Re-mything as a Socio-political Act in Lorde, Kingston, Naylor, Erdrich, and Oates

Angela Vlaicu, Purdue University

Abstract

This dissertation examines fiction by five contemporary American women writers to determine how they understood or made use of the principle of “re-mything” in their memoirs and novels, and how readers make sense of women authors' incursions into mythological realms. My study explores how American women writers of different races and ethnicities revise their own cultural mythologies to draw out images of mythical women to forge new empowering identities and cultural images of womanhood. It also emphasizes the socio-political aspect of the literary act of re-mything. By looking at contemporary American women's reworkings of myths, this dissertation explores the intersection of popular fiction and feminist discourses. My study analyzes how Audre Lorde incorporated Caribbean and West African mythologies to create the identity of the African American Lesbian Poet as mythic hero in Zami: A New Spelling of My Name; and how Maxine Hong Kingston interweaves the Chinese legendary figures of the warrior Mu Lan and the poetess Ts'ai Yen to construct the image of a contemporary Chinese American woman writer in The Woman Warrior . It also explores Gloria Naylor's revision of Biblical women and the transformation of the mythical Eve from the doomer of mankind into the redeemer of womankind in Bailey's Cafe. The next chapters examine Louise Erdrich's engendering of Native American mythologies in Tracks and The Antelope Wife and Joyce Carol Oates' revision of classical mythology and the feminization of the journey into the labyrinth in Solstice. While these texts maintain continuity with established literary traditions through the replication of conventions, their reworking of women's roles encourages readers to engage in feminist ideology.

Degree

Ph.D.

Advisors

Flory, Purdue University.

Subject Area

American literature|American studies|Womens studies

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