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THE SINGING BONE: COLLECTIVE CREATIVITY & THE CREATION OF A QUEER IMAGINARY by ELIZABETH ALEXANDRA HOWARD A DISSERTATION Presented to the Department of Comparative Literature and the Graduate School of the University of Oregon in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy June 2020 DISSERTATION APPROVAL PAGE Student: Elizabeth Alexandra Howard Title: The Singing Bone: Collective Creativity & the Creation of a Queer Imaginary This dissertation has been accepted and approved in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Doctor of Philosophy degree in the Department of Comparative Literature by: Dianne Dugaw Chairperson Dorothee Ostmeier Core Member Michael Allan Core Member Amanda Doxtater Core Member Fabienne Moore Institutional Representative and Kate Mondloch Interim Vice Provost and Dean of the Graduate School Original approval signatures are on file with the University of Oregon Graduate School. Degree awarded June 2020 ii © 2020 Elizabeth Alexandra Howard This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs (United States) License. iii DISSERTATION ABSTRACT Elizabeth Alexandra Howard Doctor of Philosophy Department of Comparative Literature June 2020 Title: The Singing Bone: Collective Creativity & the Creation of a Queer Imaginary This dissertation examines how oral folklore and supernatural elements open to view queer ways of imagining in works by French writer Marie-Catherine d’Aulnoy (1650-1705), Scottish poet James Macpherson (1736-1796), and Swedish novelist Selma Lagerlöf (1858-1940). Through their re-writing of supernatural stories from oral tradition, these authors articulate queer imaginaries that envision alternative configurations of identity and desire, in which eroticism expands beyond a binary framework, and in which equality is established between humans and nature. By reimagining oral materials in a literary form, these authors demonstrate the complexity of the interrelation between oral and literary texts and engage creativity as a collective rather than individual practice. Each author’s marginalized position contributed to their use of popular genres (such as fairy tales, ballads, and folktales) to convey their critiques of the dominant culture in which they lived. All used the supernatural to reimagine the worlds they’d been excluded from. D’Aulnoy’s literary fairy tales emerged out of the oral context of the Parisian salons, and used the magical setting of the merveilleux to articulate political critiques of women’s position in seventeenth-century France. Through the transformations of her characters, D’Aulnoy’s tales illustrate new capacities for erotic attachment, queering heteronormative sexuality by expanding sensuality and desire iv beyond the human. In his Ossian poems, eighteenth-century Gaelic poet James Macpherson recreated the oral tradition of the Highland bards within a literary context. Through his evocation of Ossian as an intermediary with the dead, Macpherson’s poems convey a queer poetic imaginary in which the boundaries that separate humans from nature, and the living from the dead, are fluid. Nineteenth-century Swedish novelist Selma Lagerlöf reimagined storytelling traditions from her native Värmland in her novels to depict a liminal world, in which the boundaries between men and women, humans and nature, and the material and spiritual world, are constantly shifting. Through this examination of queer texts with roots in oral folklore, my project provides a theoretical model for recognizing this phenomenon in other literary works. v CURRICULUM VITAE NAME OF AUTHOR: Elizabeth Alexandra Howard GRADUATE AND UNDERGRADUATE SCHOOLS ATTENDED: University of Oregon, Eugene Boston University, Boston Emerson College, Boston DEGREES AWARDED: Doctor of Philosophy, Comparative Literature, 2020, University of Oregon Master of Fine Arts, Poetry, 2011, Boston University Bachelor of Fine Arts, Writing Literature and Publishing, 2008, Emerson College AREAS OF SPECIAL INTEREST: British Literature and Folklore (the Long 18th Century) Scandinavian Literature and Folklore French Literature and Folklore Queer Theory/Gender and Sexuality Studies Translation: Theory and Practice Poetry and Poetics Fantasy and Fantastic Literature PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE: Graduate Employee, University of Oregon, 2012-2020 Mentorship Coordinator, NOMAD, University of Oregon, 2014-2015 GRANTS, AWARDS, AND HONORS: Birgit Baldwin Fellowship in Scandinavian Studies, SASS, 2019-2020 Swedish Women’s Educational Association San Francisco Scholarship, SWEA, 2018-2019 M. Gregg Smith Fellowship, University of Oregon, 2018-2019 vi General University Scholarship, University of Oregon, 2018-2019 Summer Writing Fellowship, University of Oregon, 2018 Special “OPPS” Travel and Research