This thesis focuses on the reading of fiction written by contemporary French women authors, namely Julia Kristeva, Marie Darrieussecq and Monique Wittig, establishing the reader as an active and engaged actor in meaning creation. The reader enters into dialogue with the text, the author, the narrator(s) and the characters, carving out an imaginative readerly space in fiction. The main aim of this thesis is to examine how this space comes into being, and what tools are needed for its exploration. Concepts from three main theoretical fields are used to set the parameters for this readerly space: reception studies, intertextuality, and theories of the other. As was observed by Elizabeth Fallaize, reception studies and women’s writing have not been meaningfully combined. This thesis responds to this gap in research, simultaneously expanding our interpretations of the texts by looking at the multitude of intertextual links that can be established, and at the way reading influences our relations to the other. The Introduction examines the above-mentioned three theoretical areas, alongside elements such as the tasks of the reader, the materiality of the book, and the impact of reading groups. Chapter One examines two of Kristeva’s most recent works of fiction — Meurtre à Byzance and Thérèse mon amour — studying the mise en abyme of reading and writing, the issues that can arise from extensive intertextual links and autobiographical projections, and introducing concepts such as the reading Carmel and the text as Trojan Horse. Chapter Two explores the Darrieussecq-ien aesthetic universe, starting with a consideration of the four different types of intertextuality identified in Darrieussecq’s fiction. Darrieussecq’s work with language is analysed, before introducing the concept of the fiction of honesty. The fiction of honesty allows us to explore the relationship of trust between the reader and the narrator, while an analysis of the inscriptions of time offers a better understanding of the chronologies of the reading process. Chapter Three investigates Wittig’s works, focusing on her linguistic innovations, rewriting of myths and foundational stories, extensive use of sensorial writing, and links established between fiction and socio-political activism. Chapter Four considers the media reception of the three authors, introducing resources that are not easily accessible to Anglophone audiences. The Conclusion offers an overview of the findings of this thesis, before opening onto further avenues for research.

Student Number : 9803321X - MA Dissertation - School of Literature and Language Studies - Faculty of Humanities / The primary aim of this dissertation is to trace the ways in which Yvonne Vera’s final two novels, Butterfly Burning and The Stone Virgins, provide a discursive space for the enunciation of subaltern histories, which have been silenced in dominant socio-political discourse. I argue that it is through the deployment of ‘poetic language’ that Vera’s prose is able to negotiate the voicing of these suppressed narratives. In exploring these questions, I endeavour to locate Vera’s texts within the theoretical debates in postcolonial scholarship which question the ethical limitations of representing oppressed subjects in the Third World, as articulated by Gayatri Spivak, in particular. Following Spivak’s claim that subalternity is effaced in hegemonic discourse, I focus on the ways in which Vera’s inventive prose works to bring the figure of the subaltern back into signification. In order to elucidate how this dynamic operates in both novels, I employ Julia Kristeva’s psycholinguistic theory of ‘poetic language’. I argue that Kristeva’s understanding of literary practice as a transgressive modality, which is able to unsettle the silencing mechanisms of dominant monologic discourse, critically illuminates the subversive value of Vera’s fictional style for marginalised subaltern narratives.

In the period following the May 1968 protests, French women began to create theatre that highlighted women’s struggles. This study explores the dual influence of Antonin Artaud and Bertolt Brecht on plays by Hélène Cixous, Simone Benmussa, and the Théâtre du Soleil led by Ariane Mnouchkine. Artaud argued that theatre should become a transformative experience through an explosion of sensory stimuli: music, light, noise, and imagery. Conversely, Brecht wanted to use theatre to revolutionize society and theorized that by maintaining historical and emotional distance between the audience and the play, spectators would be encouraged to think critically about the its significance and be compelled to action. The female playwrights and directors studied created powerful theatre by combining these ideas in a manner mimicking Julia Kristeva’s notion of subject formation. Kristeva proposes that the human subject is never stable. Instead, it oscillates between the non-discursive, emotion-filled state she labels the semiotic and the more language- and logic-propelled symbolic register. These two realms are in constant tension as the semiotic disrupts the logic of the symbolic and in turn, the symbolic strives to regulate the semiotic impulses. In this study, I argue that the ideas of Artaud are aligned with the semiotic while those of Brecht resemble the symbolic. In the plays examined, the non-linguistic elements of the design and mise-en-scène engage with the didactic aims of the playwrights and directors, causing the spectator to connect emotionally with the story while simultaneously reflecting on its real-world signification.

