This dissertation seeks to show that the figure of the female letter-writer in English Renaissance literature, rather than reflecting the culture’s desire to contain, undermine, or destroy the notion of women’s textual production, in fact represents the culture’s desire to imagine and see women as writers. The image of the female letter-writer was sufficiently pervasive both to normalize the idea that real women might properly engage in textual production, and to function as a literary trope which was used to investigate issues beyond gender ideology. “Author of Prodigies” explores representations of women’s epistolary creation in a broad selection of fictional texts, primarily drama. Based on these representations, I argue that the figure of the female letter-writer functioned as a means through which the fragile and epistemologically fraught relationship between the subject and the writing in which she engages was explored. In Chapter One, I focus primarily on the history of early feminist criticism, issues of how letters are related to non-epistolary texts, Renaissance notions of subjectivity and its relationship to gender, and how subjectivity was understood to adhere in epistolary writing. In Chapter Two, I examine texts in which female characters pen letters in their own blood. Blood letters figure the fragility, marginality, and vulnerability associated with self revelation in a context in which female subjectivity was not comfortably acknowledged. Chapter Three features texts that contemplate the fantasy of female characters wooing their beaux by merging epistolary production and metadramatic performances of femininity. These characters use gendered social constraints to their advantage, revealing themselves to be sufficiently skillful to manipulate social and material signs of their marginalized position in order to achieve their personal desires. Chapter Four focuses on male fetishization of women’s intellectual labour through letter-writing, and the ways in which women writers anticipate and manipulate this response. These depictions of women’s mental work are infused with mystery, which is integral to the pleasure of imagining women engaged in letter-writing. However, as the terms of the fetish are being established in these texts they are also in the process of being normalized. / Thesis (Ph.D, English) -- Queen's University, 2008-12-15 21:08:25.539

Le problème de la communication, et pas seulement du danger des liaisons, est au cœur du roman épistolaire de manière générale et de Clarissa de Samuel Richardson en particulier. Sans cesse menacée d'interruption, la communication représentée dans la diégèse du deuxième roman de Richardson influe également sur le sens et relève à ce titre de ce que Janet Altman a appelé l'épistolarité. Cette étude se concentre sur le code de la communication représentée dans l'œuvre et saisit la lettre dans l’économie de l’information toute particulière dont elle participe, à la croisée d'une communication interne entre ses personnages et des exigences d'une communication externe qui voit le matériau épistolaire affluer vers le Lecteur. Elle s'efforce de souligner à quel point le scénario romanesque est informé par la nature des communications au travers desquelles il s’exprime ainsi qu'à travers les communications auxquelles il donne lieu (Clarissa étant l'objet d'âpres négociations entre son auteur et ses lecteurs), tout comme il informe à son tour la nature de ces communications. L'examen de la communication dans et autour du roman de Richardson met en évidence l'existence d'une poétique qui est aussi une économie. L'histoire de Clarissa n'est pas tant l'histoire de ses lettres que celle de ses communications. / The problem of communication, and not only that of the danger of the liaisons, is at the heart of the epistolary novel in general and of Samuel Richardson's Clarissa in particular. Constantly threatened with interruption, the communication represented in the diegesis of Richardson's second novel also informs meaning and thus belongs to what Janet Altman called epistolarity. This study concentrates on the code of communication represented in the work and endeavors to grasp the letter in its particular economy of communication, at the crossroads of internal communication between its characters and the demands of an external communication that requires that the epistolary material be oriented towards the reader. This study strives to underline to what extent the novelistic scenario is informed by the nature of the communications through which it expresses itself as well as by the communications it produces among its readers in the shape of letters to the author. The examination of communication in and around Richardson's novel bears witness to the existence of a poetics that is also an economy. The history of Clarissa is not so much that of its letters as that of its communications.

