In 1890, Charlotte Perkins Gilman wrote a piece of fiction that reflected her personal experience for treatment of nervous exhaustion. The story she developed created controversy and comment after it was published and, years later, agitation among feminists who found allegories of truth in its narrative. This thesis explores the use of linguistic features employed by Gilman to establish cognitive connections between physical structures and social institutions, such as marriage and domesticity, that confine women within contractual obligations. Gilman’s use of extended metaphor challenges conventional conceptions of the home, inanimate objects, and institutional authority and her use of metonymy extrapolates examples from the particular to a wider review. The main findings of this inquiry reveal feminist opposition to women’s subjugated status in the marital relationship and to established hierarchies of male control. The literary analysis exposes the efficacy of narrative gap and textual silences in provoking the reader’s participation.

This dissertation critically evaluates the issue of the `silencing' of the subaltern woman in the 1988 version of Gayatri Spivak's essay `Can the Subaltern Speak?' The conclusions reached are then related to the novel The Purple Violet of Oshaantu by the Namibian woman writer Neshani Andreas. Chapter 1 deals with the essay `Can the Subaltern Speak?' and the `silenced' subaltern woman, examining both Spivak's theory on this issue as well as criticism of this theory by different postcolonial theorists. Chapter 2 presents aspects of both the creative and political practice of women, specifically the woman writer, in certain countries in Africa. Chapter 3 deals with the novel The Purple Violet of Oshaantu by Neshani Andreas and explores issues like the `silencing' of the subaltern women in the novel, opposition to patriarchal oppression and the engendering of agency by both the writer and the characters in the novel. / English Studies / M. A. (English)

