Kathryn Gleadle
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- January 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780197264492
- eISBN:
- 9780191734274
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- British Academy
- DOI:
- 10.5871/bacad/9780197264492.003.0006
- Subject:
- History, British and Irish Modern History
The Reform Act of 1832 stands as one of the defining moments in the political history of Britain, yet its implications for women and their involvement in its passage remain underexplored. The reform ...
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The Reform Act of 1832 stands as one of the defining moments in the political history of Britain, yet its implications for women and their involvement in its passage remain underexplored. The reform bill pertaining to Scotland did not specify that the parliamentary voter should be male. It presumably did not occur to those drafting the Scottish legislation that such clarification was necessary; whereas the gender-specific wording of the statutes covering England, Wales, and Ireland suggests an awareness that there was a theoretical possibility that it might be otherwise open to challenge. These differences are indicative of the subtle fissures in seemingly dominant assumptions concerning female citizenship. This chapter examines how, within the interstices of parliamentary legislation, there were many such moments of telling indeterminacy in the collective understanding of women as political subjects. It also explores the notion of women as ‘borderline citizens’, women in parliament and their political rights from 1830 to 1832, women's involvement in the campaign for reform, and the impact of the reform crisis on female subjectivities.Less
The Reform Act of 1832 stands as one of the defining moments in the political history of Britain, yet its implications for women and their involvement in its passage remain underexplored. The reform bill pertaining to Scotland did not specify that the parliamentary voter should be male. It presumably did not occur to those drafting the Scottish legislation that such clarification was necessary; whereas the gender-specific wording of the statutes covering England, Wales, and Ireland suggests an awareness that there was a theoretical possibility that it might be otherwise open to challenge. These differences are indicative of the subtle fissures in seemingly dominant assumptions concerning female citizenship. This chapter examines how, within the interstices of parliamentary legislation, there were many such moments of telling indeterminacy in the collective understanding of women as political subjects. It also explores the notion of women as ‘borderline citizens’, women in parliament and their political rights from 1830 to 1832, women's involvement in the campaign for reform, and the impact of the reform crisis on female subjectivities.
Irene González-López and Michael Smith (eds)
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- May 2020
- ISBN:
- 9781474409698
- eISBN:
- 9781474444637
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9781474409698.001.0001
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
This is the first book in English dedicated to the actress and director Tanaka Kinuyo. Praised as amongst the greatest actors in the history of Japanese cinema, Tanaka’s career spanned the industrial ...
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This is the first book in English dedicated to the actress and director Tanaka Kinuyo. Praised as amongst the greatest actors in the history of Japanese cinema, Tanaka’s career spanned the industrial development of cinema - from silent to sound, monochrome to colour. Alongside featuring in films by Ozu, Mizoguchi, Naruse and Kurosawa, Tanaka was also the only Japanese woman filmmaker between 1953 and 1962, and her films tackled distinctly feminine topics such as prostitution and breast cancer. Because her career overlaps with a transformative period in Japan, especially for women, this close analysis of her fascinating life and work offers new perspectives into the Japanese history of women and classical era of national cinema.
The first half of the book focuses on Tanaka as actress and analyses the elements and meanings associated with her star image, and her powerful embodiment of diverse, at times contradictory, ideological discourses. The second half is dedicated to Tanaka as director and explores her public image as filmmaker and her depiction of gender and sexuality against the national history in order to reflect on her role and style as author.
With a special focus on the melodrama genre and on the sociopolitical and economic contexts of film production, the book offers a revision of theories of stardom, authorship, and women’s cinema. In examining Tanaka’s iconic reification of femininities in relation to politics, national identity, and memory, the chapters shed light on the cultural construction of female subjectivity and sexuality in Japanese popular culture.Less
This is the first book in English dedicated to the actress and director Tanaka Kinuyo. Praised as amongst the greatest actors in the history of Japanese cinema, Tanaka’s career spanned the industrial development of cinema - from silent to sound, monochrome to colour. Alongside featuring in films by Ozu, Mizoguchi, Naruse and Kurosawa, Tanaka was also the only Japanese woman filmmaker between 1953 and 1962, and her films tackled distinctly feminine topics such as prostitution and breast cancer. Because her career overlaps with a transformative period in Japan, especially for women, this close analysis of her fascinating life and work offers new perspectives into the Japanese history of women and classical era of national cinema.
