Browsing by Subject "Feminism and literature"
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Item A study of selected themes in the feminist novels of Alicia Yanez Cossio(Texas Tech University, 1993-12) Boyles, Morgan DaneThis study focuses on the feminist elements and attitudes in four of Alicia Yanez Cosslo's novels. Four of the novels are treated in depth while one novel, Mas alia de las islas, is left aside since its theme to a large extent lies outside the focus of the present study. Yanez Cossio writes to expose injustices and oppression propagated by patriarchal society. She uses her women characters as mouthpieces to enlighten and educate both males and females. Yanez Cossio narrates these events with Ecuador as the backdrop representing women's plight in a machista society. This dissertation consists of a preface, seven chapters and an appendix. Chapter I is an introduction. Chapter II shows how Bruna ^ soroche y los tios lies within the parameters of a feminized quest-romance. It also includes a study of the character's feminist leanings, and how the women characters are represented as secondary in relation to their male counterparts. Chapter III deals with the feminine consciousness, the coming-of-age of the protagonist. Special attention has been given to the initiation of the feminine consciousness and the maturation process. Chapter IV delineates how Yanez Cossio exposes consumerism (capitalism) as the destroyer of both men and women alike. Special emphasis is placed the socio-economic order, and on women's role in the work force. Yanez Cossio examines the socio-economic condition of Ecuador, and the struggles women have to confront daily to combat ideological prejudice. Exploitation, dehumanization and injustice all play integral roles to show the inequality between men and women in Ecuador. Chapter V deals with the subversion of the patriarchal order in La cofradia del mullo del vestido de la viraen pipona. Yanez Cossio describes a town dominated by Dona Carmen Benavides, who demands adoration of the Virgen Pipona as a means to mask her own political, social, religious and economic ambitions. Chapter VI explores the use of prostitution as a means to maintain masculine lordship and feminine bondage in La casa del sano placer. Chapter VII is the conclusion. The appendix is a personal interview conducted by the author with Alicia Yanez Cossio in Quito, Ecuador, on October 6, 1993.Item Backward to your sources, sacred rivers: a transatlanitic feminist tradition of mythic revision(2006) House, Veronica Leigh; Cullingford, Elizabeth; Dean-Jones, LesleyItem Paradoxical passivity: an analysis of the intersection of rhetorical, narrative, reader-response, and feminist theory in contemporary British and American novels(Texas Tech University, 1995-08) Christian, Diane ThomasReaders of contemporary British and American narrative often consider certain novels to be authentic and realistic, in spite of seemingly implausible behavior by female protagonists who are faced with abuse or aggression. Through the use of a conductive and evaluative methodology, the dissertation provides an analysis of the intersection of the reader's fixed beliefs with the norms within given texts. Several paradigms are suggested for examining the incongruity and double standards in the reader's expectations for male characters and the previously unquestioned acceptance of female characters who respond passively to aggression. Readers generally dismiss or disregard any male protagonist who abdicates the right of self-defense. Paradoxically, the female protagonists who respond to acts of abuse or aggression with passivity or in other ways that seem contrary to the laws of self-preservation are generally viewed by readers as behaving "normally." The issue of a reader's belief, disbelief, and the norms governing the typical suspension of disbelief are addressed in the context of the psychopathological actions and reactions of the abused and the abuser, the captive and the captor.Item The motherhood myth in the works of Elisabeth Alexander: a feminist perspective?(Texas Tech University, 1986-05) Pierce, Paula JoNOT AVAILABLE