Die Dissertation widmet sich den intertextuellen Schreibstrategien in Ingeborg Bachmanns (1926-1973) Todesarten-Romanen Malina und Das Buch Franza und Elfriede Jelineks (1946-) Roman Die Klavierspielerin und Dramolett Der Tod und das Mädchen V (Die Wand). In diesem Zusammenhang werden zum einen die Systemreferenzen der beiden Österreicherinnen auf die Psychoanalyse und zum anderen die Bezüge auf einzelne sowohl literarische als auch philosophische und mythologische Texte untersucht. Es wird gezeigt, inwiefern sich Bachmanns Inszenierung der Hysterie in Anlehnung an die Schriften Sigmund Freuds und Josef Breuers von Jelineks Inszenierung des psychoanalytischen Diskurses unterscheidet. Bei Bachmann, die sich auf psychoanalytische Schriften beruft bzw. diese zugunsten ihrer eigenen Krankheitskonzeption verwirft, stellt die Hysterie den literarischen Gegenstand dar. Jelinek hingegen erhebt die Hysterie zum Schreibprinzip, insofern sie die inkriminierten Strukturen durch eine Art hysterische Mimesis parodierend bloßzustellen versucht. Die Funktion der Einzeltextreferenzen wird im Kontext von Bachmanns utopischer und Jelineks satirischer Schreibweise erarbeitet. Während Bachmann durch Bezüge u.a. auf Virginia Woolf und Paul Celan Bedeutungszusammenhänge schafft, bringt Jelinek ihre Texte durch die Anhäufung intertextueller Verweise u.a. auf Heidegger, Platon, Hesiod, Homer und Christa Woolf sowie auf Leben und Schaffen Bachmanns, Sylvia Plaths und Marlen Haushofers an den Rand der Bedeutungsimplosion. Die intertextuellen Strategien der beiden Schriftstellerinnen werden zum Schluss im Licht der Moderne/Postmoderne-Diskussion betrachtet. ----------------------------------- La thèse est consacrée aux stratégies décriture intertextuelles dans les romans « Malina » et « Franza » du cycle « Manières de mourir » dIngeborg Bachmann (1926-1973) et au roman « La Pianiste » et au dramolet « La Jeune Fille et la Mort V (Le Mur) » dElfriede Jelinek (1946-). Sont examinés dans ce cadre dune part les références systémiques des deux Autrichiennes à la psychanalyse et dautre part les renvois à divers textes, tant littéraires que philosophiques ou mythologiques. Il est montré dans quelle mesure la mise en scène de lhystérie par Bachmann à lappui des écrits de Sigmund Freud et Joseph Breuer diffère de la mise en scène du discours psychanalytique par Jelinek. Chez Bachmann, qui se base dans sa nosographie sur des écrits psychanalytiques tout en rejetant ces derniers au profit de sa propre conception de la maladie, lhystérie constitue lobjet littéraire. Jelinek, par contre, élève lhystérie au rang de principe décriture dans la mesure où elle tente de ridiculiser de manière parodique les structures incriminées par une sorte de mimesis hystérique. La fonction des références intertextuelles est investiguée dans le contexte des procédés décriture utopique de Bachmann et satirique de Jelinek. Alors que Bachmann met en place des rapports de sens au moyen de références entre autres à Virginia Woolf et Paul Celan, Jelinek mène ses textes au bord de limplosion sémantique par la multiplication des références intertextuelles, entre autres à Martin Heidegger, Platon, Hésiode, Homère et Christa Wolf ainsi quà la vie et à luvre de Bachmann, Sylvia Plath et Marlene Haushofer. Pour terminer, les stratégies intertextuelles des deux auteurs sont étudiées à la lumière de la discussion moderne/postmoderne. ---------------------------------------- This thesis focuses on the intertextual writing strategies in Ingeborg Bachmanns (1926-1973) novels Malina and Franza (from her cycle of novels Ways of Dying) as well as in Elfriede Jelineks (1946-) novel The Piano Teacher and her drama Death and the Maiden V (The Wall). In this context the authors allusions to psychoanalysis and their references to various literary, philosophical and mythological texts are thoroughly investigated. The analysis reveals that Bachmanns staging of hysteria, in the way it recalls Sigmund Freuds and Josef Breuers writings, differs from the way Jelinek deals with psychoanalytical discourse. Bachmann who partly relies on psychoanalytical writings and partly rejects them in favour of her own concept of malady chooses hysteria as her literary topic. Jelinek, on the contrary, makes hysteria her writing principle in trying to uncover incriminated structures by parodying them in some sort of hysterical mimesis. This thesis also investigates the functioning of the authors intertextual links in the context of Bachmanns utopian, and Jelineks satirical, writing style. While Bachmann creates new meaning through references, among others, to Virginia Woolf and Paul Celan, Jelineks texts reach the point of semantic implosion - by the amassment of intertextual hints (for instance to Martin Heidegger, Plato, Hesiod, Homer and Christa Wolf) and references to the life and work of her fellow writers Bachmann, Sylvia Plath and Marlen Haushofer. Finally, both authors intertextual strategies are examined in the light of the Modernism versus Postmodernism discussion.

Text in French; abstract in French and English / Observatrice des réalités quotidiennes camerounaises, Calixthe Beyala a publié, en 1987, un roman intitulé C’est le soleil qui m’a brûlée. Dans ce roman, elle montre au lecteur comment la femme, victime de la tradition, utilise, avec l’apport de la modernité, son corps comme moyen pour reconquérir son moi profond, et retrouver sa liberté. En 1994, elle a écrit et publié Assѐze, l’Africaine. Et en 2003, elle a publié Femme nue, femme noire. Après une lecture minutieuse de ces trois livres, le lecteur peut facilement découvrir que Calixthe Beyala place la femme au centre de sa préoccupation littéraire. Et elle examine, dans sa fiction, deux thѐmes: la tradition et la modernité. Qu’entend-elle par tradition et modernité? Comment examine-t-elle ces deux thѐmes dans les ouvrages de notre corpus? Quelles solutions propose-t-elle à la femme, d’une part, pour se libérer du joug de la tradition et de la domination masculine, et d’autre part, pour (re)conquérir son corps, son moi profond et pour son émancipation? / Observer of the daily Cameroonian realities, Calixthe Beyala published, in 1987, a novel entitled C’est le soleil qui m’a brûlée. In this novel, she shows the reader how a woman, victim of tradition, uses her body as means to reconquer herself and to find her freedom. In 1994, she wrote and published Assèze, l’Africane. And in 2003, she published Femme nue, femme noire. After a careful reading of the three novels, the reader can easily discover that Calixthe Beyala places woman in the center of her literary preoccupation. And she examines, in her fiction, two themes, tradition and modernity. What does she mean by tradition and modernity? How does she examine these two themes in the novels of our study? What solutions does she propose to the woman, firstly, to liberate herself from the yoke of tradition and male’s domination, and secondly, to reconquer her body, herself and her emancipation? / Classics and World Languages / M.A. (French)