This dissertation examines Goethe’s portrayal of femininity in Die Wahlver-wandtschaften and how his depiction of all three central female characters relates to feminine ideals that were promoted through the theoretical gender debate of the late 1700s in Germany and Western Europe. I analyze Charlotte’s, Luciane’s, and Ottilie’s actions and interactions in various triadic character constellations in order to offer new insights into Goethe’s portrayal of femininity. In so doing, I argue that Goethe’s depiction of Charlotte holds the key to understanding how far Die Wahlverwandtschaften functions as (critical) commentary on the late Enlightenment gender discourse. I maintain that the actions and interactions of these three women show them as at times ‘unfit’ and/or unwilling to meet feminine ideals promoted in the late Enlightenment. I apply central concepts of Julia Kristeva’s psychoanalytic theory from the 1970s and 1980s as analytical tools to examine how far Goethe’s Wahlverwandt-schaften can be viewed as a critique of the norms and expectations commonly expressed in the late Enlightenment. I primarily focus on Kristeva’s concepts of subjectivity formation, semiotic and symbolic modalities, abjection, and her theorizing of motherhood. Kristeva’s emphasis on the pivotal role of the maternal function in the child’s identity formation and her representation of femininity as alterity allow me to explore the significance of Charlotte’s prevalence among the characters and to approach Goethe’s ambiguous and complex portrayal of unsteady, constantly shifting, and interrelated models of femininity in Charlotte, Luciane, and Ottilie as a narrative experiment in which he tests the viability of such models within the surrounding social discourse. In the main body of this dissertation, I begin by concentrating on Charlotte’s partnerships with men, and then I focus on her maternal role in relation to Luciane, Ottilie, and Otto. By making Charlotte the ‘epicenter’ of this investigation, I explore how far Goethe shapes her, Luciane, and Ottilie as characters who transgress late Enlightenment gender boundaries and thus deviate from what were considered ‘feminine ideals’ in order to underscore the arbitrary and contradictory nature of the prevalent social order.

The purpose of this essay is to investigate the melancholic, poetic language in Bübins unge (Bübin´s brat) by Mare Kandre (1962 – 2005). In my opinion the novel, which is about a teenage ritual, also gives an imaginary arena for archaic and unmentionable experiences of the libido. It is therefore a witness to the truth of the subjects complex mind. To my assistance I have Julia Kristeva´s theory on the abjection, the successful melancholia and her concepts of the outsider and the catharsis. The method I use in my investigation is an interpretation, which is both an analytic and a hermeneutic process, i.e. a deconstructive, analytic operation based on a theory on the language and the subject and a construing, hermeneutic movement. In my pursuit I investigate structures, which make the intermittent fragmented language readable and coherent. From this point of view I study words and effects (sensations) that relate to the contrast semiotic-symbolic in Bübins unge, and disentangle energy of the affect. Mare Kandre, Bübins unge (1987). Julia Kristeva, Pouvoirs de l´horreur (1980) and Soleil noir (1987).

