Classical reception in contemporary women's writing: emerging strategies from resistance to indeterminacy

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Stoker, Polly (2019). Classical reception in contemporary women's writing: emerging strategies from resistance to indeterminacy. University of Birmingham. Ph.D.

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Abstract

The reader who rewrites remains a vital interlocutor between the classical past and the modern classicist. However, the neglect of the female reader in classical reception studies is an omission that becomes ever more conspicuous, and surely less sustainable, as women writers continue to dominate the contemporary creative field. This thesis makes the first steps towards fashioning a new aesthetic model for the female reader based on irony, ambivalence, and indeterminacy. I consider works by Virginia Woolf, Alice Oswald, Elizabeth Cook, and Yael Farber, all of whom largely abandon ‘resistance’ as a strategy of rereading and demand a new theoretical framework that can engage with and recognize the multivalence of women’s reading and rewriting. The interactions between the works of Roland Barthes, Hélène Cixous, and Jane Gallop help to spotlight what is at stake for the contemporary female reader who rewrites and manage the tension between rescue, rehabilitation, and post-structuralist play that the ironic, ambivalent, and/or indeterminate female reader negotiates.

Type of Work:

Thesis (Doctorates > Ph.D.)

Award Type:

Doctorates > Ph.D.

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