This dissertation critically evaluates the issue of the `silencing' of the subaltern woman in the 1988 version of Gayatri Spivak's essay `Can the Subaltern Speak?' The conclusions reached are then related to the novel The Purple Violet of Oshaantu by the Namibian woman writer Neshani Andreas. Chapter 1 deals with the essay `Can the Subaltern Speak?' and the `silenced' subaltern woman, examining both Spivak's theory on this issue as well as criticism of this theory by different postcolonial theorists. Chapter 2 presents aspects of both the creative and political practice of women, specifically the woman writer, in certain countries in Africa. Chapter 3 deals with the novel The Purple Violet of Oshaantu by Neshani Andreas and explores issues like the `silencing' of the subaltern women in the novel, opposition to patriarchal oppression and the engendering of agency by both the writer and the characters in the novel. / English Studies / M. A. (English)

Ce projet de maîtrise portera sur le Journal intime (1984) de Nicole Brossard, une œuvre singulière et peu connue de cette autrice majeure de la littérature féministe québécoise. Dans Journal intime, deux mécanismes animent le texte : la construction d'un sujet féminin écrivant et l'édification d'une communauté d'écrivaines sororales autour de la diariste. En brossant un portrait historique et esthétique de « l'écriture au féminin » (Boisclair, 1984 ; Lamy, 1984 ; Smart, 1988), j'examinerai la façon dont Journal intime s'inscrit dans l'œuvre de Brossard et, plus largement, dans le paysage littéraire et féministe québécois. En m'appuyant sur des notions de la poétique des genres (Auger, 2017 ; Hébert, 1983) et sur l'histoire des pratiques du journal intime au féminin (Didier, 1976 ; Roey- Roux, 1983), j'étudierai la façon dont Brossard utilise ou détourne les codes génériques et les pratiques conventionnelles du genre diaristique pour se construire une identité de sujet féminin écrivant, afin de transmettre son expérience sensible du monde. Je m'intéresserai également, à partir des notions de liminarité (Biron, 2000) et de sororité (Delaume, 2019 ; Ledoux-Beaugrand, 2013) à la manière dont se constitue dans le Journal intime une communauté de créatrices, basée sur la solidarité littéraire, artistique et politique. Dans une visée féministe, Brossard inscrit sa pratique d'écriture dans ce que Lori Saint- Martin appelle le « métaféminisme », mouvement des années 1980 au Québec, particulièrement en littérature, qui se propose de « réécrire les métarécits patriarcaux » (Saint-Martin, 1992). J'avance l'hypothèse qu'en construisant une communauté de femmes et une filiation intellectuelle horizontale (Biron, 2000) plutôt que verticale, Brossard participe à la réécriture des métarécits patriarcaux de la société québécoise en y inscrivant un récit collectif féminin, voire féministe, à la fois individuel et collectif, ancré dans cette communauté intellectuelle féminine. Il s'agira de montrer comment, dans le journal de Brossard, l'individuel peut s'allier à la communauté, comment l'intime peut servir de tremplin vers le collectif et le social, afin de comprendre ce que cette ouverture implique pour le « féminin » et les « femmes » dans la société québécoise. / This master's thesis will focus on Nicole Brossard's Journal Intime (1984), a singular and little-known work by this major author of Quebec feminist literature. In Journal Intime, two mechanisms animate the text: the construction of a female subject and the building of a community of sororal writers around the diarist. By painting a historical and aesthetic portrait of “feminine writing” (Boisclair, 1984; Lamy, 1984; Smart, 1988), I will examine how Journal Intime fits into the work of Brossard and, more broadly, into the literary and feminist landscape of Quebec. Based on notions of genre poetics (Auger, 2017; Hébert, 1983) and on the history of feminine diary practices (Didier, 1976; Roey-Roux, 1983), I will study the way Brossard uses or diverts the generic codes and conventional practices of the diaristic genre to build an identity as a female subject writing, in order to transmit her sensitive experience of the world. I will also be interested, based on the notions of liminarity (Biron, 2000) and sisterhood (Delaume, 2019; Ledoux-Beaugrand, 2013), in the way in which a community of creators is constituted in the Journal Intime, based on literary, artistic and political solidarity. In a feminist perspective, Brossard inscribes her writing practice in what Lori Saint- Martin calls “metafeminism”, a movement of the 1980s in Quebec, particularly in literature, which proposes to “rewrite patriarchal meta-narratives” (Saint-Martin, 1992). I put forward the hypothesis that by building a community of women and a horizontal (Biron, 2000) rather than vertical intellectual filiation, Brossard participates in the rewriting of the patriarchal meta-narratives of Quebec society by inscribing a collective feminine, even a feminist narrative, both individual and collective, rooted in this female intellectual community. The aim will be to show how, in Brossard's Journal intime, how the individual can unite with the community, how the intimate can serve as a springboard towards the collective and the social, in order to understand what this openness implies for the “feminine” and “women” in Quebec society.

