• Abstract and Figures
• Public Full-text

INFORMATION TO USERS This manuscript has been reproduced from the microfilm master. UMI films the text directly from the original or copy submitted. Thus, some thesis and dissertation copies are in typewriter face, while others may be from any type of computer printer. The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the copy submitted. Broken or indistinct print, colored or poor quality illustrations and photographs, print bleedthrough, substandard margins, and improper alignment can adversely affect reproduction. In the unlikely event that the author did not send UMI a complete manuscript and there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if unauthorized copyright material had to be removed, a note will indicate the deletion. Oversize materials (e.g., maps, drawings, charts) are reproduced by sectioning the original, beginning at the upper left-hand comer and continuing from left to right in equal sections with small overlaps. Photographs included in the original manuscript have been reproduced xerographically in this copy. Higher quality 6” x 9” black and white photographic prints are available for any photographs or illustrations appearing in this copy for an additional charge. Contact UMI directly to order. Bell & Howell Information and Learning 300 North Zeeb Road, Ann Arbor, Ml 48106-1346 USA 800-521-0600 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. The Autobiographical Witness: American Women Writers and the Spanish Civil War By Patricia Grace King Doctor of Philosophy Department of English */~7j W alter Kalaidji Adviser Deepika Petraglia-Bahri Committee Member ik/7- Mark Sanders Committee Member Dean of the Graduate School Date Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. The Autobiographical Witness: American Women Writers and the Spanish Civil War By Patricia Grace King B.A., Eastern Mennonite University, 1989 M.A., James Madison University, 1992 Adviser: Walter Kalaidjian, Ph.D. An Abstract of A dissertation submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate School of Emory University in partial fulfillment Of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Department of English 2000 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. This dissertation recovers literary works by American women witnesses of the Spanish Civil War. Central to this discussion are poems by Joy Davidman, Genevieve Taggard, Edna St. Vincent Millay, and Muriel Rukeyser, as well as memoirs by Josephine Herbst and Lini DeVries. This dissertation contextualizes these works as “autobiographies of witness”—metonymically voiced, politically engaged self-writing. Chapter One shows how metonymic self-writing challenges conventional definitions of autobiography. Because the metonymic self-writing considered here emanates from the experience of war trauma, this chapter provides an overview of trauma theory and literature. It further addresses the crisis of witnessing which American participants in the Spanish Civil War faced upon returning home. In such a crisis, autobiographies of witness play a crucial role in giving voice and political clout to those whose testimonies contradict dominant national agendas. Chapter Two recovers and valorizes the political poetry of Davidman, Taggard, and Millay. Because these women tended to write outside the dominant camps of literary production of their day, their poetry has been marginalized. Yet the Spanish Civil War poems of Davidman, Taggard, and Millay give us particular insight into the way these insider-outsider poets shaped their own unique poetic tradition, marked by a metonymic stance in their self­ representations vis-a-vis Spain. Chapter Three examines Rukeyser’s Spanish Civil War poems in the light of her traumatic experience of the war. This chapter shows how the metonymic Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. stance is linked to the bearing of traumatic testimony, as the bearer of such testimony must speak both confessionally and personally and as part of larger body of fellow sufferers. Chapter Four considers the differences between secondary and primary witnessing. Taking the memoirs of Herbst and DeVries as examples, this chapter demonstrates how secondary witnesses may be so scarred by the act of bearing witness for another that they become primary witnesses themselves. This dissertation concludes with an overview of other Spanish Civil War writing by American women which does not fit the definition o f the autobiography of witness. It further considers how later generations of politicized American women writers has been influenced by the literary work of those who earlier bore witness to the war in Spain. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Acknowledgements I would like to thank the members of my Dissertation Committee for their attentive and thoughtful oversight of this project. I especially thank Professor Walter Kalaidjian for having introduced me to the literature of the Old Left in America and to Spanish Civil War writing by Americans. In addition I thank Dr. Kalaidjian for his ongoing support and encouragement in helping me to develop my ideas for this dissertation in various papers and presentations throughout the course of my graduate work at Emory. Professors Deepika Petraglia-Bahri and Mark Sanders also contributed greatly to this project, carefully reading and conscientiously responding to various lengthy drafts. I am sincerely grateful to all three for the ways in which they model for me academic careers which are deeply ethically committed. I am indebted to the administration of Eastern Mennonite University and to the faculty members of EMU’s Department of Language and Literature, for having faith in me and my ability to finish this dissertation. I am particularly grateful to these individuals for giving me an extra semester at Emory to work on my dissertation before beginning full-time teaching at EMU. I thank the prompt and ever-helpful staff of Emory University’s Interlibrary Loan. I also thank Betsy Dintamin, of Eastern Mennonite University’s Interlibrary Loan, whose services were invaluable to me during my summer of revision work. I owe many thanks to the community of friends and relatives who have sustained me spiritually and emotionally throughout the production of this Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. dissertation. I am endlessly grateful to my best friend, Diana Miles, for having walked through this entire process almost literally by my side. To Diana and to Anna Engle I am indebted for the circle of solidarity which they provided me during the writing stage. Anna was a meticulous and insightful reader of my earliest drafts. Profound appreciation to Karen Brown-Wheeler for doing my final legwork in Atlanta. To Atlanta Mennonite Fellowship I also offer thanks for praying me through this work. In addition, I thank Steve Worth for his patience and kindness and for the use of his laptop computer. Finally, I thank my family—Mom, Dad, Linda, Keith, Cameron, Peyton, Wally, Kristin, Cindy, and Sandy—for your many prayers and encouraging phone calls, and for all the family vacations and holidays when you had to put up with my dragging along a computer and a suitcase full of books. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. The Autobiographical Witness: American Women Writers and the Spanish Civil War By Patricia Grace King B.A., Eastern Mennonite University, 1989 M.A., James Madison University, 1992 Adviser: Walter Kalaidjian, Ph.D. A dissertation submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate School of Emory University in partial fulfillment Of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Department of English 2000 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. UMI Number: 9993467 Copyright 2001 by King, Patricia Grace All rights reserved. ___ ® UMI UMI Microform 9993467 Copyright 2001 by Bell & Howell Information and Learning Company. All rights reserved. This microform edition is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States Code. Bell & Howell Information and Learning Company 300 North Zeeb Road P.O. Box 1346 Ann Arbor. Ml 48106-1346 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Table o f Contents Introduction....................................................................................................................... 1 Chapter One. Theorizing the Autobiographical Witness: Metonymic Self- Representation as Psychological and Political Resistance........................................ 15 Chapter Two. Poetry and the Intellectual Witness: Joy Davidman, Genevieve Taggard, and Edna St. Vincent Millay Confront the War in Spain........................ 69 Chapter Three. ‘The World is a Field of the Spanish Civil War”: Traumatic Memory in Muriel Rukeyser’s Spanish Civil War Poetry......................................140 Chapter Four. From Secondary to Primary Witness: The War Memoirs of Josephine Herbst and Lini DeVries.........................................................................

Load more

  326

Copy Link