Award, University of Oregon, 2018 Bruce M. Abrams LGBTQ Essay Award, University of Oregon, 2018 Center for the Study of Women in Society Travel Grant, University of Oregon, 2018 Svenska Institutet Short Stay Research Grant, Swedish Institute, 2017 Special Translation Studies Project Award, University of Oregon, 2016 Friends of Scandinavia Scholarship, University of Oregon, 2015 Svenska Institutet Stipendium for Malungs Folkhögskola, Swedish Institute, 2015 Robert Pinsky Global Fellowship, Boston University, 2010 Travis Parker Rushing Memorial Writing Award, Emerson College, 2008 High Distinction in Poetry Senior Writing Award, Emerson College, 2008 Magna Cum Laude, Emerson College, 2008 PUBLICATIONS: Howard, Elizabeth. “Queer Transformations and Transgressive Bodies in the Fairy Tales of Marie-Catherine d’Aulnoy.” Marvels & Tales: Journal of Fairy-Tale Studies 35, no. 2 (Fall 2021). Forthcoming. vii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS First and foremost, I would like to thank my committee members: Michael Allan, Dorothee Ostmeier, Amanda Doxtater, and Fabienne Moore, for the guidance and support they have provided throughout this process. I would like to extend a special thank you to my chair, Dianne Dugaw, for providing consistently excellent advice and unwavering support over the years, and for believing in this project from the beginning. Next, I would like to thank the Department of Comparative Literature at the University of Oregon for serving as my academic home for these past eight years, and for providing such a stimulating and supportive academic environment. Special thanks to Leah Middlebrook, current department chair; Ken Calhoon, former chair; and Cynthia Stockwell, whose presence is instrumental for the smooth running of the department. For making it possible for me to conduct vital research for the project abroad, I would like to thank: the Swedish Institute for the Short Stay Research Grant I was awarded in the summer of 2017; the Swedish Women’s Educational Association of San Francisco for funding my research at the Selma Lagerlöf Collection at the Royal Library in Stockholm in the winter of 2019; and finally, the Society for the Advancement of Scandinavian Study (SASS) for awarding me the Birgit Baldwin Fellowship in Scandinavian Studies for the 2019-2020 academic year, which enabled me to spend the year as a guest doctoral student at the Department of Literature at Uppsala University. At Uppsala University, I would like to thank the Department of Literature, especially Anna Williams and Patrik Mehrens, for hosting me during the final year of my PhD, and for making me feel like such a welcome member of the community. Thank you to Anna Nordlund for taking the time to meet with me and discuss my project, and for viii your presence at my seminar in February. I would also like to extend particular thanks to the doctoral students at the department, especially Jana Rüegg, Lisa Grahn, and Louise Schou Therkildsen, for making me feel so welcome and helping me access the true Uppsala student experience. Others in Sweden I would like to thank for their friendship and support particularly during this last, most challenging year, include: Jarita Rutkowski, Katharina Bömer-Schulte, Clara Lerbro, Elin Englund, Linnéa Sigvardsson, Emelie Waldken, Therese Korritter, Anton Bengtsson, and Fabian Söderdahl. I could not have made it through this doctoral program without the support of all my wonderful fellow doctoral students in Comparative Literature, especially: Jenny Odintz, Tera Reid-Olds, Andréa Gilroy (and honorary member, Shaun Gilroy), Sunayani Battacharya, Joanna Myers, Bess Myers, Michelle Crowson, Darya Smirnova, Anna-Lisa Baumeister, Ying Xiong, Iida Pöllänen, Palita Chunsaengchan, Baran Germen, and Ahmad Nadalizadeh. In Eugene I would also like to thank Rachael, Ben, and Ira Young, and especially my queer Eugene family: Lydia Van Dreel and Tigre Lusardi for so much love and support over the years (and all the amazing adventures!). Thanks are due as well to my Boston Mansion family: Rosalie Norris and Edison Alvarez, Erika Roderick and Natty Smith, Anna and Brian Hourihan, Jean Thrift, Veronica Barron, and Anna Laurila. Also, thank you to Laura Osur, for being there from the very beginning. Thank you to my parents for all of their love and support, and to my incredible siblings, Katherine Howard, and Michael Howard for cheering me on throughout this journey, and to Alex Houston—dearest cousin and honorary Howard sibling. Finally, special thanks to Alex Weil and Jenna Tucker, for all of your love and encouragement, for believing in me, and helping me learn to believe in myself. ix This dissertation is dedicated to the memory of my grandmothers, Maj-Britt Nilsson Houston, and Virginia Van De Carr
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