Medusa, Cassandra, Medea: Re-inscribing myth in contemporary German and Russian women's writing.
Item
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Title
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Medusa, Cassandra, Medea: Re-inscribing myth in contemporary German and Russian women's writing.
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Identifier
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AAI9986333
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identifier
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9986333
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Creator
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Grothe, Anja.
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Contributor
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Adviser: Amy Mandelker
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Date
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2000
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Language
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English
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Publisher
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City University of New York.
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Subject
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Literature, Comparative | Literature, Slavic and East European | Literature, Germanic
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Abstract
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In this study, I am analyzing works by contemporary German and Russian women authors that draw on mythological figures indicative of certain faculties of agency, and interpret them in the context of current critical debates on mythology. Emphasizing feminist aesthetics and classical studies, I pose two central questions: how can myth be conceptualized in terms of contemporary literature? And, is the use of mythological figures a retreat into known, safe, literary ground or are women authors creating new-female?---dimensions in a post-modern literary environment?;The myths of Medusa, Medea, and Cassandra are examined in a modern context as representing aspects of female agency, or rather, female agency denied, constituted in the faculties of the gaze (Medusa), speaking/prophecy (Cassandra), and action, especially giving or destroying life (Medea) in works by Elena Chizhova, Olesia Nikolaeva, Liudmila Petrushevskaia, Liudmila Razumovskaia, Ol'ga Sedakova, Liudmila Ulitskaia, and Alina Vitukhnovskaia, Ingeborg Bachmann, Gerda Hagenau, Marie-Luise Kaschnitz, Katja Langen-Muller, Elisabeth Langgasser, Gertrud Leutenegger, Christa Wolf and others.;The analysis attempts to trace an imaginative chronology of women's literature and theory: Medusa as representing the stage of definition, "looking at" what criticism has looked at, and critically looking back. Cassandra---the female voice denied---as the investigation and formulation of a women's tradition in writing, and Medea as an experiment in women's capacities, and a search for a productive model to re-define identity.
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Type
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dissertation
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Source
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PQT Legacy CUNY.xlsx
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degree
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Ph.D.
