Writer Susan Sontag speaks at conference on older women in NYC

General note: Title and date provided by Bettye Lane.

Claude McKay and the transnational novel

This thesis considers the three works of fiction of the Jamaican author Claude McKay (1889-1948) as a coherent transnational trilogy which dramatises the semi-autobiographical complexities of diasporic exile and return in the period of the 1920s and 1930s. Chapter One explores McKay’s urban North American novel, Home to Harlem (1928). I suggest that we need to ‘reworld’ conceptions of McKay’s writing in order to release him from his canonical confinement in the Harlem Renaissance. Querying the problematics of the city space, of sexuality and of race as they emerge in the novel, this chapter considers McKay’s percipient understanding of the need to reconfigure diasporic identity beyond the limits set by American nationalism. Chapter Two engages with McKay’s novel of portside Marseilles, Banjo (1929), and considers the homosocial interactions of the vagabond collective. A comparison of North America and France as supposed exemplars of individual liberty highlights the unsuitability of nationalistic prerogatives to an internally diverse black diaspora. Paul Gilroy’s Black Atlantic construct provides a suggestive space in which to re-imagine the possibilities of affiliation in the port. The latter section of the chapter examines McKay’s particular influence on, and relationship, to the Négritude movement and Pan-African philosophies. Chapter Three focuses on McKay’s third novel, Banana Bottom (1933). I suggest here that the three novels comprise a coherent New World Trilogy comparable to Edward (Kamau) Brathwaite’s trilogy, The Arrivants. This chapter considers both the Caribbean and the transnational dimensions to McKay’s work.

Facts and Fictions: Feminist Literary Criticism and Cultural Critique, 1968-2012

"Facts and Fictions: Feminist Literary Criticism and Cultural Critique, 1968-2012" is a critical history of the unfolding of feminist literary study in the US academy. It contributes to current scholarly efforts to revisit the 1970s by reconsidering often-repeated narratives about the critical naivety of feminist literary criticism in its initial articulation. As the story now goes, many of the most prominent feminist thinkers of the period engaged in unsophisticated literary analysis by conflating lived social reality with textual representation when they read works of literature as documentary evidence of real life. As a result, the work of these "bad critics," particularly Kate Millett and Andrea Dworkin, has not been fully accounted for in literary critical terms.

This dissertation returns to Dworkin and Millett's work to argue for a different history of feminist literary criticism. Rather than dismiss their work for its conflation of fact and fiction, I pay attention to the complexity at the heart of it, yielding a new perspective on the history and persistence of the struggle to use literary texts for feminist political ends. Dworkin and Millett established the centrality of reality and representation to the feminist canon debates of "the long 1970s," the sex wars of the 1980s, and the more recent feminist turn to memoir. I read these productive periods in feminist literary criticism from 1968 to 2012 through their varied commitment to literary works.

Chapter One begins with Millett, who de-aestheticized male-authored texts to treat patriarchal literature in relation to culture and ideology. Her mode of literary interpretation was so far afield from the established methods of New Criticism that she was not understood as a literary critic. She was repudiated in the feminist literary criticism that followed her and sought sympathetic methods for reading women's writing. In that decade, the subject of Chapter Two, feminist literary critics began to judge texts on the basis of their ability to accurately depict the reality of women's experiences.

Their vision of the relationship between life and fiction shaped arguments about pornography during the sex wars of the 1980s, the subject of Chapter Three. In this context, Dworkin was feminism's "bad critic." I focus on the literary critical elements of Dworkin's theories of pornographic representation and align her with Millett as a miscategorized literary critic. In the decades following the sex wars, many of the key feminist literary critics of the founding generation (including Dworkin, Jane Gallop, Carolyn Heilbrun, and Millett) wrote memoirs that recounted, largely in experiential terms, the history this dissertation examines. Chapter Four considers the story these memoirists told about the rise and fall of feminist literary criticism. I close with an epilogue on the place of literature in a feminist critical enterprise that has shifted toward privileging theory.

