Armitt, Lucie (1992) Pushing back the limits: the fantastic as transgression in contemporary women's fiction. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

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Abstract

Moving on from Jackson's belief in fantasy as the
literature of subversion, this thesis argues that by
filtering Todorov's concept of the fantastic through a
contemporary theoretical understanding of transgression, the
stasis which has resulted from the obsessive desire to pin
down a single definition of literary fantasy can be
transformed into a dynamic and interactive narrative
process. This dynamism then provides a particularly useful
strategy for the fictional exploration of the problematic
positionality of women within patriarchal society.
The Introduction sets out and contextualises this
theoretical framework, the particular significance of
transgression to socio-political marginalisation being
illustrated by reference to the work of post-Bakhtinian
theorists such as Stallybrass and White. The importance of
the precarious threshold positionality offered by the
adoption of fantastic hesitancy on the part of the woman
writer is also introduced.
The three main textual sections each focuses upon four
novels by contemporary women writers, taking as their themes
women and the domestic, women and nightmare and women who
are "larger than life" respectively. In each case the
intervention of the fantastic is seen to be inseparable from
the problematic relationship between prohibition and
transgression, a relationship largely set up and explored
through a preoccupation with enclosure.
Throughout there is a presiding concern with the
importance of paradox and ambivalence as a radical literary
and political strategy. To this end the concluding section
sets this thesis within a feminist fantasy framework,
arguing that the problematic dynamism of the fantastic
offers far more transformative possibilities than the
"closed-system" of the feminist utopia.
The originality of this thesis resides in the fact that
it adds two further dimensions to existing perspectives on
the fantastic. By fully integrating the concept of
transgression as a narrative positionality as well as a
category of content, it aims to extricate fantasy criticism
from the bounds of genre theory. In addition, by combining
this with a variety of feminist theoretical perspectives and
by taking as its focus contemporary women's fiction, this
thesis provides something still not otherwise available: a
full-length feminist reading of the application of the
fantastic to contemporary women's fiction.

Item Type:	Thesis (PhD)
Subjects:	H Social Sciences > HQ The family. Marriage. Woman P Language and Literature > PN Literature (General) > PN0080 Criticism
Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH):	Fantasy fiction -- Women authors -- History and criticism, Fantastic, The, in literature, Fiction -- Women authors -- History and criticism, Women and literature -- History -- 20th century, Feminist literary criticism
Official Date:	October 1992
Dates:	Date Event October 1992 Submitted
Institution:	University of Warwick
Theses Department:	Department of English and Comparative Literary Studies
Thesis Type:	PhD
Publication Status:	Unpublished
Supervisor(s)/Advisor:	Bassnett, Susan
Format of File:	pdf
Extent:	368 leaves
Language:	eng

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