“ … ii ABSTRACT Krosschell,Emma Le Moi Double: Les Inconscients (Post)coloniaux chez … Les Inconscients (Post)coloniaux chez Césaire et Breton By Emma Krosschell * * * * * * * * * Submitted in partial … ”
Abstract
This thesis analyzes the poetic works of two French-speaking surrealist poets of the twentieth century, Aimé Césaire and André Breton. Despite their common point of surrealism, Césaire and Breton's poems differ because of their identities in a society afflicted by Western colonization. Using the literary theories of postcolonialism as a perspective for the analysis of Breton and Césaire's poems, I show that both men have a double consciousness based on the complicated influence of a colonizing society. Literary criticism of postcolonialism examines individual identities in colonial societies in relation to their symbolic position as "colonist" or "colonized." Césaire, a Martinican poet and politician and founder of the Negritude movement, possesses postcolonial public identity of a colonized. The public character of Breton as a white and French poet indicates, at the beginning, his symbolic position as a settler. Despite this dichotomy, I explain that their poems reveal deeper identifications reversed in their subconscious. Through his use of French instead of Creole for his poems, Césaire reveals a hidden unconscious that identifies with the colonists, and the poetic identification of Breton with the Celtic culture of France before its colonization by the Romans implies the existence of a colonized unconscious. Through the revelation of these dual consciousnesses in the poetry of Breton and Césaire, this thesis demonstrates the breadth and depth of colonial influence on individuals and society.
“ … ii ABSTRACT Krosschell,Emma “To be alive – is Power”: Fuller‟s Feminine Ideal … 2011 i … and Thomas Wentworth Higginson. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2008. Print. Woman, Culture, and Society. Eds. … ”
Abstract
This thesis examines the relationship between nineteenth-century American feminism, transcendentalism, and poetry through an analysis of Margaret Fuller's essay Woman in the Nineteenth Century in tandem with Emily Dickinson's collected poems. Fuller presents an original type of feminist optimism influenced by the precepts of the American transcendentalist movement. Her essay employs the transcendental belief in the possibility for human semi-divinity in order to proclaim that women, rather than men, possess unique potential for transcendence. As a result, Fuller theorizes that with women's social, sexual, and intellectual liberation, a certain ideal woman will be able to transcend not only women's limited position in a patriarchal society, but also the confines of human experience.
I investigate the details of Fuller's ideal woman and employ her theories as a lens through which to read Dickinson's poems, with the goal of determining if Dickinson's poetic genius embodies this female ideal. By simultaneously analyzing the two women's works, I reveal the ways in which Dickinson's poems enhance, complicate, and deviate from Fuller's concepts, as well as the literary exchange that arises between the two writers. Due to the essay and poems' capacity to reciprocally nuance each other, I argue that Dickinson's poetic achievement, when read concurrently with Fuller, does fulfill Fuller's concept of the feminine transcendental ideal.
