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Performing poetesses

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TitleInfo
Title
Performing poetesses
SubTitle
collectivity and theatricality in Victorian poetry
Name (type = personal)
NamePart (type = family)
Madden
NamePart (type = given)
Caolan
NamePart (type = date)
1980-
DisplayForm
Caolan Madden
Role
RoleTerm (authority = RULIB)
author
Name (type = personal)
NamePart (type = family)
Williams
NamePart (type = given)
Carolyn
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Carolyn Williams
Affiliation
Advisory Committee
Role
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chair
Name (type = personal)
NamePart (type = family)
McGill
NamePart (type = given)
Meredith
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Meredith McGill
Affiliation
Advisory Committee
Role
RoleTerm (authority = RULIB)
internal member
Name (type = personal)
NamePart (type = family)
Siegel
NamePart (type = given)
Jonah
DisplayForm
Jonah Siegel
Affiliation
Advisory Committee
Role
RoleTerm (authority = RULIB)
internal member
Name (type = personal)
NamePart (type = family)
Lootens
NamePart (type = given)
Tricia
DisplayForm
Tricia Lootens
Affiliation
Advisory Committee
Role
RoleTerm (authority = RULIB)
outside member
Name (type = corporate)
NamePart
Rutgers University
Role
RoleTerm (authority = RULIB)
degree grantor
Name (type = corporate)
NamePart
School of Graduate Studies
Role
RoleTerm (authority = RULIB)
school
TypeOfResource
Text
Genre (authority = marcgt)
theses
OriginInfo
DateCreated (qualifier = exact)
2017
DateOther (qualifier = exact); (type = degree)
2017-10
CopyrightDate (encoding = w3cdtf); (qualifier = exact)
2017
Place
PlaceTerm (type = code)
xx
Language
LanguageTerm (authority = ISO639-2b); (type = code)
eng
Abstract (type = abstract)
This dissertation traces the nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century history of what I call “Poetess theatricality”: a highly gendered literary mode that imagines the poem as a space for collective, spectacular theatrical performance. As a corrective to popular and critical depictions of the Poetess’s solitary suffering, and as an expansion of more recent accounts of the Poetess as an “empty” and abstract figure, this dissertation argues that Poetess performance was understood by Victorian audiences to be multiply embodied: a chorus not only of voices but of gesturing, costumed bodies whose performances invoked the material profusions of popular print cultures, the crowded, often messy realities of social life, and the possibilities of social reform. Drawing on recent work in nineteenth-century poetics on the gendered, citational performances we now associate with the figure of the Poetess, as well as on scholarship on the significance of spectacle in the Victorian theater, this project revises existing understandings of the relationship between Victorian poetry and dramatic form: while the most significant poetic innovation of the period, the dramatic monologue, has ensured that Victorian poetry has always been associated with the theater, this study argues for a collective, spectacular theatricality that the genre of dramatic monologue does not accommodate. The period covered by this dissertation (1823 – 1922) saw the consolidation of the Poetess as a familiar figure in nineteenth-century print culture. As the popular success of seemingly chaste and moral Poetess writers such as Felicia Hemans made print publication more respectable for women poets, the role of Poetess became increasingly distinct from the more dangerously public, sexually compromised roles of “playwright” or “actress.” This dissertation shows, however, that the figure of the actress was never fully detached from the figure of the Poetess; instead, the collective, corporeal, spectacular aspects of theatrical performance reappear, continually reconfigured, as a major feature of Poetess writing throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries—in the sprawl of feminine bodies, objects, and texts in Hemans’s Records of Woman; the casually citational, shape-shifting figures that circulate in gift books compiled by Letitia Elizabeth Landon (otherwise known as L.E.L.); the elaborately stage-managed crowds of working-class and aristocratic supernumeraries who threaten the heroine’s narrative control in Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s Aurora Leigh; the poet-housewives and sympathetic audience-actors in Augusta Webster’s essays and dramatic monologues; and the characters, readers, and performers who form temporary communities through their recitation of the portable, quotable catchphrases in the work of Charlotte Mew. In directing critical attention to the theatricality of the Poetess, this dissertation works to connect recent work in Victorian poetics with the gendered, embodied experiences, performances, and stuff that have been the object of so much important feminist criticism.
Subject (authority = RUETD)
Topic
Literatures in English
RelatedItem (type = host)
TitleInfo
Title
Rutgers University Electronic Theses and Dissertations
Identifier (type = RULIB)
ETD
Identifier
ETD_8499
PhysicalDescription
Form (authority = gmd)
electronic resource
InternetMediaType
application/pdf
InternetMediaType
text/xml
Extent
1 online resource (ix, 338 p. : ill.)
Note (type = degree)
Ph.D.
Note (type = bibliography)
Includes bibliographical references
Subject (authority = ETD-LCSH)
Topic
English poetry--19th century--History and criticism
Note (type = statement of responsibility)
by Caolan Madden
RelatedItem (type = host)
TitleInfo
Title
School of Graduate Studies Electronic Theses and Dissertations
Identifier (type = local)
rucore10001600001
Location
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NjNbRU
Identifier (type = doi)
doi:10.7282/T3RX9G7K
Genre (authority = ExL-Esploro)
ETD doctoral
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Rights

RightsDeclaration (ID = rulibRdec0006)
The author owns the copyright to this work.
RightsHolder (type = personal)
Name
FamilyName
Madden
GivenName
Caolan
Role
Copyright Holder
RightsEvent
Type
Permission or license
DateTime (encoding = w3cdtf); (qualifier = exact); (point = start)
2017-10-03 02:24:30
AssociatedEntity
Name
Caolan Madden
Role
Copyright holder
Affiliation
Rutgers University. School of Graduate Studies
AssociatedObject
Type
License
Name
Author Agreement License
Detail
I hereby grant to the Rutgers University Libraries and to my school the non-exclusive right to archive, reproduce and distribute my thesis or dissertation, in whole or in part, and/or my abstract, in whole or in part, in and from an electronic format, subject to the release date subsequently stipulated in this submittal form and approved by my school. I represent and stipulate that the thesis or dissertation and its abstract are my original work, that they do not infringe or violate any rights of others, and that I make these grants as the sole owner of the rights to my thesis or dissertation and its abstract. I represent that I have obtained written permissions, when necessary, from the owner(s) of each third party copyrighted matter to be included in my thesis or dissertation and will supply copies of such upon request by my school. I acknowledge that RU ETD and my school will not distribute my thesis or dissertation or its abstract if, in their reasonable judgment, they believe all such rights have not been secured. I acknowledge that I retain ownership rights to the copyright of my work. I also retain the right to use all or part of this thesis or dissertation in future works, such as articles or books.
RightsEvent
DateTime (encoding = w3cdtf); (qualifier = exact); (point = start)
2017-10-31
DateTime (encoding = w3cdtf); (qualifier = exact); (point = end)
2019-10-31
Type
Embargo
Detail
Access to this PDF has been restricted at the author's request. It will be publicly available after October 31st, 2019.
Copyright
Status
Copyright protected
Availability
Status
Open
Reason
Permission or license
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