Este trabalho reúne esforços para analisar aspectos da teoria literária de Jean-Jacques Rousseau a partir do romance La Nouvelle Héloïse, considerando suas inovações estéticas em face do período de então (século XVIII) e a relevância explicativa da obra no seio do pensamento do autor. Aos propósitos do trabalho, é fundamental entender a escolha do gênero epistolar a fim de facilitar o estreitamento da narrativa com a experiência do leitor, o que se combina com a crítica da representação e com o ideal rousseauniano da transparência, perfazendo o formato do romance que Rousseau, após severas críticas à literatura, transige em considerar necessário por oferecer um exemplo de virtude no amor a uma sociedade degenerada pela corrupção dos costumes. / This work combines forces to analyze aspects of Jean-Jacques Rousseaus Literary Theory at the novel La Nouvelle Héloïse in light of its aesthetic innovations towards that period (the 18th century) and the explicative relevance of the work to the core of the author\'s thoughts. With respect to the purpose of the work, it is important to understand the choice of the epistolary form in order to facilitate the alignment of the narrative with the experience of the reader, which is consonant with the critique of representation and with the Rousseaunian ideal of transparency, constituting the format of the novel that Rousseau, after severe criticisms of literature, came to consider necessary to offer an example of virtue through love to a society degenerated by the corruption of customs.

Este trabalho reúne esforços para analisar aspectos da teoria literária de Jean-Jacques Rousseau a partir do romance La Nouvelle Héloïse, considerando suas inovações estéticas em face do período de então (século XVIII) e a relevância explicativa da obra no seio do pensamento do autor. Aos propósitos do trabalho, é fundamental entender a escolha do gênero epistolar a fim de facilitar o estreitamento da narrativa com a experiência do leitor, o que se combina com a crítica da representação e com o ideal rousseauniano da transparência, perfazendo o formato do romance que Rousseau, após severas críticas à literatura, transige em considerar necessário por oferecer um exemplo de virtude no amor a uma sociedade degenerada pela corrupção dos costumes. / This work combines forces to analyze aspects of Jean-Jacques Rousseaus Literary Theory at the novel La Nouvelle Héloïse in light of its aesthetic innovations towards that period (the 18th century) and the explicative relevance of the work to the core of the author\'s thoughts. With respect to the purpose of the work, it is important to understand the choice of the epistolary form in order to facilitate the alignment of the narrative with the experience of the reader, which is consonant with the critique of representation and with the Rousseaunian ideal of transparency, constituting the format of the novel that Rousseau, after severe criticisms of literature, came to consider necessary to offer an example of virtue through love to a society degenerated by the corruption of customs.

Although Chris Kraus's I Love Dick has been largely read as autofictional or autotheoretical, I argue that its formal characteristics and innovations can be better understood by looking at seventeenth- and eighteenth-century precedents in the amatory epistolary genre. By examining the formal constraints that belong to the epistolary medium Kraus employed—requirements such as the "I" of the writer, the "you" of the receiver, and a desire for exchange—I show how she deploys epistolary tropes such as the woman in love as natural writer of letters, and the assumed truthful nature of such letters. These epistolary affordances and the ways in which I Love Dick uses and in part revises them allow Kraus to blur the line between reality and fiction, but more importantly allow her to achieve an expansion of the "I" of the writer through what I call her stalking method of writing. It is precisely in the process of writing and in the concomitant minimizing and objectifying of the "you" of the receiver that the expansion of the "I" occurs. / Master of Arts / Chris Kraus's first novel I Love Dick was published by Semiotext(e)'s Native Agent series in 1997, but it was upon its second edition in 2006, and after a television adaptation by Jill Soloway in 2017, that the novel found a larger audience. Since then, critics have mainly discussed I Love Dick in relation to the genre of autotheory and autofiction, and called it the urtext for a certain kind of North American female writing that relies heavily on real, personal experiences that undergo varying degrees of fictionalization. While these are valuable interpretations, my research aims to correct an oversight in the current discourse around I Love Dick. By situating the novel within the tradition of love letter writing in the female voice, I show how I Love Dick employs and revises the affordances of the epistolary medium in general, and of the amatory epistolary genre in particular. Through a close analysis both of I Love Dick and of other lesser-known essays and interviews, as well as an analysis of Kraus's precedents, both in the Native Agent's series that she edited in the 1990s and in the seventeenth- and eighteenth-century amatory epistolary fiction, I reveal paradoxes that ultimately make I Love Dick a complex and ambiguous novel that defies simple categorizations.

