University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

Gender-Based Ideology in Film and Literature: The Fantastic and Related Genres

Hottell, Ruth Ann

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Description

Title
Gender-Based Ideology in Film and Literature: The Fantastic and Related Genres
Author(s)
Hottell, Ruth Ann
Issue Date
1987
Doctoral Committee Chair(s)
Jahiel, Edwin,
Department of Study
French
Discipline
French
Degree Granting Institution
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Degree Name
Ph.D.
Degree Level
Dissertation
Keyword(s)
  • Literature, Romance
  • Cinema
Abstract
  • The work studies gender-based ideology in the fantastic and related genres. It begins with a general definition of the genre and an examination of its production in filmic and literary texts. Chapter 1 thus situates the fantastic while chapter 2 explores the identity and the otherness of the fantastic agent as represented in and through the text. Reader and spectator strategies are discussed, with emphasis on similarities and differences between the two. Additionally, the ideological implications of the treatment of Woman, her image and her desire are examined. Finally, related genres, especially romance/adventure, are treated in light of their capacity to protect the homogeneity and closure of the phallocentric text after the propaganda inherent in the fantastic was revealed.
  • The ensuing chapters consist of case studies, using psychoanalytic criticism to explore the arrival, function and expulsion of the fantastic agent as it is defined by the Symbolic Order and articulated in the text. The nature of the look is treated also, along with its relation to desire and power. The specific works analyzed are: "La Morte Amoureuse" by Theophile Gautier and Les Diaboliques by Henri-Georges Clouzot. In chapter 5, the hypothesis concerning romance/adventure is tested on a 1984 film, Romancing the Stone by Robert Zemeckis. The goal of this final chapter is to expose any advances made toward affording the heroine a role as subject rather than object in the text.
Graduation Semester
1987
Type of Resource
text
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http://hdl.handle.net/2142/71041

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