The first half of the book focuses on Tanaka as actress and analyses the elements and meanings associated with her star image, and her powerful embodiment of diverse, at times contradictory, ideological discourses. The second half is dedicated to Tanaka as director and explores her public image as filmmaker and her depiction of gender and sexuality against the national history in order to reflect on her role and style as author.
With a special focus on the melodrama genre and on the sociopolitical and economic contexts of film production, the book offers a revision of theories of stardom, authorship, and women’s cinema. In examining Tanaka’s iconic reification of femininities in relation to politics, national identity, and memory, the chapters shed light on the cultural construction of female subjectivity and sexuality in Japanese popular culture.
Judith Herrin
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- October 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780691153216
- eISBN:
- 9781400845217
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Princeton University Press
- DOI:
- 10.23943/princeton/9780691153216.003.0002
- Subject:
- History, World Medieval History
This chapter examines some of the roles of women in early medieval Byzantine society. It follows three particular avenues of approach, devised as a means of identifying the positions, activity, and ...
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This chapter examines some of the roles of women in early medieval Byzantine society. It follows three particular avenues of approach, devised as a means of identifying the positions, activity, and authority of women in Byzantine society. The first is to pick up chance references to female activity in the sources written by men, especially those that occur spontaneously in narratives unconnected with women, incidental remarks, and stray observations. The second seeks to document the ingenuity with which women exercised their limited legal rights and is therefore dependent upon the case law that survives—the Peira (Teaching) of Eustathios Romaios is the outstanding example. The third approach attempts to outline the significance of ecclesiastical institutions and Christian beliefs for women, an area in which female subjectivity is perhaps most closely revealed. The overall aim of these avenues is to illuminate a practical reality rather than a legal ideal.Less
This chapter examines some of the roles of women in early medieval Byzantine society. It follows three particular avenues of approach, devised as a means of identifying the positions, activity, and authority of women in Byzantine society. The first is to pick up chance references to female activity in the sources written by men, especially those that occur spontaneously in narratives unconnected with women, incidental remarks, and stray observations. The second seeks to document the ingenuity with which women exercised their limited legal rights and is therefore dependent upon the case law that survives—the Peira (Teaching) of Eustathios Romaios is the outstanding example. The third approach attempts to outline the significance of ecclesiastical institutions and Christian beliefs for women, an area in which female subjectivity is perhaps most closely revealed. The overall aim of these avenues is to illuminate a practical reality rather than a legal ideal.
Ayako Saito
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- May 2020
- ISBN:
- 9781474409698
- eISBN:
- 9781474444637
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9781474409698.003.0006
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
Female authorship is the subject of this chapter, which concentrates on Tanaka’s third film, The Eternal Breasts (Chibusa yo eien nare, 1955). This was her first collaboration with scriptwriter ...
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Female authorship is the subject of this chapter, which concentrates on Tanaka’s third film, The Eternal Breasts (Chibusa yo eien nare, 1955). This was her first collaboration with scriptwriter Tanaka Sumie, and the chapter reveals the negotiation between two very different women of the same generation who worked together to articulate female subjectivity. Examining their distinct life experiences and approaches to the depiction of women (and female sexuality in particular) works to position Tanaka in the history of Japanese women’s cinema and melodrama. An exhaustive analysis of screenplays, shooting scripts, interviews, and contemporary reviews renders visible Tanaka’s authorial voice as a woman and her visual translation and intervention in Sumie’s script. The chapter makes a case of Tanaka’s creative directorial worth, while exposing why both the film industry and film studies may have hitherto overlooked her directed works.Less
Female authorship is the subject of this chapter, which concentrates on Tanaka’s third film, The Eternal Breasts (Chibusa yo eien nare, 1955). This was her first collaboration with scriptwriter Tanaka Sumie, and the chapter reveals the negotiation between two very different women of the same generation who worked together to articulate female subjectivity. Examining their distinct life experiences and approaches to the depiction of women (and female sexuality in particular) works to position Tanaka in the history of Japanese women’s cinema and melodrama. An exhaustive analysis of screenplays, shooting scripts, interviews, and contemporary reviews renders visible Tanaka’s authorial voice as a woman and her visual translation and intervention in Sumie’s script. The chapter makes a case of Tanaka’s creative directorial worth, while exposing why both the film industry and film studies may have hitherto overlooked her directed works.