La tesi ha per oggetto il romanzo epistolare in Inghilterra nella seconda metà del XVIII secolo, con particolare enfasi sulle opere scritte da donne. Scopo dello studio è dimostrare come Jane Austen, con le sue opere adolescenziali e il suo “Lady Susan”, rappresenti insieme un momento di sintesi e un punto di arrivo del “novel in letters” settecentesco. In particolare due filoni d’analisi convergeranno verso l’opera austeniana: la prima parte, divisa in tre capitoli, affronta brevemente la storia del romanzo epistolare e della figura della “woman novelist”, analizzando l’importanza dell’opera di Samuel Richardson a metà secolo (cap. 1) e di alcune scrittrici settecentesche quali Sarah Fielding, Charlotte Smith e Frances Burney (cap. 2), per concludersi con l’analisi del “periodo d’oro” del romanzo epistolare inglese, che coincide con gli anni ’80 e ’90 del secolo (cap. 3). La seconda parte della dissertazione, divisa in quattro capitoli, affronta in modo più specifico la figura di Jane Austen e il modo in cui essa si inserisce all’interno dello sviluppo dello stile e della fortuna del romanzo epistolare. Dopo una breve autobiografia dell’autrice e uno studio dell’epistolario fra lei e la sorella Cassandra (rispettivamente capp. 4 e 5), allo scopo di dare conto dell’importanza che le lettere ricoprirono nella formazione di Jane Austen, il cap. 6 è dedicato agli Juvenilia, vale a dire alle opere scritte fra i 15 e i 20 anni, mentre il cap. 7 affronta in modo più approfondito l’analisi di “Lady Susan”, romanzo che decreta l’abbandono dello stile epistolare da parte della scrittrice di Steventon. / The dissertation focuses on the epistolary novel in England in the second half of the eighteenth century, particularly on works written by women. The purpose of this study is to understand how Jane Austen (with her early writings and “Lady Susan”) represents both a synthesis of and a turning point in eighteenth-century novels in letters. In particular, two fields of study will converge into the works by Jane Austen: the first part, divided into three chapters, focuses on the importance of Samuel Richardson at the middle of the century (chapter 1) and of some woman writers such as Sarah Fielding, Charlotte Smith and Frances Burney (chapter 2), whereas chapter 3 is dedicated to the “golden period” of the English epistolary novel during the ‘80s and ‘90s. The second part of the dissertation is divided into four chapters and focuses more specifically on Jane Austen’s role within the development of the style and the fortune of the novel in letters. After a short autobiography of the author and an analysis of the correspondence between her and her sister Cassandra (chapters 4 and 5) in order to underline the importance of letters in Jane Austen’s upbringing, chapter 6 is dedicated to the Juvenilia, that is to say the works written between 15 to 20 years of age, while chapter 7 focuses on “Lady Susan”, a novel which represents the renunciation of the epistolary style by the author.

