scholarly journals Old Father, Old Artificer: Female Sexuality and Male Authorship in Les Fleurs du mal and A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 ◽  
Author(s):  
Melanie Lu
Keyword(s):  
Female Sexuality ◽  
Comparative Approach ◽  
Female Characters ◽  
Artistic Creativity ◽  
Gendered Identity ◽  
Critical Junctures ◽  
Biological Reproduction ◽  
Ambivalent Relationship ◽  
Aesthetic Awareness ◽  
Fleurs Du Mal

This paper examines the troubling relationship between the identity of the male artist and female sexuality during the rise of early modernism by comparing two literary works: Charles Baudelaire’s poetry collection Les Fleurs du mal and James Joyce’s novel A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. Portraying prominent female characters as a means to define the authors’ own modern aesthetics, both Baudelaire and Joyce perceive underlying tensions between biological reproduction and artistic creativity, prompting them to explore in detail the relationships between gender, sexuality, and the production of literature. For Baudelaire, the male poet as flaneur derives voyeuristic pleasure from his imaginary lesbian narratives, and his aesthetic awareness of the self that emerges is contrasted with the “sterile” nature of female homosexuality. Joyce’s Stephen Dedalus in Portrait, on the other hand, adopts a more ambivalent relationship towards women: like Baudelaire’s speaker, Stephen usurps the generativity of women by replacing meaningful relations with imaginary ones, subsequently deriving literary inspiration; at the same time, however, these attempts bespeak deeper anxieties towards his inability to attain artistic autonomy, ultimately reflecting increasing vulnerabilities in the modern male artist’s perceptions of self-contained subjectivity. Published half a century apart, these two works marked critical junctures in the emergence of modernism, and a comparative approach thus allows us to trace shifting ideologies of modern personhood and gendered identity.

Marrying Mesopotamia: Female Sexuality and Cultural Resistance in Iamblichus' Babylonian Tales

Ramus ◽  
2006 ◽  
Vol 35 (1) ◽  
pp. 78-101 ◽  
Author(s):  
Helen Morales
Keyword(s):  
Female Sexuality ◽  
Sexual Relationship ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Female Characters ◽  
Cultural Resistance ◽  
Mistaken Identity ◽  
Ancient Novel ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Extreme Violence ◽  
Female Homoeroticism

Iamblichus'Babylonian Tales, whose extravagant adventures of female homoeroticism, extreme violence and mistaken identity sit uneasily alongside those told in the so-called ‘ideal’ Greek novels, is a work largely ignored by scholars of the ancient novel, or relegated to discussions of ‘fringe literature’ We are not helped by the fact that the novel survives only in fragments and through the critical summary by the Byzantine scholar Photius, in his collection of epitomes calledBibliotheca. This article attempts a fresh analysis ofBabylonian Tales, taking as its starting point the sexual relationship between two of its female characters and moving on to discuss the politics of the novel and its self-positioning in relation to Rome and Roman conquest. It argues thatBabylonian Taleschallenges some of the rather neat stories that are currently told about the Greek novels, and that moving it from the ‘fringe’ to the centre might radically alter how we think about the genre.

scholarly journals In Search of Identity: A Comparative Feminist Exploration of Muslim Female Sexuality in Ali’s Twilight in Delhi and Shahraz’s The Holy Woman

2015 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 83-95
Author(s):  
Fariha Chaudhary ◽  
Qamar Khushi
Keyword(s):  
Female Sexuality ◽  
Muslim Women ◽  
Female Characters ◽  
Feminist Scholarship ◽  
Islamic Feminism ◽  
Post Colonial ◽  
Central Focus ◽  
Contextual Understanding ◽  
Critical Exploration ◽  
Postcolonial Feminist

A critical exploration of Muslim female sexuality through the feminist analysis of the various female characters in Twilight in Delhi and The Holy Woman, by Ahmad Ali and Qaisra Shahraz respectively, is the central focus of this paper. Theoretical insights have been drawn from Islamic feminism and Postcolonial feminist scholarship for the contextual understanding of female sexuality. Focusing specifically on the issue of female sexuality and marriages, in both of the novels, this paper demonstrates that Muslim women in the postcolonial Pakistan seems to have gained a certain measure of agency as compared to the plight of women in the colonial milieu of Ali’s novel. However, examined closely, as this paper will highlight, women in both of the novels, still in certain ways, remain helpless victims of sexual victimization. This comparative analysis of novels based in two varied settings of colonial and post-colonial Muslim societies reveals that female sexuality remains a stifling point of contention which is predominantly controlled by men.

scholarly journals REFLECTION THEORY: PUNISHING FEMALE NARCISSISM IN THE WORKS BY LEV NIKOLAYEVICH TOLSTOY

2020 ◽  
Vol 18 (2) ◽  
pp. 1-19
Author(s):  
Natalija Iva Stepanović ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Female Sexuality ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Female Characters ◽  
Anna Karenina ◽  
The Social ◽  
Reflection Theory

Even though Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy is mostly known as an opponent of (female) sexuality, this essay argues that female narcissism is an equally controversial category. As plots of three texts –the novellas “TheKreutzer Sonata” and “Family Happiness”,and the novel Anna Karenina –show, female characters have to convert ego-libido into object-libido in order to, while overcoming disappointment, reach Tolstoy’s idea of living for others. The first part of the essay is based on a close reading of Tolstoy’s novellas, and the second part examines the female characters of Anna Karenina. Instead of pointing out the differences between Kitty, Dolly and Ana, I am trying to foreground the ways in which they reflect each other, while linking Anna’s intertextual representations, two portraits, to Tolstoy’s remarks on the social functionof art. .