This dissertation explores the relationship of two of the most prominent women intellectuals of the twentieth century, Hannah Arendt and Susan Sontag. While they are not commonly considered to be related figures – Arendt is mainly recognized as a political thinker, Sontag is an icon of postwar popular culture – it has been anecdotally noted that they lived and worked in the same intellectual environment in postwar New York City, where their paths crossed a few times. However, a comprehensive systematic study of their relationship is missing. Starting from their Benjamin portraits of 1968 and 1978, I argue that Arendt’s and Sontag’s relationship is significant in terms of the German and US American tradition of literary criticism: Both women acted as transatlantic critics invested in cultural transfer between postwar US and Germany, and they employed similar styles of citation and editorial strategies to create and inscribe themselves into an authoritative literary tradition. With Arendt and Sontag, I discuss the critic’s task in terms of citational style and as a matter of taking care of literary traditions beyond national borders. As I demonstrate through comprehensive, in-depth archival analysis and close readings, Arendt and Sontag intervened with their Benjamin portraits in a heated debate about critical methods surrounding the editorial management of Benjamin’s estate and legacy through Theodor W. Adorno and Gershom Scholem in late 1960s Germany. Arendt’s portrait made Benjamin’s work available to an English-speaking audience for the first time and Sontag popularized his prominence in the US even further. Both stage Benjamin as a literary figure rather than a philosopher. Stylistically, they employ related strategies of citational mimicry to create an intimate connection between their voices and Benjamin’s, granting even unfamiliar readers access to Benjamin’s complex writing. Through constant dialogue with his work, their affective and affirmative mediation has significant editorial qualities. By preserving and promoting Benjamin as a critic in the US, Arendt and Sontag created a transatlantic tradition of literary criticism in which they inscribed themselves to gain critical authority in singular yet similar ways. Tracing the relationship between the portraits archivally, I argue that their similar citational creation of discursive authority results from Sontag’s comprehensive study of Arendt’s work and is thus an example of critical skill building through stylistic imitation. Rendering the hidden citational traces between the portraits transparent, I show how this line of influence ironically yields a lack of credit to Arendt on Sontag’s part. Like Arendt, Sontag reifies rather than breaks patriarchal citational chains. Illuminating what Arendt calls a “hidden tradition” – consisting in stylistically visible yet inexplicit commonalities – I draw on terminology gained from the current debate on critical method in Western literary studies to argue that the portraits afford a concept of criticism between such polemic poles as “surface” versus “depth” reading, “description” versus “interpretation” or “affirmation” versus “suspicion.” Characterizing this critical nuance with Arendt and Sontag as related critics, my study delineates a genealogy of a transatlantic mode of close reading with hermeneutic roots and a feminist twist.

