6 research outputs found

    The Legacy of Frankenstein’s Creature: Monstrosity and Female Grotesque in Mary Shelley, Angela Carter and Jeanette Winterson

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    This English Literature thesis (European PhD EDGES – Women’s and Gender Studies – 34th cycle) is an investigation into the representation of the monstrous body according to the British writers Mary Shelley, Angela Carter and Jeanette Winterson. The main objective is to observe how the representation of the categories of monstrous, abject and grotesque in Western cultural imagination have been influenced across time and literary genres. In the novels of Shelley, Carter and Winterson, the monstrous subject is configured as an alternative to the anthropocentric ideal embodied by the normative subject, of which Victor Frankenstein is the paradigmatic exponent. Plus, there are places considered anti-topoi within which the monster acquires a situatedness and claims a voice, generating an opposed counter-narrative to the imaginary conveyed by the normative subject. Monstrosity outlined by Shelley in the novels Frankenstein and The Last Man constitutes the starting point of my research, aiming to observe how the discourse of the normative body vs. the anti-normative body intersects with the discourse of the spaces of the centre vs. the spaces of the margin. In Carter's novels The Passion of New Eve and Nights at the Circus, the monstrous female constitutes the embodiment of wills, desires and claims challenging the heteronormative system. The space of otherness in which Carter's monster-woman is confined becomes a possibility of reshaping identity for the Subject, deconstructing the logic of power that moulded her within society. Finally, Winterson creates two monstrous women in Sexing the Cherry and The Passion who move through urban spaces, going from the centre to the margins and testifying to the arbitrariness of the system and its weaknesses. Similarly, in Frankissstein, Winterson recovers Shelley's original novel and transforms it into a parodic and intertextual speculation on the fluidity of identity and the limits of transhumanism.Tale tesi in Letteratura inglese (European PhD EDGES – Women’s and Gender Studies, XXXIV ciclo) costituisce un'indagine sulla rappresentazione del corpo mostruoso secondo le scrittrici inglesi Mary Shelley, Angela Carter e Jeanette Winterson. Obiettivo del lavoro è osservare attraverso quali modalità la rappresentazione delle categorie di mostruoso, abietto e grottesco nell'immaginario culturale occidentale sia stata influenzata nel tempo e attraverso i generi letterari. Nelle autrici prese in esame, il soggetto mostruoso si configura come alternativa all'ideale antropocentrico incarnato dal soggetto normativo, di cui Victor Frankenstein costituisce il massimo esponente. Allo stesso tempo, sarà possibile osservare come all'interno dei romanzi di Shelley, Carter e Winterson siano presenti luoghi considerati anti-topoi all'interno dei quali il mostro può acquisire un posizionamento e rivendicare una voce, finalizzata a generare una contronarrazione dell'immaginario veicolato dal soggetto normativo. La mostruosità delineata da Shelley in Frankenstein e The Last Man costituisce il punto di partenza dell'indagine, con lo scopo di osservare come il discorso del corpo normativo vs. il corpo antinormativo si intersechi con il discorso degli spazi del centro vs. gli spazi del margine. In The Passion of New Eve e Nights at the Circus di Carter, il mostruoso femminile incarna volontà, desideri e rivendicazioni che mettono in crisi il sistema eteronormativo. Lo spazio dell'alterità in cui la donna-mostro viene confinata diviene possibilità di rimodellamento dell'identità per il soggetto, decostruendo la logica del potere che l'ha plasmato all'interno della società. Winterson, infine, crea due donne mostruose in Sexing the Cherry e The Passion che si muovono negli spazi urbani oscillando tra centro e margine, e testimoniando l'arbitrarietà del sistema e i suoi punti deboli. Allo stesso modo, in Frankissstein Winterson recupera il romanzo di Shelley trasformandolo in una speculazione parodica e intertestuale sulla fluidità identitaria e sui limiti del transumanismo.Esta tesis doctoral en literatura inglesa (European PhD EDGES - Women's and Gender Studies, Cycle XXXIV) investiga la representación del cuerpo monstruoso según Mary Shelley, Angela Carter y Jeanette Winterson. El objetivo del trabajo es observar cómo haya influido la representación de las categorías de lo monstruoso, lo abyecto y lo grotesco en el imaginario cultural occidental a lo largo del tiempo y a través de los géneros literarios. En las autoras examinadas, el sujeto monstruoso se configura como una alternativa al ideal antropocéntrico encarnado por el sujeto normativo, del que Victor Frankenstein constituye el máximo exponente. Al mismo tiempo en las novelas de Shelley, Carter y Winterson hay lugares considerados anti-topoi dentro de los cuales el monstruo pueda adquirir una posición y reclamar una voz, generando una contranarrativa del imaginario del sujeto normativo. La monstruosidad esbozada por Shelley en Frankenstein y The Last Man constituye el punto de partida de la investigación, observando cómo el discurso del cuerpo normativo y antinormativo se cruza con el discurso sobre los espacios del centro y del margen. En The Passion of New Eve y Nights at the Circus de Carter, la mujer monstruosa encarna voluntades, deseos y reivindicaciones que desafían el sistema heteronormativo. El espacio de alteridad en el que está confinada se convierte en una posibilidad de reconfiguración de la identidad para el sujeto, deconstruyendo la lógica del poder que la ha moldeado dentro de la sociedad. Winterson, por último, crea en Sexing the Cherry y The Passion dos mujeres monstruosas que se mueven en espacios urbanos oscilando entre el centro y el margen, testimoniando la arbitrariedad del sistema y de sus debilidades. Asimismo, en Frankissstein Winterson recupera la novela de Shelley transformándola en una especulación paródica e intertextual sobre la fluidez de la identidad y los límites del transhumanismo

