On April 15, 1862, Emily Dickinson asked Thomas Wentworth Higginson of the Atlantic Monthly to confirm her impression that her verse was alive. Both her letter, which turned on the figure of a breathing body, and her enclosed poems, which served as samples of her living artifacts, presented Dickinson as a maker of verse and a remaker of human sentience. The context out of which her sense of language arose was local networks of exchange among kin, neighbors, and friends who had some connection to Amherst. This social economy of white, middle-class women involved exchanges of living artifacts from one household to another: food, stitched items, texts, flowers. The practice of trading handmade, material things that engaged Dickinson throughout her lifetime alters the perception of her as a recluse who isolated herself from others in order to develop her genius alone. Her linguistic choices and her indirect style are derived in part, from her social practice. So are several values espoused in her poetry: goods, not cash; unique artistry, not mass production; personal interaction, not the literary marketplace. The exchange of floral gifts reflected wider cultural practices of white, middle-class women: identifying flowers and sending messages through them. These "feminine" conventions offered Dickinson more than a temporary blurring of science and sentiment which was "corrected" by Charles Darwin in 1859: they freed her from some of the sexist constructions of nature dominant in her time. Her floral imagery resists the teeth and claws of Darwinian survival and the classifications of botanists. Science and religion emerge in her poetry as authorities proferring "instructive utterances" that require misreading. Her grounds for misreading include her experience with the Amherst landscape and her own body. Her various strands of earth, garden, and body imagery demonstrate how central the speaking body was to her art. By ignoring literature about diseased women's bodies and constructing gardens as primarily positive space, Dickinson found the means to let her body speak. Although speaking physical, sexual, and poetic fulness was difficult for Dickinson, she made verses that expressed the body's potential and touched others with their breath.

<p> Chaucer bases the marriage in the Shipman&rsquo;s Tale on the ethical and social systems of the medieval merchant class, yet criticism of the marriage and the wife&rsquo;s extra-marital transaction especially, often falls squarely in the realm of ecclesiastical, moral ideology. A moral reading of the mercantile-based Shipman&rsquo;s Tale presupposes that an accommodation can be negotiated between the mercantile and the ecclesiastical. I argue that Chaucer&rsquo;s construction of marriage in the Shipman&rsquo;s Tale allows for no accommodation. Chaucer creates a purely mercantile marriage that relies upon the ethical standards of business to determine its strength. This thesis examines the intersecting ecclesiastical and mercantile terms within the Shipman&rsquo;s Tale. Chapter one examines the assertion that money perverts the marriage of the wife and the merchant. To refute these claims I examine the medieval church&rsquo;s views on marriage, the Pauline &ldquo;marriage debt,&rdquo; adultery, and the conflicts within this ideal as they relate to and inform the marriage of the wife and merchant. The marriage between the merchant husband and his wife in the Shipman&rsquo;s Tale is strengthened by its adherence to mercantile ethics, and stands as a legitimate partnership, not as a perversion. In Chapter two I focus on the determination that the wife in the Shipman&rsquo;s Tale is &ldquo;unfaithful, aggressively self-centered, and mercenary.&rdquo; The particular assertion of &ldquo;mercenary&rdquo; interests me, since it is based on attempts to calculate a financial exchange rate in order to accuse the wife of over-selling herself to the monk. If the wife over-sells her body then she reaps a usurious profit, a practice condemned by both ecclesiastical and secular fourteenth-century courts. I analyze terms and financial transactions specific to usury and find that the wife conducts an ethical trade based on fourteenth-century mercantile law. She trades her body for the amount of currency the market will bear, therefore she is free from the charges of mercenary over-selling and moves out of the shadow of her merchant husband and into the role of independent merchant. In Chapter three I confront the &ldquo;redemptive innocence&rdquo; extended to the merchant husband and the refusal to extend such redemption to the wife. I investigate the specific mercantile terms related to the bill of exchange model used by both the husband and wife in the Shipman&rsquo;s Tale, in order to show that the wife in the Shipman&rsquo;s Tale is an ethical merchant in her own right and therefore worthy of the same &ldquo;redemptive innocence&rdquo; offered to her husband. I conclude that the merchant&rsquo;s marriage typifies the medieval mercantile business model, that ecclesiastical marriage ideology is incongruent to this business model, and that the wife&rsquo;s movements must be evaluated under the terms of mercantile ethics. I find the wife in the Shipman&rsquo;s Tale to be an ethical merchant and an exemplary participant in the mercantile marriage provided by the text.</p>