The starting point for this text is an interest in the self narratives addressed to another that take place in psychotherapeutic environments. Reading the book "The Sorrows of Young Werther" by Goethe, it becomes clear that this form of self expression, communicating one s innermost and most obscure feelings, was a feature exploited by the Sturm und Drang movement, and soon afterwards by the German Romantics too. Following this logic, we move to a psychoanalytical and sociological reading of suicide, seeking to better understand the different facets of this act, proposed by Goethe as a solution to passions misunderstood by eighteenth century German bourgeois society. Next, we approach the concept of self presented by Fichte as the basis for investigations into the relations between the self and its other. Here we trace the influence of the other on suicide, on Werther s letters and also in the constitution of the I through the "Mirror stage as a formative function of the self", by Jacques Lacan. From this we use Antonio Candido s studies to problematize Werther, Goethe and his public as characters in a game of mirrors. Werther's letters are an expression of his innermost being, and need confirmation, a response, from the other. This influence of and from the other is present in various contexts. / O presente trabalho parte de um interesse pelas narrativas de si a um outro que se dão no ambiente psicoterapêutico. Ao ler a obra Os Sofrimentos do Jovem Werther de Goethe, percebemos que essa forma de endereçar um discurso sobre si, expressando os sentimentos mais íntimos e obscuros, já era um recurso explorado pelo Sturm und Drang e logo depois pelo movimento romântico alemão. Neste sentido, passamos por uma leitura psicanalítica e sociológica sobre o suicídio, para melhor compreendermos as diferentes faces deste ato, que Goethe propõe como solução para uma paixão incompreendida pela sociedade burguesa alemã do século XVIII. Abordamos, então, o conceito de eu apresentado por Fichte como base das investigações da relação entre o eu e seu outro. Esta pesquisa investiga a influência do outro no suicídio, nas cartas de Werther e também na constituição do sujeito através do Estádio do espelho como formador da função do eu de Jacques Lacan. A partir disso, utilizando estudos de Antonio Candido, problematizamos Werther, Goethe e público como personagens de um jogo de espelhos. As cartas de Werther são uma forma de expressão do íntimo que necessita uma confirmação, um retorno por parte do outro. Essa influência advinda do outro está presente nos mais diversos contextos.

En Europe au XVIIIe siècle, le roman épistolaire connaissait un grand succès. En France aussi, un grand nombre d'auteurs s'appuyait alors sur ce genre littéraire pour transmettre des idées philosophiques et souvent critiques envers la société de l'époque, à travers des lettres prétendument véritables, à un lectorat croissant.À l'époque, parmi les écrivains dont les œuvres étaient très appréciées par les lecteurs, un nombre non négligeable était composé de femmes. Parmi elles se trouvent par exemple Françoise de Graffigny avec les Lettres d'une Péruvienne ou bien Marie-Jeanne Riccoboni avec plusieurs romans épistolaires comme les Lettres de Fanny Butler.À partir du XIXe siècle, ces auteurs ont souvent été effacées de la mémoire culturelle et ont, pendant longtemps, été délaissées par la recherche littéraire. Parmi elles se trouve Marie Leprince de Beaumont, gouvernante catholique, qui était jusqu'au XIXe siècle surtout connue pour ses ouvrages sur l'éducation des enfants, des jeunes filles et des pauvres. Elle a pourtant publié une œuvre d'une variété étonnante : on y trouve des contes pour enfants, le Nouveau Magasin français, un des premiers journaux mensuels en français à avoir été dirigé par une femme, ainsi que plusieurs romans épistolaires.L'œuvre de cette femme auteur qui, quoique catholique et croyante, essaie de transmettre dans ses livres des perspectives sur les possibilités pour les femmes de mener une vie vertueuse et honnête dans une société imprégnée par la prédominance des hommes, ne fait l’objet de recherches littéraires approfondies que depuis peu de temps.Cette thèse vise à analyser et interpréter la tension entre un christianisme profond et le désir d'améliorer l'accès au savoir pour les femmes dans les romans de Maire Leprince de Beaumont, qui « [...] avait une prédilection affichée pour le genre épistolaire [...] » . Il s'agit d'abord de les placer dans leur contexte littéraire et historique et de situer ensuite l'idée de « l'éducation narrée » au centre des recherches : comment Leprince de Beaumont se sert-elle du genre épistolaire pour communiquer des idées philosophiques ainsi que des modèles de comportement au lecteur ?La thèse veut démontrer qu'au XVIIIe siècle, il était tout à fait possible de concilier le christianisme avec le souhait de faire progresser la société de l'époque en facilitant l'accès au savoir pour les femmes ; qu'être croyant ne voulait pas forcément dire repousser les idées novatrices et que Marie Leprince de Beaumont et son œuvre épistolaire méritent une place honorable parmi les auteurs des Lumières / In 