Inez Van Der Spek
- Published in print:
- 2000
- Published Online:
- May 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780853238140
- eISBN:
- 9781781380444
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Liverpool University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5949/liverpool/9780853238140.003.0007
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
This book has examined James Tiptree Jr's ‘A Momentary Taste of Being’, a story about alien encounter, and its strange spatio-temporal settings from an interstellar spaceship to the vastness of outer ...
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This book has examined James Tiptree Jr's ‘A Momentary Taste of Being’, a story about alien encounter, and its strange spatio-temporal settings from an interstellar spaceship to the vastness of outer space and indefinite time. By reading Tiptree's narrative within the framework of a variety of theoretical discourses, heuristic images, and intertexts, it has uncovered a range of possible layers of the text, including the alien mother/daughter plot and the plots of Dr Aaron Kaye and his sister Lory. The book has also discussed the three salient issues of the text: the painful quest for female subjectivity, the figuration of the posthuman, and a multiple vision of the divine. This chapter further elaborates on female subjectivity, the posthuman, and the divine beyond the boundaries of ‘A Momentary Taste of Being’. It considers the figuration of the posthuman in relation to negativity in the formation of (female) subjectivity and to the unfathomability of the alien.Less
This book has examined James Tiptree Jr's ‘A Momentary Taste of Being’, a story about alien encounter, and its strange spatio-temporal settings from an interstellar spaceship to the vastness of outer space and indefinite time. By reading Tiptree's narrative within the framework of a variety of theoretical discourses, heuristic images, and intertexts, it has uncovered a range of possible layers of the text, including the alien mother/daughter plot and the plots of Dr Aaron Kaye and his sister Lory. The book has also discussed the three salient issues of the text: the painful quest for female subjectivity, the figuration of the posthuman, and a multiple vision of the divine. This chapter further elaborates on female subjectivity, the posthuman, and the divine beyond the boundaries of ‘A Momentary Taste of Being’. It considers the figuration of the posthuman in relation to negativity in the formation of (female) subjectivity and to the unfathomability of the alien.
Lisa French
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- September 2018
- ISBN:
- 9781474419444
- eISBN:
- 9781474444682
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9781474419444.003.0002
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
This essay examines the concept of a ‘female gaze’ in documentary film with a specific consideration of the work, and viewpoints, of women directors. The question asked is whether a film as a ...
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This essay examines the concept of a ‘female gaze’ in documentary film with a specific consideration of the work, and viewpoints, of women directors. The question asked is whether a film as a creative artefact, as well as if the working opportunities within the film industry, are affected by the fact that the person making the film is biologically female. French concludes that it is indeed so, and that “part of this recognition is due to visible female aesthetic approaches, world, views, and treatments of subjects, themes, and the overall privileging of female subjectivity.”Less
This essay examines the concept of a ‘female gaze’ in documentary film with a specific consideration of the work, and viewpoints, of women directors. The question asked is whether a film as a creative artefact, as well as if the working opportunities within the film industry, are affected by the fact that the person making the film is biologically female. French concludes that it is indeed so, and that “part of this recognition is due to visible female aesthetic approaches, world, views, and treatments of subjects, themes, and the overall privileging of female subjectivity.”
Rob Stone
- Published in print:
- 2007
- Published Online:
- July 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780719072000
- eISBN:
- 9781781701171
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Manchester University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7228/manchester/9780719072000.003.0023
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
This chapter discusses Julio Medem's Los amantes del Círculo Polar. Spanish film audiences grew during the decade of the 1990s, along with the number of private television channels and new cinemas. ...