Mermaids and sirens as myth fragments in contemporary literature

This thesis examines three works: Margaret Atwood's The Robber Bride and Alias Grace, and Angela Carter's Nights at the Circus. All three novels feature female characters that contain elements or myth fragments of mermaids and sirens. The thesis asserts that the images of the mermaid and siren have undergone a gradual process of change, from literal mythical figures, to metaphorical images, and then to figures or myth fragments that reference the original mythical figures. The persistence of these female half-human images points to an underlying rationale that is independent of historical and cultural factors. Using feminist psychoanalytic theoretical frameworks, the thesis identifies the existence of the siren/mermaid myth fragments that are used as a means to construct the category of the 'bad' woman. It then identifies the function that these references serve in the narrative and in the broader context of both Victorian and contemporary societies. The thesis postulates the origin of the mermaid and siren myths as stemming from the ambivalent relationship that the male infant forms with the mother as he develops an identity as an individual. Finally, the thesis discusses the manner in which Atwood and Carter build on this foundation to deconstruct the binary oppositions that disadvantage women and to expand the category of female.

Inspiration and mimesis in Plato's criticism of poetry

Plato criticizes poetry in several of his dialogues, beginning with Apology, his first work, and ending with Laws, his last. In these dialogues, his criticism of poetry can be divided into two streams: poetry is criticized for either being divinely inspired, or because it is mimetic or imitative of reality. However, of the dialogues which criticize poetry in these ways, it is not until Laws that Plato mentions both inspiration and mimesis together, and then it is only in a few sentences. Furthermore, nowhere in the dialogues does Plato discuss their relationship. This situation has a parallel in the secondary literature. While much work has been done on inspiration or mimesis in Plato’s criticism of poetry, very little work exists which discusses the connection between them. This study examines Plato’s treatment - in the six relevant dialogues - of these two poetic elements, inspiration and mimesis, and shows that a relationship exists between them. Both can be seen to relate to two important Socratic-Platonic concerns: the care of the soul and the welfare of the state. These concerns represent a synthesis of Socratic moral philosophy with Platonic political beliefs. In the ‘inspiration’ dialogues, Ion, Apology, Meno, Phaedrus and Laws, poetic inspiration can affect the Socratic exhortation which considers the care of the individual soul. Further, as we are told in Apology, Crito and Gorgias, it is the good man, the virtuous man - the one who cares for his soul - who also cares for the welfare of the state. Therefore, in its effect on the individual soul, poetic inspiration can also indirectly affect the state. In the ‘mimesis’ dialogues, Republic and Laws, this same exhortation, on the care of the soul, is posed, but it is has now been rendered into a more Platonic form - as either the principle of specialization - the ‘one man, one job’ creed of Republic, which advances the harmony between the three elements of the soul, or as the concord between reason and emotion in Laws. While in Republic, mimesis can damage the tripartite soul's delicate balance, in Laws, mimesis in poetry is used to promote the concord. Further, in both these dialogues, poetic mimesis can affect the welfare of the state. In Republic, Socrates notes that states arc but a product of the individuals of which they are composed Therefore, by affecting the harmony of the individual soul, mimesis can then undermine the harmony of the state, and an imperfect political system, such as a timarchy, an oligarchy, a democracy, or a tyranny, can result. However, in Laws, when it is harnessed by the philosophical lawgivers, mimesis can assist in the concord between the rulers and the ruled, thus serving the welfare of the state. Inspiration and mimesis can thus be seen to be related in their effect on the education of both the individual, in the care of the soul, and the state, in its welfare. Plato's criticism of poetry, therefore, which is centred on these two features, addresses common Platonic concerns: in education, politics, ethics, epistemology and psychology.

Maternal realms : an exegesis and novel

Combines a novel and exegesis. The fictional autobiography, "The wardrobe drawer", describes a girl's prepubescent experiences in a dysfunctional family. The exegesis explores the process of life writing and renegotiates terms for motherhood and femininity by drawing from feminism, autobiography, queer theory and psychanalytic theory.

The modern study of literature; an introduction to literary theory and interpretation by Richard Green Moulton ...

Introduction: Dominant ideas of modern study: unity, induction, evolution.--book I. Literary morphology: varieties of literature and their underlying principles.--book II. The field and scope of literary study.--book III. Literary evolution as reflected in the history of world literature.--book IV. Literary criticism: the traditional confusion and the modern reconstruction.--book V. Literature as a mode of philosophy.--book VI. Literature as a mode of art. Conclusion: the traditional and the modern study of literature. Syllabus. Works of the author. General index. Seventh impression, June, 1928

The "higher criticism" and the verdict of the monuments /

Includes bibliographical references and index.