“Resisting the Vortex” examines the tenuous role of the abject in Melville’s early writings. While much psychoanalytic criticism on Melville and his works is driven by Freudian and Lacanian analyses, my study explores the role(s) of women, particularly that of the mother, through the lens of Kristeva’s theory of abjection. I suggest that Melville’s depiction of the abject evolves and becomes more apparent as his writing career progresses. I include Typee, Mardi, Moby-Dick and Pierre in my analysis since these texts demonstrate the evolution of Melville’s relationship to the abject mother. I argue that throughout each of these works, the female (and some of the male native characters as well) are depicted in terms that are similar to Kristeva’s concept of the idealized chora and the abject mother. While the male protagonists of Melville’s early works are drawn to women who seem to embody the chora (the energies and drives that are regulated by the mother’s body), they recoil from women who are abject and seem to threaten their sense of identity. Although man must reject/abject the mother in order to maintain a sense of autonomous identity, he still longs to recreate the symbiotic relationship he once had with the mother as an infant. He seeks the language of the mother’s body – that of the semiotic, which issues from the chora, – in an effort to return to the safe haven of the womb. This tension between maintaining a sense of identity that is separate from the mother while simultaneously longing to return to the mother, is evident in each of Melville’s aforementioned works to varying degrees. However, it is in Pierre, a work that chronicles a young man’s attempt to escape the suffocating influence of his mother, that the threat of the abject becomes the central theme of one of Melville’s novels. Ultimately, man should strive to balance his need for an autonomous identity with the realization that he may never fully “escape” the mother’s presence in his life. Unfortunately, Melville’s leading men fail to recognize this paradox and the consequences are dire.

The purpose of this study is to show what melancholy and irony in my poems express and what techniques that are used to accomplish these effects. Many theorists, among them Sigmund Freud and Julia Kristeva, characterize melancholy as an experience of loss, and therefore one of my questions is what kind of losses appear in my poetry. In search for an answer I analyze the texts from both a psychoanalytic and a sociological point of view. In the latter perspective I discuss the postmodern society using concepts from contemporary thinkers like Zygmunt Bauman, Fredric Jameson and Jean Baudrillard. Finally, I also examine if melancholy has an influence on the form of the poems. The result of my investigation shows that the psychoanalytic perspecitve of Kristeva with great accuracy can predict the elements in melancholy poems but not provide interesting information about the cultural content in them. On the contrary, the sociological perspective shows a multitude of interesting connections between the feeling of loss in the poems and a dysfunctional society. My analysis also shows that both the melancholy and the irony in the poems are expressions of an alienation in a society that is characterized by an abundance of invading images, a rigid system of self control in an ”open society” and the extreme difficulty to plan for the future as a consequence of the ”unleashed market”. Furthermore, several poems have an abrupt irony in the ending and I establish that this technique has several functions in common with the parabasis in the comedy of the Greek Attic theatre. / Morgan Svensson

This essay explores the intertextual qualities in and between Kristian Lundberg’s works Yarden, Mörkret skulle vara som ljuset and Och allt skall vara kärlek. Read as a trilogy, it bears a thematic resemblance to Dante Alighieri’s Divine Comedy; an autofictional depiction of emancipation from alienation by grace. To reach this conclusion, I use Julia Kristeva’s theory of intertextuality and Roland Barthes’ post-structuralist differention of Work and Text together with his notion of the Paper-Author. Through a kaleidoscopic reading of the two trilogies, Dante and Kristian become pilgrims in the word’s true, etymological sense: foreigners, both religious and materialistic. As such, they walk the spiritual and material world making no distinction between the two towards a love whose essential nature is twofold: at once human and divine.

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In this essay I refer Eilis Ni Dhuibhne’s narrative construction of the main characters and the theme of the novel The Dancers Dancing, in the context of the anthropologist Victor Turner’s concept of liminality. Thus the summer in the Gaeltacht that five teenage girls experience, can be understood as a depiction of the liminal phase in a rite of passage. Ni Dhuibhne’s differently constructed characters enlighten different aspects of liminality and through the céilí dance their experiences are exposed. Furthermore this essay suggests that Julia Kristeva’s notion of the chora, which can be associated to dance, is also relevant when describing the unbounded and unlimited process that radically can reform social structures. I conclude that the liminal space offers an area of many possibilities. It functions as a free zone where the main characters can freely explore their personal issues that trouble them, or the difficulties of their own society.