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This chapter discusses Julio Medem's Los amantes del Círculo Polar. Spanish film audiences grew during the decade of the 1990s, along with the number of private television channels and new cinemas. Medem situated himself at the centre of his own Ptolemaic universe in the writing of the character of the protagonist of the film, the budget for which was set at 400 million pesetas. In the margins of the shooting script, Medem describes his story as a passionate fable with an atmosphere of great emotional tension. He also notes that any colours are to be neutralised by filters so that the controlled, schematic coolness of the film's structure offsets the passionate, romantic intensity of the characters. Also crucial to the film, and a notable advance in Medem's writing, was the structural, philosophical and thematic integration of a female subjectivity which balanced that of the male.Less
This chapter discusses Julio Medem's Los amantes del Círculo Polar. Spanish film audiences grew during the decade of the 1990s, along with the number of private television channels and new cinemas. Medem situated himself at the centre of his own Ptolemaic universe in the writing of the character of the protagonist of the film, the budget for which was set at 400 million pesetas. In the margins of the shooting script, Medem describes his story as a passionate fable with an atmosphere of great emotional tension. He also notes that any colours are to be neutralised by filters so that the controlled, schematic coolness of the film's structure offsets the passionate, romantic intensity of the characters. Also crucial to the film, and a notable advance in Medem's writing, was the structural, philosophical and thematic integration of a female subjectivity which balanced that of the male.
Rachel Falconer
- Published in print:
- 2004
- Published Online:
- March 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780748617630
- eISBN:
- 9780748651733
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748617630.003.0007
- Subject:
- Literature, 20th-century and Contemporary Literature
This chapter investigates fictional descent narratives where the female character descends into the underworld. It first looks at the gender dynamics involved in descent narratives, where the descent ...
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This chapter investigates fictional descent narratives where the female character descends into the underworld. It first looks at the gender dynamics involved in descent narratives, where the descent heroes are usually men, while women play the role of the medium through which the quest is realised. The chapter then studies the feminist descent, and discusses in detail three descent narratives where the route to female subjectivity is down through a patriarchal Hell.Less
This chapter investigates fictional descent narratives where the female character descends into the underworld. It first looks at the gender dynamics involved in descent narratives, where the descent heroes are usually men, while women play the role of the medium through which the quest is realised. The chapter then studies the feminist descent, and discusses in detail three descent narratives where the route to female subjectivity is down through a patriarchal Hell.
Mitsuyo Wada-Marciano
- Published in print:
- 2008
- Published Online:
- November 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780824831820
- eISBN:
- 9780824868772
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Hawai'i Press
- DOI:
- 10.21313/hawaii/9780824831820.003.0005
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Asian Studies
This chapter examines how the trope of the moga, or modern girl, is depicted in the Japanese woman’s film. It considers how latent Japanese anxieties over modernization are made visible through ...
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This chapter examines how the trope of the moga, or modern girl, is depicted in the Japanese woman’s film. It considers how latent Japanese anxieties over modernization are made visible through representations of the modern girl image in critical discourse and film. It analyzes the woman’s film as both a critical term and a historical practice in the context of Japanese modernity and asks what sort of female identifications the genre allows. It also discusses the inherently political nature of the woman’s film by focusing on the construction of Japanese female subjectivity, along with some alternative structures for how to understand the apparent changes in Japanese identity in the historical transition between modernity and 1930s nationalism. Finally, it explores the use of the modern girl image in the films A Burden of Life and Woman of Tokyo to show how the Japanese woman’s film genre created an imagined female subjectivity as a visible reenactment of Japanese anxiety over the transformative aspects of modernity.Less
This chapter examines how the trope of the moga, or modern girl, is depicted in the Japanese woman’s film. It considers how latent Japanese anxieties over modernization are made visible through representations of the modern girl image in critical discourse and film. It analyzes the woman’s film as both a critical term and a historical practice in the context of Japanese modernity and asks what sort of female identifications the genre allows. It also discusses the inherently political nature of the woman’s film by focusing on the construction of Japanese female subjectivity, along with some alternative structures for how to understand the apparent changes in Japanese identity in the historical transition between modernity and 1930s nationalism. Finally, it explores the use of the modern girl image in the films A Burden of Life and Woman of Tokyo to show how the Japanese woman’s film genre created an imagined female subjectivity as a visible reenactment of Japanese anxiety over the transformative aspects of modernity.
