In this essay I trace the historical theme in Djuna Barnes’s Nightwood, stressing the importance of the concept of forgetfulness in the text. Read alongside Nietzsche’s On the Use and Abuse of History for Life as well as his later thoughts on genealogy, the novel can be seen to concern itself with that same dilemma of history that he articulates in his philosophy. That is: how not to be overburdened by historical knowledge to the point where it petrifies life and prevents any real and novel action, and how at the same time, to make oneself conscious of ones own historicity, so as not to be governed to much by the past. I argue that Robin inhabits what Nietzsche would call the unhistorical state, whereas the other characters, in contrast, struggle with their relation to the past. Their stories delineate how history is appropriated and the other made self through the use of masks, costumes, memorabilia, nesting, storytelling and bodily inscription.

Prenant pour point de départ le corps pour l’examiner au prisme de la technologie, cette études’intéresse aux représentations du corps dans quatre textes majeurs de Djuna Barnes et de GertrudeStein. Dans The Book of Repulsive Women de Barnes, les corps fragmentés décrits dans les poèmesdialoguent avec les représentations mécanomorphiques du corps féminins chez les Dadaïstes. Lerecueil s’apparente à une série de tableaux vivants exhibant des corps mécanisés vus depuis les ramesdu métro aérien new-yorkais. La discussion envisage ensuite Dr. Faustus Lights the Lights de Stein etles connections entre la métaphore de l’électricité et l’écriture cinématique de Stein. Le lien entre cespratiques est l’automatisme que Stein a étudié chez William James et qui transforme son texte en corpsautomate. Dans cette perspective, Wars I Have Seen de Stein constitue une expérience linguistique àcomparer avec l’écriture conceptuelle de Bob Carlton Brown. Chirurgienne littéraire, Stein opère letexte à l’aide de prothèses verbales. La dernière oeuvre étudiée dans cette thèse est The Antiphon deBarnes, qui est lue à l’aide de la relation conceptuelle entre le corps violenté de Barnes et le corps dutexte autobiographique, et peut être décodée à l’analyse de ses procédés métadramatiques. Dans ledernier chapitre, les deux auteurs sont repensées à l’aulne de leur incarnation personnelle dans leurstextes et des diverses manifestations de la notion du corps et de celle de la technologie. / Having as a starting point the theme of the body and exploring it through the prism oftechnology, this study depicts its representations in four major texts by Djuna Barnes and GertrudeStein. Starting with Barnes’s The Book of Repulsive Women, the fragmented bodies depicted in thepoems come in dialogue with Dadaists’ mechanomorphic representations of female bodies. Thecollection is seen as a series of tableaux vivants displaying mechanized bodies through the alteringpresence of the El. The discussion, then, moves on to Stein’s Dr. Faustus Lights the Lights andconnections are drawn between the metaphor of electricity and Stein’s cinematic writing. The linkingaspect of this association is the practice of “automatism” that Stein explored through William James,which leads to the point that her work is an “automaton” body of text. Following this, Stein’s Wars IHave Seen, is examined as a linguistic experiment compared to Bob Carlton Brown’s conceptualwriting. Stein as a linguistic surgeon operates on the text’s body with the help of word prosthesis. Thelast work in this study is Barnes’s The Antiphon, which is explored via the conceptual correlation ofBarnes’s violated body with her autobiographical textual body, examined through decoding Barnes’smetatheatrical devices. In the final chapter, these two writers are reexamined through their personalembodiment in the texts and through the various manifestations of the themes of body and technology.

Barnes's Vagaries Malicieux, and Nin's Delta of Venus, are examples the developing vision of female sex, and both authors use their literary techniques to accomplish their aesthetic vision of amorality. Nin's visions are based on her and her friends' extreme experiences. Her primary concern was expressing her erotic and amorally aesthetic gaze, and the results of her efforts are found in her aesthetic vision of Paris and the amoral lifestyle. Barnes uses metaphor and linguistics to fashion her aesthetic vision. Her technique in "Run, Girls, Run!" both subverts any sense of morality, and offers an interesting and challenging read for its audience. In "Vagaries Malicieux" Barnes's Paris is dark while bright, and creates a sense of nothingness, indicated only by Barnes's aesthetic appreciation.

Thesis (doctoral)--l'Université de Paris VIII, 1978. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 701-723).

<p>The aim of this thesis is a comparative study of Djuna Barnes' 1928 book <em>Ladies Almanack</em> and turn of the century sexological texts focusing on Havelock Ellis' studies of 'sexual inversion in women'. The study is based on queer theory concepts from Judith Butler and Fanny Ambjörnson as well as Michel Foucault's studies of the history of sexuality. After a presentation of the theoretical concepts and a short introduction of earlier research on Barnes' works my reading and conclusions are presented in five chapters focusing on different theoretical and thematic aspects of the studied texts. A recapitulation and discussion ends the thesis.</p><p>In short, my conclusions are that <em>Ladies Almanack</em> contrary to earlier research can be read as a queer text, and a form of counter-discourse to the general one regarding lesbianism in the early 1900's. The text also reveals itself as a pointed critique and a satire of Havelock Ellis' writings on 'sexual inversion in women'. As well, when read against Radclyffe Hall's <em>The Well of Loneliness</em>, perhaps the archetypal 'lesbian novel', Hall's book reveals itself as an echo of the same discourse Barnes opposes.</p><p> </p>

The aim of this thesis is a comparative study of Djuna Barnes' 1928 book Ladies Almanack and turn of the century sexological texts focusing on Havelock Ellis' studies of 'sexual inversion in women'. The study is based on queer theory concepts from Judith Butler and Fanny Ambjörnson as well as Michel Foucault's studies of the history of sexuality. After a presentation of the theoretical concepts and a short introduction of earlier research on Barnes' works my reading and conclusions are presented in five chapters focusing on different theoretical and thematic aspects of the studied texts. A recapitulation and discussion ends the thesis. In short, my conclusions are that Ladies Almanack contrary to earlier research can be read as a queer text, and a form of counter-discourse to the general one regarding lesbianism in the early 1900's. The text also reveals itself as a pointed critique and a satire of Havelock Ellis' writings on 'sexual inversion in women'. As well, when read against Radclyffe Hall's The Well of Loneliness, perhaps the archetypal 'lesbian novel', Hall's book reveals itself as an echo of the same discourse Barnes opposes.

This paper examines Djuna Barnes's Modernist masterpiece, Nightwood, by exploring the author's particular styles of writing. As an ironist, a master of spectacle, and a visual artist, Barnes's distinct stylistic roles allow the writer to construct a strange fictional world that transcends simple categorization and demands close reading. Through textual analysis, consideration of how Barnes's characterization, and engagement with key critical interpretations lead to the conclusion that Nightwood's primary aim is to present the reader with an image of his or her own individual estrangement.

In this report, I examine the reception of Djuna Barnes’s novel Nightwood (1936) from contemporary reviews in periodicals to twenty-first century online reviews. I am interested in how the novel has been situated in both historical and personal canons. I focus on how Nightwood has been read through the lenses of experimental modernism, lesbian feminism and postmodern queer theory, and how my own readings of it have changed over the years. / text

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Missouri-Columbia, 2007. / The entire dissertation/thesis text is included in the research.pdf file; the official abstract appears in the short.pdf file (which also appears in the research.pdf); a non-technical general description, or public abstract, appears in the public.pdf file. Title from title screen of research.pdf file (viewed on March 6, 2008) Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Washington, 1996. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves [351]-383).