She Still Sees Herself in Artemis: The Chaos Magic of Feminist Mythological Retellings
| dc.contributor.advisor | Carroll, Anna | |
| dc.contributor.advisor | North, Tia | |
| dc.contributor.author | Hamerlynck, Amelia | |
| dc.date.accessioned | 2023-09-28T20:43:13Z | |
| dc.date.available | 2023-09-28T20:43:13Z | |
| dc.date.issued | 2023-05 | |
| dc.description | 64 pages | en_US |
| dc.description.abstract | This thesis is a creative writing portfolio entitled “She still sees herself in Artemis” that retells, mostly in verse, stories from classical civilizations with emphasis on feminist themes. My collection engages with a body of retellings as old as the source material itself, but especially converses with contemporary poets, influenced as they are by the feminist writers of the twentieth century who have greatly shaped my creative and political sensibilities. Part one is a critical introduction that posits rewriting and autotheory as integral to feminist literature. Rewriting enables us to reclaim a canon that has historically marginalized female and queer voices; to critique the supposed ‘foundations’ of a ‘Western inheritance,’ thus allowing us to rebel against the violence therein; and to imagine a past wherein the oppressed were always conscious of and combating their oppression, thus allowing us to imagine a future that carries this legacy. Part two is a chapbook consisting of thirteen poems and one piece of flash fiction. I wrote ten pieces specifically for this thesis and include four pieces from past classes that are thematically relevant, two of which have minor revisions. In keeping with the fluid, cyclical nature of mythological retellings, each of my pieces is intentionally derivative and referential. Footnotes and epitaphs in the chapbook identify some references. Most pieces are written “after” a specific artist, which in poetry indicates both response and mimicry. Finally, part three is an autotheoretical piece entitled “Artemis: a Gloss.” Autotheory is a feminist genre dedicated to turning one’s own life experiences into theory; as well as understanding one’s personal experiences through the lens of theory as though they were works of art. This title is lifted from “Nightingale: a Gloss” by Paisley Rekdal, in which she braids the lineage of the Philomela myth in Western literature with her own experiences as a sexual violence survivor. In a similar vein, my gloss braids a discussion of dilemmas in rewriting mythology; analyses of the artists and scholars who have directly influenced my work; and other insights into my creative process. The Gloss is itself divided into three sections, each addressing aesthetic and political questions at the heart of mythological retelling: What do we owe ancient historical women in our discussions of mythological gender violence? What is the power of reimagining mythological gender violence as healthy, romantic, and consensual? How do we center intersectional feminism while perpetuating story cycles that have historically been used to justify white supremacy and colonialism? After completing a broad review of literature that engages with these questions implicitly and explicitly, I was able to address them in my own poems. The writing process was a transformative hands-on experiment in both craft (how to write a poem) and positionality (how to be aware of where the poem comes from and what work it does). | en_US |
| dc.identifier.uri | https://hdl.handle.net/1794/28939 | |
| dc.language.iso | en | en_US |
| dc.publisher | University of Oregon | en_US |
| dc.rights | Creative Commons BY-NC-ND 4.0-US | en_US |
| dc.subject | poetry | en_US |
| dc.subject | feminism | en_US |
| dc.subject | mythology | en_US |
| dc.subject | retelling | en_US |
| dc.subject | classics | en_US |
| dc.subject | creative writing | en_US |
| dc.title | She Still Sees Herself in Artemis: The Chaos Magic of Feminist Mythological Retellings | en_US |
| dc.type | Thesis / Dissertation | en_US |