Inez Van Der Spek
- Published in print:
- 2000
- Published Online:
- May 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780853238140
- eISBN:
- 9781781380444
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Liverpool University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5949/liverpool/9780853238140.003.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
Within the science fiction community, the work of James Tiptree Jr, whose real name was Alice Sheldon-Bradley, is generally acknowledged to be among the best of the genre. During the 1970s, Tiptree ...
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Within the science fiction community, the work of James Tiptree Jr, whose real name was Alice Sheldon-Bradley, is generally acknowledged to be among the best of the genre. During the 1970s, Tiptree had won Hugo, Nebula, and Jupiter Awards for science fiction writing. Recently, the importance of her work for the development of feminist science fiction has been acknowledged by authors. This book examines Tiptree's 1975 text, ‘A Momentary Taste of Being’, which radically transformed the conventional figure of the alien encounter. In particular, it considers the ways in which the story may interact with feminist and other critical theories on the issues of female subjectivity and the meaning of the divine in a postmodern context. This introduction provides an overview of the life and work of Tiptree, and a synopsis of ‘A Momentary Taste of Being’, followed by an explanation of the central figure of the text – the alien.Less
Within the science fiction community, the work of James Tiptree Jr, whose real name was Alice Sheldon-Bradley, is generally acknowledged to be among the best of the genre. During the 1970s, Tiptree had won Hugo, Nebula, and Jupiter Awards for science fiction writing. Recently, the importance of her work for the development of feminist science fiction has been acknowledged by authors. This book examines Tiptree's 1975 text, ‘A Momentary Taste of Being’, which radically transformed the conventional figure of the alien encounter. In particular, it considers the ways in which the story may interact with feminist and other critical theories on the issues of female subjectivity and the meaning of the divine in a postmodern context. This introduction provides an overview of the life and work of Tiptree, and a synopsis of ‘A Momentary Taste of Being’, followed by an explanation of the central figure of the text – the alien.
Donna Aza Weir-Soley
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- September 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780813033778
- eISBN:
- 9780813039008
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University Press of Florida
- DOI:
- 10.5744/florida/9780813033778.003.0006
- Subject:
- Literature, African-American Literature
This chapter discusses Edwidge Danticat's representation of subject formation within the Haitian migrant community in the Dominican Republic during the 1930s. It explores Danticat's treatment of the ...
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This chapter discusses Edwidge Danticat's representation of subject formation within the Haitian migrant community in the Dominican Republic during the 1930s. It explores Danticat's treatment of the concomitant destabilization of Haitian identity in the wake of the 1937 Haitian Massacre enacted under the former Dominican dictator General Rafael Trujillo. The interdependent relationship between the material and the spiritual is carefully introduced in this narrative as Danticat attempts to demonstrate that human beings need to have both realms in balance if they are to be fully functional. The discussion proposes that Danticat purposefully downplays Voudoun as a leitmotif in this novel to force the reader to engage with the historical realities she is fictionalizing. Like the preceding chapters, this chapter also examines the healing potential of the erotic.Less
This chapter discusses Edwidge Danticat's representation of subject formation within the Haitian migrant community in the Dominican Republic during the 1930s. It explores Danticat's treatment of the concomitant destabilization of Haitian identity in the wake of the 1937 Haitian Massacre enacted under the former Dominican dictator General Rafael Trujillo. The interdependent relationship between the material and the spiritual is carefully introduced in this narrative as Danticat attempts to demonstrate that human beings need to have both realms in balance if they are to be fully functional. The discussion proposes that Danticat purposefully downplays Voudoun as a leitmotif in this novel to force the reader to engage with the historical realities she is fictionalizing. Like the preceding chapters, this chapter also examines the healing potential of the erotic.
Andrew Piper
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- January 2019
- ISBN:
- 9780226568614
- eISBN:
- 9780226568898
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226568898.003.0006
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
Quantity has a role to play in understanding the nature of characters and the process of characterization (the writerly act of generating animate entities through language). With Alex Woloch’s ...
