Single writersrev1.docx

2015

King's narratives exemplify the themes of the uncanny, of masking and unmasking, of the corporeal otherisation and of the questioning of identity. This paper is an invitation to go beyond what may commonly be thought of as a uniform looking-glass so as to discover King's particular treatment of the body. Far from shying away from sexuality, the American writer depicts it in an ambivalent or disguised manner (Thinner, Mr. Mercedes, Christine, Misery, Cycle of the Werewolf). If the female body is mainly connected with the taboos of rape and incest (Gerald's Game, Dolores Claiborne, Bag of Bones, Under the Dome), or with ungenderisation (The Tommynockers, Rose Madder), the notion of monstrosisation can nevertheless be applied to both male and female bodies (The Shining, Desperation, "The Raft," "Survivor Type"). Oscillating between hypermonstration and avoidance, King pulls the strings of the fragmentation, even of the silencing of the body. The fissure impregnating the characters' identity and bodies is enlightened by the shattering of the very connection between signifiers and signified, inserting the reader into a state of non-knowledge: a mesmerising dance of disembodied bodies within disembodied texts.

American Historical Review, 1995

Studies in English literature, 1500-1900, 1994

Male gaze and Beyond....., 2014

2022

This thesis explores the multidimensional character of desire in Jeanette Winterson’s Written on the Body through a wavelength range of an in-visible spectrum. A closer look at the writer’s use of the imaginary and the erotic suggests that the narrative of “nameless desires” (Oranges 15) is at work with its own power, chipping away at the binaries that undergird the patriarchal regulation of sexuality and subjectivity. At the core of my analysis is the deconstruction of ideologically-privileged conventions which stifle desire and the fluid expression of identity. By undermining the ascendancy of the politico-cultural discourse in favour of an aesthetic of corporeal affectivity, Winterson manages to convey a sense of queer novelty, whilst fluttering some critical dovecotes within an ethical framework. In so doing, this study ventures to scout the Wintersonian subversive quest as the writer creatively experiments with stylistic patterns in unlimited ink of poetic love and fetishistic desire against the hollowing of hackneyed clichés. As she presses on the deep connection between flesh and word, text and body, language and sensuality, Winterson brings the reader into her imaginative world that is opened up to unforeseen possibilities beyond all bounds. For that reason, I seek out to correlate the act of reading with the process of writing, each of which is driven by an overflowing force of desire. Most crucially, to elaborate on the idea of a volatile ‘plural subjectivity,’ this paper endeavors to demonstrate how the unity of the desiring subject is dissolved in “the constructive secretions of the spider’s web” (Barthes 64) where meanings are interwoven on the palimpsestic body of text.

Academia Letters, 2021

When we speak of Gothic texts, it is tempting to do so with reference to gender, categorising texts as either Male Gothic or Female Gothic. However, the definitions of these categories are somewhat nebulous – classification can depend on the gender of the author, the gender of the protagonist, elements of the narrative, or a combination therein. Moreover, this dichotomy largely ignores the prevalent depiction of queerness, here meaning non-normative experiences of sex, gender and sexuality, within Gothic fiction. In 1996, Jean Kennard published an article titled ‘Lesbianism and the Censoring of “Wuthering Heights”’. She contemplates Emily Brontë’s own identity, reading her “masculine” habits, “peculiarities”, and nickname, “the Major”, in the context of early Victorian discourse around gender and sexuality. She then reads Wuthering Heights as a subliminally lesbian narrative, in which Brontë’s ambivalence towards her own identity is encoded in the tumultuous relationship between Cathy and Heathcliff. Surprisingly, very little further work on Wuthering Heights as a queer text has been undertaken in the following quarter of a century. This paper aims to return to this site of critical enquiry, this time examining the text through the lens of the Queer Gothic, an area of study that has gained substantial interest over the past fifteen years. It begins by exploring the ways in which Heathcliff is coded as a sexual Other, drawing on the associations between race and transgression in nineteenth century England, and the ways in which these associations were articulated in Gothic fiction. It then returns to Kennard’s interest in sameness in the novel, exploring the ways in which Cathy and Heathcliff’s identifications with one another transform them into increasingly androgynous and transgressive characters. Finally, it explores Victorian notions of sexual transgression as a sickness, and the way in which the Gothic gave language and form to such notions, tracing instances of illness in the novel in this context. Ultimately, this paper reads Wuthering Heights as a deeply transgressive text that both influenced and was influenced by contemporary discourse around gender and sexuality, situating it within a history of sexuality that continues to bear heavily upon the present.

Contemporary Irish Women Writers. Ed. Michaela Schrage-Frueh, Interdisziplinaerer Arbeitskreis Frauen- und Genderforschung, Johannes Gutenberg-Universitaet Mainz, 2003. 67-87.

Studies in the …, 2009

Although ethical memory is vital to Christine de Pizan' s rhetorical agenda, the fact that it is deeply embedded within the text of Le Livre de la Cité des Dames (The Book of the City of Ladies) has been little explored. Since medieval rhetoric viewed memory as the path to ethical knowledge and wisdom, the individual memory had to be trained in order to be fully functional in ethical pursuits. So Christine fashions an artificial memory system within the text that provides a means for women to develop an ethical memory practice, thereby disproving the anti-feminist tradition of women' s vice and inconstancy. As she builds a pro-feminist history of "Woman" in the Cité by revising the anti-feminist tradition, Christine concomitantly instructs her female audience in the ways they can remember and practice this new history. Ultimately, this architectural system organizes a memorial space into a haven for the memories of her female readers, the new citizens of Christine' s visionary citadel.