    Pseudo-contractions as Gentle Repairs

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    Updating a knowledge base to remove an unwanted consequence is a challenging task. Some of the original sentences must be either deleted or weakened in such a way that the sentence to be removed is no longer entailed by the resulting set. On the other hand, it is desirable that the existing knowledge be preserved as much as possible, minimising the loss of information. Several approaches to this problem can be found in the literature. In particular, when the knowledge is represented by an ontology, two different families of frameworks have been developed in the literature in the past decades with numerous ideas in common but with little interaction between the communities: applications of AGM-like Belief Change and justification-based Ontology Repair. In this paper, we investigate the relationship between pseudo-contraction operations and gentle repairs. Both aim to avoid the complete deletion of sentences when replacing them with weaker versions is enough to prevent the entailment of the unwanted formula. We show the correspondence between concepts on both sides and investigate under which conditions they are equivalent. Furthermore, we propose a unified notation for the two approaches, which might contribute to the integration of the two areas

    Reformulating ontological queries using materialised rewritings

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    Query rewriting is a prominent reasoning technique in ontologybased data access (OBDA) applications. Roughly speaking, a rewriting of a query Q w.r.t. an ontology is another query Q^1 that can be directly evaluated over the data without further reference to the input ontology. In this paper, we observe that many OBDA applications could significantly benefit from precomputing rewritings for certain queries. For example, in query optimisation, materialised rewritings of frequently asked queries can be used to speed up the query reformulation process. Moreover, in systems where users have different levels of access to information, materialised rewritings for the views assigned to each user can be exploited to obtain the set of answers to the input query derivable from the assigned views. Consequently, we investigate the problem of reformulating a query given a set of materialised rewritings and present a practical algorithm. Subsequently, we use our approach to design a fully edged query rewriting algorithm which can exploit materialised rewritings to speed up the rewriting process. Our experimental results confirm the potential of our technique in practice

    The 'Little Arts' of Amatory Fiction: Identity, Performance, and Process

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    From its initial publication until the feminist recovery project, amatory fiction was mostly depicted as a popular, but immoral, trivial, and aesthetically underdeveloped genre in comparison to the emergent realist novel. More recently, the genre’s feminocentric treatments of gender difference, erotic love, seduction and betrayal have been discussed in terms of their proto-feminism, whilst its thematic explorations of duty and disobedience have been recognised as evidence of the genre’s Tory-oriented intervention in partisan politics. Tracing the origins of some of today’s critical perspectives on femininity, writing, performativity, and the body, ‘The “Little Arts” of Amatory Fiction: Identity, Performance and Process’ argues that these texts are characterised not so much by their proto-feminism or political alignments, as by their proto-queer strategies. The structure of the chapters works from the outside of amatory texts – their reception and their construction in chapters one and two – to their content in chapters three and four, and then back outwards again in the final chapter which considers their lasting influence. The chapters redefine the genre according to its self-conscious and theoretically sophisticated engagements with identity, authorship, materiality, power, and desire, and suggest that such a redefinition serves to widen the pool of amatory texts for consideration. Chapter one explores the interrogation of prescriptive gender constructions in amatory texts and the feminist readings that this interrogation has provoked, suggesting that a reading that attends to the queerness at work in amatory fiction can yield a clearer understanding of the genre’s ambiguous ideological position, which goes beyond transgression. Chapter two identifies the ways in which self-conscious textuality, evasive strategies of authorship, and (dis)embodiment function within these texts to posit a constructivist understanding of identity, and as demonstrations of artistry and agency. It argues that identifying amatory fiction according to its play with notions of authorship, rather than as author-based, allows for the inclusion of lesser known writers such as Mary Hearne, writers not traditionally considered amatory, such as Penelope Aubin and Jane Barker, and anonymous and pseudonymous amatory texts, within an amatory canon traditionally constituted by Aphra Behn, Delarivier Manley, and Eliza Haywood. Chapter three reads amatory fiction alongside Judith Butler’s work on performativity, and charts the way in which amatory fiction experiments with the possibility of disrupting processes of identity construction using masquerade and mimicry, and creating its own discursive forms of repetition and performativity in ways that prefigure Butler. Chapter four examines how amatory texts subject these configurations to the material effects of passion and power, using materialist feminist theory to posit that the body is recognised in these texts as a place of excess beyond the limits of discursive performance. The final chapter outlines the afterlife of amatory fiction, demonstrating the ways in which intertextuality and borrowings are used to create a community of readers and writers working in an amatory tradition both within the early eighteenth century and beyond. At a time when some scholars are turning away from the popular fiction by women unearthed during the recovery project in favour of revisionist formalist approaches, this work is both crucial and timely, demonstrating amatory fiction as formally innovative, theoretically engaged, and vital both to understandings of the queer eighteenth century, and to genealogies of feminist and queer theories
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