Scheherazade (Vol 1) : Unveiling the Carnal Feminine (Vol 2)
Files
(Major creative work)
(Exegesis)
Date
2024
Authors
Tomaszczyk, Victoria
Editors
Advisors
Law Viljoen, Bronwyn
Tonkin, Maggie
Tonkin, Maggie
Journal Title
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Volume Title
Type:
Thesis
Citation
Statement of Responsibility
Conference Name
Abstract
Situated in Orientalia-suffused fin-de-siècle Paris, Scheherazade takes inspiration from the layered narrative device present throughout One Thousand and One Nights, splintering the female storyteller’s voice into a chorus of high-end prostitutes in a luxury brothel. Their world an ornate prison, they exchange stories with each other and their clients to fill their hours of ennui and express their interior worlds. These stories depict female figures both original and from mythology, from West to East, exploring love, desire, revenge, and a mirroring sense of confinement. The frame narrative contrasts the fantastical nature of these stories and the luxury façade of the working hours, describing the poor living conditions in their private quarters, degrading doctor’s visits, and the abject reality of syphilis, drug addiction, abortion, and disfigurement. In the accompanying exegesis, I discuss the most relevant influences on the creative work, including Decadent literature from the fin-de-siècle, One Thousand and One Nights, and French feminist theories of ‘feminine writing’ and writing the body, with an emphasis Julia Kristeva’s concept of the ‘abject.’ In doing so, I offer contemporary re-interpretations of the language and themes generated by these movements and texts, as well as engage with various critiques of the theoretical positions they have generated. Of particular focus are the fetishized feminine iconographies inscribed by male Decadent authors and artists and how they can be reinscribed in order to represent a female corporeal experience that is largely absent in fin-de-siècle texts. A discussion of Orientalism explores the sense of ‘otherness’ ascribed to both the people of the Middle East and the female sex, contextualising this fetishization and the use of artifice as a means of survival.
School/Discipline
School of Humanities : English and Creative Writing
Dissertation Note
Thesis (MPhil) -- University of Adelaide, School of Humanities : English and Creative Writing, 2024
Provenance
This electronic version is made publicly available by the University of Adelaide in accordance with its open access policy for student theses. Copyright in this thesis remains with the author. This thesis may incorporate third party material which has been used by the author pursuant to Fair Dealing exceptions. If you are the owner of any included third party copyright material you wish to be removed from this electronic version, please complete the take down form located at: http://www.adelaide.edu.au/legals