Thesis (M.A.)--University of Hong Kong, 2000. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 48-51). Also available in print.

Thesis (D.A.)--Illinois State University, 1993. / Title from title page screen, viewed February 9, 2006. Dissertation Committee: Victoria Frenkel Harris (chair), Richard Dammers, Charles Harris, William Morgan. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 244-255) and abstract. Also available in print.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Ohio University, November, 2004. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 261-288)

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Ohio University, November, 2004. / Title from PDF t.p. Includes bibliographical references (p. 261-288)

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Ohio State University, 2005. / Available online via OhioLINK's ETD Center; full text release delayed at author's request until 2008 Aug 3.

Thesis (M.A.)--Bowling Green State University, 2007. / Document formatted into pages; contains vi, 93 p. Includes bibliographical references.

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The fourteenth-century mystical text, The Cloud of Unknowing, has received much scholarly attention through the years, yet scholars rarely take notice of the role of gender in the Cloud-author's theology. The text may be written by a male priest to a presumably male novice, but we can in no way infer from these details that the text is thereby masculine. Quite the contrary, it is the purpose of this thesis to demonstrate that the Cloud-author rather openly locates his text on the feminine pole of the masculine/feminine binary system, and that he does so in order to define his approach to contemplation over and against those approaches considered dominant at the time. Rather than emphasizing reason and intellect as the primary means of achieving knowledge of the divine, the Cloud-author stresses the superiority of the will as the faculty in and through which divine union occurs, and he teaches that love alone makes this union possible. Because the faculty of will has long been associated with the feminine end of the binary, and reason, language, and intellect with the masculine end, the author of The Cloud of Unknowing thus not only privileges a feminine position but actively discounts traditionally masculine ways of knowing. / Master of Arts

The main themes of this thesis are masculinities, fluctuations in socially constructed gender roles at the fin de siècle and how a number of cathartic issues influenced these. The strongest of these issues was the New Woman Question which, while demanding developments for women, threatened the stability of Victorian gender norms. This forced both sexes to rethink and renegotiate their positions within society. Women sought options that would free them from the vagaries of the marriage market and looked to move into a more public sphere. Many saw this as a threat to the patriarchal status quo and the debates that ensued were many and vociferous. In response to this, men had to look within and question various modes of masculinity and manliness that they had previously taken for granted and that they now viewed as under threat. The fin de siècle was a time of major gender upheaval which, I propose, is reflected in its literature. I intend to explore the anxieties of both genders by examination of the selected texts which cover pertinent aspects of the similarities and contrasts in the way male and female authors negotiate masculinities in relation to social and gendered spaces. In this way, I hope to investigate the underlying themes which inform the novels. I aim to research reasons for disparity in approaches to gender issues, to highlight the importance of masculinities in relation to gendered positions in fin-de-siècle discourses and to show why relations between the sexes had to evolve.

This study examines Angela Carter’s demythologising of origin myths and will investigate the extent to which her fictions offer viable alternatives that allow for productive representations of women and gender relations outside patriarchal paradigms. In the first half of the thesis (Chapters 1-3), I will primarily focus on how several of Carter’s earlier texts deconstruct existing mythical spaces, particularly the biblical creation story in Genesis. The Genesis myth is central to socio-historical constructions of gendered identities, and in itself, central to Carter’s imagination. She repeatedly returns to this myth in her challenging of the ways in which patriarchal narratives construct violent relations between self and other, specifically where ‘woman’ is situated as the repressed other of male desires and fears. Alongside her demythologising of Genesis, Carter deconstructs Freudian myths of sexual maturation, exposing where these also set up a relationship of antagonism or enmity between the sexes. Although Chapter One will explore how Carter attempts to revise these origin myths from a positive stance, Two and Three will focus on the inherent difficulties faced by the female subject in her struggle against patriarchal myths and their violent oppression of female autonomy. The second half of the thesis (Chapters 4-6) will shift to an investigation of how Carter’s later texts set up both possibilities and challenges for women when attempting to construct their own narratives of origin. Through her problematising of matriarchal myths and feminist fantasies of self-creation, Carter emphasises the need for confronting limitations rather than celebrating transgressions as entirely liberating. The thesis will conclude, however, with an examination of where Carter’s own attempts at remythologising opens up an alternative space, or ‘elsewhere’, of feminine desires that allows for a refiguring of the female subject as well as more reciprocal relations between the sexes.