18th century Europe, the epistolary novel was very popular. In France, a great number of authors used this literary genre to spread, across supposedly real letters, the philosophical, and often critical ideas on society (of the time) between a growing readership.At that time, a significant number of authors, whose works were very appreciated by the public, were (was?) female. Among them were for example Françoise de Graffigny with the Peruvian Letters or Marie-Jeanne Riccoboni with serveral epistolary novels like Fanny Butler’s Letters or Julie Catesby’s Letters.From the 19th century, these authors often disappeared from the cultural memory and have been neglected by literary research for a long time. Amongst them we can find Marie Leprince de Beaumont, a catholic governess, who was, in the 19th century primarily known for her educational works for children, young girls and poor people. However, she has published a surprisingly divers œuvre : it consists of fairy tales for children, the Nouveau Magasin français, one of the first monthly journals edited by a woman, a considerable correspondence and several epistolary novels.The work of this female author who, even though she was catholic and believing, tried to pass on in her books new perspectives on the possibilities women had to live a vertous and simple life in a society that was shaped by male predominance, is only recently in the center of enhanced literary research. This thesis wants to analyse an interpret this tension between a profound christianism and the desire to improve womens acces to knowledge and education in the fictions of Marie Leprince de Beaumont who « had a predilection for the epistolary genre ». We will first range the works in their literary and historical context and place then the idea of „narrated education“ in the center of our research: how does Marie Leprince de Beaumont employ the epistolary genre to communicate philosophical ideas and behavioral patterns to her readers ?This thesis wants to show that in the 18th century it was possible to reconcile christianism with the desire to help developping the society by facilitating women’s acces to education ; that believing in God didn’t obligatorily mean that one rejected new ideas and that Marie Leprince de Beaumont and her epistolary fictions deserve their place among the authors of the Enlightenment

The cult of sensibility in the eighteenth century celebrates delicate emotional responses. Such susceptibility to emotion, however, has to rely on somatic representations such as sighs, tears, convulsion, and faints. So, paradoxically, interiority is known to others only by outer bodily signs, signs that could just as easily reflect an affectation of sensibility as sensibility proper. The attempt to control the slippage in the reference between interiority and appearance becomes an anxious cultural feature of eighteenth-century men and, especially, women, of the higher classes. If sensibility requires such careful control and practice, its assumed spontaneity becomes a fiction. The performing body of sensibility turns into a screen that veils one¡¦s true interiority rather than a transparent reflection of it. The performing body is theatricalized¡X placed on the stage as a spectacle, examined by spectators. Sensibility falls prey to insincere, artificial, and affected performances. Emotional representations are constantly facing inroads of theatricality. When emotional expressions are rendered formulaic and reproducible, they lose their naturalness. Moreover, sensibility requires witnesses, spectators who can vouch for its authenticity (but never validate it beyond all doubt). Sensibility cannot proclaim itself because such proclamation would violate sensibility¡¦s principle of sheer sincerity and spontaneity. Theatricality, as an abstracted concept of theater, points both to the formulaic performances and to the model of spectator and spectacle in the theater. Sensibility is closely related to theatricality in these terms. This thesis aims to reveal the dynamics of the interplay between theatricality and sensibility in two eighteenth-century British novels. Both novels present a young heroine making her debut in the world after spending her formative years in seclusion with a male guardian. The Introduction reviews the eighteenth-century cult of sensibility. Chapter One discusses the theoretical and contextual relations between theatricality and sensibility. Chapter Two deals with Charlotte Lennox¡¦s novel The Female Quixote (1752), and how the heroine¡¦s sensibility is ridiculed as a form of self-theatricalization. Lennox gives the clash between sensibility and ridicule a generic dimension by blaming romance for the heroine¡¦s delusions. Chapter Three examines Frances Burney¡¦s epistolary novel Evelina (1778) and argues that the heroine¡¦s sensibility is both sealed and revealed in Burney¡¦s epistolary form since it enables Evelina to switch between being both spectator and spectacle. The conclusion briefly sums up the previous chapters and points out how, more generally, interpretations of literature can benefit from a recognition of the dynamics of theatricality and sensibility.

