Coffins, Closets, Kitchens, and Convents uses anthropologist Liz Kenyon's categories of home, Gaston Bachelard's theories on the importance of imagination and metaphor in home building, as well as literary criticism, sociology, and feminist theory to examine values of "home" in various literary works of the eighteenth and twentieth centuries. This dissertation's focus on the struggles within traditional home spheres highlights the female characters' need of a protected space. Yet these characters realize they must allow for connections with various individuals to bring about such a safe space. Through the creative act of writing, Mary Leapor's Mira in the poem, "Crumble Hall," Samuel Richardson's title character in Clarissa, and Toni Morrison's Claudia MacTeer in The Bluest Eye and the convent women in Paradise, each oppressed within the home sphere, gain full access to all that the idealized home entails in constructing their individual homes; they rewrite space into a home of their own. The chapters herein are organized from lower-class to higher-class female characters beginning in the eighteenth century with Leapor's servant narrator and moving up to Richardson's higher-class character, followed by Morrison's twentieth century impoverished youth in The Bluest Eye and variety of women both impoverished and well-off residing together in a convent in Paradise.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--West Virginia University, 2001. / Title from document title page. Document formatted into pages; contains iv, 341 p. Includes abstract. Includes bibliographical references (p. 317-341).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Washington, 2004. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 357-367 ).

Diese Dissertation untersucht die verschiedenen Konstruktionen poetischer Selbstrepräsentationen durch Melancholie in Gedichten englischer Autorinnen des frühen 18. Jahrhunderts (ca. 1680-1750). Die vielfältigen Gedichte stammen von repräsentativen lyrischer Autorinnen dieser Epoche, z.B. Anne Wharton, Anne Finch, Elizabeth Singer Rowe, Henrietta Knight, Elizabeth Carter, Mary Leapor, Mary Chudleigh, Mehetabel Wright und Elizabeth Boyd. Vor einem ausführlichen medizinhistorischen Hintergrund, der die Ablösung der Humoralpathologie durch die Nerven und die daraus resultierende Neupositionierung von Frauen als Melancholikerinnen untersucht, rekurriert die Arbeit auf die Zusammenhänge von Medizin und Literatur im 18. Jahrhundert. Für die Gedichtanalysen werden gezielt Analysekategorien und zwei Typen poetisch-melancholischer Selbstrepräsentationen entwickelt und dann für die Close Readings der Texte eingesetzt. Die Auswahl der Gedicht umfasst sowohl Texte, die auf generisch standardisierte Marker der Melancholie verweisen, als auch Texte, die eine hauptsächlich die melancholische Erfahrung inszenieren, ohne dabei zwangsläufig explizit auf die genretypischen Marker zurück zu greifen. Die detaillierten Close Readings der Gedichte zeigen die oftmals ambivalenten Strategien der poetisch-melancholischen Selbstkonstruktionen der Sprecherinnen in den Gedichttexten und demonstrieren deutlich, dass – entgegen der vorherrschenden kritischen Meinung – auch Autorinnen dieser Epoche zum literarischen Melancholiediskurs beigetragen haben. Die Arbeit legt ein besonderes Augenmerk auf die sog. weibliche Elegie und ihrem Verhältnis zur Melancholie. Dabei wird deutlich, dass gerade Trauer, die oftmals als weiblich konnotierte Gegendiskurs zur männlich konnotierten genialischen Melancholie wahrgenommen wird, und die daraus folgende Elegie von Frauen als wichtiger literarischer Raum für melancholische Dichtung genutzt wurde und somit als Teil des literarischen Melancholiediskurses dient. / This thesis analyses different constructions of poetic self-representations through melancholy in poems written by early eighteenth-century women writers (ca. 1680-1750). The selection of poems includes texts written by representative poets such as Anne Wharton, Anne Finch, Elizabeth Singer Rowe, Henrietta Knight, Elizabeth Carter, Mary Leapor, Mary Chudleigh, Mehetabel Wright und Elizabeth Boyd. Against the background of a detailed analysis of the medical-historical paradigmatic change from humoral pathology to the nerves and the subsequent re-positioning of women as melancholics, the thesis refers to the close relationship of medicine and literature during the eighteenth century. Specifical categories of analysis and two different types of melancholic-poetic self-representations are developed, in order to support the close readings of the literary texts. These poems comprise both texts, which explicitly refer to generically standardized melancholy markers, as well as texts, which negotiate and aestheticize the melancholic experience without necessarily mentioning melancholy. The detailed close readings of the poems discuss the often ambivalent strategies of the poetic speakers to construct and represent their melancholic selves and clearly demonstrate that women writers of that time did – despite the common critical opinion – contribute to the literary discourse of melancholy. The thesis pays special attention to the so-called female elegy and its relationship to melancholy. It becomes clear that mourning and grief, which have often been considered a feminine counter-discourse to the discourse of melancholy as sign of the male intellectual and/or artistic genius, and the resulting female elegy offer an important literary space for women writers and their melancholy poetry, which should thus be recognized as a distinctive part of the literary discourse of melancholy.