Recent new historicist accounts of the theatricality of power in early modern culture have often neglected issues of gender and sexuality despite the fact of four decades of female rule and the pervasiveness of images of female sexuality in cultural discourses on theatricality and power. This study of four early Jacobean Shakespearean tragedies--Othello, Macbeth, Antony and Cleopatra, and Coriolanus--reveals intimate connections between early modern culture's conceptions of power and its notions of female sexuality. Specifically, early modern constructions of the state as a family together with the concept and practice of a theatrical monarchy aligns the women in these tragedies with contemporary definitions and practices of power. In addition, reading these plays against a variety of other cultural discourses on women reveals glaring contradictions between various discourses on women and the possibilities for female power signalled by those inconsistencies. Reversing current notions of discontinuous identity or postmodern subjectivity as disempowering in denying agency, this dissertation seeks to redefine female agency and asserts that the intrinsic contradictions in representations of women open up the possibilities for female power. By highlighting their constructedness as theatrical creations, the discontinuities inherent in female characters in these plays signals a subversive site for empowerment in a culture which saw inconsistency and theatricality as constitutive of power.

My dissertation investigates the “museum” as a site of cultural politics intersecting with the spectacle of the female body. My study aims to extend the cultural and historical readings of museums and exhibitions and focuses on female encounters with the display, collection, and civic education functions of nineteenth-century exhibition phenomena. I identify the exhibition logic in an emerging national museum culture as a triangular dynamic of the host, the exhibit, and the viewer. In this triangle, the host is figured in different roles—as an exhibitor, as a representative of the patriarchal/imperialistic culture, and as an observer of the female body. Posing the female body as a locus of discipline and resistance, women writers in that period borrow this triangulated model to destabilize patriarchal power relations: Their heroines confront the host in a variety of exhibitions to gain a measure of agency and selfhood. My first chapter traces the host-exhibit-viewer relations in the increasing popular mass visual market beginning in the eighteenth-century and culminating in Great Exhibition of 1851. With the images of power, I give an overview of the uses of “exhibition” as a metaphor in both male- and female-authored fiction. Chapter Two explores the “freak show” as a metaphor, in Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre, a metaphor for women's marginalization and re-imaging of a self in a patriarchal society but also a metaphor that reinforces imperialist dominance. Chapter Three investigates the female spectatorship of visual art in Brontë's Villette as an act of subversion and a critique of the patriarchal constraints on women's visibility. Chapter Four examines, in George Eliot's treatment of her heroines' relations with men in the museum space in “Mr. Gilfil's Love Story” and Middlemarch, how the museum as a cultural classroom can become problematic when “culture” as field of knowledge is defined as exclusively masculine. In my readings, I seek to open new understanding of these authors and explore the dialogical complexity of museology, literature, and societal tensions.

Among the linguistic innovations attributed to mystics is the use of sensual, sensory words to express spiritual and abstract ideas (Waterman 101) which Otto Zirker calls a "Tendenz zur Vergeistigung des Sinnlichen" (15). When histories of the German language discuss Mechthild von Magdeburg (ca. 1212-ca. 1282), they focus primarily on the passionate passages in her text, Das fliessende Licht der Gottheit. While Mechthild's descriptions of the mystical union between God and the soul are indeed full of sensual images, her use of sensory vocabulary is not limited to this context. The goal of this dissertation is to come to a fuller understanding of Mechthild's use of sensory vocabulary by means of an investigation constructed from the vocabulary itself, not from a theoretical framework down. Mechthild says that there are five senses, but does not specify what they are. The underlying assumption is that she was acquainted with the traditional five senses of sight, hearing, smell, taste and touch. In addition, she describes an allegorical bride with five kingdoms: eyes, speech, thoughts, hearing and touch. This investigation, therefore, includes the additional "senses" of speaking and thinking. An analysis of Mechthild's sensory vocabulary indicates that Mechthild privileges the senses of sight, hearing, and touch over smell and taste and these have the largest amount of vocabulary allotted to them. These senses are also the most prominent in the interaction between the soul and God. God reveals "visions" to the eyes of the soul and Mechthild records the visual details of what she has seen. God and the soul are among the many voices in Das fliessende Licht. They listen and speak with each other in prayers and dialogues. Mechthild also acquires a voice as she speaks through her text. God and the soul also enter into an intimate tactile relationship with each other in the unio mystica, the union between God and soul for which the mystic longs.