Not a moment too soon: A juncture of BDSM and race

Sexualities ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 136346072097930
Author(s):  
Ariane Cruz
Keyword(s):  
Sex Work ◽  
Female Sexuality ◽  
Black Female ◽  
Black Feminist ◽  
The Core ◽  
Racialized Sexuality ◽  
Ambivalent Relationship

This piece reflects on the contemporary scholarly juncture of bondage/discipline, dominance/submission, and sadism/masochism (BDSM) and race. After a period largely marked by the invisibility and marginalization of racialized sexuality in the study of kink, scholars have recently taken up race, specifically blackness, as central not periphery to the study of BDSM. Intervening in and building upon a black feminist tradition that has historically exhibited an ambivalent relationship to topics of BDSM, pornography, and sex work in the context of black female sexuality specifically as well as an investment in politics of respectability, this work illuminates the racialized erotics of pleasure and power at the core of sexuality.

scholarly journals Transgressive Female Sexuality and Desire in Contemporary Colombian Cinema: Hermida’s La luciérnaga and Rodríguez’s Señoritas

2021 ◽  
Vol 48 (2) ◽  
pp. 108-122
Author(s):  
Karol Valderrama-Burgos
Keyword(s):  
Female Sexuality ◽  
Gender Norms ◽  
Interdisciplinary Approach ◽  
Women Filmmakers ◽  
Female Characters ◽  
Narrative Cinema ◽  
Visual Strategies ◽  
Female Bodies ◽  
Specific Sequences

The contemporary Colombian films made by women La luciérnaga (Hermida, 2016) and Señoritas (Rodríguez, 2013) subvert patriarchal gender norms of classic Colombian film narratology through their representation of lesbianism, female sexual self-exploration, and orgasms. The cinematic techniques of these filmmakers construct a specific view of female pleasure, emphasizing the plurality and visibility in cinema of female sexuality and desire. An interdisciplinary approach to the analysis of specific sequences suggests that the aesthetics and visual strategies of these women filmmakers evince pioneering female characters and subjectivities that challenge the traditional gaze on female bodies. Their films offer liberating representations that deconstruct the dominant basis of heteronormativity that has historically characterized Colombian narrative cinema. La luciérnaga (Hermida, 2016) y Señoritas (Rodríguez, 2013), dos películas colombianas contemporáneas realizadas por mujeres, subvierten las normas patriarcales de la narratología clásica del cine colombiano a través de su representación del lesbianismo, la autoexploración sexual femenina y los orgasmos. Las técnicas cinematográficas empleadas construyen una visión específica del placer femenino, haciendo hincapié en la pluralidad y visibilidad de la sexualidad y el deseo femenino. Un análisis de secuencias específicas con enfoque interdisciplinario sugiere que la estética y las estrategias visuales de estas cineastas evidencian personajes femeninos pioneros y subjetividades que desafían la mirada tradicional sobre los cuerpos femeninos. Las películas muestran representaciones liberadoras que deconstruyen la base heteronormativa dominante que históricamente ha caracterizado al cine narrativo colombiano.

scholarly journals Contextualizing Gender’s Role in Kate Chopin’s The Awakening and Rajaa Alsanea’s Girls of Riyadh: A Comparative Historical Study

2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 81
Author(s):  
Arwa Waleed Albader
Keyword(s):  
Gender Segregation ◽  
Literary Text ◽  
Comparative Approach ◽  
Historical Study ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Female Characters ◽  
Reciprocal Relationships ◽  
The Awakening

This study, through a new historicist comparative approach, strives to explore the dynamics of women in marriages and in friendships for Kate Chopin’s The Awakening and Rajaa Alsanea’s Girls of Riyadh. Although Chopin’s novel was written in 1899 and Alsanea’s in 2005, both received harsh condemnation and rejection in newspapers and book reviews when they were published, emphasizing gender`s role in both cultures. By explaining the reciprocal relationships between the texts and the newspaper reviews, and ephemera, this paper adds to scholarly understanding of how the newspapers and the critics` reflection for a certain literary text, as a human constant, can describe the gender segregation of the context`s time. Using textual analyses in the form of close readings of the female characters’ interactions with their partners and other women, and the struggle and experience of each women in both novels in terms of marriage, this paper will demonstrate links between the thoughts of critics as context and the novel as a creative historical output as both writers deftly caused great social discussions for change.

