals, and oral interviews that I conducted.

Female Exiles in Language: Reading for New Poetic Subjects in Modern and Contemporary Feminist Experimental Poetry

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Washington, 2016-06