Natural and Unnatural Bodies: Contemporary Folklore and Embodied Female Experience

自然与非自然的身体：当代民间传说与女性体验

• 批准号: 2630629
• 金额: --
• 依托单位: University of Manchester
• 依托单位国家: 英国
• 项目类别: Studentship
• 财政年份: 2021
• 资助国家: 英国
• 起止时间: 2021 至 无数据
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=studentship-2630629
• 关键词: Natural; Unnatural; Bodies; Contemporary; Folklore

Through my critical-creative practice during the PhD, I will be identifying a burgeoning trend of radical re-workingsof the mythic and folkloric within contemporary women's writing and exploring the feminist potential of folklore. Thecritical element will combine theoretical approaches and textual analysis with fieldwork, interviews and archivalresearch. Such research will also inform my creative project, a collection of stories interrogating the folkloric tropeof equating the body of woman with the body of nature.In relation to existing scholarship, my thesis combines the fields of corporeal feminism and bodily ontologywith modern folklore theory to address notions of the 'natural' and 'unnatural' female body in Scottish and Englishmythic tradition and to examine how contemporary women folklore writers both invoke and deconstruct folkloricconvention to foreground embodied female subjectivities. Modern folklorist Alan Dundes defines folklore as a'socially sanctioned framework for the expression of critical anxiety-producing problems' (1980). I employ Dundes'definition to suggest that this 'socially sanctioned framework', as a potent medium for communicating atavistic andcollective understanding, might be reconfigured to express those specific 'critical anxiety-producing problems'related to the experience of inhabiting a female or marginalised body - a body not 'socially sanctioned' - and mighttherefore be considered a tool of cultural criticism. By looking at social criticism in the work of contemporary femalefolklore writers, as well as conducting my own feminist intervention through my creative writing practice, I ampositing folklore not as the object of analysis but as the analytic tool itself, the mouthpiece.Working under the co-supervision of Frances Leviston and Kaye Mitchell is essential to my aim of mergingmy writerly career with my scholastic research. Frances, the author of The Voice in My Ear (2020), a collection ofshort stories on women's experience which includes speculative, fantastical elements, is ideally placed to hone mycreative methodologies and thinking. Meanwhile Kaye edits the leading international academic journal in my areaof research (Contemporary Women's Writing, Oxford University Press), and has published much work on genderedembodiment, including her book Writing Shame: Contemporary Literature, Gender, and Negative Affect (2020).My PhD research project will consider the gendered dynamics of folklore narration in terms of Sarah R.Wakefield's notion of 'folklore-naming' (2006). According to Wakefield, the dominant, typically masculine namerwields control over the feminine namee by designating them as other - in the folkloric act, the namee ismythologised to the point of a denial of subjectivity. I use Wakefield's concepts of naming and narration as analytictools for investigating how folkloric codings of women's bodies - particularly those that conflate the body of womanwith the body of nature - undermine female subjectivity by projecting mythic constructions of male fear and desire.As Tudor Balinisteanu writes on social myths of femininity in Scottish and Irish writing (2005), 'the ungovernablebodies of women and nature' are made 'abject' in male-generated lore by their allegorical association - they aredenaturalised, made other.Conversely, in contemporary British folkloric short fiction by Daisy Johnson, Zoe Gilbert and Kirsty Logan(primary interlocutors whose work my thesis will situate in longer traditions of folkloric writing and feministinterpretations by canonic authors in the field such as Angela Carter), the literal and allegorical female body isreclaimed from superstition and becomes an experiencing subject via a complex act of 'folklore-naming' thatinterrogates and undermines itself.

通过我在博士期间的批判性创作实践，我将识别当代女性写作中对神话和民俗进行彻底重新加工的新兴趋势，并探索民俗的女权主义潜力。关键要素将理论方法和文本分析与实地考察、访谈和档案研究结合起来。这样的研究也将为我的创作项目提供信息，这是一个质疑将女性身体等同于自然身体的民俗比喻的故事集。就现有的学术而言，我的论文将肉体女权主义和身体本体论领域与现代民俗理论相结合，以解决苏格兰和英国神话传统中“自然”和“非自然”女性身体的概念，并研究当代女性民俗作家如何援引和 解构民俗惯例，突出体现的女性主体性。现代民俗学家艾伦·邓德斯将民俗定义为“社会认可的表达严重焦虑问题的框架”（1980）。我采用邓德斯的定义来表明，这种“社会认可的框架”作为传达返祖和集体理解的有效媒介，可能会被重新配置，以表达那些与居住在女性或边缘化身体（未受到“社会认可”的身体）的体验相关的特定“产生严重焦虑的问题”，因此可能被视为文化批评的工具。通过审视当代女性民俗作家作品中的社会批评，以及通过我的创造性写作实践进行我自己的女权主义干预，我将民俗不是作为分析的对象，而是作为分析工具本身、喉舌。在弗朗西斯·莱维斯顿和凯·米切尔的共同监督下工作，对于我将作家生涯与学术研究相结合的目标至关重要。弗朗西斯是《我耳边的声音》（2020）的作者，这是一本关于女性经历的短篇小说集，其中包括思辨、奇幻元素，是磨练我的创作方法和思维的理想选择。与此同时，凯编辑了我研究领域的领先国际学术期刊（《当代女性写作》，牛津大学出版社），并发表了许多关于性别具体化的著作，包括她的书《写作羞耻：当代文学、性别和负面情感》（2020年）。我的博士研究项目将根据莎拉·R·韦克菲尔德的“民间传说命名”概念（2006年）来考虑民间传说叙事的性别动态。根据韦克菲尔德的说法，占主导地位的、典型的男性名字通过将女性名字指定为他者来控制女性名字——在民俗行为中，名字被神话化到了否认主观性的地步。我使用韦克菲尔德的命名和叙述概念作为分析工具，研究女性身体的民俗编码——尤其是那些将女性身体与自然身体混为一谈的民俗编码——通过投射男性恐惧和欲望的神话结构来破坏女性的主体性。 相反，在黛西·约翰逊（Daisy Johnson）、佐伊·吉尔伯特（Zoe Gilbert）和柯斯蒂·洛根（Kirsty Logan）的当代英国民俗短篇小说中（我的论文将把他们的作品置于安吉拉·卡特（Angela Carter）等该领域的经典作家对民俗写作和女性主义解释的更悠久的传统中）， 字面上和寓言中的女性身体从迷信中被夺回，并通过一种复杂的“民间传说命名”行为成为一个体验主体，这种行为审问和破坏了自身。