The dissertation examines three stage-plays--Was geschah, nachdem Nora ihren Mann verlassen hatte (1977), Clara S. (1981), and Krankheit oder Moderne Frauen (1984)--by the Austrian writer Elfriede Jelinek (b. 1946, Murzzuschlag). My dissertation views these works as a trilogy, which articulates the playwright's earliest attempt to create a new language of theater so that she could present her own critical views on Austro-German cultural history, particularly her belief that the historical subjugation of women (within private and public spheres) is closely aligned to the formation of a distinctly gendered subjectivity. I examine how Jelinek develops an increasingly complex notion of the intertextually referenced male- and female-subject in each successive play. Chapter One considers Jelinek's criticism of the growing nationalist sentiment in post-war Germany and Austria. She views residual fascism and misogyny in both these nation states as being inextricably linked to a historical process of hegemonic control by religious institutions, and powerful corporate and political interests. Chapter One considers the extent to which Jelinek's use of language and innovative theater techniques rest on avantgarde artistic trends generated by the postwar Vienna Group. This chapter lays the framework of Jelinek's political theater as she describes this in essays, interviews, and discussion sessions with Graz Group and Munchener Literaturarbeitskreis members. Chapter Two is devoted to an analysis of the Nora play. Jelinek's emerging aesthetic of political theater is evaluated through her construction of gendered dramatic subjects, in particular the female-subject Nora Helmer. Chapter Three examines Clara S., which parodies the marriage of Robert and Clara Schumann while alluding through visuals to resurgent fascism in contemporary Austria and Germany. Chapter Four examines Krankheit oder Moderne Frauen. Multiple narratives (fictional, documentary, mythical) are tightly woven together in Jelinek's depiction of Emily Bronte and Carmilla as lesbian vampires locked in a deadly struggle with the opposite sex. I conclude, in Chapter Five, by evaluating the trilogy plays as a cohesive body of work which sheds light on the early development of the playwright's political aesthetic in theater representation.

Feminist criticism offers a re-visioning of literary analysis by studying the influence of gender identity on author, character, audience, and critic. While feminist critics have focused on the novel and contemporary poetry, they are just beginning to examine women poets of the Victorian era, the first literary period to accept women as poets. Elaine Showalter's A Literature of Their Own offers a theory of women writers as a subculture within a dominant male tradition: their work evolves from a Feminine "imitation" and "internalization" of the dominant standards into first, a Feminist "protest" and search for "autonomy" and finally, a Female literature of "self-discovery" and identity. Adapting this matrix to a study of three poets--Mary Coleridge, Alice Meynell, and Charlotte Mew--the dissertation seeks to redefine the stereotypical Victorian Poetess by discovering the feminist poetics which inspired and guided her. Although she wrote with the burden of the Romantic priest of the imagination or the Victorian priest of social reform as her male models, she could not escape, in fact often turned to, her female identity to define herself as a poet. After a close examination of three individual poets, the dissertation will conclude with an overview of how their processes are echoed in a larger collection of Victorian women's poetry.

This study is an examination of how gendered characters in eighteenth-century British women's fiction are constructed and challenged. The novels under study are Eliza Haywood's The History of Miss Betsy Thoughtless (1751), Frances Sheridan's Memoirs of Sidney Bidulph (1761), Elizabeth Inchbald's A Simple Story (1791), and Charlotte Smith's The Old Manor House (1793). Chapter one, "Theory, Gender, and Eighteenth-Century British Women Writers," discusses how eighteenth-century scholars often substitute a focus on women writers and their female characters for a more thorough examination of gender and gender issues. Using post-structuralist and feminist-materialist theory, I maintain that it is important to consider a process-oriented conception of male and female identity, and to understand that each sex is continually in dialogue with the other, and with society at large. My subsequent chapters apply this supposition on a practical level. "Negotiating Female Identity in The History of Miss Betsy Thoughtless" argues that Trueworth constructs his masculine identity by associating with "virtuous" women and by avoiding any examination into his own sexual or moral conduct. He and society repeatedly and incorrectly judge the benevolent and high-spirited Betsy to be morally deficient and sexually permissive, and she comes to believe what everyone tells her: that she is a coquette and that it is her fault men sexually harass her. Consequently, Haywood offers no alternative way of perceiving women's gendered identity than by polarizing sexuality and ethics and by collapsing sexuality into gender. "Gender and Disguise in the Memoirs of Miss Sidney Bidulph" also focuses on the social indoctrination of women into accepting conservative notions of womanhood. More specifically, it explores the manifestation of heterosexual desire during a time when women were taught to venerate their parents and keep a tight rein over their desires while men were allowed more latitude in expressing their sexuality. The two remaining novels are more progressive in their construction of gendered characters. "A Simple Story: The Complexity of Gender Realized" argues that in Inchbald's novel gendered identity is indeterminate and in flux. Gender is consciously foregrounded with the construction and dismantling of gendered stereotypes, and the repetition and extension of their intergenerational stories. Characters' identities (same sex and different-sex) merge and plotlines (romance, incest, and adultery) are fluid. Finally, "Domestic Ideology and the Delusion of Gendered Stability in The Old Manor House" contends that Orlando and Monimia are deluded about the makeup of their gendered identities and the relationship they have with each other. While they work hard to maintain that separation between the public and private upon which their identities are based, Smith shows us that these spheres are always already intertwined and that it is impossible for heterosexual romance to remain immune from societal forces.