Submitted by Fernando Souza (fernandoafsou@gmail.com) on 2017-08-23T12:03:16Z No. of bitstreams: 1 arquivototal.pdf: 1419953 bytes, checksum: 8b1d1b2f92292fe9c8925f26d3d1b370 (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2017-08-23T12:03:16Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 arquivototal.pdf: 1419953 bytes, checksum: 8b1d1b2f92292fe9c8925f26d3d1b370 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2014-04-01 / Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior - CAPES / The licentious novel of the so-called "Century of Lights" was allied to the epistolary method of composition by which an atmosphere of intimacy is created and which favors the emergence of a discourse of secrecy; this atmosphere, a priori, is conducive to the individual exposure and confession of secrets. In this context, the ideas of the philosopher John Locke (2012) ― inserted in this study ― were influential in placing the sensorial experience in the first sphere of the means by which the individual is led to understanding, and thereby giving the body greater importance in the construction of the individual identity. Following Ian Watt's (2010 ) conclusion that the novel is consolidated when the narrative resources used in it become subordinated to a moral intention, and Foucault's (2006 ) assertion that the practice of religious confession gradually lifted sex to a privileged dimension of individual inner truth, our research aims to analyze the impact of writing of the self in the consolidation of the novelistic genre, taking as a corpus for this thesis two influential pornographic works of the period: Fanny Hill or Memoirs of a woman of pleasure (1749, John Cleland / England) and Theresa, Philosopher, or Memoirs to serve as the story of Father Dirrag and Miss Eradice (1748, Jean-Baptiste de Boyer , Marquis d' Argens / France). In these novels, the moral is problematized by an incursion into the obscene, and in confessions in which the characters recall learning processes from two relevant axes in the literature of the Enlightenment: pleasure (Fanny Hill is an apprentice prostitute) and philosophy (Theresa is an apprentice libertine). In this study, we have tried to show that the discourse on sex in the eighteenth century pornographic novel is endowed predominantly with what we have chosen to name aesthetics of confession, and that this resulted in important developments in the characteristics that the novel took in the eighteenth century. / O romance licencioso do chamado "Século das Luzes" foi aliado à composição epistolar a partir da qual é criado um espaço de intimidade que favorece o surgimento de um discurso de confidência; espaço, a priori, propício à exposição individual e à confissão de segredos. Naquele contexto, influiu o pensamento do filósofo John Locke (2012) ― presente neste estudo ― que colocara a experiência sensorial na primeira esfera dos meios que levam o indivíduo ao conhecimento e, assim, dando ao corpo maior importância na construção da identidade individual. À luz da conclusão de Ian Watt (2010) de que o romance moderno se consolidou quando os recursos narrativos nele utilizados se subordinaram a um propósito moral e da constatação de Foucault (2006) de que a prática da confissão religiosa gradativamente alçou o sexo a uma dimensão privilegiada da verdade íntima, tendo seu auge no século XVIII, nossa pesquisa busca analisar as consequências da valorização da escrita de si na consolidação do gênero romanesco, tomando como corpus duas obras pornográficas influentes no período: Fanny Hill ou Memórias de uma mulher de prazer (1749, John Cleland/Inglaterra) e Teresa filósofa ou Memórias para servir à história do Padre Dirrag e da Senhorita Éradice (1748, Jean-Baptiste de Boyer, Marquês d'Argens/França). Nesses romances, a moral é problematizada através do mergulho no obsceno, em confissões nas quais as personagens rememoram processos de aprendizagem a partir de dois eixos relevantes na literatura do Século das Luzes: o prazer (Fanny Hill é aprendiz da prostituição) e a filosofia (Teresa é aprendiz do libertinismo). Neste estudo, buscamos apontar que o discurso sobre o sexo no romance pornográfico setecentista se mostra dotado predominantemente do que optamos chamar de estética da confissão, que trouxe desdobramentos importantes para a configuração que o romance tomou no século XVIII.