A comparative study of disabled children and their adopted maternal figures in French and English Romantic Literature

英法浪漫主义文学中残疾儿童及其收养母亲形象的比较研究

• 批准号: 2633207
• 金额: --
• 依托单位: University of Oxford
• 依托单位国家: 英国
• 项目类别: Studentship
• 财政年份: 2020
• 资助国家: 英国
• 起止时间: 2020 至 无数据
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=studentship-2633207
• 关键词: comparative; study; disabled; children; their

The medical literature of the Romantic period claimed that the maternal imagination during pregnancy could cause a child to be born disabled. Consequently, the burden of responsibility for the child's 'imperfection' was thought to lie with the mother. My project explores depictions of the relationship between the disabled child and their adopted maternal figure in French and English Romantic literature, considering both the traditional dynamic between the disabled child and their caregiver and more unorthodox relationships. By engaging with texts on both sides of the channel, this project will mark a new direction within the recent body of work on English Romantic disability studies and facilitate a deeper understanding of the cross-cultural exchange of ideas surrounding disabled children. My initial focus will be Victor Hugo's Notre Dame de Paris and Mary Shelley's Frankenstein; I will also consider a broad spectrum of literary depictions of disability from French authors such as Marceline Desbordes-Valmore and Alphonse de Lamartine to British authors such as Lord Byron, Anna Laetitia Barbauld and Walter Scott. This project will build upon the work done by Julia Kristeva, Jennifer Buckley and Margaret Homans, considering their theories of maternal language, paternal imagination and demonic maternity, respectively, in the light of disability studies. Using a variety of methodologies from close textual analysis to historical contextualisation, I will broadly explore three ways of looking at these ideas. The first strand will consider the role of language in the adopted mother-child relationship. Quasimodo communicates with sign language taught to him by Frollo, on whom he therefore comes to rely upon to mediate his interactions with the world. In Shelley's text, the creature learns from watching the De Lacey family and through Frankenstein's notebooks; his world similarly circumscribed by his creator. Studying these distorted renderings of the maternal role of language teaching (through which the child moves away from reliance on the mother) in the context of Kristeva's work Desire in Language will allow me to examine how impairment is attributed to or shaped by this primal parental interaction. Secondly, I will reflect upon the genesis of disability in relation to whether it is inherited or the result of a later incident. There are discrepancies in Hugo's presentation of Quasimodo's deafness that warrant further investigation of his disabled identity. It is initially presented as congenital but Hugo later reveals that Frollo makes Quasimodo ring the bells and therefore causes his deafness. I intend to examine how this links Frollo even more tightly to the maternal role. In Frankenstein, the idea of inherited disability in relation to motherhood also demands analysis. There have been separate considerations of the creature's disabilities and Victor Frankenstein's position as a creator; however, the correlation between these two notions has been overlooked and my project will address this. Finally setting can be viewed as an echo of the disabled body but more specifically, the womb. In Frankenstein,the creature's hovel has been described as a 'carceral space, as womb, or as portal.'[1] The place that is supposed to protect the child in all circumstances, in accordance with Romantic scientific values, can also be viewed as the place where the most harm is caused. In constructing the creature's home in this way, the womb has been transmuted into a hostile space by Shelley. As a 'sort of living creature,' Notre Dame Cathedral, as portrayed by Hugo, provides an architectural embodiment of deformity I am curious to see how the portrayal of setting can be mapped on to the relationship between the disabled child and their maternal figure.

浪漫主义时期的医学文献声称，母亲在怀孕期间的想象力可能导致孩子出生时残疾。因此，孩子的“不完美”被认为是母亲的责任。我的项目探讨了法国和英国浪漫主义文学中残疾儿童和他们收养的母亲形象之间关系的描述，考虑到残疾儿童和他们的照顾者之间的传统动态以及更非正统的关系。通过与海峡两岸的文本进行接触，该项目将标志着英国浪漫主义残疾研究的新方向，并促进对残疾儿童的跨文化思想交流的更深层次的理解。我最初的重点是维克多·雨果的《巴黎圣母院》和玛丽·雪莱的《弗兰肯斯坦》；我还将考虑从法国作家如Marceline Desbordes-Valmore和Alphonse de lammartine到英国作家如Lord Byron， Anna Laetitia Barbauld和Walter Scott对残疾的广泛文学描述。本项目将以茱莉亚·克里斯特娃、詹妮弗·巴克利和玛格丽特·霍曼斯的工作为基础，分别从残疾研究的角度考虑她们关于母性语言、父性想象和恶魔母性的理论。使用各种方法，从密切的文本分析到历史语境化，我将广泛探索三种看待这些想法的方式。第一部分将考虑语言在被收养的母子关系中的作用。卡西莫多用弗罗洛教给他的手语进行交流，因此他开始依靠弗罗洛来调解他与世界的互动。在雪莱的文本中，这个生物通过观察德莱西一家和弗兰肯斯坦的笔记本学习；他的世界同样被他的创造者所限定。在Kristeva的作品《语言的欲望》的背景下，研究这些语言教学中母亲角色的扭曲呈现（通过这种角色，孩子摆脱了对母亲的依赖），将使我能够研究这种原始的父母互动是如何归因于或塑造损害的。其次，我将从残疾是遗传的还是后来事件的结果的角度来思考残疾的起源。雨果对卡西莫多失聪的描述中有一些不一致之处，值得进一步调查他的残疾身份。它最初被认为是先天性的，但雨果后来透露，是弗罗洛让卡西莫多敲钟，因此导致了他的失聪。我想研究一下这是如何将弗洛罗与母亲的角色更紧密地联系起来的。在《弗兰肯斯坦》中，遗传残疾与母性的关系也需要分析。关于这个生物的残疾和维克多·弗兰肯斯坦作为创造者的地位已经有了单独的考虑；然而，这两个概念之间的相关性被忽视了，我的项目将解决这个问题。最后，环境可以被看作是残疾身体的回声，但更具体地说，是子宫的回声。在《弗兰肯斯坦》中，生物的小屋被描述为“密室”、“子宫”或“传送门”。根据浪漫主义的科学价值观，在任何情况下都应该保护儿童的地方，也可以被视为造成最大伤害的地方。通过这种方式，雪莱把子宫变成了一个充满敌意的空间。作为一种“有生命的生物”，正如雨果所描绘的那样，巴黎圣母院提供了一种畸形的建筑体现。我很好奇，如何将环境的描绘映射到残疾儿童和他们的母亲形象之间的关系上。