Masters Theses
Date of Award
8-2023
Degree Type
Thesis
Degree Name
Master of Arts
Major
English
Major Professor
Alisa Schoenbach
Committee Members
Gerard Cohen-Vrignaud and Urmila Seshagiri
Abstract
Djuna Barnes’s Nightwood is a challenging and beautiful text that continues to confound readers almost 100 years after its original publication. Though the text is often read as a “lesbian” novel, I consider the possibilities available when we read this text instead with a more open queerness in mind. By looking at the novel’s treatment of image, time, history, gender, sexuality, and identity, a new way of reading is revealed which rejects moves of taxonomization and categorization. This thesis explores how Barnes challenges dominant modes of representation and understanding, not to be a simple contrarian, but to present a new form of affective realism which challenges readers’ understanding of the world and those within it as clearly defined. Through Nightwood, Barnes rejects stability and finality and instead presents a text with ever-shifting meaning and identities which can serve as a guide to reading and living queerly.
Recommended Citation
Alford, Kaitlyn A., "Love on the Spectrum: Djuna Barnes’s Case Against Categorization in Nightwood. " Master's Thesis, University of Tennessee, 2023.
https://trace.tennessee.edu/utk_gradthes/9972
Included in
Gender and Sexuality Commons, Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Studies Commons, Literature in English, Anglophone outside British Isles and North America Commons, Literature in English, North America Commons, Modern Literature Commons, Other Arts and Humanities Commons, Other Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Commons