Fay Weldon is a popular, prolific author whose oeuvre stretches from 1967 to the present and includes 20 novels, three collections of short stories and numerous stage, radio and television plays, scripts and adaptations. This thesis limits itself to her fiction and follows the chronological course of Weldon's writing career in five chapters. Fay Weldon's fiction, situated at the intersection of postmodemism and feminism, is doubly subversive. It both overturns 'reasonable' narrative conventions and wittily deconstructs the specious terminology used to define women. Weldon's disobedient female protagonists - madwomen, criminals, outcasts and she-devils - assert the power of the Other. Gynocentric themes - single parenthood, sisterhood, reproduction, motherhood, sex and marriage - are transformed by Weldon into uproarious feminist revenge comedy. This she achieves through an intertextuality which often involves unorthodox typography, genreswopping and metafictional devices. Moreover, a unique ventriloquism enables her omniscient first-person narrators to mimic 'Fay Weldon' herself. Since her narrators are rebels and iconoclasts, Weldon has always been viewed as a subversive individual worthy of media attention, especially interviews. For this reason, and because she is a woman writer who struggled initially against social and domestic odds, the thesis incorporates in its argument the author's biography and public personae. Chapter One explores the connections between Weldon's first novels - notably Down Among the Women (1971) - and early liberationist and anthropological feminism. In Chapter Two, Bakhtin's dialogic imagination and Derrida's differance provide the basis for a discussion of multiplicity in Weldon's novels of the late 1970s, particularly Praxis (1979), shortlisted for the Booker prize. Chapter Three tests the limits of a psychoanalytical model in accounting for Weldon's novels of (m)Otherhood, including The Life and Loves of a SheDevil (1983). Theories of humour and carnival inform Chapter Four's analysis of how Weldon's wit - at its tendentious best in The Heart of the Country (1987) - declines into innocence. Finally, Chapter Five sees Weldon's flagging literary reputation as the symptom of authorial exhaustion and retreat from a feminist agenda. This concluding chapter is, however, ultimately optimistic that the mercurial author's undeniable talents may reassert themselves / English Studies / D.Litt. et Phil. (English)

In this studyi apply a feminist-narratological grid to the works under discussion. I show how narration is used as strategy to highlight issues of concern to women, hereby attempting to make a contribution in the relatively new field of feminist narratology. Chapter One provides an analysis of Pride and Prejudice as an example of a feminist statement by Jane Austen. The use of omniscient narration and its ironic possibilities are offset against the central characters' perceptions, presented by means of free indirect style. Chapter Two examines The Tenant of Wildfell Hall as a critique of Wuthering Heights, both in its use of narrative frames and in its at times moralistic comment. The third and fourth chapters focus on Charlotte Bronte. Her ambivalences about the situation of women, be they writers, narrators or characters, are explored. These are seen to be revealed in her narrative strategies, particularly in her attainment of closure, or its lack. Chapter Five explores the increasing sophistication of the narrative techniques of Elizabeth Gaskell, whose early work Mary Barton is shown to have narrative inconsistencies as opposed to her more complex last novel Wives and Daughters. Finally, I conclude that while the authors under discussion use divergent methods, certain commonalities prevail. Among these are the presentation of alternatives women have within their constraining circumstances and the recognition of their moral accountability for the choices they make. / English Studies / D. Litt. et Phil. (English)

This thesis is a translation of a chapter that examines the role of Muslim women in politics during the early Islamic period and their engagement with religious and political discourses. This subject raises a combination of provocative challenges for Islamic discourse as Muslim women have had a complex relationship with their religious tradition dating back to the very inception of Islam. Despite Qur’ānic injunctions and Prophetic affirmations of the egalitarian status of Muslim women, social inequality and injustice directed at women remains a persistent problem in Muslim society. In the translated text Abū Shaqqah goes about re-invoking the normative tradition in order to affirm the role of Muslim women in politics. Furthermore the translation is prefaced by a critical introduction outlining the contours of the 20th century landscape, which attempts to describe the struggle of Muslim women in Abū Shaqqah’s time. / Religious Studies and Arabic / M.A. (Arabic)