The last years of the twentieth century have been characterized by an increased presence of women in Hispanic poetry, who inevitably brought forth a new poetic language. Typical of this new expression are the Spaniard Ana Rossetti and the Peruvian Rocio Silva Santisteban, who give free rein to their emotions and desires in their poetic texts, which reflect love as both eroticism and joyful sexuality. In their poetry the body becomes the instrument for the fulfillment of desire and the production of erotic states. Thus, love is despised almost innocently but through the use of Kitsch as pop songs and advertising slogans, love is rehabilitated and the pleasure-death relation is seen in multiple perspectives.

My critical essay uses Foucault???s theory of discursive formation to chart the emergence of the figure of the single modern woman as she is created by the various discourses surrounding her. It argues that representations of the single modern woman continue a tradition of perceiving the female body as a source of social anxiety. The project explores ???chick-lit??? as a site within the discursive formation from which the single modern woman emerges as a paradoxical figure; the paradoxes fundamentally linked to her sexuality. This essay, then, essentially seeks to investigate representations of female sexuality within chick-lit, exposing for scrutiny the paradoxes inherent in and around the figure of the single modern woman. My fictional piece is a work of erotica. It is divided into four sections: The Reader, The Writer, The Muse and The Critic. Essentially it explores the relationships between female sexuality and literature; between female sexuality and feminist, post-feminist and patriarchal values and between literature and issues of truth, perspective and representation. The two works complement each other to illuminate the paradox of female sexuality: one from a theoretical perspective and the other from a fictional perspective. The critical work focuses on female sexuality and its relationship to, and development within, the current social context. Chick-lit, as a new and immensely popular genre of fiction which holistically explores the lives of single modern women was useful for examining the relationship between the sexual persona of the single modern woman and society. The fiction is concerned with a narrower focus: specifically the sexual life of the single modern woman. Through the creative process, it became apparent that working within the genre of ???erotica??? would be not only more useful than working within chick-lit, but more powerful in exploring the themes I was interested in. The creative work draws on numerous points of interest raised in the critical work from, for example, the grander notions of the relationship between object and discourse ??? in this case female sexuality and literature ??? and the female body as a source of social fascination and anxiety to finer observations such as what it means to have sex ???like a man.??? In essence, the creative work seeks to examine the many faces of the single modern woman as a sexual being and to illuminate, on an intimate level, the many conflicts between and surrounding those faces and to suggest that while paradox remains in female sexual ideology, the single modern woman will remain suspended in a kind of sexual paralysis.

This thesis engages with Taiwanese history by offering a reading of Hou Hsiaohsien???s A City of Sadness (1989), making reference to the film???s historical dimensions, cultural representations and gender issues in the period 1945 to 1949. In addition, Hou???s cinematography is detailed with comparison to Yasujiro Ozu and the influences of Japanese colonisation. Hou???s immense contribution to Taiwanese film consists principally in a Taiwanese trilogy that traces Taiwan???s history in the 20th century. In The Puppet Master (1993) Hou details the era of Japanese colonisation from 1895 to the restoration of Taiwan by the Kuomintang in 1945. Later, A City of Sadness focuses on the fate of the Lin family from 1945 to 1949, which epitomises people???s life in Taiwan during the initial stages of Kuomintang domination. Finally, Good Men, Good Women (1995) highlights two different eras in Taiwan: the political movement in the 1950s and the pop culture in the 1990s. The thesis uses illustrations from all three films to explore Hou???s historical, cultural and gender representations. In order to understand Hou???s ideology and beliefs in greater depth, I also review his autobiographical film, A Time to Live, and A Time to Die (1985). This thesis examines Taiwan???s indigenous culture and the impact of Japanese and Chinese cultural practices in A City of Sadness through the post-colonial theories of Perry Anderson, Homi Bhabha, and Chris Berry. I draw on their theories of cultural hegemony and my empiricism to investigate Hou???s representation of the political situation in Taiwan. Finally, the thesis evaluates gender issues in A City of Sadness, with reference to Julia Kristeva???s notion of ???feminine time??? and the debate between Emilie Yeh and Mizou concerning ???whether women can really enter history???. In evaluating A City of Sadness I argue that Hou Hsiao-hsien???s use of a family???s microhistory to parallel the national macro-history of the February 28th Incident opens an important historical window through which the audience may re-encounter and reflect on Taiwan???s past, and think positively about its future.

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