Beauty and Her B(r)east(s): Monstrosity and College Women in The Jaguar

2020 ◽  
pp. 239-256
Author(s):  
Pauline J. Reynolds ◽  
Sara Durazo-DeMoss
Keyword(s):  
International Students ◽  
College Women ◽  
Real World ◽  
Female Sexuality ◽  
Social Role ◽  
College Campuses ◽  
Female Characters

This chapter shows how idealized foreign, exotic female characters become monstrous in comics. Specifically, in their reading of The Jaguar, the authors of this chapter examine the ways ethnicity, female sexuality, and language mark the identity of Maria/The Jaguar as bestial and thus, position her as monstrous in ways that undermine her performance as a hero. Further, this chapter explores how a social role fraught with so much contradiction—both beast and hero—can reveal the lived complexity of navigating college campuses for real-world international students.

scholarly journals Terrors of Girlhood

2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
Julie Casali
Keyword(s):  
Female Sexuality ◽  
Young Female ◽  
Horror Films ◽  
Horror Film ◽  
Female Characters ◽  
Female Protagonists ◽  
Horror Genre ◽  
Adolescent Women ◽  
American Horror Film

<p>Since the birth of the genre, American horror filmmakers have posed female characters as prey and objects of sexual desire. Adolescent women in particular act as both the victim and as eye candy for viewers. From the damsel in distress to the rape victim seeking revenge, women in horror films exist to be antagonized, and so often, their exhibition of femininity and sexuality determines the severity of their suffering. Moreover, though the popular horror film narrative tends to explore the fringes of human nature, few horror films openly deal with the fears and concerns of women outside of threats to their physical being.</p> <p>In the past decade, the horror genre has produced a new crop of young female characters who challenge the tropes of traditional horror films by trading in their role of damsel in distress for the role of the antagonist and anti-hero. What’s more, these films deal with themes relevant to young women, such as body image issues, tumultuous relationships, and sexual repression. In this thesis, I analyze the popular American horror film <em>Jennifer’s Body </em>(2009), which features two violent female protagonists and explores the horrors of adolescent female friendships. In my analysis, I examine whether or not the re-imagined female characters in this film are a progressive reconstruction of gender, and identify ideological conventions of the horror genre that continue to denigrate femininity and female sexuality.</p>

Differentiation and academic control over policy in Central and Eastern Europe: The case of Romania

2017 ◽  
Vol 16 (5) ◽  
pp. 605-625 ◽  
Author(s):  
Viorel Proteasa ◽  
Liviu Andreescu ◽  
Adrian Curaj
Keyword(s):  
Higher Education ◽  
Eastern Europe ◽  
Central And Eastern Europe ◽  
Policy Formulation ◽  
System Level ◽  
Comparative Approach ◽  
Organizational Field ◽  
Critical Junctures ◽  
Academic Control ◽  
The Impact

This article adds a political perspective to the phenomenon of higher education de-differentiation, by building on Gary Rhoades’ neo-institutionalist account. Diversity is operationalized on a hallmark dimension for Central and Eastern Europe: the public–private divide. Higher education is conceived of as a structured organizational field and its institutionalization in Central and Eastern Europe is surveyed in a comparative approach, focusing on the institutions governing the competition for (tuition paying) students and the normative images of higher education (accreditation, quality assurance, classifications and rankings). Critical junctures are identified in regard to the structuration and re-structuration of higher education in Romania, and the agency of the ministers is traced in relation to their academic background. The article builds on evidence from studies of system-level diversity or differentiation in higher education, the structuration of higher education as an organizational field, and the more recent empirical accounts on the impact of the agency of academics in policy formulation in Central and Eastern Europe (especially those in office as ministers of education).

scholarly journals “BURNT TO THE BONE” WITH LOVE, DAMNATION AND SIN: PHÆDRA AS THE SWINBURNIAN $FEMME$ $\textit{DAMNÉE}$

2021 ◽  
Vol 17 (1(23)) ◽  
pp. 124-149
Author(s):  
Lilith Ayvazyan
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Female Empowerment ◽  
Female Characters ◽  
Algernon Charles Swinburne ◽  
One Dimensional ◽  
Fleurs Du Mal

After nearly two centuries of neglect, Algernon Charles Swinburne (1837-1909) revived the tragedy of Phædra in his Poems and Ballads of 1866. Phædra, alongside with his other female characters, has been “branded” as shameless, indecent, masochistic, and obsessive. These analyses tend to present the poet’s protagonists as one-dimensional characters lacking emotional and psychological depth. To fully comprehend Swinburne’s Phædra, this paper observes the short poem not only from the point of Pre-Raphaelitism, but also in associations with Sappho and Baudelaire; Sappho acts as Swinburne’s inspiration for female empowerment, while Baudelaire’s Les Fleurs du Mal serves as the origin of the unique archetype of femme damnée, that can often be observed in Swinburne’s poetry of the 1860s. The aim of this paper is to shed a new light on the character of Phædra by comparing Swinburne’s delineation of Phædra with how she is portrayed in the classical originals, and then examine how he adapted her in the society of nineteenth-century England. Like his Pre-Raphaelite friends and many of the Victorian poets and artists, Swinburne’s work, especially early poems and plays, display the author’s revolt and aversion towards the Victorian “false” morality.

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