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Quantity has a role to play in understanding the nature of characters and the process of characterization (the writerly act of generating animate entities through language). With Alex Woloch’s question of “the many” in mind, the chapter begins with a survey of an estimated 85 characters per novel in the nineteenth century, a conservative estimate of 20,000 novels published during this period in English, producing ca. 1.7 million unique characters appearing in one century in one language. Simultaneously, the process of characterization poses challenges of scale: the great number of characters, plus the vast amount of information surrounding even a single, main character. Characters (like other textual features) are abundant across the pages of novels. Through an examination of over 650,000 characters using new techniques in natural language processing and entity recognition, this chapter explores the "character-text" of novels (how characters are activated, described, objectified). The (surprising) evidence here suggests that the process of characterization is best described as one of stylistic constraint, aligning the practice of characterization more closely with a character’s etymological origins (as representative, general, or “characteristic”—not individualistic). The chapter then explores the rise of “interiorly oriented” characters and Nancy Armstrong’s notion of strongly gendered “deep character.”Less
Quantity has a role to play in understanding the nature of characters and the process of characterization (the writerly act of generating animate entities through language). With Alex Woloch’s question of “the many” in mind, the chapter begins with a survey of an estimated 85 characters per novel in the nineteenth century, a conservative estimate of 20,000 novels published during this period in English, producing ca. 1.7 million unique characters appearing in one century in one language. Simultaneously, the process of characterization poses challenges of scale: the great number of characters, plus the vast amount of information surrounding even a single, main character. Characters (like other textual features) are abundant across the pages of novels. Through an examination of over 650,000 characters using new techniques in natural language processing and entity recognition, this chapter explores the "character-text" of novels (how characters are activated, described, objectified). The (surprising) evidence here suggests that the process of characterization is best described as one of stylistic constraint, aligning the practice of characterization more closely with a character’s etymological origins (as representative, general, or “characteristic”—not individualistic). The chapter then explores the rise of “interiorly oriented” characters and Nancy Armstrong’s notion of strongly gendered “deep character.”
Tan See Kam
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- May 2017
- ISBN:
- 9789888208852
- eISBN:
- 9789888313518
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Hong Kong University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5790/hongkong/9789888208852.003.0006
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
At work in Peking Opera Blues is a deeply intertextual relation to the film adaptations (three-women films) of a popular form of sentimental romance fiction - mandarin duck and butterfly fiction ...
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At work in Peking Opera Blues is a deeply intertextual relation to the film adaptations (three-women films) of a popular form of sentimental romance fiction - mandarin duck and butterfly fiction (yuanyang hudie) - which emerged when China, after thousands of years of dynastic rule, first experimented with democracy as an alternative mode of governance and lifestyle. This “fiction of comfort” came under attack by the May Fourth Movement after 1919, and was eventually consigned to the margins of modern Chinese literature. Reading through the lens of “three-women” films like Fate in Tears and Laughters (1932), Three Modern Girls (1933), Sun Moon Star (1960), and The Story of Three Loves (1963), and their women-centered narratives, enables a reading of Peking Opera Blues which reveals some of the ways in which Tsui Hark is able to emphasize the idea of women as narrative images; to highlight female agencies and subjectivities and to explore the rising status of women in the more globally connected, post-Confucian, and post patriarchal consumerist society of Hong Kong.Less
At work in Peking Opera Blues is a deeply intertextual relation to the film adaptations (three-women films) of a popular form of sentimental romance fiction - mandarin duck and butterfly fiction (yuanyang hudie) - which emerged when China, after thousands of years of dynastic rule, first experimented with democracy as an alternative mode of governance and lifestyle. This “fiction of comfort” came under attack by the May Fourth Movement after 1919, and was eventually consigned to the margins of modern Chinese literature. Reading through the lens of “three-women” films like Fate in Tears and Laughters (1932), Three Modern Girls (1933), Sun Moon Star (1960), and The Story of Three Loves (1963), and their women-centered narratives, enables a reading of Peking Opera Blues which reveals some of the ways in which Tsui Hark is able to emphasize the idea of women as narrative images; to highlight female agencies and subjectivities and to explore the rising status of women in the more globally connected, post-Confucian, and post patriarchal consumerist society of Hong Kong.
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- June 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780804762335
- eISBN:
- 9780804772518
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Stanford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.11126/stanford/9780804762335.003.0003
- Subject:
- Literature, World Literature
This chapter examines masochism and the death drive in Tanizaki Jun'ichirō's autobiographical essay “An account of the first half of my life, for Satō Haruo” and the novel The Secret History of the ...
