Beyond the Fitting Medium of Desire: Feminist Readings of Prose Writings by Men in the Romantic Period

Gilroy, Amanda (1993) Beyond the Fitting Medium of Desire: Feminist Readings of Prose Writings by Men in the Romantic Period. PhD thesis, University of Glasgow.

Abstract

In this thesis I focus on the canonically-marginalized genre of non-fictional prose written by men during the period 1750-1850, and I argue that in this fluid genre, gender, too, is unstable. I trace the congruences between recent theories of "gynesis", that is, "the putting into discourse of 'woman'", and the use of the trope of woman in Romantic texts. Borrowing Shoshana Felman's rewriting of Freud's famous question, I ask of various texts, "what is femininity - for men?" The texts I consider (in Part II) are: Edmund Burke's A Philosophical Enquiry. Shelley's A Defence of Poetry and some of his shorter essays, Keats's Letters and De Quincey's essays, especially The English Mail-Coach. Suspiria de Profundis and material included in Recollections of the Lakes.

• Item Type: Thesis (PhD)
• Qualification Level: Doctoral
• Additional Information: Adviser: Bone Drummond
• Keywords: British & Irish literature, Comparative literature, Gender studies
• Date of Award: 1993
• Depositing User: Enlighten Team
• Unique ID: glathesis:1993-74628
• Copyright: Copyright of this thesis is held by the author.
• Date Deposited: 13 Nov 2019 15:58
• Last Modified: 13 Nov 2019 15:58
• URI: https://theses.gla.ac.uk/id/eprint/74628