Material Information
- Title:
- TRADITION IS BROKEN: ILLEGIBILITY AND AUTHORSHIP IN ELIZABETH BOWEN’S INTERWAR COURTSHIP NOVELS
- Physical Description:
- Book
- Language:
- English
- Creator:
- Welsh, Taylor
- Publisher:
- New College of Florida
- Place of Publication:
- Sarasota, Fla.
- Publication Date:
- 2014
Thesis/Dissertation Information
- Degree:
- Bachelor's ( B.A.)
- Degree Grantor:
- New College of Florida
- Degree Divisions:
- Humanities
- Area of Concentration:
- English, Gender Studies
Subjects
- Genre:
- bibliography ( marcgt )
theses ( marcgt )
government publication (state, provincial, territorial, dependent) ( marcgt )
born-digital ( sobekcm )
Electronic Thesis or Dissertation
Notes
- Abstract:
- This thesis examines how two of Elizabeth Bowen’s 1930s novels explore
changing conduct conventions through experimental narrative strategies. In To the North
(1932) and The House in Paris (1934), Bowen presents baffling new social expectations
for women in post-World War One Britain through tropes of legibility and authorship.
Her heroines engage with unstable conduct codes and subvert formulaic courtship plots
through motifs of textuality that involve “reading” and “writing” their social milieus.
Following an introduction that outlines the unclear expectations wrought by rapidly
evolving social, economic, and political roles for interwar women, the first chapter
examines social legibility as a problem of readership in To the North. This chapter
examines how difficulties navigating interwar gender conventions manifest through
problems of expression, relation, and articulation on the level of plot. It also demonstrates
how illegible social codes are focalized through the characters’ relationships to modern
spaces of transit that alternately allow for and constrain narrative and romantic
possibility. The second chapter positions social illegibility in The House in Paris as an issue of authorship and voice that surfaces on the level of both plot and structure. It
examines textual questions of representation by exploring the novel’s literarily selfconscious
style and its presentation of a problematized female subjectivity and narrative
voice. Bowen’s interwar fiction is an apt example of literature responding to social
changes. Thematic and structural elements of these two novels illustrate a larger dynamic
of cultural instability and ambiguity inherent to the plight of British female experience
between the world wars.
- Statement of Responsibility:
- by Taylor Welsh
- Thesis:
- Thesis (B.A.) -- New College of Florida, 2014
- General Note:
- RESTRICTED TO NCF STUDENTS, STAFF, FACULTY, AND ON-CAMPUS USE
- Bibliography:
- Includes bibliographical references.
- General Note:
- This bibliographic record is available under the Creative Commons CC0 public domain dedication. The New College of Florida Libraries, as creator of this bibliographic record, has waived all rights to it worldwide under copyright law, including all related and neighboring rights, to the extent allowed by law.
- General Note:
- Faculty Sponsor: Welsh, Taylor
Record Information
- Source Institution:
- New College of Florida
- Holding Location:
- New College of Florida
- Rights Management:
- Applicable rights reserved.
- Classification:
- S.T. 2014 W457
- System ID:
- AA00024830:00001
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