Alblas, Elizabeth Jane
(2023)
Women of World Mythology and Folklore: A Poetic Re-imagining of Cultural Stories and Figures.
PhD thesis, University of Nottingham.
Abstract
This thesis focuses on uncovering stories concerning female figures from world mythology and folklore. The creative component of my thesis, the poetry collection The Island Witch, explores, interprets, and reassesses myths, legends, and folktales from around the world through a feminist lens, interrogating themes of female agency, marginalisation, sexual assault, transformation, voicelessness, and ecofeminism, amongst others.
My collection is accompanied by three creative-critical essays: ‘Dissected Bodies’; ‘‘After a while, you’ll see her when you think of me’: The Crafted Woman and Female Agency’; and ‘‘Wearing the open flowers and withered flowers upon my body’: Myth, barbaric feminism, and ecofeminism in Hiromi Itō’s Wild Grass on the Riverbank.’ Each of these essays investigates how female authors (and, in the case of ‘The Crafted Woman’, artists and filmmakers) have interrogated myths and folktales as a means to analyse both contemporary and historically documented female experiences. The essays examine how fragmentation is recognised as an act of gendered violence, as well as how it is used as a critical mode; how art has been used as an oppressive pedagogical tool against women; and how ecofeminism and barbaric feminism can be used to understand women’s relationships with nature.
My research is designed to have a clear public impact in the form of my collection. In particular, it expands upon the current Western publishing trend of feminist retellings of mythological texts by interacting with stories and figures from all over the world in order to address the current imbalance caused by an overwhelming focus on classical Greek mythology. These include stories from Chinese, Japanese, South American, Greek, Scottish, and Indian myths, legends, and folktales, among others.
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