This thesis examines the way in which the fictional biographies of Virginia Woolf, Orlando and Flush, prefigure central tenets of postmodern fiction. To demonstrate the postmodern elements present in Orlando and Flush, this thesis focuses on how the fictional biographies exhibit three postmodern characteristics: concern for historiography, extensive use of parody, and the denaturalization of cultural assumptions. Born from Woolf’s desire to revolutionize biography by incorporating elements of fiction alongside historical fact, these two novels parallel later works of historiographic metafiction in several key respects. Woolf’s extensive use of parody in Orlando and Flush prefigures how postmodern parody foregrounds the many ways in which all narratives are inherently constructions. Woolf also expresses a postmodern attitude by denaturalizing cultural assumptions about sexual difference and social class. When taken together, these three traits reveal how Orlando and Flush possess an ontological philosophy indicative of postmodern literature.

The subject of this thesis is Leonora written by Elena Poniatowska. The aim of the study is to analyze the literary technique and strategy used in constructing this book which depicts the life of a famous painter, Leonora Carrington. The analysis concentrates on two aspects: the extent of its feminist character and whether it can be classified as a fictional biography or a biographic fiction. In order to arrive at a conclusion on these issues a brief summary of literary and feminist theory is presented as well as a short description of relevant aspects of the surrealist movement. According to the author Leonora does not pretend to be a biography but rather a tribute to a great woman and artist. This esay however sustains that the book is a feminist fictional biography. In fact it builds upon books written by Carrington herself with a highly autobiographical content as well as on biographical texts. Both the author and her protoganist are well-known for their feminist stand and the analysis shows how feminist theory or thinking is reflected both on behalf on the writer as well as in the construction of the hero and certain aspects of her life that build up this biographical fiction.

Dissertação(mestrado) - Universidade Federal do Rio Grande, Programa de Pós-Graduação em Letras, Instituto de Letras e Artes, 2010. / Submitted by Cristiane Silva (cristiane_gomides@hotmail.com) on 2012-09-24T12:30:12Z No. of bitstreams: 1 deisebastos.pdf: 1074024 bytes, checksum: dbea90ca29ec6848098cd17d9e863a30 (MD5) / Approved for entry into archive by Bruna Vieira(bruninha_vieira@ibest.com.br) on 2012-11-06T15:29:24Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 1 deisebastos.pdf: 1074024 bytes, checksum: dbea90ca29ec6848098cd17d9e863a30 (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2012-11-06T15:29:24Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 deisebastos.pdf: 1074024 bytes, checksum: dbea90ca29ec6848098cd17d9e863a30 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2010 / Nesta dissertação, a partir da análise do conto “Uma biografia para Barbie”, em As meninas da Torre Helsinque (1996), e de “Sonhadora”, “Ginny”, “Flapper” e “Clarice”, em Vésperas (2002), ambas as obras de autoria de Adriana Lunardi (SC, 1964), investigo as estratégias narrativas que a escritora utiliza, a fim de iluminar questões que envolvem a arte e a artista. Situo seu discurso na confluência de três paradigmas de gênero (literário e categoria de análise) postos em tensão: o Künstlerroman de autoria feminina, a biografia ficcional ou imaginária e o conto. Examino de que modo a autora constrói retratos da mulher-artista, seja ela uma figura documentada pela historiografia oficial ou um ser possível e imaginável, no viés tanto da trajetória da protagonista-artista, quanto dos processos intertextuais e dialógicos presentes na écriture lunardiana. A ênfase na análise da representação da artista em narrativas curtas de Adriana Lunardi conduz a discussões tais como: o conflito arte versus vida, o diálogo constante entre memória e expressão artística, o corpo feminino, o processo simbólico de morte e re/nascimento, as construções literárias mise en abyme e os jogos intertextuais. Devido ao caráter bibliográfico e hermenêutico da presente pesquisa, na abordagem crítica e analítica aos textos, além dos fundamentos teóricos, utilizo documentos externos aos contos; alguns pertencem ao campo da história (biografias oficiais) e outros, ao da literatura (obras das protagonistas). A narrativa curta de Lunardi, além de inovar configurações dos gêneros literários, Künstlerroman e biografia ficcional, amplia as fronteiras dos estudos de gênero. As distintas figurações da mulher-artista nos contos instauram o diálogo entre uma grande diversidade de textos, fato que traz maior visibilidade à autoria feminina e demonstra a flexibilidade da moldura da historiografia literária brasileira. / In this dissertation, from the analysis of “Uma biografia para Barbie”, in As meninas da Torre Helsinque (1966), of “Sonhadora”, “Ginny”, “Flapper” and “Clarice”, in Vésperas (2002), both works by Adriana Lunardi (SC, 1964), I investigate the narrative strategies the writer uses in order to enlighten the questions that deal with art and the woman-artist. I locate her discourse in the confluence of three paradigms of gender as well as genre which are placed under tension: the female Künstlerroman, the fictional biography and the short-story. I examine how the writer builds pictures of the woman-artist, being her a historical and officially documented subject or a possible and imaginary being, from the perspective of both the protagonist-artist´s trajectory and of the writer´s intertextual and dialogic processes involved in her écriture. The emphasis on the analysis of the artist´s representation in shortstories by Adriana Lunardi leads to discussions on: the conflict art versus life, the permanent dialogue between memory and artistic expression, the female body, the symbolic process of death and re/birth, the mise en abyme literary constructions and the intertextual games. Due to the bibliographic and hermeneutic character of the present research, throughout the critic and analytic approach to the short-stories besides the theoretical basis I use documental material external to the corpus; some of them belong to the field of history (traditional and official biographies) and some to the literary one (the protagonists´ works). Lunardi´s short-stories, besides innovating in terms of the configurations of literary genres, Künstlerroman and fictional biography, enlarge the frontiers of the studies of gender. The distinct representations of the woman-artist in the short-stories establish the dialogue among a great diversity of texts, fact that allows the female authorship a wider visibility and demonstrates how flexible the framework of the Brazilian literary historiography is.