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This chapter examines masochism and the death drive in Tanizaki Jun'ichirō's autobiographical essay “An account of the first half of my life, for Satō Haruo” and the novel The Secret History of the Lord of Musashi. It suggests that the essay shows Tanizaki coming to terms with the idea that domestic homosocial intimacies while the novel translates the inertness of a wife who could be passed but not loved into the universality of a female “subjectivity”. This chapter also considers Tanizaki's portrait of the Lord of Musashi alongside Freud's account of the death drive to show how both authors describe aggressivity according to a hydraulic model.Less
This chapter examines masochism and the death drive in Tanizaki Jun'ichirō's autobiographical essay “An account of the first half of my life, for Satō Haruo” and the novel The Secret History of the Lord of Musashi. It suggests that the essay shows Tanizaki coming to terms with the idea that domestic homosocial intimacies while the novel translates the inertness of a wife who could be passed but not loved into the universality of a female “subjectivity”. This chapter also considers Tanizaki's portrait of the Lord of Musashi alongside Freud's account of the death drive to show how both authors describe aggressivity according to a hydraulic model.
Ewa Płonowska Ziarek
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- November 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780231161497
- eISBN:
- 9780231530903
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Columbia University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7312/columbia/9780231161497.003.0002
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Feminist Philosophy
This chapter develops the political theory of revolution and female subjectivity produced by the British suffrage militancy in the context of Hannah Arendt's theory of revolution and Theodor Adorno's ...
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This chapter develops the political theory of revolution and female subjectivity produced by the British suffrage militancy in the context of Hannah Arendt's theory of revolution and Theodor Adorno's aesthetic theory. What is at stake in the analysis is the conflicting relation between women's political and literary discourses of revolution and their relevance for feminist aesthetics. This juxtaposition of suffrage militancy with aesthetic and political theory allows us to rethink the pervasive modernist preoccupation with the new beyond mere formal experimentation for innovation's sake and address it instead in the context of political struggles. Without this intersection between political and aesthetic struggles, it is all too easy to dismiss the rhetoric of the new as a symptom of either the aestheticization of politics or the commodification of art instead of recognizing it as a transformative political and aesthetic force.Less
This chapter develops the political theory of revolution and female subjectivity produced by the British suffrage militancy in the context of Hannah Arendt's theory of revolution and Theodor Adorno's aesthetic theory. What is at stake in the analysis is the conflicting relation between women's political and literary discourses of revolution and their relevance for feminist aesthetics. This juxtaposition of suffrage militancy with aesthetic and political theory allows us to rethink the pervasive modernist preoccupation with the new beyond mere formal experimentation for innovation's sake and address it instead in the context of political struggles. Without this intersection between political and aesthetic struggles, it is all too easy to dismiss the rhetoric of the new as a symptom of either the aestheticization of politics or the commodification of art instead of recognizing it as a transformative political and aesthetic force.
Amy Motlagh
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- June 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780804775892
- eISBN:
- 9780804778183
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Stanford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.11126/stanford/9780804775892.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, World Literature
This book traces the relationship between the law and literature in Iran to reveal the profound ambiguities at the heart of Iranian ideas of modernity regarding women's rights and social status. It ...
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This book traces the relationship between the law and literature in Iran to reveal the profound ambiguities at the heart of Iranian ideas of modernity regarding women's rights and social status. It reveals how novels mediate legal reforms, and examines how authors have used realism to challenge and re-imagine notions of “the real.” The chapter examines seminal works that foreground acute anxieties about female subjectivity in an Iran negotiating its modernity from the Constitutional Revolution of 1905 up to and beyond the Islamic Revolution of 1979. By focusing on marriage as the central metaphor through which both law and fiction read gender, the author critically engages and highlights the difficulties that arise as gender norms and laws change over time. She examines the recurrent foregrounding of marriage at five critical periods of legal reform, documenting how texts were understood both at first publication and as their importance changed over time.Less
This book traces the relationship between the law and literature in Iran to reveal the profound ambiguities at the heart of Iranian ideas of modernity regarding women's rights and social status. It reveals how novels mediate legal reforms, and examines how authors have used realism to challenge and re-imagine notions of “the real.” The chapter examines seminal works that foreground acute anxieties about female subjectivity in an Iran negotiating its modernity from the Constitutional Revolution of 1905 up to and beyond the Islamic Revolution of 1979. By focusing on marriage as the central metaphor through which both law and fiction read gender, the author critically engages and highlights the difficulties that arise as gender norms and laws change over time. She examines the recurrent foregrounding of marriage at five critical periods of legal reform, documenting how texts were understood both at first publication and as their importance changed over time.