The sister-figure that appears in the works of the turn-of-the-century Austrian poet, Georg Trakl (1887-1914) has been the source of speculation and analysis in numerous secondary works, beginning already less than ten years after Trakl's suicide in a military hospital in Cracow. Although current research is generally in agreement that Trakl had an incestuous bond with his younger sister, Margarethe Langen-Trakl (1891-1917), the relationship between Trakl's poetic creation of the sister-figure and his own sister Grete continues to be a contentious issue within the secondary literature. In my study of the development of Trakl's sister-figure, I show that this figure appears at times of crisis or emotional turmoil with Grete. Through creation of the sister-figure, Trakl found a means of expressing the conflicting emotions of attraction and repulsion and guilt that arose out of his relationship to Grete. In the poems and particularly in the unedited dramas, the sister-figure is represented as fragmented, both physically and psychically. The image of the sister as both victim and aggressor, both male and female eventually gives way to a mythical representation of the sister. After Trakl's death, many of his friends and acquaintances had contact with Grete Langen-Trakl. In their depictions of her, they measure her explicitly against her brother and find her lacking in positive qualities, polarizing Georg and Grete into extremes of good and evil. Implicitly, their negative portrayals of Grete are based on Trakl's implication of the sister-figure in an incest scene. Contemporary depictions of her behavior and relationship to her brother frequently employ words expressing disgust and abhorrence or make references to her fate of tragic suffering. As a result of these early attempts to obscure the incest, most secondary works establish a stance of either accepting or rejecting the importance of the incest and the sister-figure in Trakl's oeuvre. I argue that many of these secondary works adopt the tone of the contemporary depictions of Grete Langen-Trakl, which they then apply to their analysis of Trakl's sister-figure. In particular, biographical sketches of Trakl and his sister borrow heavily from the contemporary descriptions of Grete Langen-Trakl and Trakl's representation of a sister-figure.

This study presents a selection of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century German women dramatists and their works. The texts were not located within what we know as literary history, but rather within the context of the contemporary German theatre and the social conditions governing the writing and publishing of plays by women. The majority of these dramatists are unknown today. Research in this area is made more difficult by the widespread anonymity of female playwrights throughout both centuries (of 242 authors, 191 used pseudonyms). This is one of the reasons why a study of their work has yet to be conducted, and the reason why there is more need for a broad and general introduction than for investigations focusing on single authors. Although most of these authors and plays have been forgotten, many can still be located. In my research, I have located approximately 1,600 plays by 242 female playwrights; half of these texts were available through the Interlibrary Loan System in the United States. I have chosen to analyze texts by selected authors in the categories of comedy, drama, tragedy, historical plays, dramas about artists, mythological and biblical plays, dramatic fairy tales and allegories, and children's theatre. The plays are presented in chronological order in each chapter and described with an emphasis on thematic development within the genre. As a point of departure, I have included a description of the conditions of theatre performance in both centuries. The appendices contain biographical information about the fifty dramatists whose works are introduced here (Appendix A) and a complete list of female dramatists, with names (including pseudonyms, stage- and maiden names), dates, dramatic works, and the location of the works (Appendix B). Where applicable, I have supplemented my investigation with related materials by the playwrights themselves or their contemporaries, retaining the emphasis on the dramatists and their plays, since my aim is to make them accessible to our thinking, and to provide future researchers with biographical and bibliographical material on them.