Tonkin, MaggieWest-Sooby, JohnDoyle, Hannah Ann Violet2025-05-282025-05-282024https://hdl.handle.net/2440/144758This thesis examines the concept of performance in the poetry of Marceline Desbordes-Valmore. Despite theatrical performance constituting an integral aspect of the poetess’s life, there is as yet little detailed scholarship concerning the influence of her stage experience on her poetry and the performative nature of her poetic practice. In order to address this gap in the existing scholarship, in this thesis we consider the extent to which Desbordes-Valmore’s poetry is performative in both form and content In the three chapters that comprise Part 1, we examine the formal characteristics of performance in Desbordes-Valmore’s poetry. We begin by analysing the dialogic dimension of the poetry, establishing a taxonomy of the types of dialogue present in order to determine whether the dialogue is real or implicit. In Chapter 2, we discuss the tradition of literary dedication, confirming that Desbordes-Valmore’s elaborate and extensive use of dedications functions a means of staging herself as a player within the literary field, and thereby accruing cultural capital. In Chapter 3, we consider Desbordes-Valmore’s approach to versification, concentrating on her mastery, but also, in some instances, her rejection of the prosodic conventions of the nineteenth century. In the four chapters that comprise Part 2, we analyse what is being staged in Desbordes-Valmore’s poetry. We consider how she draws upon theatrical techniques to stage four key tropes: maternity, space and time, abandonment, and waiting. In Chapter 4, we examine Desbordes-Valmore’s treatment of maternity, focusing first on the poetic representation of her own mother before turning to an analysis of how Desbordes-Valmore positions herself – or sees herself positioned – as a maternal figure. Subsequently, in Chapter 5, we demonstrate how Desbordes-Valmore uses theatrical devices to poetically stage three spatio-temporal dimensions in her poetry: that of the past and the homeland, the present and the urban, and a future utopia. In Chapters 6 and 7, we focus on the way in which the poetess stages the respective tropes of abandonment and waiting through her construction of a conventional early nineteenth-century feminine persona and her use of dialogue. Through both formal and thematic analysis, this thesis aims to uncover the deeply theatrical and performative aspects of Desbordes-Valmore’s poetry, as well as highlight her poetic mastery, innovation, and authority.frMarceline Desbordes-ValmoreFrench Romantic poetryperformancetheatricalitywomen poetsThesis