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Degree

Master of Arts in English, Youngstown State University, Department of English, 2010.

Abstract

Through an analysis of Jeanette Winterson's Written on the Body, Mary Fallon's Working Hot, and Monique Wittig's The Lesbian Body, we can gain an understanding of the connection between language and desire, and how it relates to sexuality, female desire, and lesbian representation. In these texts, bodies have been explored, critiqued, and dismembered by language. The deconstruction and reconstruction of lesbian bodies, the re-appropriation of social and cultural paradigms, and the re-working of language and narrative are tools that enable Fallon, Winterson, and Wittig to create a lesbian space that disrupts and subverts conventional ideologies. The writers use different literary strategies to construct lesbian desire, and if we consider how these strategies work together and complicate each other, the role that language plays in lesbian representation becomes clearer.

Subject Headings

Gender; Language; Literature; Womens studies

Keywords

the female body; lesbian desire; Monique Wittig; Jeanette Winterson; Kathleen Mary Fallon

Committee / Advisors

Sherry Linkon, PhD (Advisor)
Linda Strom, PhD (Committee Member)
Philip Brady, PhD (Committee Member)

Pages

iii, 43 p.

Document number: ysu1277413109
Permalink: http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=ysu1277413109

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