Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of California, Santa Cruz, 1995. / Typescript. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 237-248).

The inhuman element in Djuna Barnes’s works has been widely acknowledged. So far the research has, however, concerned itself primarily with animality, thus neglecting the importance of things and thingliness in her texts. In this essay I outline a new way of approaching Barnes were things are taken into account as a vital element in her literary world, using theories on prostheses, fetishes and souvenirs. In Nightwood and four of the short stories, ”A Night Among the Horses”, ”Aller et Retour”, ”Cassation”, and ”The Grande Malade”, I examine clothing, interiors, collections, statues and dolls as objects that in different ways harbour meaning, dream, riddle, memory, history, longing and desire. The aim is not at translating these objects; my concern is not so much with what they mean, as how they mean; how they are used and thus how they interact with the characters.

This thesis discusses performative identity in Djuna Barnes' The Ladies Almanack and Nightwood. Barnes' characters create and perform their identities as an attempt to escape or subvert patriarchal norms and societal prejudices. In analyzing the marginalized performative identity categories (race, class, gender, sexuality), one can glean an understanding of the complex social tensions present during Barnes' era, and understand the socially constructed, confining nature of identity itself.

H.D., Djuna Barnes et Laura (Riding) Jackson incarnent trois visages du modernisme américain expatrié. C’est autour de leur place paradoxale dans le contexte d’instabilité et de circulation de ce moment littéraire que s’articulent leurs parcours respectifs. Cette thèse cherche à montrer comment l’expérience du déplacement géographique s’incarne dans le texte thématiquement, stylistiquement, grammaticalement, génériquement et dans le genre (gender) pour produire une écriture autobiographique déplacée qui interroge et transgresse les frontières. On analysera comment l’expatriation des trois auteurs et leur marginalité dans la communitas des expatriés produisent une écriture qui remet en question la limite entre personnel et impersonnel. On explorera les représentations du déplacement géographique lui-même comme thématique et esthétique. En adoptant une méthode de cartographie littéraire, nous mettons au jour une écriture nomade et interrogerons le rapport à la nation dans les textes qui travaille le trope du Grand Tour. L’analyse de l’esthétique du déplacement de l’autobiographie sur les éléments organiques du texte met au jour la métaphorisation du déracinement et le processus de déterritorialisation/reterritorialisation de l’expatriation et du genre féminin chez H.D., Barnes et (Riding) Jackson. / H.D., Djuna Barnes and Laura (Riding) Jackson embody three facets of American expatriate modernism. Their trajectories hinge on their paradoxical place in modernism’s context of instability and circulation. This thesis purports to show how their works are imbued with the experience of geographical displacement at various levels (thematic, stylistic, grammatical, generically and in gender). This porosity between life and work results in a displaced autobiographical writing which questions and transgresses frontiers. The first section deals with how these authors’ expatriation and marginality in the expatriate communitas produce texts which probe the limit between the personal and the impersonal. The second part focuses on the representations of the geographical displacement itself—both as theme and aesthetics. By resorting to a literary cartography method, we argue for a nomadic writing and interrogate the writers’ relation to the concept of nation in texts which deploy the Grand Tour trope. The final section analyzes the aesthetic transference of the autobiography on the organic elements of the text. These motifs act as metaphors of the subject’s uprootedness and of the deterritorialization/reterritorialization process at work for expatriate women writers.

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.

<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