BUCH
Deliberately Out of Bounds
Women’s Work on Classical Myth in Nineteenth-Century American Fiction
American Studies – A Monograph Series, Bd. 282
2017
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Bibliografische Daten
Abstract
Nymphs, maenads, goddesses, and heroines from classical myth populate nineteenth-century American women writers’ fiction in exhilaratingly innovative, often multilayered and complex reconfigurations. Based on Hans Blumenberg’s notion of artists’ ongoing “work on myth” and Aby Warburg’s concept of ‘pathos formulaeʼ, this monograph explores the functions and meanings of these ancient figures in image and text. Examining novels by Catharine Maria Sedgwick, Lydia Maria Child, Elizabeth Stoddard, Elizabeth Stuart Phelps, and Louisa May Alcott, this study sheds light on the intellectual and aesthetic achievements of these American women writers across a range of genres. Furthermore, the book challenges the assumption that women’s “work on myth” did not thrive until the second half of the nineteenth century and proposes an approach to overcome the persisting binary and gendered opposition between myth and logos as the ‘feminine’ body and the ‘male’ mind.
Inhaltsverzeichnis
| Zwischenüberschrift | Seite | Aktion | Preis |
|---|---|---|---|
| Cover | Cover | ||
| Titel | 3 | ||
| Imprint | 4 | ||
| Table of Contents | 5 | ||
| Acknowledgments | 9 | ||
| 1 Introduction: Classical Myth and Nineteenth-Century American Women’s Fiction | 11 | ||
| 1.1 Women Writers’ Innovative Work on Myth, 1800-1900 | 11 | ||
| 1.2 Literature Review | 15 | ||
| 2 Myth, "Pathos Formulae", and Women’s Revisionist Mythmaking | 25 | ||
| 2.1 Working on Myth with Pathos Formulae | 25 | ||
| 2.2 "Pathos Formulae" and the Polarity of the Symbol | 41 | ||
| 2.3 Deliberately Out of Bounds: Women’s Work on Classical Myth | 50 | ||
| 3 Dionysian Frenzies in Catharine Maria Sedgwick’s A New- England Tale | 67 | ||
| 3.1 Maenad-in-Motion | 67 | ||
| 3.2 What Manner of Intoxication | 75 | ||
| 3.2.1 Inspired to Love, Inspired to Live: Bet and Jane as True Dionysian Followers | 77 | ||
| 3.2.2 Apollo’s Mission: Reward vs. Punishment | 88 | ||
| 3.2.3 The Dionysian Frenzy of Everyday Life in Sedgwick’s Social Canvas | 92 | ||
| 3.3 The Artistic Layering of Sedgwick’s Realist Mythology | 109 | ||
| 4 The Trials of Psyche: Ancient Mysteries in Lydia Maria Child’s "Philothea" | 113 | ||
| 4.1 Deficient in Repose | 113 | ||
| 4.2 Synthomorphosis and Metamorphosis in "Philothea" | 119 | ||
| 4.2.1 Philothea and the Love of the Soul | 120 | ||
| 4.2.2 Philothea and Sacred Marriage | 125 | ||
| 4.2.3 Philothea, the "Panathenaia", and Domestic Ideology | 134 | ||
| 4.2.4 From Eve to Psyche: Eudora’s Temptation and "Sophrosyne" | 147 | ||
| 4.2.5 Eudora’s/Psyche’s Ascent | 157 | ||
| 4.3 The Language of the Ancient Mysteries | 163 | ||
| 4.4 Philothea, Eudora, and the Archive of (Mental) Images | 166 | ||
| 5 Jason and the Sphinx: Elizabeth Stoddard’s Discrepant New England Mythologies | 169 | ||
| 5.1 The Writings of Elizabeth Stoddard | 169 | ||
| 5.2 Stoddard’s "Two Men" | 172 | ||
| 5.3 Two Men, Two Jasons | 173 | ||
| 5.3.1 Jason, Stranger among the Boston Brahmins | 176 | ||
| 5.3.2 Parke, A High Culture Hero in Crisis | 184 | ||
| 5.4 Stoddard’s Discrepant Mythological Iconographies | 192 | ||
| 5.4.1 Jason and the Feast of the Gods | 195 | ||
| 5.4.2 Stoddard’s Floral Grotesques | 202 | ||
| 5.4.3 Priapus Meets Mercury | 209 | ||
| 5.4.4 Medea, the American Sphinx, and Female Self- Possession | 216 | ||
| 5.5 Jason/Hermes and the Sphinx | 223 | ||
| 6 Isiac Womanhood in Elizabeth Stuart Phelps’s "The Story of Avis" | 225 | ||
| 6.1 Writing “Woman” for Women | 225 | ||
| 6.2 The Moving Panorama and Avis’s Initiation into the Mysteries of Isis | 230 | ||
| 6.3 Phelps’s Isiac Mythmaking | 238 | ||
| 6.3.1 Isis "Myrionymos" | 249 | ||
| 6.3.2 Isis, "Mater Dolorosa", and Mythical Wailing Woman | 259 | ||
| 6.4 Phelps’s Composite Soul Landscapes | 262 | ||
| 6.4.1 Avis’s Magnetism and Fuller’s Red Carbuncle | 266 | ||
| 6.4.2 Avis as Artist-Intellectual, Goddess, and Divine Soul | 270 | ||
| 6.5 No American Eve | 283 | ||
| 7 Galatea’s Sufferings in Louisa May Alcott’s "A Modern Mephistopheles" | 285 | ||
| 7.1 Of Marble Women and Sleeping Nymphs | 285 | ||
| 7.2 A Modern Mephistopheles | 291 | ||
| 7.3 Doubling Pygmalion’s Creation | 292 | ||
| 7.3.1 Alcott’s Sleeping Nymph | 296 | ||
| 7.3.2 The Sorrows and Sufferings of Alcott’s Marble Woman | 310 | ||
| 7.4 The Intensification of Alcott’s “Tear-Shedding Heart" | 322 | ||
| 8 With Pathos "and" Logos | 327 | ||
| 9 Bibliography | 333 | ||
| 10 List of Illustrations | 362 | ||
| Backcover | Backover |
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