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The majority of this thesis consists of my creative work in poetry, accompanied by researched information and concepts that serve to contextualize and illuminate the poems themselves and my creative process. Key areas of scholarship that underlie my poetry include the tropes and motifs of Gothic literature from the Romantic era to the present; the progression of women’s writing, particularly writing by women identifying as lesbian; and the conflation of female writers and characters with the concept of the ‘monstrous’ and transgressive. Also informing the two research chapters are some of the basic concepts about abjection and depression developed by philosopher and theorist Julia Kristeva. The collection of my poems contains both narrative and lyric poems. The final chapter, following on from my collection of sixty-eight poems, outlines my creative progress as I developed my particular poetic aesthetic. It is heavily informed by my growing acquaintance and comfort level with my own darkness and depression reflected in Gothic tropes, lesbian fiction, and aspects of Kristevan theory. The progression of my craft as a writer led me to strive for an effective expressive balance between the abstractions of the French Symbolists and Surrealists and a more ‘Imagistic’ focus on accurate, concrete imagery.

Thesis (M.A.)--University of Guelph, 2001. / Author requested name be removed from all areas of the catalog record. Includes bibliographical references.

Ina Yee. / Thesis (M.Phil.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 1999. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 87-90). / Abstracts in English and Chinese. / Acknowledgements --- p.i / Table of Contents --- p.ii / Abstract --- p.iii / Introduction --- p.1 / The Gendered Vampires in Contemporary Culture / Vampires and Contemporary Culture --- p.1 / Woman/Lesbian as Vampire --- p.7 / "Ortner and ""the Angel in the House""" --- p.9 / "Mulvey, Postfeminist Media Critics and the Female Body" --- p.10 / Butler and the Lesbian Phallus --- p.12 / Feminism and Postfeminisms --- p.14 / Chapter Chapter One --- The Woman Vampire: The Fallen Angel --- p.18 / Woman and Nature --- p.18 / The Angel and the Woman Vampire --- p.23 / The Postmodern Dracula --- p.33 / Conclusion --- p.39 / Chapter Chapter Two --- The Girl Vampire: The Resistant Female Body --- p.40 / The Male Gaze --- p.40 / """When the Woman Looks"" at a Woman" --- p.47 / The Postmodern Female Body --- p.56 / Conclusion --- p.58 / Chapter Chapter Three --- The Lesbian Vampire: The Female Desire --- p.60 / The Lacanian Phallus --- p.60 / The Lesbian Phallus --- p.64 / The Lesbian Vampire --- p.67 / The Dark Kiss and Female Sexual Pleasures --- p.70 / Conclusion --- p.78 / Conclusion --- p.81 / Towards an Autonomous Representation of Womanhood / Bibliography --- p.87

Le Mouvement de libération des femmes en France ne fut pas seulement un mouvement politique et social, ce fut également l’une des dernières, si ce n’est la dernière, avant-garde littéraire que la France a connue. Du point de vue international, l’activité des littératrices au sein du Mouvement constitue un des principes distinctifs de la lutte des femmes en France. Les manifestantes qui déposent publiquement une gerbe de fleurs à la femme plus inconnue encore que le soldat inconnu sous l’Arc de Triomphe le 26 août 1970, sont déjà pour certaines – appelées à le devenir pour d’autres – des écrivaines. Dix ans plus tard, le MLF, depuis peu marque déposée à l’Institut national de la propriété industrielle, appartient à une éditrice, Antoinette Fouque, promotrice d’une écriture dite féminine. Dans l’espace circonscrit par ces deux points fixes, paraît un ensemble de textes qui s’inscrivent au sein de deux tendances majoritaires – mais antagonistes – du Mouvement, le féminisme d’une part et la néo-féminité, ou éloge de la différence, d’autre part. En miroir, un double rhizome éditorial se développe, partageant maisons d’édition et revues en deux factions militantes et littéraires bien distinctes. Pendant dix ans, la littérature se met tout autant au service du Mouvement des femmes que le Mouvement irradie la littérature, chacun-e influençant et informant la pratique et la pensée de l’autre. C’est de cette coïncidence entre littérature et Mouvement de libération des femmes que le présent écrit se propose de rendre compte, afin de retracer un mouvement politique qui fut et se fit littéraire, et, dans le même élan, une littérature qui fut et se fit politique. Par là même, la thèse redouble la question posée par tout un mouvement de femmes à la littérature elle-même, contestant ses définitions premières et repoussant les limites qui lui ont été assignées. / The Women’s Liberation Movement (MLF) was not only a political and social movement, but one of the last, if not the very last, literary avant-garde that France has experienced. From an international perspective, the activity of the literary women within the movement represents one of the fundamental principles of the fight for women’s rights in France. The demonstrators, who publicly placed a bouquet of flowers for the unknown wife of the Unknown Soldier under the Arc de Triomphe on August 26th 1970, are for some, and are soon to become for others, women writers. Ten years later, the MLF, a recently registered trademark with the National Institute for Intellectual Property Rights, belongs to the editor, Antoinette Fouque, promotor of female writing. Within the space determined by these two fixed points, there exists a collection of texts that adhere to two major trends – although antagonistic – of the movement, Feminism on one hand and Neofeminity, or the praise for “difference”, on the other hand. Mirroring each other, a dual editorial form develops, sharing publishers and scholarly journals, into two distinct literary and militant factions. For ten years, literature served the purpose of the Women’s Liberation Movement as much as the latter promoted literature, each influencing and informing the other by practice and thought. It is precisely this coexistence between literature and the Women’s Liberation Movement that the present dissertation proposes to examine, in order to trace the political movement that was and made itself literary, and, by the same token, a literature that was and made itself political. At the same time, the dissertation continues the question asked of literature by an entire women’s movement, challenging its assigned definitions and pushing back its boundaries.