Gabrielle McNally (ed.)
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- September 2018
- ISBN:
- 9781474419444
- eISBN:
- 9781474444682
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9781474419444.003.0006
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
The essays discusses the mindful use of improvisational methods in women’s autobiographical filmmaking as a means to establish a feminist documentary voice that lies outside of patriarchy and ...
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The essays discusses the mindful use of improvisational methods in women’s autobiographical filmmaking as a means to establish a feminist documentary voice that lies outside of patriarchy and established Western notions of subject, using intersections between improvisational theory and the well-established theories of subjective voice in documentary. The author concludes that “improvisation as a working method invites practitioners into a space of community, empowerment and political change.” … “”Through the utilisation of improvisation as a method of feminist autobiographical documentary praxis, filmmakers can take a step in the direction towards a future promising personal growth and both social and political change and define their work outside of standardised, patriarchal means.”Less
The essays discusses the mindful use of improvisational methods in women’s autobiographical filmmaking as a means to establish a feminist documentary voice that lies outside of patriarchy and established Western notions of subject, using intersections between improvisational theory and the well-established theories of subjective voice in documentary. The author concludes that “improvisation as a working method invites practitioners into a space of community, empowerment and political change.” … “”Through the utilisation of improvisation as a method of feminist autobiographical documentary praxis, filmmakers can take a step in the direction towards a future promising personal growth and both social and political change and define their work outside of standardised, patriarchal means.”
Saswati Sengupta
- Published in print:
- 2021
- Published Online:
- December 2020
- ISBN:
- 9780190124106
- eISBN:
- 9780190993269
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780190124106.003.0007
- Subject:
- History, Indian History
The Conclusion addressees the question of the relevance of this study in the contemporary context: Do women still observe bratas? Are these kathās still in circulation? Does the arrival of the novel ...
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The Conclusion addressees the question of the relevance of this study in the contemporary context: Do women still observe bratas? Are these kathās still in circulation? Does the arrival of the novel and later cinema and television reduce the mode of storytelling of the bratakathā to solemn but specious nonsense? Ironically, modern technology has also aided the propagation of caste-patriarchal stereotypes of women and generated new bratas. The laukika bratakathās of Manasā, Caṇḍī, Ṣaṣṭhī and Lakṣmī can also be used as a site from which the totalizing assumptions of caste-patriarchal societies may be challenged.Less
The Conclusion addressees the question of the relevance of this study in the contemporary context: Do women still observe bratas? Are these kathās still in circulation? Does the arrival of the novel and later cinema and television reduce the mode of storytelling of the bratakathā to solemn but specious nonsense? Ironically, modern technology has also aided the propagation of caste-patriarchal stereotypes of women and generated new bratas. The laukika bratakathās of Manasā, Caṇḍī, Ṣaṣṭhī and Lakṣmī can also be used as a site from which the totalizing assumptions of caste-patriarchal societies may be challenged.
Mireille Calle-Gruber and Jane Hiddleston
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- June 2013
- ISBN:
- 9781846317453
- eISBN:
- 9781846317187
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Liverpool University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5949/UPO9781846317187.010
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
This chapter explores Kateb Yacine's ‘feminine voice’. It focuses not so much on the autobiographical as on the author's struggle to represent a female subjectivity that comes to stand for Algeria ...
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This chapter explores Kateb Yacine's ‘feminine voice’. It focuses not so much on the autobiographical as on the author's struggle to represent a female subjectivity that comes to stand for Algeria itself.Less
This chapter explores Kateb Yacine's ‘feminine voice’. It focuses not so much on the autobiographical as on the author's struggle to represent a female subjectivity that comes to stand for Algeria itself.